Aside from the heaps of aged useless items that I can't even believe the antique mall would buy with the honest intention of resale (taxidermy pieces), there is nostalgia to be had while surfing the second-hand filled booths and cases.

Items that your great grandparents, grandparents and parents likely grew up with fill the building, as well as a few picks from the 80's and 90's (I actually saw the 1997 movie Liar Liar in a showcase for $5.00. Seems too soon, doesn't it?) [morelink]

To check out my finds, ranging from movie memorabilia to 1920's appliances, click the gallery tab at the top of this story. 

If you do decide to head out to the Antique Mall, you may want to set aside a few good hours for the hunt. You may lose yourself inside, don't say I didn't warn you.

The South County Antique Mall is located at 13208 Tesson Ferry Road and is open 10AM-8PM Mon-Fri; 10AM-6PM Sat; 11AM-5PM Sun. [gallery]

They say another man’s trash is another man’s treasure.  When it comes to the Goodwill, I always believed the reputation that it was just a place for other people’s trash (I’ve been known to donate a few useless items during spring cleaning), so I never gave it much of a chance when it came to my need for retail therapy.

Well the times, they are a-changin', so I set out to see if the local Goodwill could fulfill my shopping bug on the cheap and if anything, provide a little entertainment by scanning the hodgepodge.

Boy, was there good, bad, and just plain u-g-l-y!

Armed with my camera phone, I snapped away items that I couldn’t believe I found.

[morelink]

The Good:

1. A burnt orange Old Navy dress. Within my first few minutes in the store, I spotted my first buy– this gently used dress for a whopping $3. Although it’s out of season, I’m sure my closet will forgive me for housing it another few months. I figure a big sassy belt and some knee-high boots, and I’ve got myself a budget-friendly fashion find for Fall. Score!  (ARV: $30-$40)

2. A mod-style striped chair. It was in great shape and would look great in a downtown loft or condo. Goodwill price: $125. (ARV: Unsure.) 

3. Bar accessories. I am always on the lookout for things to help accessorize my house as a fun gathering spot for friends. The store had over 4 different dartboards, all for under $8! (ARV: $25-$50)

4. I found Gremlins on VHS. Nostalgia set in and they just got their $2 asking price. (ARV: Priceless.)

5. Hand-held spotlight. I found this buried deep in the electronic shelves, and I was so excited! I thought of all the people I could hassle on the road with it… or perhaps a more law-abiding approach would be to use it for camping trips or late-night bonfires. $8 spend. (ARV: $40-$100)

The Bad:

1. Used Makeup. This used Cover Girl foundation has been slightly used and smeared on someone else’s greasy face, but you can now buy this at the bargain price of $2! (ARV: $5.99) Deal? I think not. Gross.

2. Bathroom scales. It’s not that it’s a bad deal, but I can’t believe the inventory they have on-hand! I saw the obesity epidemic flash before my eyes and I just wanted to say shame on donors for tossing these to the wayside. Goodwill price: $3.  (ARV: $10-$50)

The Ugly:

1. TV-shaped (it's questionable) cowgirl & horse decorated cookie jar. Not hot. Goodwill (overpriced) price: $6.  (ARV: Unsure.)

2. Down-home country signs. “Squeeze me a little… and make me wine.” Definitely tacky (although I will admit I smirked a little!)  

All in all, I’d say my trip to my local Goodwill was a success. There was nothing quite like the experience of trying to find a diamond in the rough and having a few laughs along the way. The best part is knowing how much the Goodwill benefits the St. Louis community.

To find a Goodwill near you for shopping or donating, click here. (Also on the Goodwill site until April 25, you can enter for a chance to win Cardinals tickets compliments of Cornbread and the Goodwill!) 

Odell Terry has spend half of his 16-year-old life waiting for a new set of lungs. This month, after overcoming one obstacle after another, he finally got his lung transplant.

According to KSDK, it took so long for the transplant to take place because in the meantime, everything that could have gone wrong did. The first possible lung transplant a few years ago turned out to be no good, then his relatives back home in Tennessee stole all the money from his medical account, and finally, his family lost their home last year when his oxygen tanks caught fire. (The teen was on oxygen to help him cope with his cystic fibrosis.) Docs at St. Louis Children's Hospital say that he's now doing great. Good luck with your new lungs, Odell.

