2011 Flambeaux Awards

[XLFD]

As a nod to the beginning of our third year, we salute the end of the second by introducing the year end First Annual Flambeaux Awards.  Through a secretive vetting process, four choices are found for each category, with the opportunity for a write-in vote.  You may choose to vote in public by posting here your choices and any rationale you want to share, or send me (XLFD) a private message.  I will tabulate the results and publish it by January 3 (please vote by the end of the year.  Winners of the various awards will get some as of yet undetermined prize for their efforts, and the recognition from their peers.  Here are the categories.

 

1)  Local Story of Interest that You Couldn't Find in Other Local Media:

 

A)  Washington Avenue Bridge to be Rebuilt at $2.5 Million Without Any ... Aquaman-- Quite a lot of public dough to fix a bridge to nowhere.

 

B)  Sign Contracts Awarded Without Bids to Fiance of DDA's Chairman Who... XLFD-- Not to mention a bid-rigged process for the rest of the $150,000 contract by the new City Councilor.

 

C)  One Million Dollars of Public Money to Put in an Extra Runway at Ma... Willie Smith-- Some improvements at the airport came at a price, and again the need was questioned.

 

D)  Illegal Policy Enforced on a Candidate Running for City Councilor P... XLFD-- The effects of an ordinance that allows a City Manager to outlaw anyone from a public place without any due process or appeal.

 

E)  Other--  

 

2)  State and Federal Story of Interest Explored in the Torch

 

A)  Casey Anthony is Tried and Found Innocent Dave-- This thread followed the case from start to unexpected finish.

 

B)  Budget Battles, not Skirmishes XLFD-- discussion on what to cut in the year-long battles over the budget

 

C)  Weinergate Edie Lindsey-- This was a hot topic of discussion earlier this year.

 

D)  Baby Kate Gets National Attention for Abduction and Policework Dave-- This story had input from many reflecting on the local story.

 

E)  Other--

 

3)  Local Story of Interest, Non-Political in Nature

 

A)  Beach Officers or Lifeguards?  Angela-- Early murmurings of what was best for beach safety.

 

B)  Ludington Avoids Mentioning Christmas, Religiously XLFD-- Exploring the tale of two cities, around the Christmas holiday.

 

C)  Local Convention and Visitor's Bureau gets a major boost  Aquaman--  Local hoteliers add their own 'tax' to depress tourism even more

 

D)  Walhalla Gets Some Help XLFD-- Walhalla finishes high in the Reader's Digest vote, thanks to Torchies pushing them 13 spots ahead of Ludington.

 

4)  Best Picture

 

A)  The Roadrunner by Max

 

B)  John Shay's Gaze by Christopher R. Keough

 

C)  Under the Radar by Willy Smith

 

D) Sunset by Willy Smith

 

E)  Other--

 

5)  Best New Member of 2011

 

A)  Wanda Marrison

 

B)  easymoney

 

C)  Marty Redman

 

D)  Robert

 

E)  Other--

 

6)  Least Favorite Troll of 2011

 

A)  Jhon Sahy

 

B)  Heaven Therzky

 

C)  Rom Totta

 

D)  Eye on Ludington

 

E)  Other--

 

7)  Best Contributors to Threads

 

A)  When Will Atlas Shrug

 

B)  Guidothesemipeudocapitalisticpig

 

C)  masonco

 

D)  John

 

E)  Other--

[XLFD]

The spell-checker was working on that one, even if the grammar-checker was turned off.  I think Heaven is trying her darndest to win that Flambeaux Award for trolls with this late push.

[AQUAMAN]

X, you might want to leave instructions for Heaven as to how to program in the Spell-checker, as it's obvious she flunked her grammar classes thus far. Makes a person wonder, how does anyone leave school with a diploma that can't communicate any better than this? Says a lot about our current school systems deficiencies, even after we pour tons of money into improvements and teachers salaries way beyond reasonable for taxpayers to absorb, we still turn out this type of kids.

[XLFD]

Did Heaven say she graduated with a diploma?  I got the impression she was still going to Foster Elementary School, or maybe even Franklin or Lakeview. 

I do like your commentary on the state of the education in this country.  If we could eliminate the Dept. of Education, which a lot of Republican candidates say they will do (but likely not follow through {pardon the rhyme}) we could free up billions each year wasted on administration and get the Federal nonsense out of the schools at the same time. 

