Barren Garden

So Friday I was doing my daily morning routine, eating cereal and reading the comics in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, when I realized that it was the day for Garden State to debut in more cities. I've been waiting for this to come out in St. Louis for many months now so my fingers were moving quickly to turn the page to the movie listings and take a look at the playing times for G.S. at the local theaters. That's odd... there's no listing for Garden State. I turn my attention to the "art house" theaters... nadda. I look at the cereal in my bowl becoming soggier with each passing second as I try and figure out why I'm not seeing Garden State listed in any of these theaters play lists.
Since I had just woken up I rubbed my eyes a few times to make sure I wasn't seeing things and just overlooking it as I have begun to do in my old age of 23. Old age is a bitch. Anyway, I searched through every theater and came up with the same result. NO Garden State. I looked at all of the ads for the various movies that try to suck the movie-goers pockets dry to leave them with nothing left but lint when a movie of merit somehow slips by the distributors greedy eyes. There was no mention of Garden State to be found. St. Louisans should feel privileged however, because there are two theaters playing Metallica's documentary about themselves and I'm sure that would be much more entertaining than the hilarious looking (since I have no way of knowing whether it is funny or not) film by Zach Braff of "Scrubs" fame entitled Garden State.
This is not the first time the St. Louis movie scene has let me down. There has been too many times that a film has been released that has gotten favorable reviews from nearly every critic on the planet but I have to wait to see it once it comes to Blockbuster or Hollywood Video because there isn't a theater within 200 miles that will show it (the rental stores and the distributors must be in cahoots or one in the same entity). We can get documentaries about played out metal bands and circuses, but when a real film should be playing on the big screen we somehow miss out on it.
I've been fuming about this for two days now and I'm tired at the moment so my attempt at writing a bitchy post might just come off sounding like a ranting stream of conscience. If I knew who to complain to I'd write a letter to each person at fault every day for as long as it would take to have the film selection in St. Louis improve, but screw it I'm moving to Houston in a week and I'm sure it's playing there. I'd much rather not have to wait a week to be able to see it but it looks like I have no choice.