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Having eaten a lot of Indian food--in...
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i dont like the way the new red hot...
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Best Of 2007 Award Graphics
Arts & Entertainment >>
Best Newspaper Columnist (10 Comments)
Dana Loesch
Dana Loesch, who pens the "Mamalogues" column on stltoday.com, picks up where Anna Quindlen left off in her tales of young motherhood, substituting Quindlen's sap for a heavy helping of sass. A twentysomething stay-at-home blogger/mother of two young sons, Loesch says she writes to keep herself... More >>
Best Reporter (Newspaper Division)
Susannah Cahalan
Susannah Cahalan wasn't your average aspiring journalist when she snagged her ticket on the Fame Express on the pages of the January 21, 2007, New York Post underneath the headline "I Am Still Too Scared to Tell My Mom and Dad, ÔKidnap' Creep Admits." The then-Washington University senior had... More >>
Best Reporter TV/Radio Division) (1 Comments)
Tom Weber
Twenty-eight-year-old reporter Tom Weber wakes at 3:30 a.m. Monday through Friday to spew excellence over the public radio airwaves via the local National Public Radio (NPR) affiliate, KWMU (90.7 FM). The New Lenox, Illinois, native debuted in St. Louis five years ago and is proving himself an... More >>
Best Hair on a Local
TV Personality (Male)
TV Personality (Male)
Jim Hayes
OK, so that weave atop his pate is not Jim Hayes' actual hair. But then, toupées are a time-honored tradition in television, with famed sports anchor Howard Cosell and weatherman Willard Scott just a few of many broadcasters who've worn a rug before the camera. That said, Hayes' hairpiece... More >>
Best Hair on a Local TV Personality
Vickie Newton
Is it just us, or do you get the feeling that a certain KMOV-TV (Channel 4) News 4 This Morning team member looks in the mirror every day and says to herself, " This is the year I win the RFT 's ÔBest Hair on a Local TV Personality (Female)'"? Dream on, babe. To get a load of this year's best... More >>
Best TV News Anchor
Mandy Murphey
Mandy Murphey is the kind of anchor Ron Burgundy would try to date. The doe-eyed blonde is smart, cute and keeps it classy. During her tenure, the FOX 2 News co-anchor has garnered enough awards to fill a trophy case or three, including back-to-back Emmys for anchoring in '05 and '06 (she's won... More >>
Best Weathercaster (2 Comments)
Steve Templeton
As everyone knows, the climate in St. Louis is not particularly hospitable to humans. It's a given that the televised forecasts are almost always going to contain bad news, but that fact doesn't even bother us anymore. And why should it? St. Louis has the most handsome weathercaster in the entire... More >>
Best TV Station
KPLR-TV (Channel 11)
If you substitute the word "station" for "magazine," what Homer Simpson once said about Reader's Digest also holds true for the programming on KPLR-TV's CW 11: "It's not just one station, Marge; they take hundreds of stations, filter out the crap, and leave you with something that fits right in... More >>
Best TV Program
The Fan Show
At their best, sports are electrifying and suspenseful. So why do most sportscasters opt for the most boring format possible — taped interviews and the like — for their Sunday sports shows? With The Fan Show , shot live on Sunday nights at the Casino Queen's Club Sevens, KPLR's Rich... More >>
Best TV Power Hour
KMOV-TV (Channel 4) Saturdays 11 p.m. to midnight
Another Saturday night and you ain't got nobody. You're broke, depressed and — worse yet — you drained your last beer an hour ago. You're about to cry yourself to sleep when all of a sudden it hits you like Poison: That jackass from work is on the television aping the lyrics to "Every... More >>
Best Local TV Commercial
Reuther Automotive Group
"I got it! Picture this: A big extravaganza, with hundreds of dancing female chocolate bars. An orchestra's playing while these hottie bars dance up a never-ending staircase. And then this Al Jolson-type bar dances out and sings, ÔWhere the sweet deals are,' like it's ÔSwanee River.'" Brilliant! More >>
Best Podcast
Jeff Kopp's Savage Kick
Though terrestrial radio remains relatively relevant, podcasts are increasingly popular, providing music fans with yet another listening convenience. Locally, former KDHX (88.1 FM) host Jeff Kopp ( The Wayback Machine ) offers the Garage Punk Podcast network (www.garagepunk.com), which features a... More >>
