More unhappy news for troubled Missouri Employers Mutual Insurance. Since November, there were the deaths of two former members of the workers comp insurer’s Board of Directors who had resigned amid separate scandals and federal investigations. One was St. Louis County Planning Commission Chairman Doug Morgan, who died in early November.His attorneys said Morgan had battled serious health issues. Now comes word that the late November death of the second erstwhile MEM director, former Kansas City medical school president Karen Pletz, was a suicide. The Broward County medical examiner reported Friday that it was a mix of booze and pills. MEM has insisted the scandals of its former board members didn’t involve the company. But MEM has also acknowledged inquiries from the feds in the investigation of business activities. Next move is the government’s.

It’s not the Moonrise or the Ritz-Carlton or the Omni or the Four
Seasons (which was honored in 2010). According to the latest issue of
Travel & Leisure magazine, Missouri’s best hotel is the Raphael, “a
grand 1920s Italian Renaissance Revival-style hotel with an opulent,
revamped lobby” overlooking the Country Club Plaza shopping center in
KC. And in a feature called “12 for 2012 – The Places to Go This Year,”
Bentonville, Arkansas makes the cut, thanks, of course, to Alice 
Walton’s new Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (which, the
magazine’s Stephen Wallis says, is “already being touted by some as a
countrified Guggengeim Bilbao – and Walton herself as a latter-day J.P. 
Morgan or Henry Clay Frick.

Brand sponsors have flocked to this year’s Grammy telecast on CBS (7 p.m., Sunday on KMOV) with commercials costing $800k for a 30-second pitch. The ads have been sold out for weeks. In 2011, music’s big night racked up 26.6 million viewers and spots were price-tagged at $621k. Elton John will appear in an expanded 90-second cut of the company’s Super Bowl ad for Pepsi. Paul McCartney will hustle JBL speakers.  . .The British Film Academy Awards on Sunday night at the Royal Opera House will feature George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Brad Pitt and Miss Piggie. . .Our town’s John Goodman is teaming up once again with Roseanne Barr for NBC’s “Downwardly Mobile,” a comedy series set in a mobile home park. . .Christopher Plummer and Frank Langella will star in an HBO film production on Muhamad Ali.

The Princeton Review has declared that Washington University is seventh best value in private universities. The ranking is based on factors including financial aid and academics. . ..University of Missouri paleotologist and researcher Dr. Casey Holliday has found what he and his colleagues call “Shieldoroc,” a 25 to 35-foot prehistoric crocodile with a five foot-long head covered with a “thickened skull spot” or shield. It’s the earliest African ancestor of the modern crocodile, Holliday says, in the journal PLoS One. . .Wehrenberg’s Gallaxy 14 Cine is now equipped with dual 4K digital projectors providing a new 3D movie experience. . .Edie Avioli’s Black Cat Theatre, producers of the innovative Piwacket Theatre, has fallen on hard times.  The theatre’s board has put it up for sale due to the price tag for the non-profit. “We need someone out there to keep the theater afloat,” urged Avioli. . .SiriusXM has lured a record 21.9 million followers. . .Word of the day: Electile Dysfunction, the inability to become aroused over any of the choices for President put forth by either party in this election year.

Getting married isn’t rocket science, and that is probably a bad thing for brides and other partiers who have scheduled events at the St. Louis Science Center. Regular readers will remember an item here last year that mentioned that the Science Center had booked, cancelled, and (after an uproar) rebooked a year or so worth of private events as it tried to more narrowly define its mission. That matter was handily resolved, say some affected partiers, by the quick and professional reaction of Science Center sales manager Brooke Emshoff, who ably wrangled special events on Oakland Avenue – until this week, when she was one of nearly two dozen Science Center employees who received pink slips. Yesterday, nervous nupters have been getting calls from a different Science Center facilities staffer asking them for a meeting.  Topic uncertain. Brides ballistic.

Dr. Gordon Lamb only served for about a year as interim president of the University of Missouri System. But he was no caretaker. Lamb, a music educator by training, a chorale member by natural gift of song, looked like a university president out of Central Casting: Tall, silver-haired, dignified, he could have also played the part of a British lord, a U.S. senator, a Supreme Court Justice or a Navy admiral. But it would always be the good guy.Mostly he was a leader, standing up for academic freedom when right-wing appointees of then-Governor Matt Blunt balked at publicly supporting university research. Lamb angered but then shamed the right-wingers on the University of Missouri Board of Curators to approve a statement backing up research commitments. Still, Lamb caught private hell from the Republicans carrying water for anti-life sciences forces. He didn’t care. Comfortable in his academic consulting business after retiring as a university president in Illinois, Lamb was tapped as interim leader of the four campuses in St. Louis, Columbia, Kansas City and Rolla. He didn’t need the job. He was so valuable, the man hired as president asked him to stay on for a year as his right-hand man. Gordon finally retired, only to be tapped once again as an interim president at the University of Central Missouri. A robust fisherman, Gordon Lamb had been in ill health in recent months. He died Monday in Columbia. Teachers lost an advocate. Students lost a friend.

Two national chains are poised to open in the sweeping space vacated by Provisions Gourmet Market in the 11000 block of Olive Boulevard in Creve Coeur. The space will be divided to accommodate both The Potbelly Sandwich Shop and The Vitamin Shoppe, vendor of vitamins and nutritional supplements.

For the first time in memory, Thom, Jane and Liam Sehnert’s Annie Gunn’s Restaurant in Chesterfield Valley will open on a Monday night. Due to a sell-out on Valentine’s Day, hospitality manager and sommelier John Cain will open the doors on Monday to serve those who cannot get reservations for Tuesday. So, for regulars it will be an opportunity to congratulate affable and vivacious manager and event planner Lesley Davis on her 19th year there. And, perhaps, order a house specialty from mixologist Ed Canavan - chef Lou Rook’s Irish old-fashioned.