Save the Landing — bring back LSD! In regard to Randall Roberts' "Laclede's Lament" [November 23], in many ways Laclede's Landing is a metaphor for America. The businesses that once occupied the Landing have been done in by the forces of globalization. While illuminati-controlled corporations like Disney, Pepsi and McDonald's prosper, craft merchants, hippie stores and independent thinking in general have been snuffed out. The youth in the 19-to-29 age range must choose between the army, prison or corporate serfdom. There is no longer a place in neocon American for that sexy summer day spent strolling in and out of craft and pothead stores.
I miss too much caffeine and laid-back slacking, I miss acid suns. A great spiritual renaissance must occur, both on the Landing and in America. Support small business, not whitewashed corporate serfdom.
Christian Peper
Richmond Heights
Who's dropping acid? Once again, RFT, you should be ashamed of yourself. If one had not been to the Landing recently, they might believe your article with its pictures of abandoned buildings and jabs at the few businesses there that actually bring business and revenue in. However, those of us who are more familiar with the Landing know that thousands of people frequent the Landing on weekends and support the businesses that you not only slighted in your article, but also neglected to interview.
Why focus only on the negative and not support those keeping the Landing alive? Because it doesn't make for an interesting story? You should get your act together and leave the Landing alone.
Jessica Maykopet
Granite City, Illinois
Musical Cheers
Free Rent: Melissa Levine's review of the film adaptation of Rent is not only wildly ignorant, it's also far crankier than it has a right to be ["Spent," November 23]. Her review is filled with misinformation and reveals her ignorance both of the material and the long-standing and legitimate art form of movie musicals. As an example, it's not true that among the main characters "almost everyone" is gay — four of the eight central characters are, as they would be in that time and place. It's also not true that the play or film is based on Puccini's opera La Bohème. In fact, it's based on Henri Murger's wickedly funny, outrageous novel from the 1840s and shares very little in common with the opera. And if two straight, HIV-positive, heroin junkies falling in love is a cliché, I guess I need to catch up on my romantic movies.
If Levine finds singing and dancing on film so outrageous, so unrealistic, then I wonder how she deals with other unrealistic film techniques like romantic montages, time telescoping, digital effects, split screen, voiceover narration, lush orchestral underscoring and animation — is she this cranky about all those conventions as well? And in the age of MTV and VH1, is singing and dancing to tell a story really all that bizarre? The $10 million that Rent made its opening weekend suggests that it's not.
Rent is flawed, no question, but it won the Pulitzer Prize because it is an insightful, inventive, genuinely truthful look at being young and different in America, a story that will never go out of date.
Scott Miller
St. Louis
Chow Time
Shank shot: How can Rose Martelli be a food critic if she has no clue what she's talking about? I read your reviews every week and the only restaurants that actually get good reviews are the ones who have, like, ten ads in the RFT. Also, any idiot knows you can't order lamb shank medium ["Grouse of the Seven Gables," November 23].
Please get someone who can review places right. And a culinary background might be nice. (Please tell me Rose Martelli doesn't have one, 'cause if she does, she just made her school look that much more dumb.)
Mike Jones
Chesterfield
School's In
Multiple choice: Regarding Kristen Hinman's "L Is for L. Ron" article on the Applied Scholastics tutoring method [October 26]: "Religiosity?" is the wrong question. "Workability?" is the one to ask, and the one left unanswered by your article.
Are we so rich in effective solutions to our modern educational crisis (and any of those quoted in your article will agree that it is a crisis) that we can't afford to leave uninspected a new one that just might work?
John C. Lyman
St. Peters
