Remove ImagesYost Column
Lady, Bed And Stink Bugs Sweep Yosties
July 14, 2011
Well, if you didn't win a Yostie Award last week, here's your final chance for this year – so, cross your fingers, say a little prayer and read on …
Biggest celebrity coup by the Greensboro Coliseum. It was a good year for the Coliseum, and they brought in Prince, Taylor Swift, the Beach Boys, Bill Maher and a host of others. If the great Charlie Sheen had made it to town, the race in this category might have been close, but, as it is, the winner, by a mile, is Twiggy the water-skiing squirrel.
Yostie for the saddest store closing. After 23 years of existence, and much excellent free publicity in this newspaper and this column, the Golden Gate Harris Teeter is closing. Harris Teeter is closing down all of their smaller stores because they want to force me to navigate their giant mega-stores, such as the world-famous Teeter-Dome built a few years ago at the new Shops at Friendly Center.
The "Please God, I don't want to go to heaven – I want to end up in the other place" despicable crime of the year award. Last year, this award went to the low-life criminals who defaced the statue of Andy Griffith of all people – I mean, who does that?
This year, it goes to the thieves who, in March, stole 158 vases off the graves at High Point Floral Garden Cemetery. The vases, which sat on the headstones of the dead, were valued at a total of $31,000.
That may sound like a good take for an easy crime – but, trust me, it's a small price for your eternal soul.
Yostie for the strangest robbery in the triad. In February, not one, but two, Reidsville taxidermies were broken into and, between the two taxidermists, thieves stole over 30 sets of deer antlers of all things.
The antlers, stolen from Broken Arrow Taxidermy and Nature's Creation, were from whitetail bucks and were being prepared for mounting.
"I couldn't believe someone would break in and steal deer antlers," Jamie Revis, owner of Nature's Creation, told Fox 8 News shortly after the robberies. "You've already got a spot picked out on your wall for this thing to go – and then somebody comes in and decides to take it away from you."
Biggest fizzle-out/let-down ending for a wildly anticipated event finale (national events category). Oprah Winfrey, for her sign-off show.
Despite the massive promotional campaign that lasted for several months leading up to her final show, I forgot the show was on that Wednesday afternoon.
I called Commissioner Linda Shaw to interview her about something and she said to please call her back later because Oprah's grand finale was about to start. Linda said she had been watching all the Oprah shows leading up to the big finish. She said they were elaborate specials featuring Tom Hanks and other mega-stars, and they were fantastic.
So I turned on my TV and watched; because, while I don't usually watch Oprah, her final show was being billed as the most important event in human history.
I thought the show was a letdown. (If you didn't see it, the show consisted entirely of Oprah just standing there talking the whole time.) Right after it was over, I called Linda to ask her my questions.
I didn't comment on the show at all; I didn't know if you were allowed to say anything negative about Oprah's last show – because, you know, isn't Oprah sacred?
However, when I called Linda, she blurted it out first: Oprah's grand finale was kind of a letdown.
Relieved that it wasn't just me, I said, "Yeah, I thought so too – I just didn't know whether or not you were allowed to say that about Oprah."
So, I guess it is OK to talk about after all, and so I'm willing to be the first one to write about it publicly like that little kid who pointed out that the emperor was naked.
Biggest fizzle-out/let-down ending for a wildly anticipated event (local events category.) The $40 million downtown luxury Wyndham Greensboro hotel – the imaginary make-believe hotel that was going to revitalize downtown.
In November 2010, it became official that the downtown hotel – which had been written about extensively in the press and talked about on local TV for the past year – was never going to be.
This story got a ton of traction from the start because people couldn't get it through their heads that, after the first version was proposed, there was never one dime of public money at risk – only private money, and only if any bank or investors were willing to put the money up, which no one was of course.
I know nothing about the hotel business but, the whole time the controversy was going on, I kept saying: Well, if they can find a group of people willing to throw $40 million at it, more power to the group behind the imaginary hotel.
If area residents had truly understood what was going on here, they would have been a whole lot less upset about it and they would have spent a lot less time fretting over it.
Yostie for best wings. Ham's. There are a lot of great wings available in the area, but I like the ones from Ham's. With bleu cheese instead of ranch.
The 2011 rest in peace, it was nice while it lasted, Yostie Award. Myspace. I used to write that Myspace was a virtual ghost town, and that had a nice ring to it because "virtual" connotes computers and the internet; but, now, I don't think virtual is a good description anymore because it means "almost or nearly as described, but not completely."
So perhaps complete and total ghost town is a better way to describe Myspace now. I think 90 percent of the pages still up on Myspace are pages of people who died over the last few years and whose family members can't figure out their password in order to take down their love one's Myspace pages.
Three years ago, its future looked magnificent. In July 2005, Rupert Murdoch paid $580 million for Myspace, and a couple of years later some analysts valued the company at several billion dollars.
About a month ago, the parent company of Myspace, News Corp., sold the site for $35 million to an Orange County firm that specializes in online advertising.