Yesterday afternoon, officials discovered cracks all over the school's floors and walls, and it's being attributed to a huge depression from an underground caved-in coal mine. Since a "substantial part" of the mine was located directly below the $7.5 million-dollar school, it's not looking great for the school's future. The district is working to find other schools to send the students to.

A couple of years ago, I hopped on the Tina Fey bandwagon and now I can never look back. Not only has she taken America by storm, but she's reached me on a personal level - she's taken my vocabulary and speech back to my pre-adolescent stage.

Thanks to her, I now incorporate her 30 Rock lines into my daily speech pattern, such as, "Blerg!" and "I want to go to there!"

Nowadays, if you ask me who's queen of the tube I'll tell you Tina over Oprah hands down, although I do love me some "Borpo."

What I appreciate most about Tina is her ability to hang with the best of them; she was named Saturday Night Live's first female head writer, pulled the suffering "Weekend Update" sketch out of the slums and created a television series that glorifies "supernerds" and baby-stealing blackouts.

Aside from the one-liners and the A-list cast mates whose hilarious characters she's created, her writing really stands out from modern day comedy. From every SNL sketch to the movie Mean Girls to her brainchild television show 30 Rock, her writing always carries an underlying message with intelligent laughs. (If only there was a great moral lesson in each of my ToastedRav stories - ha!)

Plus, she took the real-life hard-to-like hothead Alec Baldwin and made him a lovable hotheaded character on 30 Rock. (Quite a feat after the butt-chewing voicemail he left his daughter a couple years back.)

As my tribute to Tina, I've included some facts you may not know about her:

• Tina was born Elizabeth Stamatina Fey and hails from Upper Darby, Pennsylvania. (A "wowza" is in order the middle name.)
• She studied drama at the University of Virginia and graduated in 1992.
• Tina was discovered by SNL producers at Chicago's famed Second City comedy troupe, where she was a writer-performer.
• She is an alumna of the Famous Improv Olympic, along with actors Vince Vaughn, the late Chris Farley, Ossie Beck, Mike Myers, Amy Poehler, and Adam McKay.
• Regarding the scar on Fey's left cheek, in an interview in Vanity Fair, husband Jeff Richmond says a stranger slashed Fey's face when she was five years old. He says the incident occurred in her front yard.
• In her high school yearbook, Tina Fey predicted that ten years down the road she would be “very, very fat.” She was never very, very fat, although she was once heavier than she is now; she took off 30 pounds in the year before she debuted as a “Weekend Update” anchor.
• When she was first starting out as an improv comic in the Chicago area, Tina Fey made ends meet by working the early-morning shift at the front desk of a YMCA.
• Tina Fey is known in entertainment circles for her ability to restrain herself from overindulgence when it comes to drinking and other sometimes risky behaviors, which sets her apart from many famed SNL cohorts both past and present.
• Tina is often referred to as “the thinking man’s sex symbol."

Now that you know a little bit more about Tina, let's celebrate her awesomeness by clicking the ToastedRav video tab for some of Tina's best comedic moments (Sarah Palin impression definitely included.) Enjoy!

Answer me this: if most broadcasters come from the Midwest because they don't have an accent, then why do we have such a hard time pronouncing St. Louis street names, and even our own state's name? This burning question may not have been answered when we headed to the St. Patrick's Day parade equipped with a list, a microphone and a video camera, but some of the pronunciation flubs that run rampant in our city were definitely exemplified when we asked people to read from our list.

It may have been by benefit of all the green beer that was flowing, but we heard some pretty interesting variations of these words when we asked St. Louis to try their hand at reading them. To test your skills, and to see others doing the same, check out our video on [tab:trav_video].

Love or loathe mispronunciations, they are everywhere. If not having a silent "s" on the end of Gravois really gets under your skin, you should also check out Audrey's article on some other words that Missouri commonly mispronounces.

When we first heard that Bevo Mill was suddenly going out of business, we felt horrible for all of the couples in St. Louis who were then stranded without a place to hold their wedding receptions. It turns out we weren't the only ones sad about their predicaments. Banquet halls all over the Lou are stepping in and opening their doors to the couples who were left high and dry.

