Category: St. Louis Living

Andy Cohen Meets The Real Housewives of St. Louis

Published on by Kelly Suellentrop3 Comments

It’s official. I am 2-2 when it comes to saying absolutely ridiculous things to celebrities. My first moronic blubbering happened when I met Micky Dolenz of the The Monkees last summer. My second just recently occurred at a book signing with Andy Cohen, Bravo television executive and champion of The Real Housewives franchise…who also happens to be a fellow St. Louis native. Because of this, I have decided I should cloister myself away with my computer and only interact with the public via my blog. Apparently, I am really lame in person.

Cohen’s new book, “Most Talkative”

Cohen made an appearance at the St. Louis County Library last Friday to publicize his new book Most Talkative: Stories from the Front Lines of Pop Culture, and my friend Catherine and I thought it would be fun to go see him. We are both guilty of being Real Housewives fans after all, and I have a little soft spot for Cohen. Aside from marveling at his grace under fire during every Housewives reunion special, he is also responsible for bringing the shows Top Chef and Project Runway into my life. One sparked my interest in sewing, leading me to spend precious bonding time with my grandmother learning her tricks of the trade for pillow shams…the other sparking my interest to gain five pounds. There’s also a sense of pride that comes along with seeing a likable homegrown boy make it in the big city. But mostly, I was hoping to get some Housewives dirt. I was sorely disappointed on that front. But “bravo” to Cohen for being smart enough not to bite the obnoxiously blinged-out hands that feeds him. That’s some good old Midwestern common sense.

After I took this photo, I looked at Catherine and said, “This is SO Andy”…because, you know, we’re pretty close and I know this stuff.

I like that Cohen is a proud St. Louisan. He often references being a native of The Lou on his live late night talk show, Watch What Happens Live. And he was just as appalled as I when, during a game of Pictionary with a couple of the Real Housewives, Kyle Richards had no idea what the St. Louis Arch was. He is a loud and proud Cardinals fan. And a recent article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch relayed his feelings on his place of birth: “When I tell people I grew up in St. Louis, their first reaction (is sometimes) ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ (…) Here’s what: Apology not accepted — or needed. I loved growing up there.”

Wearing my “Housewives of St. Louis” tee-shirt. Cohen did acknowledge it when he signed my book: “Kelly! RHOSTL!”

Given the props Cohen routinely gives to his roots, Catherine and I thought it would be funny and perhaps (not so) clever to make The Real Housewives of St. Louis tee-shirts to wear to the book signing. (Cohen did make clear during the interview with McGraw Millhaven prior to the book signing that there will never be a St. Louis Housewives…for purely selfish reasons. As he put it, he doesn’t want to be home for a relaxing Thanksgiving break and run into the “Ramona of St. Louis.”) So I took a little trip to Walmart (because that’s where any good Housewife gets her apparel) for some $4 tee shirts and printable iron-on transfers. I spent a good thirty minutes or so recreating the Real Housewives logo with our esteemed city name and icon of choice: Orange County has the orange, Atlanta has the peach, New York has the apple, Beverly Hills has diamond-studded sunglasses…what better to represent St. Louis than the Imo’s pizza logo! Not only does it have the Arch, but it is also the symbol of the square-beyond-compare of delectable provel cheese…the cheese to which Cohen confessed to loving, though he touted it as the cheese they put on salads at Cafe Manhattan, not mentioning Imo’s once. What???? I have to admit I doubted he was REALLY from St. Louis for a moment.

Anyway, Catherine and I were totally digging our shirts, despite the fact that we were surrounded by women who were dressed as if they were auditioning for Real Housewives themselves. It’s all good, we thought. All the more reason we’ll stand out. Catherine even dared to hope that maybe, just maybe, Cohen would love our shirts so much he’d give us a “mazel” on his talk show. That was stretching it a bit, but surely he would love our playful sense of humor, right?

So our turn came to get our books signed. I walk up to Cohen and immediately thrust my hip to the side, point at my chest with both hands, and say in a somewhat cocky manner, “Like my shirt?” Oh…my…God. He smiled a little and said “Aw, cute.” But it was totally in the tone someone uses when she first sees a friend who has just gotten her hair butchered at the salon. Really? I spent a good thirty minutes on this tee-shirt buddy! Perhaps to make up for my failed attempt to win his friendship with my shirt, I go on to say, “Thanks for always representin’ the STL.” ……………??????????????? Yes, that was “representin'” minus the “g” and “STL”…not “St. Louis.” I actually used the letters S-T-L preceded by the word “the.” I will no longer comment on this for there really are no words. What I SHOULD have said was, “Please tell Alexis Bellino to stop reminding people she’s from Missouri, because it’s giving us a bad name.”

