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The verdict’s in on the new Lucinda Williams album, West, and it’s not good. By which I mean the critical take on the artist’s first release of new material since 2003’s World Without Tears is a thumbs-down.

The album represents somewhat of a departure for Williams, whose five releases from 1988’s Lucinda Williams to World Without Tears garnered nearly universal raves from (for want of a better umbrella term) the alt-country crowd. (Williams had released two LPs prior to the eponymous breakout disc, as well as a two-disc live set that came out in 2005.)

Everybody loved Lucinda (a poet’s daughter) for her songwriting, filled with intimate details rendered in stark specificity, and her delivery, a drawl that could range from languid to leonine to, well, to lip-lickingly lusty. That she was a perfectionist who

Much has been made lately on plans for building additional highway lanes across the Mississippi River. The most feasible proposal would have the State of Illinois and the federal government paying $450 million to add lanes to the Martin Luther King Bridge. But Missouri officials don't like that idea. They want a $1 billion signature bridge paid for by government and private investors.

In both cases bridge proponents agree that more lanes are needed to relieve gridlock entering St. Louis. (Funding for the signature bridge is based on the notion that folks will actually pay a toll for the privilege of entering St. Louis.)

But never mind entering St. Louis. What about getting the hell outta Dodge?

A report card from the American Highway Users Alliance recently awarded St. Louis a C- when it comes to evacuation preparedness. Commissioned following the evacuation of New Orleans in the days after Hurricane Katrina, the study rated cities on the criteria of exit capacity, internal flow and automobile access.

St. Louis' score of 70.6 (out of a possible 100) ranked just four percentage points higher than New Orleans. Kansas City earned the only A in the report, with a score of 90. That'll no doubt make our brethren to the west rest easy. Here in the Gateway City, we'll just have to hope we get some form of new bridge before the next big one hits.

-Chad Garrison

Upon hearing on the radio this morning that Cardinals single-game tickets are going on sale this Saturday morning, I smiled. And it's not because I'm a Redbirds fan. (Don't hate.) Wait, keep reading: I'm excited because this means that spring (and summer!) is right around the corner.

Okay, okay, I'll come clean: I always feel nostalgic for my childhood when I think of baseball, especially because this is a post-World Series Championship year for the Cardinals, and this makes me think of what could have been. As most of you know, I grew up in Cleveland. What many of you don't know is that I'm a huge Indians fan, and have been since I was about six years old. My parents took me to my first game when I was a wee kindergartener, and up until I graduated high school (and even after), I attended a ton of games each year.

By now you've heard the big news about the extreme makeover slated for Lambert Airport's main terminal. Kevin Dolliole, airport director, told KMOX radio this morning that he expects the first two phases (retail-related) of the $105 million project to be complete in the early part of 2009. Thankfully, visitors to the main terminal won't have to wait that long for the dust to start settling at the terminal's short-term parking garage -- our "Best Boondoggle" last year and a subject about which I've been meaning to blog for a while now.

Last summer I got a call from Bob Orchard, a well-to-do St. Louisan (former owner of Orchard Paper Co.) and longtime civic booster. (For more on the latter, look here.) Orchard, who's in his 80s, loves the airport shoeshine shop located in the lower level near the baggage claim -- so much that for several years he has made monthly pilgrimages there. "I don't know what it is about their polish, but it's the best in the world," Orchard says.

But ever since the garage renovations started back in 2004, Orchard complains, "Crippies can't park!"

Allow him to elaborate: "If you're disabled and you hunt around for a place to park, you have to go to the very ends of the parking garage. If you're not in such good shape, like my legs, it takes you fifteen minutes to get to the entranceway to the airport. You're really huffing and puffing by the time you make it in there."

Orchard tried several times to strike up a conversation with the airport's transportation director Ted Laboube and with Dolliole himself, but no dice. So I finally took a ride out to the garage with Orchard a week or so ago -- his first trip in about six weeks, owing to discouragement.

"Well, I'll be damned!" he blurted as we circulated the garage's three levels, noticing a host of apparently newly positioned parking spots (albeit, 95 percent full) for the disabled. "Maybe my bitching finally paid off!"

Kinda, sorta. Not all of the garage's 1,848 spaces have been available during the renovation, but the garage did maintain 34 handicapped spots, as required by law, says Rich Bradley, assistant airport director of planning and engineering. Orchard's problems probably stemmed from the fact that the locations of those 34 spots kept changing.