Michelle of Bounce St.Louis LLC contacted ToastedRav:

We purchased a banquet center in Pevely in December, have some openings for weddings this year and would love to help. We want to work with those who lost money and/or date reservations due to the Bevo Mill closure. We will work with any budget and situation. Due to us taking a banquet center that had been for sale, we may have more openings than usual, and by having the resources of Bounce St. Louis also at our disposal, we can put together an incredible event for a very reasonable cost. Our center is beautiful and newly renovated, and it's open for tours of any kind. We can take a negative situation and turn in into an incredibly positive one; we can help each other in an awesome community effort! I hope we can be of some help for these brides in such an unfortunate situation.

So when a little Clark Kent was looking for something to do on a Friday night, he may have spent time skipping stones on the Mississippi River. You know, if he wasn't a comic book character and all. Located just around 2 hours south of downtown St. Louis the little village of Metropolis, IL is the home of one of the very few comic book heroes who doesn't wear a mask, (quick, can you name at least two others?), and besides having a statue of the reporter-come-caped-crusader outside of the city's courthouse, they celebrate their  resident hero each with the annual Superman Celebration.

It was recently announced that the first on-screen Lois Lane (Noel Neill) will return to celebrate alongside other action movie celebs at the festival, which runs June 11 through the 19 and includes a fan film competition. This year will mark the 31st anniversary of the celebration, and recently it was recently announced that the city may erect a bronze statue of Miss Lane.

Last year the Superman Celebration set a world record for having the largest gathering of people dressed like the superhero. Are you planning to join the crowd of more than 30,000 at the vigilante's blast this year? The celebration's tentative schedule includes plenty of parades, competitions of superhero strength and even artist seminars. You can find out more about the Celebration by checking out the Metropolis Tourism site.

When it comes to monuments on the east side of the river, it really is hard to say if the giant ketchup bottle in Collinsville or the giant Superman in Metropolis is cooler.

Having lived through the age of "The Rachel" and with all the buzz about Edward Cullen's locks, I shouldn't have been surprised that people have a downright obsession with hair (both other people's and their own). However, when a thirty minute conversation between astronauts and Presidential-types also includes hair commentary and questions...

The Belleville News-Democrat is reporting that Belleville native, and one of the astronauts aboard and international space station Discovery, Sandra Magnus was asked about her hair during a conversation with President Obama

“That’s a really good question, cause there’s a little bit of an overhead to take care of long hair here,” Magnus said. “Ideally, a short hair cut’s the way to go, but quite frankly, on me it wouldn’t be so nice so I kept it long.”

“I think it’s a real fashion statement,” Obama said with a chuckle.

Obama also asked about the final set of solar wings the crew installed on the space station last week.

Sandra The Astronaut's mama, Rose Hall, said her attention getting locks will be pruned at an appointment she made... from space... when she returns to earth. I ask you this, what would be the first thing on your mind if you were in space or if you were talking to an astronaut? Evidently hair is more important than space travel and rocket ships combined, because you know you were just going to say "getting my hair did."

Fez hats, tiny race cars and a circus are the first things that come to mind when you think of the Moolah Shriners (recently that cool bowling alley and theater in Midtown comes to mind, too). The Shriners are more than just a float in a parade and a circus act though. Did you know that their mission is to heal hundreds of children each year in their hospitals, for free?

The Moolah Shriners are a fraternal organization that spans the country. Doug Bachman, a St. Louis Shriner on the Board of Governors for the Shriners Hospital, told us that the Shriners are a fraternal organization similar to what you see on college campuses but just a little older. Like a college fraternity the Shriners have their share of Shriners only ceremonies, which contributes to some of the secretive aura of the group. Like a typical college Greek organization they also have tons of committees within the group that the members can participate in, including their famous mini indy car patrol (called the Gateway 500) that helps promote the organization, a drum and bugle corps that marches in parades and guides that provide the manpower at the Shrine functions, just to name a few.

This year's Moolah Shrine Circus is almost here. The St. Charles Family Arena will be transformed into the big top March 26 through 29 for the organization's biggest annual fundraiser. We had a chance to talk to the Moolah Shriners about their mission and the circus, and we even got to take one of the mini indy cars for a spin. To learn more about the Shriner's mission to help kids and to check out ToastedRav's peek behind the fez (and in the go-kart) check out [tab:trav_video].

