Gonna be making the trip to the folks in St.Louis for Thanksgiving. My second favorite holiday after Halloween. However I'm not donning a costume this year. I was thinking of creating an anthrax microbe outfit. So thats where my brain is. Destruction and the Midwest.

I once made a list of things that reminded me of St.Louis for a stand-up routine. And since I was thinking of the emminent excursion there, I thought I'd share.

Hairdos. Mullets and jehri curls. Mullets otherwise known as the Wisconsin waterfall, business in the front, party in the back. And the drip drip dripping sound of a fresh jehri curl. Where's my activator bitch? Not suggesting that these are the only two hairstyles that exist there. However for a couple of doos that had their short moment in the sun twenty years ago, they have a stronghold of folicle warriors fervently promoting them in St.Louis.

Stretch pants. Gack. Lycra clingy type material with stirrups at the end so that the pants are pulled taught from heel to waist. For some reason the chunkier girls really like this fashion trend. Wound up looking like some giant suppository. Another item I thought should have died in the eighties, but alas St.Louis is the haven for discarded trends.

The Anheuser Busch beer plant tour. The birthplace of Budweiser. Its actually a kinda cool thing to do. My favorite part of This Old House is when they go to the factory to show how the siding, tiles, wainscotting, insulation, etc. is produced. I guess I have a factory fetish. Also at the end of any beer plant tour you get to drink as much free lager as you can stomach, fresh from the production line.

Fried foods. Sure fried foods exist everywhere. I'd wager good money that most American fried food innovations originated in the Midwest. The toasted ravioli definitely made its debut there. Funnel cakes had to start there. I've seen deep fat fried sausages on the menu. If it'll hold batter and isn't too big to fit into the fryolator, you can bet somewhere in St.Louis its being served as the latest fried delight.

The Arch. The best thing I recall about the Arch is a stunt attempted on That's Incredible. There was a guy who parachuted on top of the Arch successfully. Made the news. The show That's Incredible caught wind of it. They asked him to repeat the feat, this time with cameras rolling. So he lands on the arch, a gust catches his chute and yanks him towards the edge. He slides down the slick metal slope six hundred and thirty feet. Human puddle. Never made it on the show obviously, but local news showed partial footage. Natural selection is a wonderful thing.

Ozarks. The outlying woods south of St.louis, flanked on the other side by Kansas City, sort of. Have you seen the movie Deliverance? Imagine wooded areas where indoor plumbing is a fancy thang. Your sister is also the mother of your children. Roadkill is good eatin. Its no wonder why one of the biggest Ku Klux Klan camps is in the center of it. This is where the retard tumor is embedded in U.S. soil, and all retards in the country are mastacisized from it.

Lawns. Lawncare is big business in the Midwest. I've been privy to debates and conversations on grass ( not the good kind ) that lasted a good part of the afternoon. Actual mower envy infects neighborhoods. Men purveying their lawn, arms folded, chest out, the master of every blade of Kentuckey Blue. The best is seeing someone actually mourn a dead lawn.

Floods. Happens almost every three years. The people who live in the flood plains of the numerous rivers around St.Louis end up getting flooded out. And they always move back in. All possesions covered in an inch of muck. The river doesn't like you, move away from it.

And speaking of rivers. Every year at the V.P. Fair, a bunch of drunk idiots try and traverse the Mississippi River. You can send your eulogies to the Louisiana Delta, the resting place for these pioneers of undertow.

Oh theres plenty more. Caves, obesity, flannel, Jesse James, dog breeders and dog shows, sports icons opening restaurants, "fark" instead of "fork", "Worshington" instead of "Washington", frozen custard, bowling, enormous supermarkets, fraternity idiots, station wagons, malls, and on and on and on and on.