Category Archives: Forsyth County

Want to Force Me and Kenny Beck to Shave Our Heads?

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Anyone who's been watching WXII this week knows that they're making a serious push to raise food for Second Harvest so that kids won't go hungry this summer.  One of their morning show members, Kenny Beck, has been doing goofy stuff like the chicken dance in exchange for financial donations.  I asked him via Twitter what it would take to get him to shave his head and he said $1,000. When I indicated I might be serious he said he was too, and we agreed to a low setting on the clippers (not bald, but pretty short).

This dovetails nicely with the food drive that my office is doing for Second Harvest and I thought that if Mr. Beck has the guts to do it, then so should I. So here's the deal:

  • If you want to donate to Second Harvest please contact me via email at jon.lowder AT gmail.com and coordinate the donation with me.  Once we amass $1,000 I'll arrange to get it to Kenny and we'll get his head shaved.
  • Once we pass the $1,000 mark for donations I'll start adding to the tally for TAA's food drive.  If you tell me you're donating in hopes of getting me to shave my head then once we reach another $1,000 I'll get my head shaved too (most likely a high and tight like the Marines). I'll post pictures on this blog, my Facebook profile, Twitter, and anywhere else. It won't be pretty, but it's for a good cause. BONUS FEATURE: The largest single donor actually gets to do the hair cutting on me (can't offer that up for Kenny).

So that's it.  If you want to see Kenny Beck and me get our heads shaved then email me at jon.lowder AT gmail.com, or call me at (336) 899-0238 to arrange donations. You can also simply mail a check made out to Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest North Carolina and write "Make Kenny and Jon Shave Their Heads" in the memo field and mail it to me at:

Triad Apartment Association/Attn. Jon Lowder
3407 West Wendover Ave., Suite E
Greensboro, NC 27407

Of course you can mail it directly to the Food Bank, but if you want it to be counted towards our impending baldness you need to send it to me so I can keep track of our progress.

Also, I've also set up my very first Facebook group for the cause. If you visit it you can see one of the worst pictures ever taken of me Photoshop'd to show me bald.  Like I said, it's gonna be ugly.

West Forsyth H.S., Mathematician’s Paradise

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For the second time in three years a West Forsyth H.S. math teacher has been named Teacher of the Year in the Winston-Salem Forsyth County School system.  Hopefully this means my kids will leave H.S. with a much stronger grasp of the subject than their old man has.

Congrats to Heather King for the recognition.

Pray for Our Horses

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Anyone who thinks Forsyth County is just another sleepy, southern county that's home to a medium-sized city that was founded by members of a mainstream religion that hardly anyone outside of NC or PA has heard of, is smoking crack.  Where else would you have government officials who are simultaneously fighting in court to be able to continue practicing sectarian prayer at the beginning of their public meetings and on another front are lobbying the state legislature to allow them to establish parimutuel betting on horses? 

Budget shortfalls sure do have a strange effect on people.  I mean sheesh, it wasn't that long ago that you couldn't buy booze on Sunday and now we're looking at legalizing gambling in order to fill a budget hole.  If we're that desperate let's go for casinos and brothels and do it up right.  Think of the selling points, not least of which is the easy flight from DC to PTI so that the naughtiest people on Earth (Congress, especially those "conservative" skirt chasers) can easily partake of our wares.  We're also pretty close to some prominent televangelists and they seem to go for this kind of stuff on a regular basis. They could come to fight for public meeting prayers by day, and to explore their sinful natures by night.

The more I think of it the more I think we may be on to something.

The Bridge

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Bo Gray has a great pic of the bridge over the Yadkin River at the Yadkin County-Forsyth County line.  He accompanied it with Longfellow's The Bridge, a fine poem, but my attention was drawn to the apologetic graffiti on the right side of the bridge:

Sorry about the paint and what not. My bad.

For some reason that made me laugh.

