A cheapskate's lodging: more or less

So last night I mentioned the cutest, jankiest hotel you may ever meet were our accommodations on the outskirts of the Chicago area.  Priceline's 'name your own price' deal can be the BFF of the cheapskate traveler, sometimes landing you fantastic deals on great hotels in great locations, but the sometimes, and the great locations, are not likely to be in downtown Chicago on Labor Day Weekend, so we did a bit of hunting to find a place cheap enough to enable our fun, and since there were plans to buy some rather large items at Ikea, we looked in that area for a place, and found Hotel Bolero, in Palatine.  Not far from Ikea, and very near Arlington Park racetrack (Which I totally want to check out sometime!).  Now I admit, Hotel Bolero, and the $57/night price tag, might sound a bit iffy (and maybe also the horse track adjacent location), but every good adventure starts with a risk!

So without further ado, check out my room for the weekend.  I call it the Violet Beauregarde room, for reasons that will soon become clear:

The entrance, from between the bed and desk.

The room itself - with a wall of giant blueberries!

Sitting area, and yes, that's an actual balcony.  It even overlooked a little courtyard!

Another angle on the blueberry bedroom.

Looking in from out on my balcony.

So that's the awesome part.  I wish I'd taken pictures in the lobby and whatnot - there was much cuteness on display there as well.

The less awesome part was the increasingly evident fact that whoever did the fun, boutique renovation of this clearly former chain hotel had long since gone, and been replaced by, as far as I could tell, a staff of one very pregnant woman.  When we checked in and I asked if we could be moved to rooms closer together, we were told that they were short staffed that day, so some of the rooms hadn't been cleaned.  No big deal, our request was accommodated by giving me a handicapped accessible room just down the hall from my friends' room.  And when we left on Sunday morning for round two of adventuring, we had noticed plenty of signs that the place was not as well-kept as the wallpaper might lead you to believe, but we were still feeling great about the deal we got for such a cute place that we had essentially to ourselves.  Todd and Ryan had enjoyed the indoor pool the night before and I know my bed was plenty comfy, in my nest of many pillows.

However... when we got back that evening we noticed the rooms had not been cleaned.  Not a terribly big deal, but the towels had also not been re-stocked.  Still not a big deal for me, but for the family of 3 I was travelling with, who had used their towels for swimming the night before and showering that morning, the pile of damp, used towels that remained on their bathroom floor seemed less than ideal.  When they asked about it, they were told that no housekeeping is done on Sundays, and there were no spare towels to be had, but they were welcome to use the coin-op laundry room to wash them themselves!

So... me being me, it's very, very far from the worse place I've stayed (that one was located above a restaurant/bar in an alley in Rome and involved a swayback bed, a loud fan in the window and a really long line for the one bathroom down the hall and subsequent shower in the proprietor's brother-in-law's apartment upstairs).  But, if you hate to see prenatal child labor like the poor pregnant woman who apparently runs the place single-handed, or like having clean towels and whatnot, you might want to make some inquiries before booking at the Hotel Bolero.  Personally though, the cute, cute room and the nest of many pillows was well worth it to me.

And thus ends a cheapskate's review of a cheap hotel.  Stay tuned next time for Sunday's adventures (including more thrifting!) and some musings on the joys and horrors of Ikea.

Strange coincidence

Of all the posts I've done since I started this little enterprise last December, one from last February has had way, way, way more hits than any other, mostly due to Google searches involving either a certain kind of Le Creuset hollow-handled sacepan or Dru Holland cast iron cookware (you can read that whole post here if you like).  The strange coincidence of my post title today involves the saucepans:

Le Creuset hollow-handled saucepans.

The research I did at the time lead me to believe that this particular style of Le Creuset pans with the fat hollow metal handles that are all of a piece with the rest of the pot originated with another company, Cousances, that was bought out by Le Creuset in 1957.  The serendipitous new find I've made throws a whole new element into the game:

Sorry, rather crummy phone pic here.

As you can see, there is a definite resemblance between these two little pots and the little pots above!  The handles and style are the same, and then there's that gorgeous orange flame enamel.  The interiors are different - gray on these, and white on the Le Creusets - and unfortunately there's only one lid with this set, and it may not be original to the set, despite the color match - it's not cast iron, it's much lighter.  Also these two are the same size.  I haven't gotten all four of them together in the same place for comparison, but I don't think these are any bigger than the larger of the two Le Creusets.  

