| August 16, 2012 Well, it's finally that time again. Move over Emmys; take a backseat People's Choice Awards; take a hike Oscars – it's now time for the annual Yostie Awards for the very best (and worst) of the past year. This week is only the first of two sets of the all-important awards – so, if you sadly don't win a Yostie this week, keep your fingers crossed: You still have a chance to get one in the next round.
Like I said, this year there are plenty of winners and losers, so let's get right to the action ...
Biggest Scoop. Winner: Scott D. Yost, Rhino Times. This award goes to Yost for revealing the scandal that became affectionately known as Poopgate. The Rhinoceros Times broke the story that Greensboro Mayor Robbie Perkins let his dogs take a poop in Center City Park without picking up the finished product.
My friend Andy Cain took a picture on his phone that captured the incriminating act, and The Rhino ran the picture with the damning pile of evidence magnified many times over – using a brand new special effect that we here at The Rhino now call "Poop-a-vision."
Perhaps, rather than saying this was the biggest scoop of the year in Greensboro, I should say that this is the biggest lack of a scoop, if you get what I mean.
The article pointed out that there's no divine right of kings or mayors, and also that, ever since the Magna Carta was signed, rulers in society haven't been allowed to claim the right to run roughshod over the laws that all of us commoners are expected to follow.
I'm also particularly proud of the fact that, when I exposed Poopgate, I was able to work in both "dog poop" and "Magna Carta." I feel pretty certain that that's the only time in the history of man that "dog poop" and "Magna Carta" have appeared in the same article.
Also, I should note here that, after Poopgate was revealed, I spoke with several people who say they know that, as a rule, the mayor is very, very good about picking up after his dogs.
Just not, apparently, all the time.
Biggest Mystery. Dick Broadcasting. The sudden and inexplicable firing of radio host Jack Murphy after two decades of the excellent Murphy in the Morning Show.
The Sudden Reappearance of Childhood Items out of Nowhere after Years of Obscurity Award. Tie. The game Battleship and the toy Etch A Sketch.
I thought both of these things were gone for good years and years ago, but apparently I was wrong.
Battleship came back suddenly thanks to a mega Hollywood motion picture, and, earlier this year, the Etch A Sketch skyrocketed out of obscurity and had an Indian Summer Dog Day Afternoon in the Sun after an off-hand remark by Mitt Romney's presidential campaign Communications Director Eric Fehrnstrom.
As for Battleship, I don't know if they're making a sequel, but I heard there are plans in the works for a summer blockbuster Yahtzee movie next year.
The Yostie for the Most Shocking Revelation of the Year. Anderson Cooper is gay. I don't know about you but I was utterly flabbergasted by the news. Who could have ever in a million years seen that coming?
I haven't been so shocked by something since the astounding 2008 revelation that Clay Aiken was gay.
Strangest Robbery. Recently, a man in a Lexus robbed the Greensboro Wendy's on Summit Ave. at 2 a.m. – using a knife at the drive-thru window.
Now, I wasn't there, so I'm not exactly sure how it all went down; but it seems to me that, if you're working at a drive-thru window and a man threatens you with a knife, the thing to do is simply close the window and call 911.
Then the guy would just have to drive away, and he would be like: Uh, I guess I didn't plan my big Wendy's heist very well.
The "Hey, Where Did Everyone Else Go?" Hide-and-Seek Award. Winner: The Guilford County Board of Commissioners. County Commissioner Kirk Perkins was totally stunned a couple of months ago when, thinking that he had solid support from at least four other county commissioners, he up and out of the blue made the motion to fire County Manager Brenda Jones Fox on the spot at a commissioners meeting. To the surprise of many – not the least of which was Perkins – his motion was met only by the sound of crickets chirping when no other commissioner even seconded it.
Perkins later said he didn't tell anyone he was going to make the motion before he made it. Perkins said after the event, "I ran through a lot of possible scenarios in my head, and not one of those scenarios was that it wouldn't get a second."
After the meeting several commissioners who say they want to fire Fox said they were so stunned that Perkins had suddenly become a member of the fire Fox contingent that they didn't think fast enough to second the motion before Chairman of the Board Skip Alston, one of Fox's die hard supporters, immediately jumped in to say, "Dies for lack of a second." Alston then hurried the board on to other business.
Most Tragic Celebrity Animal Death. Meow, the world's fattest cat.
Meow weighed 39 pounds upon his death, and, according to one news account, this is one fat cat who didn't die in vain because Meow "helped raise awareness about obesity in pets."
The 2-year-old Meow was turned in to an animal shelter in Santa Fe, New Mexico, earlier this year and he then made worldwide news as the fattest cat on the planet. At first, the flabby feline was simply a new piece of comedic fodder. One of Meow's obituaries stated: "He barely fit into his animal carrier, and was likened to Puss in Boots from the Shrek movies."
Sadly, in early May, Meow died of lung failure.
Biggest Beneficiary of the Death of the World's Fattest Cat. The Rhinoceros Times' own JJ the cat, who, after the tragic death of Meow, now takes the honor of being the world's new fattest cat.
The Yostie for the Biggest Waste of Taxpayer Money that Could be Prevented by Simply Folding a Piece of Paper. The Guilford Center and the Guilford County Department of Public Health. From both those departments, The Rhinoceros Times periodically gets mail that consists of a one-page document sent in a 9 by 11 envelope at a cost of 90 cents per letter. Forget about the fact that it cost more for a 9 x 11 envelope than it does for a regular envelope – the postage for sending one page through the mail in a large envelope is 90 cents. If county workers simply folded the document, it would only cost 45 cents to send.