Best Strip Joint (1 Comments)
Rhonda's Place
You've been to Rhonda's before. It's the place where Tony Soprano has an office in the back, Patrick Swayze is the bouncer, and a down-and-out Billy Bob Thornton comes to drown his sorrows. A pasties bar with black-tinted windows decorated with white "mud flap girl" silhouettes, Rhonda's stands... More >>
Best Actor in a Play
John Flack
It used to be that the customer was always right. In the theater, the playwright is always right. At least he gets the last word. And when you're writing thinly disguised autobiography, it's only natural to want to make yourself out to be the good guy, more sinned against than sinning. In After... More >>
Best Actress in a Play
Colleen M. Backer
Who says the Best Actress has to be in a leading role? Two years ago at the inaugural Kevin Kline Awards, the category of Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Play may well have been the most competitive category of the night. Teresa Doggett, Michelle Hand, Liz Hopefl, Rory Lipede, Magan Wiles and... More >>
Best Actor in a Musical
Ben Nordstrom
At first glance Ben Nordstrom is as all-American as Huckleberry Finn, as modestly wholesome as the scrawny kid next door. Next thing you know, he's flying over your head, higher than Peter Pan without the wires. Who is this guy, anyway? In Urinetown he was Bobby Strong, a young innocent who... More >>
Best Actress in a Musical
Kari Ely
The oh-so-civilized Stephen Sondheim-Hugh Wheeler musical A Little Night Music concerns Desiree Armfeldt, an aging Swedish stage star who suddenly finds her oh-so-complacent life under assault at the nubile hands of youth. This is not merely the stuff of musical theater; this is a problem that... More >>
Best Kept Secret (Arts Division)
Saint Louis Art Museum Print Study Room
It's not a secret, per se, but it's not widely known, either. The Saint Louis Art Museum holds a collection of more than 14,000 printed images on its fourth floor — and you're welcome to examine them all. At your own table. With the artworks right in front of you. And a staff ready to help... More >>
Best Arts Organization
The Black Rep
It's always amazing to come across a St. Louisan who has yet to attend a production by the Black Rep. We're talking about a theater company that began as artistic director Ron Himes' penniless pipe dream back in 1976 and is now the largest African-American professional troupe in the country,... More >>
Best Local Impresario
Matt Strauss
"We made a lot of really good mistakes this year," says Matt Strauss, the driving force behind White Flag Projects, a nonprofit alternative art space that wrapped up its inaugural season in July. "Next year we're going to take a lot more risks." More risks? What, like showing more artists who've... More >>
Best Reading Series
Observable Readings
A good reading series brings famous authors to town, introduces them to the adoring masses and perhaps fetes them with a box of wine and some chunks of cheese. A great reading series honors well-known authors, gives up-and-coming writers a voice (and an audience to hear that voice) and builds a... More >>
Best Book by a Local Author
A New Religion in Mecca: Memoir of a Renegade Brewery in St. Louis
If Tom Schlafly's autobiography will teach you anything, it's that there's always room for one more — even if your competition is Goliath. A New Religion in Mecca: Memoir of a Renegade Brewery in St. Louis retraces his business venture in the shadow of Anheuser-Busch as the president of... More >>
Best Coffee Table Book by a Local Author
Hoorah for the Bra: A Perky Peek at the History of the Brassiere
Burned in the Sixties, perennially derided in schoolyards as the "over-the-shoulder boulder-holder" — no question about it, the bra has had a tough go. Which makes graphic designer Cheree Berry's Hoorah for the Bra: A Perky Peek at the History of the Brassiere such a welcome fixture on the... More >>
Best Local Poet
Qiu Xiaolong
Chief Inspector Chen Cao, the protagonist of St. Louis author Qiu Xiaolong's entertaining crime novels, is a lover of and writer of poetry. Perhaps not surprisingly, so's Qiu. In fact, it was poetry that lured him to St. Louis from his native Shanghai in the 1980s. A highly regarded Chinese poet,... More >>
Best Local Artist
Tom Huck