"Every time we move something, it confuses people," concedes Bradley, though he notes that the airport "tried to put them in the most convenient places for the folks using them."

The renovation project is over budget and behind schedule, owing to structural problems discovered along the way, Bradley says. But the ninth and final phase should be completed by the end of October, and it'll be another two decades before further rehabbing is needed, he says.

Bradley warns, though, that some of Orchard's "crippie spots" will continue to move around until October.

Which leaves Bob Orchard unsatisfied. "I don't think they did enough," he says. He wants more spots and more signage.

-Kristen Hinman

It may be more customary to watch the Super Bowl for the commercials, but it turns out that the Oscars telecast sneaks in some interesting spots as well. In between Helen Mirren's toast to Queen Elizabeth and Forest Whitaker's existential but moving speech, we spied an ad for the Cadillac SRX (a mini-SUV that looks like it could fit in the back of an Escalade) to the tune of the Pogues' "The Sunny Side of the Street," the lead-off track from 1990's Hell's Ditch. Watch the ad, titled "Morning Routine," on Cadillac's site (click on the Commercials & Downloads tab).

We've long ago given up carping on musicians for "selling out" to television ads; many of the acts that license songs to car ads, from the Clash to the Walkmen, have fought the good fight with the music industry — they've earned the quick payday and national exposure. But this is an odd choice. On the surface, "Sunny Side" is one of the Pogues' most ebullient songs — bright mandolin strums, a jet stream of chromatic accordion energy, the whole Irish folk-pub rock mix done to perfection. The instrumental intro, when played over scenes of a rushed morning in suburbia, is almost enough to make one wish for such starch-collared domesticity. Then singer Shane MacGowan starts in, his slurred brogue singing of his wild roving days. Shane's word-garblin' mouth can make it hard to make out the lyrics, so we've transcribed them for you:

Seen the carnival at Rome,
I had the women, I had the booze
All that I can remember now
Is little kids without no shoes
So I saw that train and I got on it
With a heart full of hate and a lust for vomit
Now I'm walking on the sunny side of the street

Booze, hate and vomit — could that replace Cadillac's current slogan of "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit"? The conflation of drunkenness and luxury cars may not be as confounding as, say, a commercial for a cruise line set to Iggy Pop's liquor-and-drugs anthem "Lust for Life," but it's dumbfounding nonetheless.

Still, it's nice to hear the brilliant Pogues on the air again (were they ever on the air in this country to begin with?). Having reunited in 2001 for biannual tours of North America and Europe, the band will be playing in Chicago on March 5 and 6. If you're itching for a road trip, Cadillac may have the perfect ride for you.

-Christian Schaeffer

Not totally satisfied with your weekend itinerary? Just check out Go!, our regular feature highlighting everything from rock shows to art openings, from delicious dishes to hidden-gem hangouts.

Friday, 2/23

Blue Ribbons for everyone! We can debate the possible cruelty to animals that occurs at the PBR Rodeo all night, but the truth is, only one creature in the ring is getting his head stepped on when things go wrong. Buck up, cowboy: There ain't no crying in rodeo.

Carnival cruisin': Mardi Gras has come and gone, but you can relive the highlights of the Brazilian Carnival festival at Club Viva! and dance to the sounds of Samba Bom, St. Louis' premier Brazilian band. Samba instructor Edilson Lima will be giving dance lessons before the show, and members of Chicago Samba will sit in with the band.

Cod bless you: Start your circuit of Lenten fish fries with a bang at the annual Cod and Cask Festival at the Schlafly Tap Room (2100 Locust Street, 314-241-2337). You'll see live Icelandic music and an absolutely massive serving of fish-and-chips. The festival runs from 5 p.m. till midnight tonight and noon till midnight Saturday.

Saturday, 2/24

Advice from the St. Louis Classical Guitar Society: Gimme that lute, son. I want that lute, son. F the Gucci in the booty, I want that lute, son. Don't tell me you ain't got none. I ain't playin', son. Drop that lute like it's on fire and I won't start none.

The band so nice they named it twice: Washington University's student-run radio station KWUR (90.3 FM) wraps up its annual music festival with a performance by Man Man, whose nutso live shows mix Captain Beefheart's grab-bag sound with the energy of a circus sideshow. Local twee-punk favorites Bunnygrunt will open the show.