We here at The Rhino have no idea how many one-page documents the county sends out this way, but whatever that number is, multiply it by 45 cents and you would have the amount of taxpayer money that could be saved each year by simply folding a sheet of paper before sending it.
The 2012 Yostie Political Genius Award. Linda Kellerman. This 59-year-old retired CAD designer for a truck company, who was raised near Allentown, Pennsylvania, was a political unknown who hatched an ingenious political plan the likes of which has never been seen in the annals of Guilford County politics.
Kellerman tricked her opponent, Dan Miller, into letting his guard down by announcing that she was pulling out of the District 6 Democratic primary contest for a shot at a seat on the Board of Commissioners. She then even started helping Miller on his campaign and, on primary day last May, Kellerman was at the polls handing out campaign literature for her opponent.
Though Kellerman was supposedly now working for her opponent, her name remained on the ballot even though she had announced that she had pulled out.
With Miller not running any campaign to speak of (since, of course, his opponent had "pulled out"), the devious ingenuity of Kellerman's no-need-to-worry-about-me plan was only known right after her plan was hatched on election night – when the crafty Kellerman pulled in 57 percent of the vote to Miller's 43 percent.
The College Basketball Shot of the Year. Duke Guard Austin Rivers for his Wednesday, Feb. 8 last-second buzzer beater against Carolina.
Runner Up. UNC player Tyler Zeller for his shot, right before Rivers' buzzer beater, when Zeller tipped the ball into the Duke basket and scored for the Blue Devils, putting Duke in position to win that game.
Congratulations, Tyler, and thanks again.
And, if you're a Carolina fan reading this, please don't remind me that not long after that shot by Rivers, Carolina beat the tar out of Duke in Cameron and won the ACC regular season, and then Duke lost in the first round of the NCAA tournament to Fuquay-Varina Junior College for Wayward Women or whatever. These are my awards, not yours, so I would appreciate it if you wouldn't bring stuff like that up.
Most Active Guilford County Committee. The Guilford County Building Naming Committee. Between August of last year and the present, the giant committee has met 42,738 times and named 632,367 county buildings, meeting rooms, coat closets and urinals. The meetings have consumed over 3 billion combined man-hours of commissioner and staff time.
In all that activity, the committee did all these ingenious things like naming the Blue Room meeting room the Blue Room, and naming Emergency Services Base 2 Emergency Services Base 2. And when the committee named the new jail in downtown Greensboro the "Guilford County Detention Center," it did so over the objections of the Sheriff's Department, since, as sheriff's officials pointed out, Guilford County Detention Center was already the name of the county's jail in High Point, and, if the committee named the new jail that, it would require that they give the High Point jail a new name.
Still with me? No matter – the Sheriff's Department is calling the new jail "Jail Central," just as it had always planned to do.
Least Active County Committee. The Guilford County Board of Commissioners Budget Committee. Now, you would think that, at a time of budget crisis, a county debt of over a billion dollars, and dwindling revenue streams – not to mention at a time when a county Building Naming Committee was meeting day and night – that the meeting of the county's budget committee would be more important than ever before.
In that last Yostie Award, for the most active county committee, I was exaggerating a little for comic effect, but I swear the following is true: This year the county's budget committee met only twice and, each time, no kidding, only one committee member showed up – Commissioner Kirk Perkins, who's chairman of the committee.
At one point in those "committee" meetings, after Perkins watched a staff presentation, he asked if anyone had any questions before he realized he was the only one sitting at the table.
He said something like, "Oh, I guess there is no one to ask any questions."
That's your county government at work folks: It can spend 3 billion man hours with meetings to name buildings while everyone on the budget committee is a no show.
Hottest Local Government Leader in the County. I have to admit that this is not the strongest of categories. However, that said, Greensboro City Manager Denise Turner Roth is very easy on the eyes.
I first met her a couple of years ago when I went on one of those neighborhood walks that the City of Greensboro sponsored, and Denise and I talked quite a bit while on that two-hour constitutional. At that time she was just the city's new lowly assistant manager – but the next time I turned around she was running the whole city. I'm still not exactly sure how that happened, but good for her – and, Denise, congratulations on winning your first Yostie.
Lifetime Achievement Yostie Award for Inaction. The Guilford County Board of Commissioners for, after almost eight years of trying, failing to establish the Guilford County/Alamance County line. The state surveyed the line five years ago and now everyone knows exactly where the line is, but no one wants to even have the conversation because people who live along the line get very upset whenever the issue is discussed. In January, the chairman of the Board of Commissioners guaranteed that the county line would be worked out by the end of the year – the problem is that it was January of 2010 when Alston made that pledge.
To this day, there's no solution anywhere in sight – so that means many people who live near the county line now vote, pay taxes and go to school in the wrong county.
Least Important Discovery of All Time. Winner: The Hadron Collider people, for the God Particle. The mad scientists who are part of the project spent over a decade and about $10 billion to find the God Particle, insanely risking the lives of every man woman and child on the planet in the process.
Now, that "vital scientific earth-shattering break-through discovery," along with about eight dollars, will buy you a good-sized container of Tang.
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