Ask printmaker Tom Huck what fuels his work — large, meticulously detailed woodcuts, always grotesque and often violent — and the 36-year-old artist doesn't mince words. It's all about revenge. Huck still smarts when he thinks about his adolescence in rural Potosi, Missouri. Few people... More >>
Best Museum
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum
In the past five years, Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson's site-specific work has been exhibited at the Tate Modern in London, the Gallery Koyanagi in Tokyo, San Francisco's MOMA and...the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis. Wash. U.'s campus gallery packs more... More >>
Best New Museum
Moto Museum
Dude. We like the way father and son Steve and Zach Smith roll. Their Moto Museum, vintage April 2007, occupies 15,000 square feet in an old printing factory in the Locust Business District that's been retooled into a hip-industrial showroom by the fashionable architecture firm the Lawrence... More >>
Best Museum Exhibition
Remote Viewing (Invented Worlds in Recent Painting and Drawing)
We're living in a windows-within-windows world. Our TV screens display two channels simultaneously, with both channels running graphics crawlers across bottom and top; our computers run simulated game worlds in one window and a live news feed in another; our cars have DVD players for front- and... More >>
Best Art Gallery
Ellen Curlee Gallery
Time was that if you lived in St. Louis and wanted to see world-class contemporary photography outside the city's universities, you needed an Internet connection with plenty of bandwidth — or a plane ticket. Enter Ellen Curlee, whose eponymous gallery concentrates exclusively on fine-art... More >>
Best Gallery Show
Erik Spehn: New Paintings April 20-May 26, 2007
Anyone lucky enough to glimpse St. Louis painter Erik Spehn's spring show at Schmidt Contemporary Art was treated to an eyeful of one of our town's strongest talents working at his meticulous best. For his first solo show in seven years, Spehn flooded Jim Schmidt's Grand Center gallery with... More >>
Best Movie Theater (3 Comments)
AMC Crestwood Plaza 10
No question: Watching a movie at the Moolah Theatre & Lounge (3821 Lindell Boulevard, St. Louis 63108; 314-446-6868 or www.stlouiscinemas.com/moolah) is a treat. Who wouldn't enjoy spreading out on a big, comfy leather sofa while sipping wine or a cocktail while watching the newest blockbuster?... More >>
Best Film Festival
True/False Film Festival
FADE IN
INT. THE TIGER HOTEL, COLUMBIA — EVENING
Nearly 200 people pack into the elegant ballroom. The prime seats
were snatched more than an hour ago; latecomers press against the
back wall. Columbia residents, Mizzou students and filmmakers sip
complimentary Schlafly and whisper... More >>
Best Art Cinema
Webster Film Series
Since 1979 Webster University's Webster Film Series has brought art-house cinema to sleepy Webster Groves. Just this year WFS became the first place to see David Lynch's Inland Empire as the Twin Peaks creator's foray into weirdness made the festival circuit, still unready for prime time. As... More >>
Best Freebie
"Film Feastivals" at Lemmons
Mondays. Ugh. Honestly, what could be worse than a flamboyant flair-wearing, disparaging, mentally and physically impairing case of the Mondays? Fortunately, for the past five years Lemmons has countered the fax machine-destroying, f-bomb finger-flippin' monster in all of us with its Monday-night... More >>
Best FM Radio Personality
Les Aaron
Les Aaron is the cockroach of the St. Louis airwaves. The native of Brighton, England, has survived (and even thrived) on local radio stations for more than fifteen years now, weathering endless format changes at his various employers. One suspects that what drives the affable announcer —... More >>
Best AM Radio Personality (4 Comments)
Davie Lee
Davie Lee has such a leathery, down-home delivery you swear you're listening to the Cracker Barrel pitchman. But more than a sultry voice, Lee is a living icon who got his start spinning records as a Dallas teenager in the 1950s. Like such luminary DJs as Gary Perkins, Wolfman Jack and Bill... More >>
Best Radio Station
Movin' 101 (101.1 FM)
[Setting: A roomful of older women and a therapist. One of the ladies, a nervous-looking fortysomething blonde wearing jeans and a sweater, begins to speak.]
Hi. Um, I’m a little embarrassed to be in this support group, but my
name’s Sally.