But where it gets interesting is this.  These are neither Le Creuset nor Cousances.  These are marked Trianon, Made in Belgium.  So of course, I asked good old Google about "enamel cast iron trianon", and found... not a ton of information.  The first thing returned is the most interesting.  It's a page from the Milwaukee Journal from December 5th, 1952 with an ad for Trianon "Terraflame":

As you can see it shows not-very-good black and white illustrations of various pots and pans, lettered, with prices listed like in a catalog.  G. looks awfully familiar with its fat little handle, and apparently, for Christmas 1952, it could be had (size-depending, I assume) for $3.20-$5.70.  The image is terrible, so it's hard to say if the lid looks anything like the one I got with my thrifted treasures.

But what interests me about the whole thing is... I thought I had settled in my mind that the design of these little pots came from the Cousances company, since they predated the ones made by Le Creuset.  But Le Creuset bought out Cousances in 1957.  The above ad proves the same design was being made by Trianon at least as early as 1952, so they could well have been doing it first, but I can't find much else out there about Trianon enameled cast iron.  Anybody out there a connoisseur who can fill me in with the scoop?

In the mean time, check out a couple of great link-ups here:

 

Cap Creation's Thrifty Love Link Party and The Thrifty Groove's Thrifty Things Friday

Gettin' crafty

Remember when you were a little kid, and you'd have your army men or your Barbies, or your My Little Ponies, or your Matchbox cars?  Action figures?  Muppet Babies?  Whatever they were, do you remember how fun it was to make up little worlds for them?  My best friend in elementary school had this awesome area in her backyard that was like the rain forest for Barbie.  If we turned the sprinkler on there was even a waterfall.  And shoe box villages for Fisher Price Little People were at least as fun as the store bought schoolhouses and things (with the exception of the houseboat, because you could totally play with that in the bathtub!).  In the summers at the Lake of the Ozarks with my cousins, we would build mazes out of Legos and try to make the frogs we caught hop through them.  And who hasn't spent hours building elaborate blanket forts?

To me, there's always been something of that same feeling in maps.  When I unfold a road map and trace my finger along a highway, that whole world of imagined possibilities opens up again.

Map of Missouri, my home state

Probably most trips along the line I'm tracing are just long, tedious drives to get from point A to point B, just like the Barbie rain forest in my friend's backyard was just a tangle of weeds her dad had to deal with.  But looking at the map, reading off the names of towns I've never visited, I can just about feel the wind buffeting my hand as I let it dip and rise out the car window, and I can picture the greasy spoons and the 'World's Largest Somethingorother' in that pretend place in my mind, where everything's like the fun parts of Thelma and Louise.  On a world map, I'm Indiana Jones, my finger tracing flights to exotic adventures:

Or take a globe... I defy you to spend more than 5 minutes in a room alone with a globe without playing the game.  You know the game - we all do!  You spin the globe, you close your eyes, and you put your finger down and see where you end up, and you hope it's Paris, or Tibet, or maybe Alaska, but if it's someplace like Uzbekistan, you make a mental note to see what Wikipedia says about Uzbekistan, because that's kind of awesome too.  Maps let me play pretend, and globes let me dream big, and when I spotted a poor battered globe without a stand on half-price day at Value Village a few months ago, I immediately new exactly why I needed it.

I'm not terribly crafty outside the confines of my skull.  In there, I'm always making stuff, and it always turns out great.  In the real world, I'm like the kid who can't quite cut on the lines, or who glues my fingers together.  But the minute I spotted the globe, I flashed back to a few months prior to that, when I came across a whole bag of Lite Brite pegs at Unique Thrift, and foolishly passed them up.  I picked them up, even put them in my cart, but then I scolded myself and put them back because I had no practical use for them and really, really didn't need them.  And now I had a globe, and an idea, but no Lite Brite pegs to make it happen!

I looked into buying pegs and was not thrilled with the prices, and then the other reason I'm not really all that crafty kicked in.  I'm easily distracted, and generally bad at follow-through.  All idea, no execution.  But after Monday, I feel so motivated, that I did the unthinkable on my lunch break this afternoon.  I followed through!  Well, partly.  I stopped in at Hobby Lobby, and while they don't have Lite Brite pegs per se, they do have these, in the doll house section:

I bought two kinds.

I'm sure by now you've probably sussed out my clever plan.  I'm going to poke these into the globe in places that are significant to me like pins in a map on the wall, and make a light fixture (lampshade? pendant light?).

So here's the before:

Sitting in a bowl so it will hold still.  At half off of $1.51, it was a no-brainer!