[XLFD]

Last call.  Please vote by the end of tonight either by sending me a message (thanks for all those who have done so), or posting your choices here. 

[XLFD]

While it looks like I may have been remiss in my duties as offical counter and award granter of the Flambeaux Awards, I will put in my defense that I had made an elaborate posting of the awards granted that cost me about a couple hours of time, and then my %^$&# finger hit the wrong key and I lost everything.  Am I the only idiot who has this problem?  I wish we had one of those prompts that would come up and ask "Do you really want to navigate away from this page?" when you are in the midst of posting a reply.

 

Anyhow, enough about our problems and on to the winners, with considerably less fanfare.  The winners are:

1)  The Best Local Story not covered elsewhere was tied between my fifth article on the DDA, Signs of Love, and my article on The Candidate Who Couldn't Vote.  I reserved the right to vote if a tie occurred, but since I was involved with publishing both, I decided it would be in my interest to mint two awards for myself.  Congratulations, me and myself, better luck next year, I. 

2)  Dave's continuation of the Baby Kate story continued the area's biggest news story of 2011 with lively discussion about the event and its aftermath.  If anyone was thinking that the local police and local paper were top of the line, the mishandling of this event by both should make one reconsider.

3)  Angela's question comparing Beach Patrol or Lifeguards early this year, narrowly beat out the recent story comparing Ludington and Manistee's Christmas events.  This continues into the new year, as the City will actually spend more for having one patroller rather than three lifeguards present at the beach.

4)  Willy Smith's Under the Radar easily won the best picture of the year.  If it survives stretching, we hope to have it as a month heading later this year.

5)  Best new member, and first out of state winner, was Marty Redman.  Wanda did not get any votes in this category, though she had one write-in ('right-in' if you are our Heaven T., LOL) for:

6)  Least favorite troll honors was Rom Totta, probably for the aggressive style he portrayed in his limited stay here, and his incendiary posts at the now-defunct website Eye on Ludington.  A Flambeau cream pie is waiting for you, contact me for getting your prize. 

7)  Best Contributor had some misperceptions, it was more of an award for those who bring on their comments to our various forums, but don't create too many themselves.  Votes for Dave and I were thrown out accordingly.  An honorable mention I forgot to include in the choices was Lisa O'Brien, who adds quite a bit to our discussions, and it was an oversight in forgetting her for this category.  There was a tie between WWA Shrug? and Masonco for this award, and votes for all mentioned. 

 

Congratulations to all the winners.  Your awards will be coming to you soon.

[Sweater Cows!]

Oh boy do I know the pain of making some long edited and thoughtful posts only to have them go off to the wind and end up throwing up a short unedited reply!  Now I try to remember to highlight and 'copy' anything I am writing every so often so if I mess up I can paste it back in. or if really long write it in wordpad and copy over to the reply box.

[Lisa O'Brien]

Lisa forgives the oversight.

[XLFD]

I believe you, Lisa, because you called it an 'oversight' and not a full 'slight'.

Pain is an appropriate word, WWAS, because I make some very undignified grunts and groans when I see the page unexpectedly travel away with all my unsaved data, then instead of throwing the computer across the room, I generally defuse the anger by getting up and do something akin to a dog chasing its tail.  Very undignified and weird to the rest of the home peeps... but it saves getting a new computer.

[Willy]

My hat's off to you X for your work on this forum and the time you put into producing it. I want to give you my thanks.

[XLFD]

Thanks, Willy, and allow me to take my hat off to everyone who chooses to participate in our interactive activities here at the Ludington Torch.  All of you have added to the success of our continued experiment into getting the full story and the truth out about what happens here in and around Ludington without the filters and limitations that you can get from print media, and even broadcast media. 

I also encourage everyone to do their best in 2012, so as to give us an even more competitive 2nd Annual Flambeaux Awards.

[Heaven Therzke]

i am not a troll.  just a sane person who likes my local goverments.  glad the voters ha ha saw that i wasnt one.

[Dave]

Apparently your one of those people that would jump off a cliff too if your local government told you to do it.

And it wasn't that people don't think your a troll, simply that they thought the winner of that particular vote was a bigger troll :-)