Sunday, 2/25

The Pageant rolls out the red carpet: There's only one Oscar as far as we're concerned — but his parties are lousy. But the second-best Oscar in the world -- that shiny gold sumbitch -- can throw down with the hoedown like nobody's business. Get yer party pants on and experience the splendor of Ellen Degeneres in HD TV.

Longtime Riverfront Times readers will recognize the name Richard Byrne; he was a music/media writer and editor for the paper from the late 1980s through the mid-'90s. While here, he tirelessly reported on the rise of the St. Louis alt-country scene, went on the road with Uncle Tupelo (for RFT) and preached their gospel to anyone within earshot. His screams of enthusiasm echoed across the nation and helped to establish the movement nationwide.

Since he left St. Louis for Washington, D.C., Byrne has been busy. He has written liner notes for Uncle Tupelo (the reissue of Anodyne) and R.E.M. (New Adventures in Hi-Fi reissue), has traveled often to Eastern Europe, and was awarded a Pew Fellowship in International Reporting (now known as the International Reporting Project Fellowship) to study media in postwar Bosnia. He's currently a senior editor at The Chronicle of Higher Education, as well as an American editor of the Belgrade publishing house Alexandria Press. He has completed a novel, Luckyboys, about American expats in Prague.

Byrne still checks in with RFT from time to time and recently e-mailed to inform us that his one-act play, Burn Your Bookes, has been named a finalist in the inaugural Prague Post Playwriting Festival. The play, says Byrne, "is set in Prague in the Renaissance court of Emperor Rudolph II. Two alchemical pretenders are under sentence of death by starvation. The English alchemist Edward Kelley happens to wander by their cages -- or is he there for a reason?"

The play will receive a full production along with the other two finalists at Prague's Divadlo Minor in mid-March, with the winner being announced after the final performances. We'll keep you posted.

-Randall Roberts

Tom Matthews calls his search for his lost mutt, Mattie, "just another lost-dog story." If that's the case, Matthews and his wife, Alice, of Grand Rapids, Michigan, are redefining the genre. In the five months since Mattie, a shaggy little white twelve-year-old, disappeared in the couple's 2001 Buick LeSabre -- the victim of a car theft at Delmar and Skinker -- the Matthewses have consulted animal communicators and behaviorists, employed a team of search dogs, hired bounty hunters and upped a reward from $3,000 to $25,000. They have attracted a pack of kick-ass local volunteers who canvass neighborhoods and spread the word.

The Matthewses even started a blog.

So devoted are Tom and Alice, they return to St. Louis almost monthly to work their own shoe leather in areas where Mattie sightings have been reported. The search has taken them way down South Broadway and up to Bellefontaine Cemetery, through the back alleys around O'Fallon Park and across every inch surrounding a Jennings strip mall.

"We stayed out all night in the alley of Harney Avenue," Tom writes in an e-mail. "We visited drug houses looking for 'Henry.' Rumor has been that James Butler killed Mattie with a sledge hammer."

"Henry" is a purported friend of James Butler, the St. Louis city resident whom Cape Girardeau officials busted with the Matthewses' car. The Matthewses believe Henry is key to their mission. "Everybody kind of pointed to this one guy," Tom says. "But nobody will give his last name. Basically everybody's a little scared of him."

The couple has had no shortage of bad luck in St. Louis. On Christmas Eve they got a flat tire. On New Year's Eve their parked rental car got smashed up.

"We still think St. Louis is a great city," writes Tom, who's an accountant. (His wife, Alice, is a surgical technician.) "Big, bold with lots of beautiful and interesting places. It's a real shame that it has such a strong criminal element that makes everything seem so dangerous."

If you run into Tom -- and you might; he says he has committed to a three-year search -- help him see another side of St. Louis. Better yet, call 616-706-6026 if you get to Mattie before he does.

-Unreal

Make that "Press Release of the Month"... Oh, what the hell:

Press Release of the Frickin' Year

February 23, 2007

Media & Communication Resources / siucnews@siu.edu
Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Carbondale, IL 62901
618/453-2276 phone?618/453-2230 fax
http://news.siu.edu

Hello from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. We are sending you (1) news release. Today's headline is:

SIUC employee credited with saving boy's life
By Tim Crosby

CARBONDALE, Ill. - A Southern Illinois University Carbondale employee's quick actions saved the life of a young boy having a seizure.

Gary W. Lannom, a building services worker at SIUC, was on duty at Life Science II the evening of Feb. 12 when a woman exited an elevator, walked a bit down the hallway and then cried for help for her child. The 17-month-old boy was not breathing and had turned a purplish color.