I cleaned the price off with a damp napkin and took an exacto knife to Antarctica:

Still not great at cutting on the line, but it's round-ish!

Mary Poppins was intrigued:

Now the problem is getting the pegs into the thick cardboard with nothing but a thumbtack as a piercing tool.  I've got half a dozen or so in, but then my thumbs got tired, so that's as far as I've gotten so far.  Stay tuned! Once I get some sort of actual tool and get all the pegs in, I'll have to come up with a plan for exactly how to make it into a light.  What do you think?  I'm always open for advice!

Cheapskates' Paradise, part the 4th

If you've been following along at home, you may recall that my satisfaction at learning that Kipplinger's online had named my hometown the top pick for cheapskates has lead to the only real ongoing series of posts I've ever done, unless you count droning on endlessly about my booth at Kenrick Antique Mall or bragging on my thrifty finds as series, but since that's pretty much all I do most of the time. I don't think that counts.  Anyway, you can find previous Cheapskate Paradise posts, in which I wax poetic on the topic, here:
Part 1: Didja Hear About the 'Lou?  Reaction to the news, plus the St Louis Zoo.
Part 2: Cheapskates' Paradise, Part Deux!  The St Louis Art Museum, aka SLAM.
Part 3: Cheapskates' Paradise Junior-Junior A trip to the county: Laumeier Sculpture Park/Poweder Valley.

And now we arrive at part 4 of my cheapskate love affair with my home town.  Today's topic? 

The St Louis Science Center!

Now, like the Zoo and the Art Museum, the St. Louis Science Center is also situated in Forest Park and is also - and you can sing along if you know it by now - Free To The Public (dun-DUN!).  It started out as a single, spectacular building on the South side of Forest Park - the McDonnell Planetarium.  An architectural gem on par with our gorgeous Gateway Arch, if you ask me (I love the crispness of the sweep of white against the sky), it was designed by Gyo Obata, who was later, not coincidentally, chosen to design the National Air and Space museum in DC (also free admission, by the way, but we got the better design for ours!):

The James S McDonnell (yes,of McDonnell-Douglas) Planetarium - sleek!

Other buildings were later added on the South side of highway 40, on Oakland Avenue, with an enclosed bridge linking the two (where you can look down on cars racing by, and even clock their speeds). 

The main building.  Image borrowed, oddly enough, from NASA.gov, here.

There are over 300,000 square feet of exhibit space, and much-to-most of it offers hands-on experiences to engage the visitor.  You can, for example, learn building/engineering principles in the Structures gallery, including building a replica of the Gateway Arch from soft blocks (an exhibit that's helpful for kids who are afraid of a trip to the top of our tallest national monument - they'll learn what makes it so strong!).  You can also marvel at the cheesiness of the giant animatronic dinosaurs, check out fossils and watch lab types perform science-y goodness for your enjoyment.  Also, you can design your own fish, which is kind of adorable, try out flight simulators, and play around with dozens of other cool exhibits all for free! And if you are lazy, tired, easily amused or probably also if you're one drugs, you could just watch the giant rube goldbergian Energizer ball machine for an hour or so:

One section of the enormous contraption, from the 2nd floor after hours.

Parking in the main lot does cost, but there is free parking available.  And if you simply must spend your hard-earned pennies, you can spend them on:

Planetarium or Omnimax shows, the Discovery Room (great for the smaller kiddies), or Lego MindStorms.  You can also fork over some dough to ride a Segway around the joint, enjoy whatever big travelling exhibition is on at the moment, or to raise a fork at the concessions.  But I've been going to the Science Center for years, and have yet to shell out for any of that, and it's still fun every time!

It's especially nice this time of year, when kiddos are off school and temperatures are outdoorsiness-limiting.  Tons of activities to keep the kids entertained for hours without making a dent in the pocketbook - nice! 

And beyond that, I wanted to get a post on the Science Center out around now because of two big bonuses currently in place to bless your cheapskate soul:

1. Drippin' Discount!:

If the temp outside is over 95, tickets to the main exhibit, and to any Omnimax show go for only $5.00 a pop - what a fun way to beat the heat!

2. First Fridays:

A great one for grownups who want to get their awe on.  On the first Friday of the month, the Science Center gets jiggy after hours, with discounts to the exhibits, free music, cheap Omnimax shows and Segway rides, free Planetarium shows and public telescope viewings, and at 10:00 PM, a free viewing on the Omnimiax screen.  August's First Friday freebie will be Batman:

The campy 1989 version - 40% less angst!

