Are You Kidding Me?

You have to love the Asheville City Council...it isn't every political body that has so little to do these days, they have time to pass ordinances banning advertising. Gone are the dancing mattress, the strutting chicken and the strange worm with leprosy that graced the Sprint store on Patton Avenue.

In a move that defies logic and reason, the Grove Park Inn was told to turn off the spotlights they had rented to promote their Celtic weekend. The reasons given were totally absurd....first, the lights detracted from the city skyline and second, the lights posed a hazard to the motoring public. Let's face it, Asheville has no skyline and if the city were truly concerned with the motoring public, they would focus their efforts on filling in giant craters that fill most of the city streets!

The local TV station did an online poll asking for viewer input on the matter. Most responses were in favor of doing away with this foolish law and allowing businesses to get back to having a bit of fun. There were a few nut jobs that supported the ban, but you could tell from their comments that they were probably under the influence of some mind altering substance. Among the favorites..."the lights pose a serious hazard to planes landing at the airport", "the lights keep me from being able to see the moon" and "I can't sleep with the lights on"!

As for planes having problems landing at the airport, the runway is several miles from the city and the flight path doesn't take them over the hotel to begin with. For the people that couldn't see the moon, it had nothing to do with the searchlights, the current lunar phase ranged from a new moon to a waxing crescent, I think you can draw your own conclusions there. For the fool that said they couldn't sleep with the lights on....where the hell were you trying to sleep? Were you in the Goodyear blimp or a hot air balloon hovering overhead? No, it couldn't have been the blimp, because that would be an illegal form of advertising and it certainly wouldn't be over Asheville.

Wake up Asheville, time to vote these nimrods out of office and get some of these ridiculous laws off the books.