A little over a month ago, Mayor Francis Slay announced his yearly call for submissions to design the St. Louis Holiday Card, or at least A Holliday Card…and while they have to say “holiday” for the diversity blah blah blah of the city, if you were thinking about drawing a Kwanza card you can just stop right now. We all know that’s just not gonna happen.

The top 10 winners get their cards hung up in City Hall so that grumpy people waiting in some god forsaken line to pay some fee they’d only recently heard of will see them and a begin to mentally pick out the inaccuracies in them, forgetting entirely that a child made it.

Here’s this year’s winner by fourth grader Tatyanna Jackson:

It’s a pretty good little drawing, with some quality work on the squirrel and baseball-man. However, that right side of the arch isn’t going to hold much weight for too long, and Fred Bird’s not going to go far trying to fly by kicking his little bird feet. Where the really art lies in this photo is what’s not there. No Pujols for one. They’re clearly in front of the arch, but no one’s been shot or stabbed, so did they move the Arch? Why aren’t there any snow flakes in front of or on the Arch itself? Does this card imply the artist shares the belief that the Arch controls the weather? Yes to probably all that stuff. Meaning they submitted a card with a scene where a cardinal and a baseball snowman excitedly compare their balls in front of  an Arch that’s probably been moved to an undisclosed location, and emitting a low-range weather changing signal while a squirrel stands guard with a baseball bat.

This card is crazy messed up. There’s no way this card could have beat anything unless the runner up was a crayon drawing of a heroin addict breaking in to our car and taking the Hootie and the Blowfish CD I keep on the dashboard.

Here’s our submission that apparently didn’t make the cut:

What you’ve got here is a recently escaped felon holding up a guy with a knife while it snows just before the holiday tornado comes to take out have the state leaving nothing but little pieces of Joplin and candy canes in it’s wake. …and they’re in front of the Arch because you gotta but the Arch in these things to have any chance at winning. Oh, and it’s snowing. Happy Holidays!

So Mayor Slay’s staff walk in to a room in the Edward Jones Dome with a few people from the Occupy St. Louis movement currently inhabiting downtown…

Stop us if you’ve heard this one.

The initial debate was between the Mayor’s Chief of Staff Jeff Rainford, and a guy that only went by “Chuck”…naturally.

“We ask that you condemn the police violence in Oakland and retract any threats or insinuations of violence against us and the accusation that we are inciting violence,” Chuck said.

Rainford responded: “I don’t know where you read in the newspaper, or what newspaper or tv station said that I was threatening violence.  I wasn’t.  It’s very easy.  I condemn the violence in Oakland.  I condemn violence here.  I condemn violence everywhere.”

Chuck starts out with some fire, but it was quickly put out by the Rainford. But what, you may ask, were the rest of Chuck’s occupy buddies doing?

Residents of the tent community had voted earlier in the day not to attend the meeting, but a few came wearing dollar bills taped around their mouths and refusing to speak.

We hear one guy had a $20 over his mouth at first but then noticed it looked bad after his friend emailed his recent iPhone photo he took while occupying the Galleria earlier in the day, so he called home and had his mom swing by and drop off some singles. It wasn’t a quick drive from Ladue, but she loves her “little free spirit”!

Ok, enough of this chit-chat! Lets get to those demands! The Mayor’s office would like the Occupiers to leave Keiner Plaza since there are events coming up that need that space, various health concerns and City Hall is down wind. The Occupiers would like…

 …the city withdraw its funds from big banks, and a request for another building or park to occupy instead of Kiener Plaza.

Oh is that all? Anyone need a sandwich while we’re at it? Maybe some little milk cartons? …ok the building thing isn’t that big of a deal we guess, with all the spare ones we seem to have downtown these days.

Rainford refused the idea of moving city funds out of big banks, saying the banks provide revenue to the city and fund services downtown.   He also refused to provide a building for the protestors to occupy.

Shocking.

But the mayor’s office did suggest creating a “speaker’s corner” downtown, where the protestors could maintain a presence and get their message out.