That's the main reason I wanted to get this post out now - First Fridays is a blast.  I went last month, which is why the above picture of the Energizer ball machine seems empty and dark.  I had to work until 9:00 pm, so I missed most of the festivities but I got there in time for the most important thing.  Last month's free Omnimax showing was of my very favorite 2-parter of Doctor Who: The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances.  

The only thing better than The Doctor is The Doctor, Omnimax sized.  See how happy it made my friends?

There's apparently a Doctor Who fan club in the 'Lou who turned out complete with Doctors 10 and 11!  I was way too shy to speak to them, but plenty creeper enough to snap a photo or two from afar:

11th Doctor had the look down pat.

10 was less convincing to look at,
but you should've seen him do the walk!

They cleverly chose this 2-parter as a tie-in, as the story features prominently some sub-atomic critters.  Fits nicely with the current summer exhibit: Amazing Nano Worlds, about nanotechnology.

I had a wonderful time last First Friday.  Check it out for yourself next weekend.  If you do, let me know what you think!

Free to a good home: a big idea!

Thrifty folks with database and coding skills, take note!  I finally came up with a really good idea that's probably worth money.  It may well already exist out there, but I haven't found it yet, and because I do not have the necessary skills, and am entirely too clueless and lazy to track down people who do and make it happen, I am offering this brilliant idea up to anybody who might be clever enough to implement it, free of charge!  How's that for a bargain?  All I ask is, if you make it happen, let me know?  I wanna see it So Bad!

 So here's the idea, somewhat inspired by sites like Pandora and Netflix and others that use algorithms to "learn" your tastes and recommend things that you would like.   But this one is for my favorite thing:  Road trips!

Essentially, you start with a map.  With sites like Netflix, the more items a user rates, the more the site learns about the user's tastes, and the better it gets at recommending content, but the actual items being rated are a part of a pre-existing database.  In this case my thought is that users create the content, to a large extent.  A basic database of obvious places would exist to start, like museums and hotels and restaurants and major tourist attractions, music venues, hiking trails, architectural marvels, amusement parks and the like.  Users would start with areas they know well and start tagging, rating and reviewing places in the various categories.  But they could also add places within categories that the system doesn't already know about, and add categories too, which would grow the database further if something they want to tag doesn't fit an existing category.  As users in various places tag their maps, the system learns about the sites they tag, growing it's knowledge base and learning what each individual user likes and why.  Then, when you're ready for a road trip, you can check your destination on the map and get suggestions not only for where you might like to stay and eat and what you might like to see and do there, but also what route would take you near other things you would enjoy along the way, complete with descriptions and reviews by people who have similar tastes to you.  And if you were feeling adventurous and didn't have a specific destination in mind, you could even ask the site to suggest, based on your tastes, a customized road trip just for you!  How brilliant is that??  Not to mention it could help you skip places that would not appeal to you, so you save some money!

I admit that I'm not sure I'd use the site, if it existed, because I like the surprise of the random road trip.  Stumbling across things I didn't know existed gives me such a rush of discovery; I'd hate to lose that.  But I could totally see myself tagging, rating and reviewing places.  It would be a fun way to commemorate your road trips and share your discoveries with other people.  And I could definitely see myself poring over far-away places that I may never get to visit, experiencing them vicariously through other people's reviews.  

Oh, and just for fun, I've got suggestions for what to name the site, because that's the only part I actually could do myself!  How about Meander?  Or Wanderlike?  Or, inspired by the late great Yogi Berra, something like this?:

Cute, right?  See a fork in da road?  Take it!

And now all I can think about is wandering off down the road to see what I can see!  Wanna go?

My good friend Hank HeadRoom (the Chevy HHR)  on my most recent wander.

Cheapskates' Paradise Junior-Junior

It all started here, when I learned that St Louis topped Kipplinger's list of 10 best cities for cheapskates, and I waxed on about the wonderful St Louis Zoo.  Then there was this, where I revisited the topic to brag on the world-class St Louis Art Museum and decided this topic definitely merited a series.  Today, my friends, we'll be taking a mini-trip outside of the city limits to the St Louis suburbs, where the intersection of highways 44 and 270 afford us a two-for-one bounty of free recreation/edification, less than 20 minutes from the (mid-century lovers' delight) Gateway Arch downtown.  Our first stop, dear friends, lies just north of Highway 44, and just inside the lasso that highway 270 throws around the core of the St Louis area.  Along Watson Rd between said lasso and Lindbergh Blvd, you'll find two things: a large suburban shopping area anchored by a Home Depot, and an office park.  Google doesn't seem to recall, but I remember fondly that this area also once housed, during the days before Netflix and RedBox, a very cheapskate-friendly $1.00 movie theater that showed films that had long since left the regular theaters, but hadn't yet showed up on cable (remember those days?).  It was a very mom-and-pop operation, if I recall.  The lobby was populated by a pair of tie-dye sporting mannequins having a barbecue, and as a kid I saw Drop Dead Fred there twice.  And now you know I'm old, so I might as well tell you that since beginning this reminiscence, I can't stop humming The Kinks' "Come Dancing":

