WLOS dailies FRI 1223

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

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Merry (patronizing) Christmas
Michelle “Bah-Humbug” Boudin revealed her sexist side Friday as she brought us a patronizing report about last-minute Christmas shoppers at the Ashvegas Mall. They’re mostly men, Boudin said.

Boudin backed that up by quoting some kind of survey and the mall schill, who said it’s usually men who put off the shopping until the last minute. I don’t know – the shots Michelle showed during her report showed all kinds of people, not just men. Not even mostly men.

Nonetheless, Boudin used the report to do some major man bashing, describing “men loaded with shopping bags;” also, “a lot of desperate men;” “men on a mission;” and men procrastinating – “wait until you hear their excuses,” she said snootily.

Hey Boudin, get a boyfriend and give it a rest.

Killer credit card payments?
Susan Mundane delivered an old story – higher minimum payments on credit cards start in January – with a renewed sense of gloom and doom on Friday.

Susan pumped it up to make it sound like the most horrible, terrible news you could imagine just before Christmas. But the fact is that the higher payments really don’t amount to that much more money. And it’s good news, because it means (hopefully) that people will pay off their debt more quickly.

Susan kept telling us to “brace ourselves” for the “pain of paying.” She did mention the upside, but the overall effect was to scare us.

But it really won’t be all that bad. Here’s how one internet story described the effects on consumers:
In some cases, minimum payments will increase from 2 percent of the balance due to 4 percent. But in most cases, where most credit card issuers previously required customers to pay off 2% of their outstanding balances each month, they’ll now require customers to pay all monthly interest and fees, plus 1% of the outstanding balance.

For example, says a spokesman from indexcreditcards.com, imagine a person with a $10,000 credit card debt and a 19 percent annual interest rate, both higher than the average consumer is carrying.

Using the two percent minimum balance calculation, this person would have a required monthly payment of approximately $203.16. Under new requirements, the monthly payment would be $258.33 ($158.33 in interest, plus $100 of the outstanding balance). This is a difference of roughly $55 – on a balance and interest rate that exceeds what the average consumer is carrying.

Back at Coral Bay
Holly Headache followed up her Thursday report about the sudden closing of the Coral Bay restaurant on Tunnel Road with more outrage, this time from little old ladies who’d bought gift certificates.

The little old ladies were pissed that their gift certificates had been rendered useless. After all, as syntax reports, Coral Bay has some awesomely delicious hush puppies. I mean, these old ladies were hot.

Holly quoted the restaurant owner as saying the new restaurant, Hamm’s, would honor the gift certificates when it opened sometime next year. And if people wanted their money back, they could call a restaurant answering machine and get it.

Only Larry “Old Glory” Blunt wasn’t buying that. He gave us a sour look, then said many customers were “skeptical that it may not be such an easy process” to get their money back. No Larry, they’re skeptical that it will be easy.

Best toss of the day
Scottie2Hottie to Larry: “Now here’s our little ray of sunshine, Larry Blunt, with news from your town.”

Let it snow
If we needed more evidence of the American over-indulgence at Christmastime, we got it in Jon “Punnyman” Le’s report at 11 about a Candler dad who made it snow in his yard.

Friday was a beautiful day, with plenty of sunshine and highs in the 50s. Le showed us a bunch of kids sliding down a snow-covered front yard in Candler where the kids had a ball blasting down the hill on their sleds.

Le said “you’d have to sled it to believe it.” He asked “what precipitated this unexpected precipitation.” He said the whole thing “snowballed.”

The dad rigged up a power washer and air compresser, stood it up with the help of an old bike stand, then woke up every morning at 4 a.m. to turn on the spray. He burned through 1.6 gallons of water a minute to produce the fake snow. But to the dad, it was apparently all worth it. One of the neighborhood kids “told me I was the greatest dad ever,” he said.

Useless story of the day
The lead story at 11 was an absolute non-story, brought to us by Cherub Charu about a mom and daughter who moved into a Habitat for Humanity house in Hendersonville – three weeks ago. So? The family was grateful and had lots of Christmas lights out front. Great. But there was no news. It played more like a Habitat commercial.

Back at the desk, Larry started preaching to us, telling us that the family in the house will work on other Habitat houses for other people in need. “So the family will pay it forward” by passing on their “blessings,” he told Charu.