St. Louis News Blog

Oops. Missouri congressman Todd Akin made a boo-boo Thursday at a Washington, D.C., kick-off to yet another tea party. (Unreal thought those ended like two months ago, but whatever.)

As Akin says, he was trying to tick off the liberals by leading the crowd in a resounding Pledge of Allegiance. You know, that thingie in which we pledge our allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and stuff.

Politico captured the blunder on video.

​Just published yesterday is RFT's reportage from the Miss Gay America pageant, which overtook the Millenium Hotel downtown last week. It's a delicious read.

The RFT also captured behind-the-scenes video at the pageant, asking contestants what it took to become the top dog in a pageant whose motto is: "Where boys are boys, and female impersonation is an art."

So no, there are no surgical augmentations below the neck for these contestants.

In one man's words:

"So, it's just like what you would see on television, it's not much different, it's just men wearing dresses and portraying the image of a woman."

(Video by Stew Smith and Amanda Andert.)

Wikimedia Commons

You won't find a crapper as rustic as this one at the I-44 Conway Welcome Center. It has modern wastewater treatment!

​This just in from the latest issue of AAA's Midwest Traveler magazine: a $10.8 million Missouri rest stop has collected props from the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials in the coming-in-ahead-of-time-and-under-budget category.

Your humble Daily RFT correspondent celebrated for a minute here before it hit us: Missouri has a rest stop?

The Route 66-themed outpost apparently opened back in May in a faraway-sounding place called Conway. Among the eco-friendly perks are motion-sensored toilets, pet walking areas and "a modern wastewater treatment system."

Alrighty then!

That'll sure differentiate the Conway Welcome Center from our run-of-the-mill do-me-doggie truck stops.

​Today the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has an interesting story about the Missouri Department of Revenue's determination that yoga studios are fitness centers and therefore subject to the state's 4 percent sales tax on the latter.

In Unreal's continuing effort to make the world a better place, we turn to potentially misleading typos in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. An inveterate racetrack denizen, if there's one thing Unreal knows, its how to read the odds.
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Unreal loves a business trip as much as anybody. Oh, the fun we've had on long drives out to the O'Fallons, Lake of the Ozarks and Ste. Genevieve! The best part, though, comes after we get home, when that little expense check magically shows up in our pigeonhole. How wonderful life would be, we've often thought, if we could just disappear for a few days and then get that expense check without, you know, actually doing any work.  Daily life, especially in these times, does get expensive and a little extra cash is always welcome.

Then we heard about the Maloney & Porcelli Expense Report Generator. Through the magic of the Internet, it makes a full expense report for you, with receipts and everything, that you can just send to your accounts person.

Eagerly, we decided to try it out. Three hundred twenty bucks and thirty-eight cents sounded like a reasonable expense check for the strenuous business of sitting at home in our underwear watching daytime TV.

Jeff Rainford

​Is it just Unreal, or is that St. Louis' Chief Ball Buster Jeff Rainford calling the shots against the Second City?!

www.espn.com

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​Unreal likes to pride ourself on ingenuity. But we're not too cocky to tip the ol' cap to the truly awesome ideas of others, like "Texts From Last Night."

That website's premise is simple and effin' hilarious. Simply send in your (frequently drunken) texts from last night, including area code, and we'll post 'em, say the site's anonymous founders.

For Unreal's purposes, here's where it gets even more beautiful: TFLN lets you search for entries by zip code!

The recent revelation caused Unreal to think that we should start a lil' "314's Greatest Hits from TFLN" as a regular Friday feature on Daily RFT.

You're not busy, are you? Enjoy!

(314): I will give everyone a free pointer today. Here it goes, always pee by the house late at night to avoid getting shot by drunk bastards with guns. Never go by the tree line.

​A little nugget from the Unreal e-mailbox, which raises several questions at once:

1. Why the $67 price tag?

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2. By the same token, where'd they come up with the $5,254.96 figure? Why not shoot the moon and go for $5,254.97?

3. The small print at the bottom ...​says:

si.com

Broadway Joe: The man least likely to pottymouth that other Joe

​This just in to the Unreal e-mail bag. The second installment of HBO's quarterly Joe Buck Live show's slated for Tuesday, September 22. Per the press release (boldface is ours):

In addition to a previously announced live gathering featuring three of the NFL's all-time great quarterbacks - Dan Marino (Dolphins), John Elway (Broncos) and Joe Namath (Jets) - Buck will host a roundtable discussion with newsmakers Jerry Jones (owner of the Dallas Cowboys) and Mark Cuban (owner of the Dallas Mavericks). Buck will also go one-on-one with former baseball star Curt Schilling, who is among the most opinionated observers on the sports scene.

