Scott Fowler of the Charlotte Observer writes: “The Carolina Panthers’ most famous fan just got run over by Fox Sports.

It wasn’t pretty, and it wasn’t fair. Fox Sports did a bad thing to a good man on national TV Aug. 24, and I’m furious about it.

The good man’s name is actually Greg Good. But if you know him at all, you know him as “Catman.” He sits in a front-row end zone seat at every Panthers home game wearing an electric blue wig and a black-and-blue cape.

With just under two minutes to go in the Panthers-Miami Dolphins exhibition, Good was under the impression Fox Sports was about to give him a new car. The network’s announcing team had promoted the free car giveaway on air at the end of the third quarter.

Instead, sideline reporter Tony Siragusa handed Good a toy car.”

Good, believing the toy was a symbol for the real thing, said on-camera to Siragusa: “Thank you! Thank you very, very, very much — it’s a blessing and a prayer answered!”

Good, 49, lives in Winston-Salem. He’s a college graduate with three children who works with troubled kids for a mental health agency. He drives a 1991 Chevrolet Astro van with 130,000 miles on it.

(more…)

Ex-inmate was trying to reach mirror to shave

Byron “B.J.” Rhodan never feared for his safety in Georgia’s bare-knuckled prison system, even though he’s a dwarf.

But an insistent guard and a slippery sink led to his downfall, Rhodan alleges in an ongoing federal lawsuit against the state Department of Corrections.

prison for dealing marijuana and possessing methamphetamine, according to state records.

In the lawsuit, Rhodan claims that in April 2004 a guard at the state prison in Jackson told him to shave. Rhodan told the guard he could not reach the mirror above the sink in his cell. The guard, according to Rhodan, told him to stand on the sink. Rhodan fell off the sink onto the cement floor in his cell, according to the suit.

Rhodan claims he severely injured his back in the fall. His back already undergone multiple surgeries as a result of the genetic disorder causing his dwarfism.

Rhodan said he’s not sure how he slipped off the sink.

“The only thing I can think of — I shouldn’t have been wearing socks standing up there,” he said. Rhodan is asking for unspecified monetary damages in the suit, and alleges the prison system was negligent and violated the Americans with Disabilities Act.

But an inmate in an adjoining cell claims Rhodan is just running a “scam” on the prison system. Ronnie Fritts, in a deposition, said Rhodan purposely fell from the sink and that other inmates were cheering for him to beat the Department of Corrections.

“Several people were hollering, ‘Yeah, Shorty, you got them now, I will testify for you’ and all that stuff,” Fritts told lawyers in March. “And you know, because you are in prison, you are sort of pitted against … the Department of Corrections … they are the enemy.”

Rhodan, now 23, is trying to get his life back together. An aspiring rapper and songwriter known as “Lil Dirty,” Rhodan is enrolled in a media and audio production program at an Atlanta university.

Rhodan doesn’t shave these days. He now sports a full beard and mustache. He still bears the artwork of prison life — tattoos cover his arms, including drawings of a joker and SpongeBob SquarePants.

Rhodan’s stature otherwise never posed a problem in prison, he said. He mostly wrote lyrics and minded his own business.

But he has no plans of going back.

“The way I feel about prison is that you only live one time, and I just can’t see spending all my time in prison,” Rhodan said. “There’s just more to life than being caged in and disrespected.”

AJC story (Registration)

Spotted on Lorna Road, in Hoover, Alabama.

Classic memory photo duck taped to the back window. I’m unsure what this yellow dog represents. Maybe Old Yeller.