Jason Sandford
Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.
DOOK LOSES
Dook, the overall number one seed in the NCAA Tournament, lost last night to LSU, 62-54. !
An elitist school takes on Wal-Mart
WLOSers had a story last night about high-dollar Asheville School trying to throw its weight around over the proposed Wal-Mart Supercenter on Smoky Park Highway.
The new Wal-Mart, when it gets final approval from Ashvegas City Council, will be right across the street from the $32,000-a-year exclusive prep school. And that doesn’t sit well with the school’s headmaster. (I’ve already got a problem with any school that calls its principal a “headmaster.”) So here’s what the school did – it fired off a letter to council, demanding that Wal-Mart do the following:
hire a 24-hour-a-day security guard
stop selling firearms
build a fence and a berm to “shield” the school
Let us go off here for a minute – what the Asheville School is really saying is, “We don’t want the Wal-Mart white trash littering our neighborhood.” That’s what it boils down to. There’s no major security problem – the school just wants wall and fences so it doesn’t have to look at the good West Asheville folk going about their business.
Dook loses to LSU; JJ Redick cries
Republicans have no sense of humor
That was the upshot of a Holly Headache report that led the news at 6. The owner of the Piki Grille in Fletcher told Holly that the lease for his restaurant space wasn’t being renewed because he clowned Vice President Dick Cheney.
Here’s what happened: You all remember when Cheney blasted his buddy with a shotgun while on a quail hunt, right? Well, about a week later, the Piki Grille held a dinner special: “Cheney’s Quail Birdshot Special.” Cute. Funny. A joke. And that’s the way WLOSers treated it when they reported that.
Now, Tom Kurtz tells Holly that the building owner, Bob Gasperson, and the subleasee, Billy Frizzell, want him out. Holly talked to Frizzell, who said there’s nothing political about all this at all. She also said that Gasperson said there’s nothing political here.
Kurtz, the Piki Grille guy, says he doesn’t believe that. He says that after he did his little joke dinner, he got threats on the phone. And recently, someone shoved a flier under his restaurant door showing that Gasperson’s daughter is running for clerk of superior court in Henderson County. As a Republican.
If it looks like a quail, quacks like a quail, walks like a quail….
Dook loses to LSU in NCAA Tourny; Coach K hugs his guys
Snow sirens, but no snow
WLOSers turned up the snow sirens, with Mike “Cuervo” Cuevas showing us a bunch of color-coded maps with heavy snow warnings and snow advisories on it. But we wake up in Ashvegas this morning, and guess what, Cuervo??? No snow. A little rain. A flake or two. But that’s it.
Hey Cuervo, let’s also talk about your winter snowfall prediction, since we just markied the last day of winter. As Ashvegas recalls, you predicted some 20 inches of snow for the season. We got about 3.
Not good, Cuervo.
News flash – farmers bitch about the weather
Sheraldo brought us a shout report from Henderson County farmers – a shocker – farmers are worried about the weather!
Sheraldo does this story every spring. The strawberry and apple crop farmers are watching the weather and hoping it doesn’t get too cold. Yeah, we know. The magic temp is 28 degrees, said one farmer, who also reminded us that the past couple of years we’ve had a hard freeze well into May. So don’t get too happy out in your garden just yet.
News leak: Bonnie’s got to go
Jon “Punnyman” Le had a report about Olympic speedskater Bonnie Blair, who was in Ashvegas Thursday to talk about stress induced incontinence. She would pee when she couldn’t help it. (What a pisser!)
Le danced all around the topic for a couple of minutes, before finally showing us some weak graphic of a swollen bladder or something. Then he quoted Bonnie’s doctor, who talked about how brave Bonnie is to be talking about such a secret topic.
Then he quoted Bonnie, who said she just wanted to help people. Then Le showed provided video of Bonnie jumping on a trampoline, all happy and playing with her kid. So it’s not that bad, after all. Only the story never offered any solutions, suggestions, tips or advice for anyone suffering from leakage.
Nice work.
In other news…
Haywood schools are going completely tobacco free… A man trimming trees in Biltmore Forest was electrocuted when his crane bucket touched a power line… Haywood County held a fake disaster drill wherein they pretended that everybody had real bad diarrhea, which they called a GI illness (they called the drill “When Diarrhea Strikes!)… A Madison County group filed suit against a Laurel Valley development, saying the rules weren’t followed… Mills River is worried about new development… Asheville police met with residents at the North Asheville branch of the library on Merrimon Ave… The parents of Mitch Carver, a soldier who died in Iraq, want to fix up the Leicester Community Center playground to honor Carver… Kids at Tuscola High threw pies in each others faces to raise money to fight cancer… A Rutherford County couple says they’re getting evicted from their rental because they are an interracial couple, but the landlord says they weren’t paying all their rent.
Did we mention that LSU BEAT Dook, 62-54?
I thought about sending you a sympathy card when Carolina lost. But now I think Duke’s loss is the most soothing balm of all for you…
It scares me how much pleasure it gives me to see JJ cry. A Duke loss is almost as satisfying as a UNC win.
Yeah, those good West Asheville folk, doing their part as citizens, by buying lots of cheap plastic crap that will end up in our landfills in a year or two.
Glinty, glinty, glinty.