Anyway, after that long "Dollar Show" digression, let me tell you what's behind the shopping center and the office park.  This:

 


Giant eyeball sculpture

   and this:
  


The Way.  Significantly giant-er.

   and this:
  


Big smiley skull in the ground.

 

All three images above courtesy of LaumeierSculpturePark.org 

 The first of our two-for-one cheapskates' havens, the free-to-the-public Laumeier Sculpture Park was once the country home of Henry and Matilda Laumeier, and so boasts a beautiful stone house that serves as office, art gallery and gift shop.  The rest of the over 100 acres of rolling meadows and wooded trails is populated by dozens of modern/contemporary sculptures and what I would call collaborations with either natural features or ruins already on the property.  One such ruin is my favorite spot in the park.  A trail winding through the woods eventually leads to an old abandoned swimming pool, part of the long-gone Orchard Valley estate that neighbored that of the Laumeier family.  Artist Mary Miss, who's known for blending art and landscape design, built decking and trellises around the remains of the 1930s stone and concrete pool, leaving it intact and allowing for a quiet, peaceful place that at the same time teems with nostalgia and the feeling that at any moment the past will join you and you'll hear the splash of water, laughter and the tinkle of glasses.

There are lovely spots to picnic, including in the shadow of The Way, commonly known as the Big Red Thing pictured above, where you can watch or join in with fellow park-goers to play frisbee or fly kites in the presence of amazing works of art.  What more could a thrifty art and/or nature lover want?


Well... if the thrifty nature lover wants more, more can be had just across the highway!  Take Geyer Road just across the I44 overpass to Cragwold, where you'll find another completely free outdoor destination:  Powder Valley Conservation Nature Center, run by the Missouri Department of Conservation.  It, like Laumeier, offers something a little different from your average park.  Another 100+ acres of mostly wooded real estate, ribboned with short, shady trails that are family and even handicapped friendly.  The interpretive center houses a small gift shop, classrooms, and kid-centric exhibits relating to local wildlife and conservation.  The best bit by far to me is ahead and to your left as you walk into the building.  A wall of windows complete with comfy seating overlooks a wildlife feeding area with birdfeeders, salt licks and the like that attracts everything from tiny hummingbirds to big, beautiful deer. 




Birds high up on some of the feeders

 I've spotted fat wild turkeys, hawks stalking chipmunks, and dozens of other furry and feathered critters as well, and microphones are discretely situated among the feeders so that, while you relax after your picnic and trail walking, you can listen to the songbirds.  Lovely!

If you haven't had enough of the great outdoors at this point, you can always follow Cragwold a little further, across highway 270 to yet another nearly 100-acre park, along the Meramec River, but I'll let you discover the more traditional Emmenengger Park on your own.  Just know that all 3 of these wonderful, free outdoor destintions are nestled within about two square miles in St Louis County.  Just imagine all the fun you can have exploring the rest of the area!

Cheapskates' Paradise, part deux!

You might recall a few weeks ago I wrote about how Kiplinger's website named my own St. Louis #1 in their list of the 10 best cities for cheapskates.

At the time I waxed on about how awesome it was growing up in St Louis, where you don't have to have a lot of money to enjoy culture, science and the arts.  But due to my perhaps overzealous enthusiasm for the subject, I only managed to give details on the fabulous, free St Louis Zoo before my post got out of hand.  So I thought maybe it would be worth revisiting the issue to tell you all about other great things you can do in St. Louis on the cheap.  So since I started with the Zoo, there's no point going farther than right up the hill, still in Forest Park.  Folks, I give you the St. Louis Art Museum:

Picture courtesy of ArtKnowledgeNews.com

As you can read in the caption included in the above picture, we are once again in 1904 World's Fair territory with this building.  An altered photo, but a better view of the architecture, by Bill Haack at flickrhivemind.net:

See Saint Louis (Louis IX of France) on his trusty steed guarding the entrance there?  Good man!