You can buy tickets for the circus by going to www.StlShrineCircus.com; tickets start at $12 for general admission for the performance and go to $35 for Executive V.I.P. passes. There will be eight performances, including a special show for the hearing impaired on March 29 at 1:30pm, so you have plenty of chances to catch all of the trapeze artists, clowns and tigers and support a great cause.

According to Advertising Age the threats in the text messages vary by city, but all are saying you best stay far away from Walmart stores on Friday. But St. Louis police said its alright for women to wander through the land where the prices never end in a comfortable, round number, according to KMOV.com

A text message warning women about possible gang-related activity at a local Wal-Mart is being sent nation-wide and right here in St. Louis.

Police said there is no reason for alarm.

That's right - you can get your paper towels and eat your Little Debbie's, too. (Pick me up some Oatmeal Cream pies if you would?) The text messages are just a variation on a 2005 hoax that said there would be massive gang initiations in Walmart parking lots, which was proven false by Snopes.com.

When asked for a comment about it all being a hoax Shorty Short-Short's wife said, "He better not be coming home with without my eggs and Twilight DVD."

While folks around here commend this awesome act, the national news stood up and took notice, too. Earlier this week, NBC Nightly News' Brian Williams recognized Dave on national TV for making a difference. Thank you, Dave, for setting such a heart-warming example. ToastedRav joins Brian Williams in giving props to Mr. Sinclair for using his auto empire for the greater good.

A record crowd turned out for this year's St. Patty's Day Parade in Dogtown, and ToastedRav headed down to join in on the festivities. There were crowds from as near as the neighborhood and as far as Dublin Ireland celebrating the annual wearing of the green.

As sure as St. Louis will have green beer in March, we also have the long ago names from some of our favorite institutions so ingrained in our minds that when they change we have a hard time adjusting. (How's that for a transition reach?) While we were in Dogtown, we quizzed St. Louis about some of the more famous name changes to see which old names we are hanging on to the most.

To check out the parade festivities and to see the results of our quick St. Louis quiz, check out [tab:trav_video].

When we first met up with 28-year-old Mike Frazee at the Fairwinds at River's Edge Leisure Care Retirement Community, the St. Louis native was excited to show us what he does every day. After playing Family Feud, checking out the train and plane room and learning the Tango, we decided that coordinating the activities of St. Louis' retirees definitely qualifies as one of St. Louis' oddest jobs. Throw in Wii Bowling, the Senior Olympics, an open bar that starts at 2 p.m. and a few field trips, and Mike's job qualifies as downright unusual. But he loves what he does, and boy do the residents of River's Edge love him. Check out [tab:trav_video] for more on Mike's unusual occupation.

If you think your occupation is odd enough for ToastedRav, e-mail me at audrey@toastedrav.com.

• Dogtown is a neighborhood located on the western edge of St. Louis City. Dogtown is to the Irish families what The Hill is to local Italian families, hence the convergence of green bedecked citizens from around the metro-area and the whole parade thing. The reason for the neighborhood's name is the stuff of many local legends. One tale has it that many Irish families relocated there from the area that became Forest Park, and because Brinks wasn't an option back then many of them would chain dogs outside their shanties for security. Another rumor is that during the 1904 World's Fair some fellows involved with said fair would head over to Dogtown and dine on the neighborhood's Lassies, Hooches and Toto's.


• The first predominantly Irish neighborhood in St. Louis was called "The Kerry Patch" since many immigrants to St. Louis were from Kerry County in southwest Ireland. The original Kerry Patch was roughly 8 square blocks in Downtown (bound by the north by Cass Avenue, the south by O'Fallon St, east at 16th St and west at 22nd St).


• St. Louis' first St. Patrick's Day celebration was in 1820 and at that time almost 2/3 of our fair city's immigrant population was Irish born.


• Chicago's O'Hare Airport is named for the grandson of a St. Louis Irish family. The O'Hare family owned a saloon in St. Louis and their grandson, a Chicago transplant from the 'Lou, was honored by a Congressional Medal and eventually killed in WWII.

If you are interested in learning more about St. Louis' Irish heritage or fun facts, for instance that our city is home to more than 15 different Irish bands, you can check out the websites for the Ancient Order of the Hibernians or Irish in St Louis. Now, go out and wash down that corned beef and cabbage with a green beer, lads and lassies.