The burning question, of course, is: Who'll take up the challenge Artie Lange threw down with his obscenity-drenched rant during episode one on June 15? If your memory's hazy, after Buck allowed that his favorite website is TMZ.com, pottymouthed comedian Lange posited that next on Buck's list was "suckingcock.com."

This time around, Unreal's money is on Cuban. Least likely? Namath.

Following is a poll, complete with the odds as we see them:

​ From the Hyde Park Herald, until last January the President's source for neighborhood news:

Hyde Park Herald

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flickr.com/photos/dee_lightful

​Unreal doesn't consider ourself a likely candidate for salvation, but we happened to hear Patti Smith's "Dancing Barefoot" on the radio the other day and decided that if it ever does happen, it will be on a dance floor. Of course, our Patti-inspired vision involves vast quantities of hallucinogens and maybe some ecstatic Sufi-like spinning.

Then we heard about The Body Light Club, a Christian nightclub downtown, next door to the City Museum. Our heathenish heart atremble, we called up Leonard Foxworth, Jr., the club's owner to find out how soon we could get saved.

Unreal's got nothing against Apple, but we were briefly puzzled to see, amid the computer maker/geek cult's hype for the newest iteration of its OS X operating system, Snow Leopard, the highway sign for Interstate 64:

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What could this mean?

Awful Library Books

​Unreal recently came across an absolutely wonderful blog called Awful Library Books. Founded by two Michigan librarians named Mary and Holly, the site is, in their words, "a collection of public library holdings that we find amusing and maybe questionable for public libraries trying to maintain a current and relevant collection."

Herewith Unreal's favorite awful titles:

• Wax in Our World
• Our Backward Children
• My Cat's in Love or, How to Survive Your Feline's Sex Life, Pregnancy and Kittening
• Teacher Spanks Johnny: A Handbook for Teachers
• The Love Bugs: A Natural History of V.D.'s
• What's Wrong With My Snake?
• Do-It-Yourself Coffins
• More Great Pantyhose Crafts
• A Passion for Donkeys
• Phunology (a true classic in the genre of parlor game instruction, dating from 1923)

While dining on goat and fufu at a Nigerian restaurant this weekend, Unreal spotted a preview for a film called Hitler. Immediately, we fell in love and abandoned all plans of downloading an advance copy of New Moon. This is the film to see this year. We dare you to tell us any different.

Is it just us, or is it always the high-school band director??

STLtoday.com

The skin-flute is indeed a formidable instrument.

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flickr.com/photos/syl2007

​Unreal has just been informed that the biggest question that plagues single women is "Why are all the good men taken?"

This came as a surprise to us, because we always believed the lament of the single woman (well, actually, women in general) was "Why are men such assholes?"

But we came across the good men being taken question in an article in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, which told us right away that this was a question of serious scientific import. Or maybe the asshole question is far too complex to be resolved with one experiment on a group of undergrads who need the credit for their Intro to Psych course. (Remember when you actually got money for participating in a psych experiment? Unreal does -- with longing.)

Ph.D. student Jessica Parker and her advisor Dr. Melissa Burkley, the authors of this article (called "Who's chasing whom? The impact of gender and relationship status on mate poaching"), hypothesized that "taken men are perceived as good" and set up an experiment on 184 undergraduates, 97 of them female, at Oklahoma State University to prove it.

The movie Cold Souls sounds kind of like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind without the Jim Carrey-Kate Winslet part. In other words, it's about a company that extracts your soul and stores it for you in a glass jar. That's what Unreal has surmised anyway, based on the movie's viral marketing scheme. We won't find out for sure until it comes out on DVD because, guess what? Cold Souls is never gonna open in the state of Missouri. Ever.

Putting bitterness aside, because Unreal is exceptionally good at that sort of thing, we must admit the movie's viral marketers got skillz. The Soul Storer, the web site they have constructed, takes info on your age, location, occupation, favorite color and film and produces a picture of what your soul would look like. (It's the best viral marketing site we've experienced since Mad Men Yourself, and that one is so last week.)

Behold, the soul of Unreal:

thesoulstoragecompany.com

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Here at Unreal's dear old RFT base of operations, we get TONS of e-mail. By TONS we mean scads, heaps, piles, mountains. Think: landfill. We're, like, the cat lady of e-mails.