Totally adorable?

One of the librarians quickly snapped a photo of Catherine and I with Cohen. I was excited to see it since the librarian kept saying how “adorable” the photo was as she was taking it. She very obviously loved our shirts and found them very clever (aHEM, Mr. Cohen). However, either she was in need of a new prescription for her glasses, or she just thought Catherine and I were more “adorable” if our faces were blurry, because the photo was a pretty big fail.

But all in all, I give the experience two thumbs up. Sure, I wish we had gotten a better reaction about our shirts, but really, it’s not like it was this crazy original idea. And we had fun with it, so that’s all that matters.

In honor of Cohen I will end this post in a similar fashion to how he wraps up each episode of Watch What Happens Live…with my “Jackhole of the Day” and my “Mazel of the Day.”

My “Jackhole of the Day” goes to the crazypants woman from Iowa who expected Cohen to recognize her voice since she had called into his show three times, and who both asked to be his wife and wanted to know what her chances were of becoming a Real Housewife. His response? A very honest probably not that good. Honey, if Real Housewives of St. Louis doesn’t have a chance, I wouldn’t hold out any hope for Real Housewives of Des Moines.

My “Mazel of the Day” goes to Cohen himself for giving me something fun to do with my good friend on a Friday night. Then again, the rest of my day consisted of a trip to Walmart, making an unappreciated tee-shirt, and cleaning up my dog’s barf off of our living room carpet…so he really didn’t have all that much competition. Now THAT’S the life of a Real Housewife.

St. Louis Reads Because We Can

Published on by Kelly Suellentrop6 Comments

It is called vindication. And it reads like the sweet, smooth words of Jane Austen, the biting and truthful wit of Mark Twain, and the timeless universality of William Shakespeare. I should know, because I am from St. Louis: the eighth most literate city in America.

st. louis arch
By StLouisArchMultExpEV-4.72.JPG: Kevin McCoy StLouisArchMultExpEV-1.82.JPG: Kevin McCoy StLouisArchMultExpEV+1.51.JPG: Kevin McCoy StLouisArchMultExpEV+4.09.JPG: Kevin McCoy derivative work: Darxus [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
After ranting about a bogus report that St. Louis was the third most dangerous city in the world (see my post “Lock Your Doors: There Is Danger in The Lou“), I was a little over the moon this morning to hear that my beloved city finally fared well in one of these lists our society seems so enamored with making. And this one is actually legitimate, unlike the one that ranked us among world cities dominated by war and drug cartels. Apparently, a Central Connecticut State University study found St. Louis to rank among the top ten literate cities in America, according to a CNN article.

So we might shoot you, but at least we will be able to read the story when it makes in the papers the next day.

Every English teacher in the city should be proud right now. All those painful book reports we graded, all the groaning we let roll off our backs as we assigned homework chapters and summer reading, all those lessons in sentence diagramming, all the class discussions that resembled pulling teeth and exercises in non-sequitur thoughts more than literary dissection…they have all paid off.

It is nice to see our city rise to the occasion and succeed in an arena inspired by natives such as T.S. Eliot, Kate Chopin, Tennessee Williams, Eugene Field, Marianne Moore, William S. Burroughs, and Maya Angelou, instead of just being known as the home of rappers Nelly and Akon. That is a different kind of literacy, though I am sure we would probably rank pretty high on that list as well. I am going to say that makes us well-rounded.

Now if only we could figure out how to pronounce Gravois, mostaccioli, wash, and fork, I bet we would get bumped to #5 on the list.

We Read Because We Can

Published on by Kelly Suellentrop7 Comments

It is called vindication. And it reads like the sweet, smooth words of Jane Austen, the biting and truthful wit of Mark Twain, and the timeless universality of William Shakespeare. I should know, because I am from St. Louis: the eighth most literate city in America.

st. louis public library
We dig the library in The Lou

After ranting about a bogus report that St. Louis was the third most dangerous city in the world (see my post “Lock Your Doors: There Is Danger in The Lou“), I was a little over the moon this morning to hear that my beloved city finally fared well in one of these lists our society seems so enamored with making. And this one is actually legitimate, unlike the one that ranked us among world cities dominated by war and drug cartels. Apparently, a Central Connecticut State University study found St. Louis to rank among the top ten literate cities in America, according to a CNN article.

So we might shoot you, but at least we will be able to read the story when it makes in the papers the next day.