[The rest of the room, in unison] “Hi, Sally.”... More >>
Best Radio Program After Midnight (1 Comments)
The Space Parlour
The music Nick Acquisto cues up on The Space Parlour isn't as cosmic or lounge-y as its title suggests — Acquisto sticks to a steady diet of new releases, college-rock favorites (Ween gets played on almost every show) and the occasional cut from the Who or the Kinks. While the mix is... More >>
Best Theater Company
Rep Studio
The operative word here is "company." For better or worse, the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis is an all-out, full-fledged, Equity-sanctioned company. The better part is almost always found in the belly of the beast, downstairs in the Emerson Studio Theatre — one of the few stages in town... More >>
Best One-Person Show
Via Dolorosa
Even on a good night, British playwright David Hare can be one of the most tendentious of modern playwrights. But in Via Dolorosa the playwright who usually has so much to tell us switched roles and became the listener. Via Dolorosa is Hare's travel diary that chronicles his 1997 trip to... More >>
Best Theater Surprise
Darrie Lawrence in Doubt
For months the Fox advertised the appearance of Cherry Jones in Doubt , John Patrick Shanley's much-honored parable about suspicious goings-on in a Catholic school in the Bronx. It's always exciting to see an acclaimed actor in his or her Tony Award-winning performance. As opening night neared,... More >>
Best Ensemble Cast
Noises Off
Just because Noises Off , Michael Frayn's chaotic farce about the trials and travails of a touring theater company, is one of the funniest plays ever written doesn't mean it's a sure thing. It requires an ensemble of stellar actors. What is ensemble acting? It's a cohesiveness that often begins... More >>
Best Children's Theater (1 Comments)
Hana's Suitcase
If it's escapism you seek, you don't have to look far. Wherever we turn, hucksters are only too eager to take our money and help us forget the world's ills, when sometimes what we need most is to remember them. The U.S. premiere of Hana's Suitcase , a stage adaptation of the popular children's... More >>
Best Musical
A Little Night Music
Last November, when Urinetown received a brilliant staging by the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, this paper wrote that "the bar has been raised for locally produced musicals." Without in any way tarnishing the memory of that glorious accomplishment, the nod here goes to Stages St. Louis'... More >>
Best Stage Production
A Number
It was short: just 55 minutes. It was small: just one set and two actors. But the Rep Studio staging of A Number , Caryl Churchill's (hopefully not too) prophetic parable about the difficulty of "human" relationships in a futureworld where human cloning is a given, delivered a potent,... More >>
Best Sound Design (1 Comments)
Amanda Bruggeman
The Orange Girls opened their season with Standing on My Knees , an intense melodrama about a poet trying to control her schizophrenia in a manner that will restore order to her life yet not diminish her creativity. The story calls for the poet to play an LP of a Bartók symphony. It was... More >>
Best Play You Didn't See
Beautiful Resistance: Confessions of a Hoosier in Palestine
On a wintry February night, for one performance only (and one not very well promoted, at that), Magan Wiles made theater in a Saint Louis University classroom. There was no stage, no real lights to speak of (other than turning them on and off). But the small crowd in attendance was treated to a... More >>
Best Musical You'll Probably Never See
Soapdish
Fairview Heights native Mark Hollmann, the Tony Award-winning composer of Urinetown and all-around good sport, returned to town in March for the Kevin Kline Awards. In addition to presenting two Kevins and delivering a 40th-anniversary tribute to the Rep, Hollmann agreed to perform a song from... More >>
Best Curtain Call (2 Comments)
You Can't Take It With You
A popular adage proclaims that it ain't over till the fat lady sings. At the end of the madcap You Can't Take It With You , Stray Dog Theatre's ode to eccentricity, everybody sang — cast and audience alike. Never mind that this wasn't a musical. After the play had ended and the bows proper... More >>
Best Casino
Casino Queen
" Casino Queen/my lord you're mean/I've been gambling like a fiend/on your tables so green." So sang Jeff Tweedy on Wilco's 1995 album A.M. Of course, back in the mid-1990s the Queen could afford to be a little ornery — even seedy — if she wanted to be. The East St. Louis riverboat... More >>
Best Zoo Animal
Ozark hellbender
You wouldn't go in the Herpetarium if you weren't in search of a thrill. Something to make your skin crawl. When a pile of Gila monsters lying next to their own recently shed skin fails to do it for ya, try Missouri's own Ozark hellbender. The weird, primitive look of this harmless salamander... More >>