But we're not complaining. Fact is, scrolling down our inbox, sifting through our massively clogged spam filter -- and throwing nearly everything away -- can induce in Unreal a  Zen-like calm. There's a certain Dada-ist bent to the process, even as the eyes glaze over and the brain's alpha waves kick in. Every once in a while, a chunk of virtual flotsam catches our eye and won't let go...

Such was the case this morning, when we encountered:

Subject:     Yaz Ayları için Oyuncaklar

August Busch IV

 It's been a while since Unreal posted our Entirely 100% Unauthorized August Busch IV Dating Contest.

And, truth be told, we kind of forgot about the competition. That's because just one Daily RFT reader (Dena Vellone) initially responded to our quest to find a new life partner for the recently divorced -- and unemployed -- August Busch IV.

Now, five months later, and suddenly there's a renewed interest in the contest. Readers "Helen," "Fuzzy," "Rose Lynn" and "Lily" have all commented this month to either wish the beer scion luck or throw their names into the ring to become his soul mate.

That's fine. But as we originally posted, better would be to send us an email (200 words max) stating why you think you'd be a perfect fit for A4. A picture of yourself wouldn't hurt either. 

We'll then post your sentiments on this blog, and we'll do our best to pass them, as well as your photo, along to the eligible bachelor himself.

So drop us a line ladies (or gentlemen). After all, this Bud could be for you.
 

Every once in awhile Google's and Yahoo's "alert" e-mails bring Unreal a nugget of can't-live-without news, like an announcement of a gigantic bible-eating & pie-beating convention at America's Center, or the publication of a book about how not to make sex with your mother-in-law really awkward.

Unreal really enjoyed the gem delivered this morning under the headline, "Man With Workout-Ball-Slashing Fetish Charged."

Wikimedia Commons

Here's what appears when Unreal searches online images for "fetish." Ball-slashing not found. Drats.

According to the story, "The St. Louis County Sheriff's Office says a man with a self-professed sexual fetish for slashing rubber balls was arrested and has appeared in court.

"Police started looking for 31-year-old Christopher Bjerkness after surveillance tape allegedly showed him breaking into a fitness clinic in May and slashing exercise balls.

"Duluth Police said Bjerkness was arrested after he called them from..."

Hold up there! DULUTH?!

OK, uh, yeah, that would be St. Louis County, Minnesota.

'Round these parts, we're more likely to see a headline about arrests of drivers of redneck limos.

For the rest of that Duluth story, take the jump.

www.inperspire.com

A few weeks after we interviewed Darla Dale, one of the founders of Inperspire Motivational Fitness Towels, a lovely little package came across our desk. Inside, beautifully wrapped in tissue paper, was an Inperspire towel for our very own, plus a coupon for 20 percent off our next order for Inperspire.

Now, we love our towel. It is soft and white and emblazoned with the slogan "Sudo, ergo sum. I sweat, therefore I am" and a drawing of Rodin's The Thinker. (Unreal, you may have noticed, is the philosophical type.) We haven't sweated into it yet -- so far we've only used it as a scarf to ward off hypothermia brought on by the hyperactive air-conditioning at our desk -- but we love our towel and you will have to pry it from our cold, dead hand.

But we also want to share the Inperspire love. So if you would like the 20 percent off coupon, please send a picture of your t-shirt pit stains to unreal@riverfronttimes.com. No smelly t-shirts, please. A picture can say a thousand words about how badly you need a new towel.

Though it's unlikely Ichiro Suzuki combed through last week's Riverfront Times Guide to the All-Star Game, the Seattle Mariners star did visit one prominent spot on Ian Froeb's fact-packed (if controversial) "Inside Baseball: A tour of St. Louis landmarks, from the famous to the infamous (and everything in between)."

Library of Congress (via Wikimedia Commons)

Seattle Times sports columnist Larry Stone writes that while in St. Louis for the All-Star Game, Ichiro "spent part of Monday visiting the St. Louis grave of Hall of Famer George Sisler, whose single-season hits record he broke in 2004. Ichiro very much wanted to pay his respects to Sisler, and brought flowers to leave at the gravesite."

Ichiro, Stone notes, broke Sisler's single-season hits record back in 2004. Sisler family members were present at Safeco Field for the game in which Ichiro tied and then broke the record. (Sisler amassed 257 hits for the St. Louis Browns in 1920; Ichiro finished '04 with 262 hits.)

Sisler is buried at the Old Meeting House Presbyterian Church Cemetery, at 2250 North Geyer Road in Frontenac.

Newsweek blog ponders: "As Obama Heads to the All-Star Game, a Debate Over What to Wear"






Unreal replies:


Voilà!

