Star Clipper!?

Best of St. Louis, September 27, 2007

You gotta be kidding: I read RFT every week and I love it, especially this time of year, when the "Best of St. Louis" issue is published. This year, I was miffed that you voted Star Clipper the best comic book store in St. Louis. You state: "Gone are the days of geeked-out, poorly lit, cramped retail spaces with the product stored in cardboard boxes." I have to tell you, I've been to Star Clipper and I hated it. The place was a glorified newsstand. Where were the back issues to thumb through? Where was the name-knowing clerk who remembers that you like a certain title and will pull one on the off chance that you might come in wanting it? Where are the old comic shops? They're next to one another on the corner of Watson and Chippewa, and are called All American Collectibles or Mo's Comics — both are staples in the south-side area. I understand that Star Clipper is in the Delmar Loop, but it is not the best comic shop in St. Louis. It doesn't even have back issues. You can't go into the shop and find older books, and you will never see the first issue of Superman lying around.
Joe Buttice, St. Louis

Stage, September 13, 2007

It all ends in tragedy: Dennis Brown did get two things right in his review of History Boys. This excellent play "can sustain the skepticism of one lone dissenter" and "it might well be that I'm [Dennis] the one who's missing out." This is a very complex work, requiring more thought than To Sir, with Love (which I also loved), but worth the effort. In these days of No Child Left Behind angst, the conflict between Hector's philosophy of education for the whole person and Irwin's teach-for-the-test approach is especially relevant.

The headmaster's statement that education only matters if it can be measured was so realistically delivered that I had to hold myself back, silently repeating, "He's only acting." Education must be bigger than the test so that when our students arrive at their own Oxbridge, they are prepared to do the work they find there.

A tragic hero must have a tragic fault, and Hector's is so shamefully ridiculous that one would like to smack him upside his head. To his attempt to offer rationalizations, Mrs. Lintott's reply, "a grope is a grope," cuts through all the pretense, just as I suspect her history classes did. We didn't need to see her classes, though I would have liked to, because the showdown was between Hector and Irwin. How ironic that the headmaster's reaction was glee over having a way to get rid of Hector, but Irwin, his golden-boy replacement, was prepared to go much further down that road and (trying not to spoil the ending) that the headmaster himself set up the tragic ending.
Mary Garrett, St. Peters

Stage, August 9, 2007

Hey guys, call it as it is: Why is the headline "Les Mediocrity" for Dennis Brown's review of the Muny's production of Les Misérables? The reviewer gave this particular production incredibly positive reviews, although he appears to disdain the show itself. Yet the article itself highly recommends the talent and quality of the show presented. Just because RFT touts itself as a hip, independent paper doesn't excuse boneheaded editorial choices.
Jason Krueger, Steamboat Springs, Colorado

Ask a Mexican, July 19, 2007