A new addition to the museum, designed by David Chipperfield, is almost finished (on the outside.  Interior work is still to come), and is scheduled to open next year:

Artistic rendering courtesy of  e-architect.co.uk.

This new addition will allow the museum to keep more of its well over 30,000 works of art on display.  That figure includes everything from ancient Greek, Egyptian, and Byzantine pieces to  precolumbian Native American art to the Americana of George Caleb Bingham to the best collection of 20th century German artist Max Beckmann's work anywhere, to brilliant contemporary artists, photography, design and decorative arts.  I believe I shared with you here about one of my favorite pieces already, 17th century Spanish painter Francisco de Zurbarán's St Francis Contemplating a Skull:

A few other of my favorites on display at the St. Louis Art Museum:

Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion, John Martin, 1812

One of Degas' "Little Dancer" bronzes

Van Gogh's beautiful "Stairway at Auvers".

 I love Van Gogh.  Partially because of the color and texture and intense life of his work, partially because of the heartbreaking story of his life and art and death, partly because of his self portraits with his gentle, sad eyes and partly, I fully admit, because of Richard Curtis, Tony Curran and Bill Nighy and the beautifully touching job that Doctor Who did with him in "Vincent and the Doctor".  

The above painting dates to July, 1890.  His tragic, still debated death came that same month, which makes it extra poignant.

You can see all of this and so, so much more at the St. Louis Art Museum, and you can see it for free!  That's right, like the St. Louis Zoo, the Art Museum is part of the Metropolitan Zoological Park and Museum District, a tax district which provides subsidies to help keep certain cultural institutions available to all, regardless of their financial status.  In fact, above the entrance is the inscription "Dedicated to Art, and Free to All", a motto that was emblazoned on a t-shirt I got my senior year in high school when I got a museum membership as a gift.  I stopped wearing it in college after meeting a guy named Art I wasn't particularly fond of.  Not sure what happened to it after that!

Anyway, with the World's Fair-built building being nearly as beautiful as it's varied contents, the warren of galleries can be fun to wander without direction, allowing for a surprise around every corner.  That in and of itself can provide hours of completely free fun (donations accepted), but wait, there's more!  The museum is situated in Forest Park, atop what's known as "Art Hill", a fairly steep hill leading from the museum down to a reflecting pool with fountains, providing gorgeous views and plenty of lawn for your picnic.  If you feel like spending a little money, rowboats and paddle boats can be rented at the nearby Boat House, where there is also a lovely restaurant alternative to your picnic.  In the winter, bring your own sled and more hours of free entertainment can be had.  Sledding on Art Hill is as much an institution as the museum itself, and most of the population of the city can tell you stories of fun times had speeding down that hill.

How's that for thrifty?

A co-worker told me today about something he's very excited about, and now I'm kind of excited about it my own self!  Apparently there are some guys in Finland who make movies on the extra-cheap.  These guys crowdsource pretty much the whole thing!  Cool!

Co-worker-man says they made a Star Trek parody or homage or something a few years ago.  I just looked it up for ya - it's called Star Wreck, if you're into such things:

I'm not sure that having seen the most recent Star Trek movie (cause I love Simon Pegg!) and a handful of episodes of the one with the Reading Rainbow guy quite qualifies me to watch that one, but the new one they're doing sounds pretty awesome, if not as awesome as when martians-stole-santa-claus in the 50s or 60s:

The premise of this new film is that in 1945, Nazis built themselves some cool flying saucers and escaped to the dark side of the moon, where they've been plotting all this time, and now they're ready to come back and conquer the world.  How awesome is that?  The kitsch factor alone makes me smile, but then the co-worker showed me the trailer, and it's really quite beautiful.

This trailer is from 2008, but as I understand it the movie wasn't finished until some time in 2011 and the world premier is in February at the Berlin film festival (there are a bunch more trailers and clips and whatnot on youtube and at their site).  I guess they don't have a distributor or anything at this point, but you can go to their website and if you scroll about halfway down the main page you can "demand" it in your neck of the woods, presumably so they can show potential distributors that it would have an audience.  I totally made my demand - needed to make sure St Louis was on their little map, didn't I?  I mean, I get a kick out of the whole idea, but what's more, I couldn't help doing my part to promote such a thrifty endeavor (without spending money, of course).  So there's that managed - probably 3-5 more people in the world will know about their clever film because of me and my little blog. ;)