Ciao Again, Y'all

I'm out of town again - yes, I know, this is playing havoc with my blogging. Sorry about that. No, not really. I'm having fun, so, well, uh, tough. Y'all will just have to deal. Anyway, this afternoon I'm dashing off to Charleston and thence to Baltimore and I probably, gods willing and the creek don't rise, won't be back to Asheville and my computer until like next weekend. In the meantime, here are a few Asheville downtown notes from this morning's copious intake of coffee to keep you occupied.

Boob Cam at Asheville Savings Bank! Okay, I noticed this months ago and have never been sure exactly what to do about it - gently notify the bank or just revel in the schadenfreude? Let's go with revelling: the drive through at the downtown branch of Asheville Savings (yeah, there is one; it's in the parking lot behind the bank off the alley; it took me 7 years to find the damn thing but I swear it exists) has this nifty device whereby, since there is no window, you actually speak with a real time video image of your teller as you do your banking. This is pretty cool. What is even cooller, or possibly extremely uncool, depending on how you want to look at it, is that the camera is pointed straight at your teller's chest except when she bends down to speak directly to you. The tellers are, of course, 90% female. I can't believe they've never noticed it and I've always wondered if it was some goofy camera installer's idea of a joke but there it is: Boob Cam at the bank!

Scary Mannequin Has New Scary Clothes! There's a mannequin at Bellagio Everyday on Biltmore Avenue who scares the bejesus out of me. She is white - well, they're all white, like chalky postmodern titanium ghost white - and her feet have built in heels, which is just creepy, and her face is evil in that sneery mannequin way and, the worst part, her hands are held up in a kind of claw like gesture so that it is all too easy to imagine her stepping out of that window one fine night and eviscerating a passer by with her long white fingernails. I fear her. She's the one who was holding up the Christmas lights, which made her no less frightening, since it looked like she was about to happily strangle you with them, but now she has put down her lights and put on a pair of totally psycho black parachute pants like a crazed jewel thief from a bad 80s movie. It was awful enough when she was dressed in the gorgeous albeit unaffordable clothes that Bellagio usually features because at least you were going to be supernaturally killed by a beautifully dressed creature of evil but in those pants? Aaaaiiiiiiiieeeeeee!!!

And that's it for today. Enjoy your New Years Eve, y'all, and remember it is Amateur Night par extraordinaire, therefore, behave accordingly. Happy End of the Fucking Holidays At Last! See You Next Year!