"She had the boy in a baby carriage and she was running around saying 'dial 911!'" said Lannom, who has worked at SIUC about two years. "My phone wouldn't get a signal there, so I ran down and picked him up and took off his coat. Two other guys called 911."

Lannom, from Marion, noticed the boy's breathing problem right away and asked the boy's mother if he could be choking on something. The woman, Peng Congyue, a graduate student in plant biology, said he had been eating Cheerios, but Lannom also noticed the boy's jaws were clenched shut.

"I thought he could be having a seizure," said Lannom, who witnessed his share of medical emergencies during his 14 years working as a custodian at an area hospital before moving to SIUC.

Lannom's cardiopulmonary resuscitation training kicked in, and his first move was to try to clear the boy's airway. He began trying to force his thumb through the boy's locked jaws while also pushing on his back and ribcage. After what seemed like an eternity to him, Lannom was able to open the boy's mouth, expelling some liquid and opening his airway.

I got a call just now from Amanda Verbeck, owner of the brand-new Pele Prints studio in Crestwood (9400 Watson Road; 314-750-7799). She'd just read an item in our Night & Day section that features an opening this evening from 5:30 to 8:30 at Pele, a show called Works in Progress by local printmaker Brandon Anschultz.

Drawing on a press release Anschultz sent that describes the show as "a preview of works in progress," Jason Toon riffed on the notion, comparing it to a last-ditch all-nighter when a big school project is due.

The blurb has Verbeck regretting her choice of a title. Anschultz's prints weren't finished when the release went out, she explains, but they are finished now, and she's afraid readers will get the wrong idea.

She's got a point.

"Do you grind on through the night, or just turn in what you've got so far and hope it's enough for a D?" Sorry about that, Amanda. Sounds like Jason soared off on the wings of a college-days flashback.

"I've learned my lesson for sure," Verbeck says. "'Works in progress' can send the wrong message. I'll never use that term again!"

-Tom Finkel

It seemed like just last month that Britney Spears' only shaved head was between her legs. The upside about her rehab-induced mental tailspin? We got a five-minute respite from the Anna Nicole baby's daddy saga. The bad news? Britney Spears finally ruined her last redeeming aspect: her locks. Strangely though, she doesn't look all that bad as a baldie. She's still more attractive than, say, Larry David. And plenty of people would still pay to see her in Playboy. But where does Spears' Kojak turn rank her in the pantheon of women gone bald?

1. Natalie Portman There seemingly isn't a celebrity list that Ms. Portman doesn't belong on. But when Gen Y's Long Island Lolita started rampaging runways with her V for Vendetta Bic vixen makeover, she somehow was hotter without hair. 2. Alek Wek She never quite made it to the cover of SI's swimsuit issue, but she's arguably the most recognizable, post-Roshumba black woman on the world's runways. And bald as shit. 3. Demi Moore Ms. Kutcher became a butch icon to all 50 people who paid to see G.I. Jane. The shower scene left men wondering whether to be turned on or question their sexuality. Her "Suck my dick!" quote after breaking Viggo Mortenson's nose didn't help.

4. Sinead O'Connor
Amazing to think that in the early '90s, Sinead's then-rebellious follicle fashions inspired mass cultural inference of everything from lesbianism to bratty antagonism. Ultimately, it was just ironic that she had a fairly similar hairstyle to the Pope.

5. Persis Khambatta The who the what now, you might ask? Oh, the super hot bald chick from Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Right. Well, if you're going to cast someone to play a hairless alien, she might as well be a former Revlon girl and Miss India.

6. Melissa Etheridge
As if it weren't enough that she was an outed lesbian who carried David Crosby's seed, Etheridge had to make us all feel utterly uncourageous by storming the 2005 Grammy stage with her shorn scalp, the result of a recent battle with breast cancer. She looked sexy. Take that, Ellen and Portia.

