25 JUL 08: I.D. THE IDIOT

After five-and-a-half years of blogging, someone in Columbus gave us an award for our efforts Thursday. It truly was unexpected, truly left us humbled - and unlike the Leonard Leavell Award from the Columbus NAACP, it wasn't even misspelled.

What is this award? It came via e-mail from a candidate for Muscogee County Sheriff....

Richard, Congratulations' you have just the Idiot of The Week Award, for your information it is not a requirement for campaign candidates to place disclaimers' on the political signs or campaign materials anymore. This law was repealed by the State Attorney Generals office, again you need to get your facts straight before put out erroneous information out your blog. www.marklajoye.com

The facts we stated here Tuesday regarding Bert Coker's Columbus Council campaign signs used to be accurate. But a woman at the Muscogee County Election Board confirmed to us the rules changed a few years ago. Too bad sign-watcher Paul Olson didn't call a news conference to announce this, and declare some kind of victory.

So the laws on Georgia campaign signs have changed, and we apologize for not knowing that. But still, this was a first for us - receiving an award from a political candidate. Who knows how many officeholders in Columbus quietly have considered us an "Idiot of the Week," but simply never told us so?

(Regular readers know we hand out "Burkard Awards" here every 1 January. But in all the years, I've never given one to myself. That would be the height of egotism - and didn't Sigmund Freud write something about Idiots and ego?)

If we're going to have an award-winning blog, we might as well.... oops, I'd better be careful. This man has shown even one wrong word about him can be upsetting -- and he didn't say I "won" the Idiot of the Week Award, did he? Perhaps I'm running unopposed this week....

But if we're going to have this title, we might as well spread the news all around Columbus. So we prepared a sticker declaring ourselves "Idiot of the Week" - since we never bothered to develop a budget for yard signs, advertising such things.

We had several errands and events on the schedule Thursday. So we wondered how Columbus residents would react to someone wearing an "Idiot of the Week" title on his chest. Would they ask questions? Would they take one look at us, and automatically agree?

1:10 p.m.: At Tenth Avenue and Wynnton Road, someone in the car next to us seeks our attention. "How do you get to 431?"

The man probably couldn't see our sticker - and at a traffic light, there's really no time to explain that we're the Idiot of the Week and shouldn't be helping him. But our cars are pointing eastbound, so even I can handle this one.

"You need to go back to Alabama. You're going in the wrong direction." The passenger doesn't seem to know where the bridges are across the Chattahoochee River, so I name a couple of crossing points before the light turns green. But I'm the Idiot of the Week - so I have no city maps in the car to offer him.

1:20 p.m.: We visit the Columbus Public Library to check out an item. A couple of people in line seem to see our sticker, but no one speaks up about it -- even though it's a perfect moment for a beggar to ask for 50 cents in gas money.

1:45 p.m.: We have three bags of paperboard and white paper to recycle on Martin Luther King Boulevard. As we return to our car, a woman parked next to us in a white Mazda needs guidance. "How does this work?" With so many dumpsters and stacks of items around, it can look like leftovers from a flea market.

I tell the woman about what I did with the white paper and paperboard - but she's brought plastic to recycle. That's done somewhere else, at the Goodwill center on Tenth Avenue. But as I explain, I stop: "I really should be disqualified from helping you, because I've been declared the Idiot of the Week."

"So I see," the woman says as she looks at my sticker. But she keeps asking, anyway -- as if any old Idiot is better than no help at all.

I finally tell the woman I'm heading to the plastic recycling center next. She's happy to hear that, and follows my car down Tenth Avenue to Goodwill. Yes, a total stranger is following the admitted Idiot of the Week. And you wondered where the show "Desperate Housewives" gained its name.

I dump my large bag of plastic in the Goodwill bin, and the woman steps out of her white Mazda with three bags of plastic items. "Do you have to sort them by any particular number?"

"I think they prefer 1's and 2's, but you can dump it all and let them sort it out." The center staff probably will call me an idiot, for giving them extra work to do.

"Thanks for all your help!" the woman says. Isn't it amazing - I label myself the Idiot of the Week, and suddenly two people need advice from me? Maybe if I walked around wearing a graduation cap, everyone would leave me alone.

3:10 p.m.: Talking by phone with a woman in California about a completely different project, I mention the Idiot of the Week title and the events so far. "If you're taking advice from an Idiot of the Week," she asks with a laugh, "does that make you the bigger idiot?"

5:10 p.m.: It's running time, but I do NOT wear the Idiot of the Week sticker outside for the jog. The reason: I wrote the sticker like an idiot - and failed to use an ink pen which is sweat and water-resistant.

8:30 p.m.: Thursday night is poker night at Lil Kim's Cove - and we know our sticker will get as much action as a pair of jacks in the hole. Only on this night, we had to fold a pair of jacks because other players had something better....

"You're not an idiot," the director of poker night says after we explain why Mark LaJoye passed the Idiot of the Week Award onto us. "You didn't know." Later in the evening, two other poker players would declare another man an idiot - after we hit a straight on the river, top his two pair and leave him cursing in disbelief.

A man wearing Auburn gear also asks about our Idiot of the Week Award from Mark LaJoye. "You know what I'd tell him?" he says. "Kiss my f**king big a*s." This "poker ministry" thing I'm trying still has a long way to go.

"That's an insult," the Tiger fan continues.

"But he could be right," I answer. "We're all idiots, when it comes to something." The Auburn man agrees with that reasoning. We'd probably both be in trouble if we were asked to count from one to ten in Chinese.

A man named Bill sits immediately to our left at the poker table - and when we mention the award came from Mark LaJoye, he asks whom we're backing in the Sheriff's race. "It makes no difference to me," I answer. That comment may win me an Idiot of the Week Award from the other two candidates.

"That Johnson is crooked," Bill then tells me.

"He is?"

"I know he's crooked."

"How do you know that?" We should note this is the same man who declared on a poker night last year that the Cash 3 lottery game was fixed.

"You want the inside sources?" Bill promises to tell me more later - but that never happens. That's the problem when your main source goes bust early, and you keep playing to the end of the final table.

Three big pots in a row come our way, and we carry a huge stack of chips to the final table. "You must not be an idiot," the director declares - and he repeats that conclusion when we go home with a second-place finish and a ten-dollar prize. Maybe this is where the idea of "good cop bad cop" started.

The week doesn't end until Saturday evening, so we'll update our Idiot of the Week celebration as conditions warrant. In the meantime, let's try to sum up the Thursday news accurately....

+ The owner of Millie's Market announced he's putting the South Lumpkin Road business up for sale. Lefty Incarnacion says business has dropped 60 percent since the Independence Day shooting. Now I feel guilty - because maybe those robbers stole the Lance cookie ten-packs I couldn't find there last week.

+ An Opelika firefighter was arrested on charges of selling counterfeit DVD's. Authorities say he even sold them from a fire station - which seems like the silliest way to offer "hot-selling movies" I've ever heard.

(For some reason, the Alabama Alcohol Beverage Control department was part of this investigation. Perhaps it intervenes when someone tries to sell DVD's with country music stars.)

+ Waves created by Hurricane Dolly damaged a beach on the Alabama Gulf Coast. Hopefully no trees were knocked down in the process - or else you'd have an unusual case of Dolly-wood.

+ Day two of Southeastern Conference football "Media Days" in Birmingham featured a lawyer serving a subpoena to Tennessee head coach Philip Fulmer. I don't understand this at all. Shouldn't losing a home game in the conference be a more serious offense, as opposed to one at Alabama or Auburn?

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