Unreal never ceases to be amazed at the sheer multitude of wondrous things in the world. Many of them, it is true, require the expenditure of vast sums of money, but that doesn't prevent us from marveling.

Such is the case of Pet Airways, a new airline exclusively devoted to -- yes, you guessed it -- small(ish) household animals. It makes its first flight next Tuesday, Bastille Day. (It's all about the liberty to be accompanied by your dog everywhere, which is a very French notion.)

We have spent the past hour studying the Pet Airways website obsessively. We cannot help but think, bitterly and enviously, why the hell didn't we think of this first?

flickr.com/photos/carlsoje

Yes, there are worse things than being forced to wear a stupid pet costume.

stltoday.com

Bill McClellan

Every now and again, a crumb of genius falls from the table inside Bill McClellan's head and lands in one of his columns.

He tossed this one off in the Post-Dispatch yesterday while discussing "Meet Me In St. Louis" at The Muny (at which he started crying, incidentally):

"Back when the country was founded, the successful people had no reason to leave the East Coast. The less successful people pushed west. This clump of unsuccessful people reached St. Louis. The adventurous ones pushed on. The slackers stayed here. Much later, we built the Gateway Arch to honor the people who had the gumption to keep going. We are the only city in the world that has a memorial to honor those who left."

As a longtime St. Louis dweller, Unreal has never once thought of the Arch in that way. But we concur.

Having resided in both unincorporated and incorporated regions (including Cahokia, Knob Lick and Versailles -- pronounced Ver-sales -- Missouri) Unreal often finds our fellow St. Louisans to be rather unlike the pioneers who kept moving westward, and on the contrary, to be by far the least willing to move away and the proudest of their hometown.

Every city has its native devotees, true. But we submit that St. Louis has the highest proportion, and the most fervent.

Sound off-base to you? Leave your comment below.

(Also, keep in mind, the gist of McClellan's column was how much he adores St. Louis.)

Unreal has observed that anything can be made exponentially cuter by shrinking it. Take the Hostess Donettes currently on our desk for instance. Or the miniature horse.

At seventeen inches, St. Louis very own Thumbelina is the world's smallest horse.

flickr.com/photos/96621012@N00

Don't you just want to pick her up and squeeze her? Now it has just come to Unreal's attention that there are also miniature cows. And bulls!

flickr.com/photos/earthworm

One of Unreal's favorite features in our apartment is the little shelf next to the toilet, which we naturally use to store our bathroom reading. Here we keep back issues of The Atlantic and The New Yorker, assorted volumes of Best American Essays and our alumni magazine. Unreal does not believe one should waste one's time on the crapper.

(Sadly, our Spaloo had to be abandoned.)

But still, we were feeling pretty self-satisfied with our bathroom arrangements until we came across photos of The Most Beautiful Crapper in the World, also known as the Book Toilet of Antwerp, Belgium.

www.inperspire.com

Inperspire Motivational Fitness Towels started as so many things do: as a random inspiration at the gym. Darla Dale, an assistant dean at Washington University "approaching 50", was trudging along on the treadmill somewhat less energetically than usual when she noticed that everyone around her had a towel to cover the screens on their machines.

"The towels should have a mantra written on them so you can stay on," Dale remembers thinking. She wrote the idea down in her idea journal, but the plan didn't come to fruition until January when her husband Jimmy, tired of traveling, quit his job with Southwest Airlines. They joined forces with Dale's sister Dana and her husband Greg, who live in Seattle. Says Dale: "What better time to start a company?"

Unreal: In the middle of a recession?

Darla Dale: That's what my parents said.

Er...

It's not the sanest thing, but we love it so much and have had so much fun putting it together.

flickr.com/photos/gnuf

The Fairview Winery goat tower: the original, the mother of all goat towers.

There were seven wonders of the ancient world, all but one destroyed. There are three goat towers in the modern world and all of them still stand.

In the words of Shelley's Ozymandias: "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"*

More simply: Goat towers kick ass over ancient wonders.

Now, it must be said that the most kick-assingest goat tower is the one at the Fairview Wine and Cheese Estate in Paarl, South Africa, because it was the first goat tower ever constructed, back in 1981, and because it is on a wine and cheese estate.

But the goat tower with the most kick-assingest name is the Tower of Baaa, in Findlay, Illinois, a scant 131 miles and 2 hours and 41 minutes from St. Louis, Missouri, via Interstate 70.

(For the record, the third goat tower is in Norway, or maybe Portugal.)