7. Sigourney Weaver Ripley went skull-commando for the third installment in the Alien franchise. Apparently the alien itself was no longer scary enough. But, heh, she was still Sigourney Weaver. 8. Kim Cattrall Would a 20-something male model still bang a middle-aged bald women in real life without being scared off by such a visceral reminder of her relative mortality? Probably not. Still, Cattrall's real life battle with cancer coupled with her character's made her outshine the other three. 9. Jane Curtin Sort of weird that Curtin's Mrs. Conehead character was actually embodied by a male phallus. Or does that just make me weird for putting her on this list? 10. Samantha Morton Similar to mentally retarded characters having inexplicably messy hairstyles (e.g. Leo in What's Eating Gilbert Grape), cryptic telepathic communicators must be bald and constantly shivering. Observant Morton followers saw this one coming with her neatly manicured turn in In America. Bonus: Joan Elizabeth (Denise, from Seinfeld episode "The Beard") In one of the show's more absurd-yet-brilliant plotlines, George, now donning a toupee, was mortified when Denise removed her hat to reveal a perfectly chromed cranium (and in perfect Seinfeld un-PC-ness, the motivation for her baldness was never explained). But as we know, no one made the cast's girlfriend counters unless they were disproportionately attractive to their male counterparts.

--Kenny Herzog

So your Mardi Gras celebration was impeded by the cold. Your hands froze to your beer bottle. Ladies shouted, "Throw me some beads and I'll show you my heated socks! Wooo!" That's rough. And, of course, today the weather's beautiful. You can be bitter about the hand that fate has dealt, or you can embrace a new kind of celebration: the President's Day bacchanal. "But," you sputter, "the day's half-over and I haven't made any plans!"

MappyHour 2.0 to the rescue. The latest confirmation that booze + technology = awesome, MappyHour gives viewers a handy interactive map of the city's taverns. Just click on the wee beer bottles, and you'll get addresses and phone numbers. There are some fixes that need to be made — like removing several long-closed venues from the map — but the concept is nifty. (Other cool "GoogleMap mashups" include the New York Times' incredible city map and a guide to hot peppers 'round the globe .)

The only bummer about MappyHour is that it's not super-comprehensive (and the majority of the mapped locations are missing drink-special info). But no worries — the site is set up in wiki format, so you (yes, you!) can register with MappyHour and contribute. So go out tonight, raise a glass to your favorite president, and ask your bartender about specials. Then go home and get Mappy.

-Brooke Foster

More than a year behind schedule, red-light cameras commence operation today in the City of St. Louis . For the next month, motorists who run lights at the intersections of Hampton and Wilson avenues and Hampton and Chippewa Street can expect to receive a warning citation in the mail. Following that grace period, traffic scofflaws will be subject to fines.

The cameras along Hampton Avenue are the first of several dozen to be installed and operated by Arizona-based American Traffic Solutions. In December 2005 the St. Louis Board of Police Commissioners awarded ATS the contract, but that agreement was thrown out a month later following repeated queries from Riverfront Times as to how the police agency awarded the deal.

This past August a five-person selection committee composed of representatives from Mayor Francis Slay's office, the Board of Aldermen and the city's Comptroller's Office again awarded the contract for the cameras to ATS.

In a statement today, Police Chief Joe Mokwa reports that more than 70 accidents occurred at the two Hampton Avenue intersections in 2005, with many of those crashes resulting from motorists who ran red lights.

-Chad Garrison

Not totally satisfied with your weekend itinerary? Just check out Go!, our regular feature highlighting everything from rock shows to art openings, from delicious dishes to hidden-gem hangouts.

Friday, 2/16

Sweet home: Sarah Giannobile reveals her new suite of paintings inspired by her hometown, St. James, with a public reception from 6 to 8 p.m. this evening at the St. Louis Community College-Forest Park Gallery of Contemporary Art (5600 Oakland Avenue). St. James, Missouri, is also the hometown of honky-tonk hotshot Rex Hobart; he's not attending the show, but honky-tonk hometowner Bob Reuter is, and he's even playing a little mood music during the show.

Valentine's Day, to put it mildly, is a mixed bag. For every rose-petal-strewn canopy bed and From Here to Eternity-style beach-boink, there's a sad dude shuffling through the Schnucks card aisle at 8 p.m. on February 14. Of course, there's also the glee inherent in rude candy hearts, and last year our department shared a lovely cookie cake (but only after receiving a reprimand from the Great American Cookie Co., who informed us that "there's just some things a cookie shouldn't say").

Despite all the forces conspiring against us, we finally found the perfect way to spend Valentine's Day. We (and ours) shared an evening with those most selfless of beings: dogs. Last night was the second annual Courageous Canine Awards at adorable Clayton pet botique Lola & Penelope's, and the pups converged en masse. Big dogs, little dogs, dogs with three legs. A drug-sniffing police dog who takes his commands in Czech.