The Baldwin Report

Parents make lots of sacrifices for their kids: soccer games, recitals, braces and the family truckster. Fortunately, family vehicles have progressed since Chevy Chase's Vacation in a Ford station wagon.

You relax as the chair warms and massages your back. Soothing colors surround you, and calming music fills your ears. No one can interrupt this 30 minutes just for you. No phone calls, no demands, no guilt about just being still and doing nothing—with your mouth wide open.

Pearly whites and shiny silver! Precious metals may look très chic as bracelets and necklaces, but can they also leave you with a perfect smile? These youngsters sure hope so! Here, they show off their finest incisor accessories and prove there is such a thing as being en vogue in braces.

NOTE: The review below was written for the original presentation of Stupefy! last December. The latest production features three new cast members, including Chris LaBanca, Ben Ritchie and John Wolbers, who are replacing Blaine Adams, Rob Suozzi and John Foughty, respectively. Additionally, the new rendition includes a 5-minute video pre-show as well as new scenes and a new ending, all in a “faster than last time” 90 minutes.

World-class artists are once again coming together for Sing for Siteman, a one-night-only performance to support cancer research for Siteman Cancer Center.

There are many approaches to a younger-looking face, from cosmetics to plastic surgery. But one of the most important components of a youthful appearance is a healthy smile. Maintaining the teeth and gums is critical to your overall beauty regimen.

The humble knee is a true orthopedic workhorse. With its combination of bone, cartilage, ligaments and fluid, it carries us through life—until something goes wrong.

Jan Albus considers Variety the Childen’s Charity of St. Louis her 14,000-member family. As executive director and a national board member, she leads the nonprofit in helping children with physical and mental disabilities reach their full potential.

In the world of professional gardening, winter brings on different tasks. Hopefully, most of these jobs will be indoors when the weather is at its worst, as snow-shoveling and ice-chipping rank near the very bottom of our favorite jobs list. About the only things lower on that list are cleaning up the bird messes under the seed feeders, mucking out the pond on a cold spring day or spreading ripe manure in the heat of the summer. Gardeners usually use the winter season to plan future plantings, research new materials, order specialty items and peruse plant catalogs.

A divorce can be one of life’s most difficult hurdles. And for men who often don’t share their emotions as openly as women, surviving the process can become overwhelming without a 'road map' for navigating the legal, financial and emotional issues that arise, says E.B. Gunn, New York Times best-selling author of The Gentleman’s Guide to the Nasty Divorce.

Story: Well, there’s this young wizard named Harry Potter who has great mystical powers. Harry is an orphan who now lives with his non-magical, “Muggle” relatives, dullards who hope that he will turn out ‘normal.’ Nonetheless, he and his best pals, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, become students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, presided over by Albus Dumbledore.

The Baldwin Report

Story: Anne Frank, the 14-year-old girl whose life was one of millions of European Jews extinguished in concentration camps by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party in World War II, meets another 14-year-old, Emmett Till, a black boy from Chicago who was brutally murdered in 1955 while visiting relatives in Mississippi, an act that galvanized America’s black community and started the Civil Rights movement.

I was really looking forward to this film. The cast is incredible and the premise is intriguing: A young writer struggling with mediocrity happens upon a brilliant manuscript and claims it as his own. What could possibly go wrong there? In theory, this would be an incredible film. Unfortunately, we know all too well that what works in theory doesn’t always work in practice.

Children used to spend years with a mouthful of metal as braces slowly repositioned crooked teeth. Today, kids have lots of options, and braces are even considered a fashion statement.

What do all those technical terms mean when it comes to our bodies and the procedures that can transform them? Although by no means an exhaustive list, the following may help decipher some alien terminology—and help you become more aware of your options.

Brace yourselves. In true 2001: A Space Odyssey style, this film is bound to be one of the most discussed/debated/dissected films in sci-fi history.

Kids may not always like their braces, but we sure think they’re cute! Here, we celebrate all the smiles made straight with a little help from the family orthodontist.

A generation ago, braces were a cross that some unfortunate kids had to bear. ‘Metalmouth’ was an insult, and kids who wore the dreaded ‘headgear’ were doubly cursed. All that has changed. For many of today’s youngsters, braces are a fashion statement and a rite of passage with little or no trauma attached. Modern braces address a variety of issues related to cosmetic and functional concerns. The age at which a child is fitted with braces depends largely upon the braces’ purpose.

Maryville Talks Books, the signature author series from MARYVILLE UNIVERSITY, kicks off this month with actress/ singer VANESSA WILLIAMS and her mother, HELEN WILLIAMS. The pair will appear on May 10 at Christ Church Cathedral for a discussion and signing of their book, You Have No Idea. The rest of the lineup includes former Democratic presidential candidate BILL BRADLEY (May 11), sportswriter FRANK DEFORD (May 30), author and historian DOUGLAS BRINKLEY (June 4) and Friday Night Lights and Three Nights in August author BUZZ BISSINGER (June 11). Except for the Williams event, all other appearances take place at Maryville University Auditorium and are free and open to the public. Ticket packages for the Williams event are $30, and include seating for two, as well as a copy of the book (brownpapertickets.com).

At age 7, he started driving a pickup on his family’s farm. When he was 12, his father gave him the keys to a 1968 Ford truck to drive around the property. Curtis Francois got the racing bug early and hasn’t shaken it. Fast forward to a Tuesday night in March: It’s 7:30, and the husband and father of two is observing drag-racing in the pits at his track, Gateway Motorsports Park. You do what you love. So this real estate developer does the real estate stuff in the morning, and then goes to the track and stays late.

Kids grow fast. In the case of scoliosis, a lateral (side-to-side) curvature of the spine, rapid growth may exacerbate the problem, although it can develop at any age.

So something weird happened the other day. By now, you’d think I’ve learned to anticipate these little familial occurrences, but no. This came like a bolt out of the blue—I could see the words coming out of my mouth and lingering in the air like a cartoon bubble. Whiny had a birthday last week, and while on some level, I must have acknowledged what was happening, it wasn’t until I said it out loud that it hit home: I have teenagers, plural. I have teenagers.