These days, if you're talking to a woman under 35, you say "OK, Facebook me." If you say "Myspace me," she may say, "Listen, grandpa, on second thought – why don't I just send you a letter by Pony Express."
Best airport wildlife preserve. John F. Kennedy International. Rhino Times Managing Editor Lisa Bouchey called my attention to this event that happened a couple of weeks ago. Here's the story according to the ABC news website …
"About 150 turtles inching their way across a runway at New York's Kennedy International Airport reduced some flights to a crawl this morning."
According to Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) officials, delays reached 30 minutes for some flights.
FAA spokeswoman Arlene Salac said the turtle procession started at 7:30 a.m. across Runway 4L. That runway was shut down when "the bulk of turtles started to go across."
Salac said flight delays resulted when aircrafts were instructed to use alternate runways.
So, at JFK, the 15th busiest airport in the world, airport workers dropped what they were doing, went out to the runway to help the turtles get where they were going – a sandy beach on the other side of the runway – and air traffic controllers told flights from all over the world they were just going to have to hold their horses until all the turtles were safe.
After the incident, JFK workers joked that, "The next time, we are hoping for faster animals."
Worst airport wildlife preserve. Piedmont Triad International Airport. If you don't know why our airport won this award, I could tell you, but then airport officials would have to kill you.
The Yostie for the worst new visitors: Bedbugs. Also, as a runner-up, let's go with the evil stinkbugs that stink up the place when you step on them. I never saw one of these stinkbugs before last year, but now they're everywhere, walking around like they own the place.
By the way, did the bedbugs go away or did the media just stop doing stories on them?
Most disturbing Yost Column in the last 12 months. April 7, 2011. "Yost Follows Ladybug Down the Rabbit Hole."
I'm going to warn you in case you look the column up online and read it: It's all about ladybug sex. I felt highly uncomfortable writing this column, and I think I thought that, when I turned it in, the people in control would find some reason not to run it, but I was wrong. I wrote it, but I've been afraid to reread it.
The News & Record article I found the least surprising this year. Thursday, June 23, "Study: Potato Chips pile on pounds."
It said that if you eat a lot of potato chips you may gain weight. According to researchers, here's part of the problem: "People don't generally take one or two chips. They have a whole bag."
Speaking of food, the best food you can't get enough of. My Three Sons Pimento cheese. Commissioner Linda Shaw makes some wildly good jelly each Christmas, and she's won the Yostie for food before in the past, but this year she didn't make me any, so the award goes to the all-natural locally made My Three Sons pimento cheese. Not just because the girls in the stores who offer it to you free are very hot, but that doesn't exactly hurt marketing either if you know what I mean.
Chairman of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners Skip Alston's best quote. In past years, he's won a Yostie for things like, "Even Stevie Wonder could see that." This year, his quote came while he was talking about the fact that any county redistricting map that didn't adequately represent minorities would be rejected by the Department of Justice.
"It would be DOA at the DOJ," Alston said.
Guilford County department director most likely to pick up the phone when you call her. Merle Green, Guilford County health director. She's the head of a huge county department and, if you call her, she picks up her own phone. To me, that's amazing. If you don't have my cell number, try giving me a call at the office and see how that works out for you.
Guilford County director least likely to return my calls. Bonnie Stellfox, purchasing director. If I call her they send me to voice mail. If I leave a message, or 10 messages for that matter, she doesn't call back. If I go over there and I see her in the office, she runs away. If I catch her, she motions like she has laryngitis or, if there's a cat nearby, she points to it indicating that the cat has her tongue. If I ask for a written report, she motions to a dog if there's one nearby to indicate that she had a copy of that printed out for me, but the dog has eaten it.
The aren't you glad this wasn't the Guilford County Sheriff's Department that this happened to Yostie Award. Buncombe County Sheriff's Department … "NC Sheriff says cheese led to false drug test."
This happened in Asheville: "An enzyme found in cheese triggered false drug test results that led Buncombe County deputies to think a man with 91 pounds of tortilla dough was actually carrying that much cocaine, the sheriff said."
Poor Antonio Hernandez Carranza spent four days in jail before the tests came back from a state lab revealing that he was carrying a mix of cheese, shrimp and tortilla dough.
Apparently, the portable drug test kits carried by Buncombe Sherriff's deputies aren't quite as accurate as one might hope.
Biggest discovery by a president this year. Obama discovers a computer program called Photoshop. After years of being unable to produce his birth certificate, a birth certificate suddenly magically appears out of nowhere.
Best idea of the year award. Scott D. Yost. This one was for my idea for the Transportation Security Administration to have the intrusive pat downs at airport security done by hot girls in lingerie. That would certainly cut down on the complaints about invasive pat downs if you ask me.
OK, that's it for this year's awards. If you were left out in the cold, remember there's always next year, and keep in mind that you weren't truly left out in the cold, because it's very hot outside.