More goodbyes
Scott “Scottie2Hottie” Wickersham got another goodbye Thursday, this time from Mike “Cuervo” Cuevas, who said he was headed on vacation, so later dude, and stuck out his hand. Cuervo seemed genuine, but Scottie2Hottie was just, like, “Yeah, thanks. I put my two years in. See ya, don’t wanna be ya.”
We’re wondering, Scottie, are you taking your cat with you, or will Candice take care of the puttie tat until she moves? What’s that damn cat’s name? Tookie, wasn’t it? Something like that.
Sorry, we digress. As part of the going away, we here at Ashvegas are going to formally retire the Scottie2Hottie leather bomber jacket. It was a thrill to see Scott get out there and report a story looking like a million bucks. Whether he was extracting a killer soundbyte from a Hendersonville town board member or covering horrendous rains and floods, Scottie always let us know he was in charge when he broke out the bomber.
We’re going to have that great coat sealed in a glass case and placed somewhere.
Dangerous gorge
Russ “Beefcake” Bowen brought us a report about how effed up Interstate 40 is through the Pigeon River Gorge in Haywood County. Y’all have driven it, right? It’s some scary shit. The lanes are narrow. There’s a huge concrete divider in the middle. It’s downhill and uphill and the road has more curves than than the Pussycat Dolls.
So Russell tells us that AAA Carolinas tells us that percentage wise or something, there are more tractor trailer wrecks in Haywood County than anywhere else in the state. And that’s because of I40 in the gorge. A trooper told Russ that truckers speed and that cars drive in the blindspots of truckers. So everybody, slow yer ass down.
Graham County has the highest number, or percentage or whatever, of motorcycle wrecks. Russ didn’t explain that one to us, but here’s my guess – it’s something called the Tail of the Dragon. It’s a route motorcylists all over the world know and come to ride – I think it’s a state road. Spectacular scenery and curvy as hell, it’s a crotch-rocket riders’ dream. A deadly dream. But a dream, nonetheless.
Russ, you should do that story. Great for sweeps. Find a biker dude who’ll strap you on the back of his Harley and ride this ride. Talk about the safety measures in place. What’s the most dangerous curve? Can it be made safer? It would be way cool. And you’d look great on a Harley.
Thursday soapbox
The so-called war on Christmas was the topic. I didn’t really pay attention to what people were saying, because nobody stood on the effing soapbox. Look, if the idea is to have people spout off, and you’ve actually gone to the trouble of building an actual soapbox, make people stand up on it and talk.
In one shot, a local pastor or something talked while the soapbox sat in a back pew like a bad Baptist on Easter. In another shot, the photog made the soapbox look HUGE by placing it in the foreground of his shot. I kept thinking, “Damn, I hope that sucker doesn’t fall over, cause it’ll crush the poor woman.”
WLOS employees get sick, station does story
Scottie on Thursday mentioned how sick he was. And he told us that several people had called in sick at the station. So he went and did a story on it. Scottie knows a great story when he sees one, especially on a slow Christmas week.
Turns out there are a couple of cold viruses making the rounds. Scottie talked to the Buncombe County health hottie, Susan Mims, and a pharmacist, who left us with this tidbit: “People share their viruses and colds this time of year. That’s one of the presents people give each other during the holidays.”
Nice. Scottie told us to wash our hands and showed us how to cover our nose when we sneeze.
Coral Bay closes
There’s always at least one real jerk that makes himself known during the holidays. This year, it looks like it’s the owner of the Coral Bay Seafood Restaurant. You know the place – that bland looking restaurant right there on Tunnel Road that you never set foot in because it just looked empty all the time.
Holly Headache told us that restaurant employees were livid after the boss told them Monday that the restaurant was closed. End of story. Don’t come to work. No notice. In fact, a couple of employees that Holly talked with said the company Christmas party was Sunday and nobody said a word about the impending closure. Ain’t that some shit?
It’s like the time I left a job a couple of weeks before Christmas and the boss told me to give back my Christmas bonus check. All $25 of it. Damn!
Anyway, Holly got some great quotes from the restaurant owner. She quoted him as saying that if he’d notified employees earlier, they might have gotten lazy or decided to steal stuff. That’s the way it goes in the restaurant biz, he told Holly. O, and he graciously added that everybody’s invited to apply for new jobs when the restaurant reopens in March as a Ham’s.
What an effing – wait, I need to turn to the Shakespearean insult generator for a good one – “Thou misbegotten milk-livered popinjay!”
Yeah, take that.
2 Comments
am i surprised that coral bay closed? heck no. it was open for several months before i even heard of it and when i did drive by and look over there, the parking lot was mostly empty!
i stopped in once and sat at my table for about 20 minutes before anyone came by and noticed me. i had to flag down the woman sweeping the floor and had to make hand signals to her cause she didn’t speak english.
it was only a matter of time, folks. and the employees were in denial if they claimed they were surprised.
p.s. i loved the fried shrimp i had there, but the service was so bad, i never went back.
bummer. coral bay actually had decent hush puppies.