Angry Wife Billboard Update: Is it a restaurant publicity stunt?

The talk of the area since yesterday morning has been this billboard on Battleground Avenue in Greensboro (North Carolina). In big bold letters on a wrathful red field it reads thusly: "Michael- GPS Tracker - $250, Nikon Camera with zoom lens - $1600, Catching my LYING HUSBAND and buying this billboard with our investment account - Priceless. Tell Jessica you're moving in! - Jennifer".

That LED billboard has caused at least one car wreck (was his name Michael?!).  Some have said the photos are fake but it's really been on display.

(Photo credit: Fox 8 WGHP)

Now there is evidence that the entire thing has perhaps been, rather than a jilted wife airing her husband's dirty laundry on Battleground Avenue, a marketing ploy by a restaurant instead.

At right you see the new message that showed up on the same billboard today.  It's now alternating with the original note from "Jennifer".  The new one references "Yodaddy's".  Incidentally, there is a local restaurant called Yo Daddy's.

Mash down here for what the good folks at Fox 8 WGHP have discovered about the billboard since yesterday.  Feel free to draw your own conclusions.

Ehhhhhh... okay.  If it's some kind of stunt, I don't get it.  In retrospect it's not the cleverest thing that I've heard of.  Maybe they could have stretched this whole thing out into an ongoing drama or something...

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Do you think Jennifer is angry at Michael?

An actual LED billboard this afternoon on Battleground Avenue in Greensboro, North Carolina...

Tip o' the hat and credit due to journalist Chad Tucker of Fox 8 WGHP, who posted this on Facebook a short while ago!

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Eustace Conway: Independent mountaineer versus the government

If there had been Watauga County bureaucrats running the country following the Revolutionary War, the United States would have never expanded past the Appalachians.  It's a wonder we survived before the advent of indoor plumbing...

Eustace Conway, a resident of Boone, North Carolina who's been featured recently on the History Channel's series Mountain Men, is now facing the prospect of his land being condemned and control of it taken from him by the local government.  Watauga County officials are insisting that the nature school on Conway's land isn't up to code and is in violation of numerous health and safety regulations.  Conway believes that he's being targeted because he advocates a more traditional "back to nature" approach to living, one which is at odds with "modern" culture and its trappings of collective expectation.  He cites that his property has been the way it is for the past 26 years and has routinely passed inspections, but only now is it coming under the hammer of the goons in Boone.

Fox 8 WGHP's Bob Buckley has turned in a terrific piece of cinematography and narration in his Buckley Report about Eustace Conway.  Y'all would be well enlightened and even entertained by what this colorful character has to tell us about his life and his current plight.  Especially this...

“I live in a much different way and I’m glad for it. Basically, I’m living like the American heritage pattern of all of our ancestors and the modern world isn’t. They don’t know how to accept me. This is supposed to be the land of the free, government is supposed to help people and protect their individual liberties and freedom. That’s not what’s happening here. My gosh. This is the country that I pledge allegiance to?”

So this dude has put up a couple of old-fashioned outhouses on his own property and the government is trying to take his land because of it? Have I got that right?

Good Lord. This country really has come off the rails.

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Bob Buckley turns in a BEAUTIFUL story about tobacco barns

When it comes to North Carolina architecture, there is no more ubiquitous an example than the humble tobacco barn. You can barely drive half a mile in the rural farming areas without seeing at least one or two dotting the landscape. With some of them dating back a century and more, they once exemplified this state's agricultural acumen like nothing else could.

And it is not without some sadness that in the modern era, most of them have fallen into disuse. Once they hummed with hard work and a handsome payoff. Now, no more. But the barns still stand: a testimony to times gone by and a tradition that many families maintained for generations.

For those reasons and more (not the least of which is the gorgeous cinematography and editing by Stewart Pittman) I can't recommend enough that y'all check out this Buckley Report story by WGHP Fox 8 reporter Bob Buckley. Buckley and Pittman deserve an Emmy for this, easily...

Special thanks to good friend Mark Childrey for being the first to spot this and passing it along!

(Along with props to historian extraordinaire Bob Carter for a great exposition about tobacco farming :-)

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Fox 8's The Buckley Report follows up on me BEING BIPOLAR

Just before this past Christmas, Bob Buckley from Fox 8 WGHP interviewed me for a segment of the Emmy-winning The Buckley Report, dealing with my coming out about having bipolar disorder on this blog. Here's the link to that first story. A couple'o weeks ago he and Fox 8 photojournalist Chris Weaver (who also has an Emmy notched on his belt!) came back and filmed a follow-up story about the direction that I've taken since then: the Being Bipolar series, and the video supplements that I've used to chronicle and document what it's like to have a bipolar episode.

Well, it just aired on this evening's Fox 8 News 10:00 News and lo and behold it's already on the Fox 8 website!

Here's the direct link to the segment.

And look! Embeddable video thingy!

 

Good job Bob and Chris! Hope that this snags y'all another Emmy or two :-)

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Fox 8 story about my living with bipolar disorder

Chris Knight showed his creativity in one of the first Youtube videos to go viral. But there was another, darker side that he struggled to contain.

Last week Bob Buckley from WGHP Fox 8 came to my house along with photojournalist Chris Weaver to interview me about my recent public disclosure on this blog about my having bipolar disorder. We filmed about an hour's worth of material (and Chris got some terrific outdoor shots with his cinematography skillz :-).

The story aired last night during the Fox 8 News at 10 as a Buckley Report feature. A lot of people have told me since its broadcast that it turned out great and that hopefully it will bring encouragement to others suffering from bipolar (which, is one of the reasons why I felt led to write about it on my blog).

Here's the story, in case you missed it last night (or if you happen to live in London or Tasmania or Chula Vista or somewhere else outside of Fox 8's broadcasting area)...

 

Here's the link to the story's page on the Fox 8 website.

In the past few weeks, God has placed it on my heart that... this can be a kind of ministry opportunity. Last month a friend of mine who is associate pastor of a nearby church shared 2nd Corinthians with me: how Paul wrote about God putting afflictions in our lives so that we might be a help to others going through the same thing.

If so, then I certainly must thank God for not only letting me go through this, but also His bringing me through to this place in my life. To a place where I can have the life that I have always longed for.

There was so much said during the interview last week and not all of it could have made the final cut. I remember telling Bob and Chris at one point that I was better than I was a few months ago... and I'm not as good as I will be a few months from now.

And if God has given me this experience, for whatever reason He had in allowing it, well... I'm going to play it to the hilt for everything that it can.

Thanks to Bob Buckley and Chris Weaver for a job well done! :-)

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