Every English teacher in the city should be proud right now. All those painful book reports we graded, all the groaning we let roll off our backs as we assigned homework chapters and summer reading, all those lessons in sentence diagramming, all the class discussions that resembled pulling teeth and exercises in non-sequitur thoughts more than literary dissection…they have all paid off.

It is nice to see our city rise to the occasion and succeed in an arena inspired by natives such as T.S. Eliot, Kate Chopin, Tennessee Williams, Eugene Field, Marianne Moore, William S. Burroughs, and Maya Angelou, instead of just being known as the home of rappers Nelly and Akon. That is a different kind of literacy, though I am sure we would probably rank pretty high on that list as well. I am going to say that makes us well-rounded.

Now if only we could figure out how to pronounce Gravois, mostaccioli, wash, and fork, I bet we would get bumped to #5 on the list.

Lock Your Doors: There is Danger in The Lou

Published on by Kelly Suellentrop10 Comments

Huh. I just heard on the radio this morning that St. Louis, Missouri is the third most dangerous city in the world. You heard me correctly…the WORLD. The home of the World Series Champion Cardinals is nestled between Ciudad Juarez, Mexico and Port-au-Prince, Haiti. We also safely beat out Mogadishu, Somalia (#5); Grozny, Chechnya, Russia (#8); and Muzaffarabad, Kashmir, Pakistan (#10). That’s right. My city is more dangerous than one embroiled in the Afghan war.

Wow. So I guess the fact that I have safely survived thirty-four years without so much as mace in my purse means I have way more street cred than I ever would have imagined.

Or this could simply be a case of irresponsible journalism. Surprising, I know.

st. louis arch
Does this skyline look dangerous to you?

I was curious to see this report that one of our local radio stations broadcasted as I drove my daughter to school this morning. I apparently did not realize how lucky I was to have made the trip without encountering a car bomb or a car-jacking. So I typed in the keywords, expecting to see a rash of trustworthy news sources citing some legitimate study done by a governmental statistics agency, or something along those lines. Instead, I got one result at the top of the list from a website called Urban Titan, whose tag line is “All Things That are Weird, Bizarre, Strange and Unusual.” And the article about the ten most dangerous cities in the world was written by “Nataly.” Just Nataly. Apparently she is such a renowned expert that she does not need a last name.

That is just for starters. The “article” was riddled with typos. And when I was finished reading the “article,” I could click on one of the numerous ads on either side to educate myself on the ten most controversial cartoon characters, the five most bizarre deaths during sexual intercourse, and how drunk girls like to “experiment.” This is hard-hitting journalism, folks.

Not only that, but as part of the explanation of why St. Louis, Missouri is on the list, the author claims that 65% of our crime occurs in East St. Louis. Hold it. East St. Louis? You mean that city that shares our name but is a completely different city? The one with its own mayor, and…oh yeah, its own STATE? As in East St. Louis, ILLINOIS? Granted, I will admit that East St. Louis is considered to be within the family of “the St. Louis area.” We certainly claim its successes for our own, such as Ike and Tina Turner and Miles Davis. But when taking statistics for something like the most dangerous cities, it can only seem fair to include the stats strictly within the city limits, and East St. Louis does not fall within those limits. If they are going to be lax about parameters, at least throw in the stats from suburbs like Manchester and Frontenac to give our median a fair picure of the area. Even still, I would question if East St. Louis as its own entity would be able to keep up with some of the world’s most violent places.

But I think what bothers me the most is that some of our own St. Louisans brought this story into the limelight by discussing it on their radio show without really checking the validity of the story. The original article on Urban Titan was posted in January of this year, which means it went virtually unnoticed in our media for almost a year. Why? Because had it been a legitimate study, it would have made news. But it’s not. And now our own fellow citizens are perpetuating an idea that St. Louis is really worse than it is…which really is not that bad at all. I am not denying the fact that we have crime, and more crime than we should. But it seems that polls like this one and the recent Men’s Health poll on the saddest cities in America (in which we came in sixth) do nothing but create overall unrealistic images of cities which can be a danger to tourism and commerce. And for what?

I guess the only thing we in St. Louis can do is hold on to the fact that we know we live in a great city with a rich history. The Gateway to the West. The home of the Arch, interesting architecture, fabulous museums, copious and tantalizing restaurants, cozy neighborhoods to raise families, Forest Park, ground-breaking music, the eleven-time World Series Champions, and some damn fine beer, among many, many other things. Oh, and the best tasting city water in America (see: http://www.stlwater.com/bestwater.php).

As far as I’m concerned, the rest is just fuzzy math. Then again, most math is fuzzy to me.