Jokes aside, that seems fair. But it’s certainly not as cool to have a sanctioned protesting area rather than taking over an area downtown with nothing but your burning desire for social and economical reformation! In fact, they may have to change the name from “Occupy St. Louis” to “Don’t Mind Us. We’ll Just Be Over Here, Out of the Way St. Louis”

via KMOX

No, no no. This isn’t some symbolic deal where we say Mayor Slay found the beaten body of a nearly dead spirit of St. Louis on the sidewalk that told him he should probably do a little more about the crime. Mayor Slay actually found the beaten body of a nearly dead guy on the sidewalks of South City.

Mayor Slay said he was traveling along South Grand Boulevard near the intersection of Utah Street in south St. Louis when he came upon a man who had been assaulted. The man was lying in a pool of his own blood on the side of the street and was unconscious.

His Mayorness waited with the man and kept repeatedly coaching the guy up with “So you ran in to a door right? …or maybe fell down some stairs? Lets go with the door one, ok? You really gotta watch out for those doors buddy! Such a klutz!”  while the emergency crews sped to the scene.

So who did this? The Mr. Mayor see the perps?

According to Mayor Slay, he noticed a group of youths walking away from the scene.

The Mayor didn’t get a great look, but he’s pretty sure he saw these two youths commit the near murder and then escape in a metallic mint green 1963 Pontiac Tempest.

Now lets bring in the professionals to tell us the motive behind the brutal beating, but keep in mind they have no one in custody and have maybe one witness.

Officials say the violent act was part of what is known as the “knockout” game. It is an ongoing problem that left a 72-year-old man dead in south St. Louis last April.

Again with the “Knockout Game”! We’re starting to think that “Knockout Game” is St. Louis code for “We have no clue why this random horrible crime happened, so lets tie them together somehow.” If we don’t know, or think it has anything to do with young people, just assume it will be eventually labeled as “Knockout”.

As for the man himself, he’s had to go through facial reconstructive surgery, but is recovering and should be fine after lots and lots of time and he finally manages to get the mayor to stop sending him “I’m Sorry” flowers with “Vote Slay!” buttons on them.

via KMOV

If you’re on the internet, you know about the recent surge of photo memes. For example, there’s Philosoraptor, Hipster Kitty, Scumbag Steve, Socially Awkward Penguin, Business Cat, and Technologically Impaired Duck just to name some of the better ones. …but now…we present to you…the beginning of the “Mayor Slay” meme! He’s a nice-guy mayor awkwardly leading a city further in to crappiness, so these pretty much write themselves…except for the ones we did, those took amazing comedic skill.

If you feel like you want to jump on this meme, don’t worry because we’ve done all the hard work! Here’s a blank one ready to download, and below are a few examples to get things going! So crank a few of these out while your at work today because it’s Friday and you weren’t planning on doing much work today anyway.

The few of you that voted decided that the St. Louis City earning tax should be kept around yesterday night, in what ended up being a decisive landslide approving Proposition E. Meanwhile, in his skull-shaped island lair, Mayor Slay tapped his fingers together in pleasure because he would continue to reap the roughly $150 million dollar revenue stream the income tax generates (or, probably more precisely, he wiped the sweat off his brow, high-fived his buddies, then went home to rub one out and get a good night’s sleep for the first time in a few months, but the super villan in his lair sounded more awesome).

Mayor Slay has been out there campaigning for keeping the tax in recent weeks since it’s obviously a large part of the city’s budget, which is already bleeding, and with this vote the city (figuratively of course, since only the old people voted) has decided to keep the tax in place, which is the right move. Even Slay admits the earnings tax is something that needs to be phased out, but right now, in the midst of probable fireman layoffs, isn’t the best time.

Eventually, Slay has said, the city needs to come up with alternative sources of revenue to replace the earnings tax. Ideas that have been floated included higher sales or property taxes, a tax on nonprofits, and the city entering St. Louis County as a municipality or the two sharing services. Preserving the tax this spring will give the city more time to adopt other revenue sources, he said.