Very Berry at The Children’s Home

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The Journal's Michael Hastings writes today about the strawberry patch at The Children's Home in Winston-Salem, and I'd like to personally vouch for the greatness of those berries.  Last Saturday I was at The Children's Home to help give a presentation to The Children's Home Alumni Association about the Labor of Love project the organization I work for did back in February.  The folks at The Children's Home fed us some of the first berries picked from the patch and I can tell you they blow away any of the store bought strawberries I've had this year.  Seriously, you need to head over to TCH and get yourself some. 

ExtenZe at Hanes Mall? Really?

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I know I've been distracted lately, what with three teenagers needing feeding and watering, the day job going on all cylinders and me being preternaturally distracted and all, but how in the heck did I miss this? ExtenZe opened its one and only store in Hanes Mall over the weekend! From the article:

ExtenZe has predominantly marketed to the male demographic in the past. Not only with a NASCAR Sprint Cup sponsorship of the No. 37 ExtenZe Racing Ford, but also through spokesman such as Jimmy Johnson, championship winning football coach, and porn star Ron Jeremy. Also with late night infomercials, featuring Bridgetta Tomarchio – actress, model, talking to people about their personal sexual performance levels.

But now one of the hottest products is ExtenZe Women, an all-natural blend to create a female libido booster. In addition to these enhance products, the store plans to capitalize on traditional mall products with the ExtenZe logo on and engaging slogans such as “Yeah, We’re Cocky” and 
“Growing Our Fan Base One Member at a Time”.

I never thought I'd live to see the day that Hanes Mall was mentioned in the same article with Ron Jeremy. Seriously, is this a hoax or can someone confirm that there is indeed an ExtenZe store at Hanes Mall?  I go to the mall once a year (Christmas Eve, 3:00 p.m. in a panic) so I have no way of knowing for sure.

Governor’s Volunteer Service Award

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Remember a couple of months back how I wrote, incessantly some would say, about the Labor of Love project the Triad Apartment Association (my day job) was doing at The Children's Home?  Well, the folks at The Children's Home were kind enough to nominate us for a Governor's Volunteer Service Award and a bunch of us will be attending a breakfast for the Forsyth County nominees on April 29.  The project was highly rewarding in its own right, but the award process is very exciting too.  We're very grateful to the folks at The Children's Home for nominating us and hopefully we'll do them proud!

No Fumar

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The first Forsyth County biz to be hit with a fine for violating the NC smoking ban is:

Breaktime Billiards on Jonestown Road.

To get fined they had to have been cited at least three times so I guess they've been thumbing their nose at the state for a while.  It'll be interesting to see what effect, if any, the fine has on the behavior of Breaktime and other businesses in Forsyth.

A Little Tarnish for BB&T

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Winston-Salem based BB&T has enjoyed a very strong, positive public image especially during the last few years as other "local" banks like Wachovia painted themselves as evil-banker-villain people.  Well, it looks like the sterling image is in danger of being tarnished.  To wit, two stories in the last week (h/t to Ed Cone for lead to first story):

Visions of Profits Gone, Lot Buyers Sue (News & Observer)

Attorney Wes Hodges, whose firm filed the suits against Saunders, said that buyers were subjected to high-pressure sales tactics. He said they were told it was certain that they would reap big profits by the time the two-year loans came due and that the subdivisions would be finished by then.

He said prices of the lots were artificially increased via fraudulent appraisals and that the lender – BB&T in most cases – signed off on the loans knowing the prices had beenhyped. The frontline bankers approving the loans were paid bonuses of up to 100 percent of their annual salary for hitting targets for the number of loans written, he said.

BB&T is a defendant.A spokeswoman for the bank said it doesn't comment on ongoing litigation but that it will vigorously contest the allegations.

Whistle-Blower Ordered Re-Hired in a Ponzi Scheme (Associated Press)

The BB&T Corporation must rehire a former company investigator who said she was fired after exposing a $100 million North Carolina development scam, an administrative law judge said in a ruling released Friday. The decision, made by Judge Jeffrey Tureck, said the investigator, Amy Stroupe, should be reinstated to her position with back pay because of protection afforded by whistle-blower laws…

Investigators say the development, known as the Village of Penland, was a Ponzi scheme, and Judge Tureck said in his ruling that the bank was assisting the fraud by making loans to investors in the community.