Source: Rhino Times Greensboro

Yost%20Column
Yost Still Haunted By Horny Goat Weed Guy

by Scott D. Yost

December 30, 2010

This is my very last column of 2010 and, when the clock turns to midnight on New Year’s Eve, it will be 2011, which means it will be exactly 10 years past the beginning of the future.

The good thing about 2011 is that I feel certain it is the year that the flying car scientists will finally unveil the much-awaited flying car. I know the flying car scientists haven’t really exactly been men of their word in the past, but, this time, I feel certain that they’re very close and that 2011 will be the year their promises finally come to fruition.

To be honest, 2010 wasn’t the best year – or even one of the better years – and, if you had to give it a name, it would probably be “the Year of the Bedbug.”

So that’s not really an indication that it was exactly a terrific year.

At the end of each year, it’s kind of a tradition with me to look back over the last 12 months and call out some of the best and worst things that took place in order to wrap the year up in a pretty bow and put it to bed in a nutshell.

So, that’s what I’m going to do this year as well. Here we go …

Worst criminal act committed in the State of North Carolina this year: defacing the statue of Andy Griffith. The vandals painted Andy’s hair green and his face and badge red. I mean, it’s Andy Griffith for goodness sakes. Who does that? I don’t think they ever caught anyone in the case; however, as I suggested at the time it happened – it looks to me to be the work of one Ernest T. Bass.

Best new thing of 2010: the iPad. When the iPad came out in April it won a Yostie Award for its excellence. It has made the world a better place and now everyone else is, as usual, trying to catch up with Apple. The folks at Apple never cease to amaze, and when the Verizon iPhone comes out soon, I will be all about getting one. By the way, look for version 2.0 of the iPad sometime this spring. I predict it will be lighter and smaller but with the same size screen it has now.

Worst county scandal: Three-way tie, but the winner is the same no matter which one you pick: Guilford County Manager Brenda Jones Fox.

In the chronological order in which they appeared in The Rhino, they are (1) creating a county job for former Commissioner Steve Arnold; (2) entering into a secret real estate deal potentially worth tens of millions of dollars to exactly duplicate services the county is already set up to handle; and (3) the Chicago-style real estate deal involving the purchase and renovation of the Russell Street building in High Point.

Runner up: Fox’s “Code of Conduct” for county employees in which employees are instructed to apprise the county manager of “all conversations with board members on any significant issues,” and “of any conversations of which they [the county manager or assistant manager] should be aware.”

Worst idea of the year: the nuclear scientists who are now wanting to build an even larger and even more powerful version of the Large Hadron Collider. People, please. Will the madness never end?

Worst decision to interrupt a sportscast: the News 2 “I’m-in-control-here, look-at-me, look-at-me!” weathergirl who droned the same thing over and over again and who caused the entire viewing area to miss just about the entire last half of a riveting NCAA playoff game between Duke and Baylor. Listen, Duke basketball is sacred. If people have to die in a tornado so I can watch the game – well, that’s the way it has to be. I guarantee you that if it were North Carolina playing for a slot in the Final Four (I mean, imagine it was a long time ago) – well, there’s no way News 2 would have interrupted the end of that game.

Worst decision: Kanye West’s decision to jump up on stage and ruin Taylor Swift’s moment at the Video Music Awards. This actually happened in late 2009, but I forgot to call him out on it at the end of last year so I’m doing it now. Hey, Kanye, that’s not just some nobody you decided to mess with – that is Taylor Friggin’ Swift. Sweet, beautiful, immensely talented and wildly loved by the public. You know how they say you need to pick your battles; well, you need to pick your targets carefully too. A very, very poor decision.

Best movie I saw this year: The Hurt Locker. I finally saw it a couple of months ago. Despite all the Oscar talk when it first came out, I didn’t get around to seeing it until it came on one of my movie channels. Only about one in 10 major movies are directed by women, and I couldn’t name you one single other war movie directed by a woman – but, this one, I just loved. This is not only one of the best war movies I’ve seen, but one of the best movies period. As one critic put it, The Hurt Locker is “a near-perfect movie.”

Best new college basketball sensation: Kyrie Irving, Duke University.

Worst cashier of 2010: The guy at the drug store who wouldn’t check me out until I agreed to meet him the next day to discuss horny goat weed in an attempt to get me involved in a horny goat weed pyramid marketing scheme. I’m not making that up.

Other worst cashier: The automated do-it-yourself cashiers at Harris Teeter. If I ever go to the Harris Teeter on Lawndale after 9:30 at night I am quickly reminded why I go to the Golden Gate Harris Teeter after 9:30 at night. At the Lawndale store, there are no cashiers after that time – there are only the machines, and I hate those things.

You can never get items to scan and something always goes wrong and it takes you like 30 minutes to check out with two items, while the employee 10 feet away merely sits there like a lump of coal and stares at you, and he or she laughs inside to themselves while you struggle.

Whenever I leave the store after checking out, I intentionally don’t thank the attendant sitting there because they did absolutely nothing.

Best April Fools joke of 2010: Scott D. Yost. I think I had everybody in the new High Point County convinced for a couple of weeks that there really was going to be a new High Point County. If you live in High Point – you wish; keep dreaming. Sorry about that, but, like us here in Greensboro, you’re stuck with Guilford County’s outlandish leadership for the immediate future.

Best News & Record headline: “Police chief focuses on cutting crime.” When they came out with that one earlier this year, I wrote that the News & Record’s next story should be, “Greensboro fire chief determined to put out fires when they occur.”

Best idea for a column: Scott D. Yost. Finally, after decades of being shrouded in mystery, I explained the meaning of the lyrics of “Blinded by the Light.” You can use the Google to look up my column if you want to finally know what that song means.

Best ransom demand of 2010: The Discovery Channel gunman. If you go online, you can find page after page of the lunatic’s rambling demands, which include everything from, “Find solutions for Global Warming, Automotive pollution, International Trade, factory pollution, and the whole blasted human economy,” to “Civilization must be exposed for the filth it is.”

Hear, hear.

Best scam involving the City of Greensboro rather than Guilford County government: Recycling. We learned this year that practically nothing is actually recyclable despite all the hoopla over the importance of recycling.

Best shot in a basketball game this year: Jon Scheyer. Right in front of where I was sitting in the Greensboro Coliseum, with just a few seconds left in the final game of the ACC Tournament. Scheyer coolly drained the winning long-distance three-pointer against Georgia Tech, and Duke went on to win a national championship.

Speaking of Duke, worst self-delusion by Scott D. Yost in 2010: Being utterly convinced Duke was going to beat Alabama in football in Wallace Wade Stadium. I had bet with my brother. I had Duke and the line, 23 points, and I still lost. Now, if I’d had Duke and 50 points, I would have won that bet, but with only one point to spare.

Best phrase that has new meaning: “Don’t let the bedbugs bite.” Not long ago, this was merely a nice affectionate phrase parents said to their children at bedtime – now it’s a dire warning about legions of parasitic insects that feast on human skin and blood.

Worst weather forecast: That we may get “a dusting of snow.” Twice this year they’ve said that and I’ve woken up to see what looked like the peak of a Himalayan mountain range in mid-February.

OK, well, that’s it for me this year and I hope everyone has a happy New Year – and don’t say you didn’t get your money’s worth out of me in 2010 because, keep in mind, The Rhino is free.

And remember, in 2011, before you step into your brand new flying car, be sure to check yourselves for bedbugs because you don’t want bedbugs infesting the seat or your fancy new flying car in addition to your bed.