Oh, he’s just being modest. Those little revenue ideas will amount to nothing once the St. Louis scientists finish work on the machine that turns discarded fake hair in to gold! The city streets will be littered with gold! …now if only we could turn blood, homeless guy piss, and general dispair in to something we can spend and we’d be a city on the top of a few lists finally. List’s like “Fanciest Places to Get Herpes From a Girl Name Cherise and Then Get Yelled at By a Large Ugly Woman Holding a Sign With A Chopped Up Fetus on Your Way in to Planned Parenthood a Few Day Later”

Hello tourism!

Results via KSDK, and quote from St. Louis Business Journal

Yesterday a Missouri Senate committee heard testimony from both sides of the issue of whether or not St. Louis city should control the local Police Department, including the man himself, Mayor Frank Slay. Obviously the Mayor is a strong proponent for giving control of the city police force to the city as opposed to the status quo of the State running it from Jefferson City.

“Again, if something goes wrong in city government, if people have an issue with what I’m doing, they can go to the polls and they can vote one way or another…they can’t do that with respect to the police department,” Slay said.

Good point, but the committee, though appearing to side with Mayor Slay on the matter, didn’t offer much hope.

“I think your problem’s gonna be getting the bill off the floor, if it gets to the floor, because of the filibuster rule…,” [committee chairman Kevin Engler]  said, “there’s quite a few people that sympathize with your opponents…but as a former mayor, and I know my vice chair’s a former mayor, we’re very similar, we sympathize.”

This whole thing is so f*cking stupid it gives us a burning sensation when we pee…that might be something else but Cinnamon is really dragging her feet on getting back to us with those test results so we can’t be certain. This thing with the city and the police still really f*cking stupid though.

It’s freaking ridiculous that we actually have to say this but: The city should of course have control of it’s own damn police department! Period. It would be like if you bought your car, pay to keep it up and put gas in it, but when you get in it and try to go to work it might say “You’re not really the boss here…lets go to Wendy’s” and you’d be all like “Dude. I pay a lot of money for you and I need to go to work.” but the car would totally be like “Nope. Wendy’s.” and start driving there. The thing is, Wendy’s isn’t even open. It’s 9am. Stupid car. What are you going to do just sit there waiting for Wendy’s to open? Oh the burgers are square! Yup, very impressive, you froze meat in a non-traditional shape. Good for you.

It’s not like you don’t like the car, its just that since you’re sinking all your money in to it, you should really be in charge. Sure the car would rather it have the option to tell you to go screw even though we pay for it, who wouldn’t? …but that’s not the way it should work. The only argument the “other side” has is that “it’s the way it’s always been done” and that’s maybe the worst reason to do anything, ever…except for maybe “because my penis will fit in there,” but that’s for another post. Only white guys voting, slavery, respecting your elders, cuffed jeans, saying “golly”, and that show Step By Step with Patrick Duffy…all these horrible things would still be around if we decided to keep doing something dumb just because it’s been that way for a while. The freaking law was enacted so that the South didn’t get control of the St. Louis police department during the Civil War and St. Louis had enough people the President Lincoln…freaking Lincoln!…decided that’s the city to focus on because of all the voters, and now, 150 years later, we have someone filibustering this thing in the state senate so that the law stays in place! A freaking filibuster! Oh, now you’re going to say that this douche is protecting policemen’s pensions because the city might shrink them? Please. No one is saying that the job changes at all, its just putting something back the way that makes sense and how every other city operates. If the transfer is approved and the city slashes pensions or puts in one of those pee troughs were you have to get all close to the guy next to you and it always splashes back on your pants, then quit and go work somewhere else. That’s not a raw deal, that’s just the sweet ride of the last 150 years coming to an end. Hell of a run. Now shut the hell up and worry about the few people left in the city that keep getting shot, mugged, stabbed and robbed.

That’s right! We agree with the mayor on this one. This is normally where we’d remind you that this means hell has frozen over, but you went to work today, you felt how cold it was outside on March freaking 28th. You know already.

Plans are in place to disagree with the Mayor again soon so that should defrost the area pretty quick. Sorry.

via STL Public Radio and STLToday