Metro Pulse/Ear to the Ground

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Election Season Follies

So what's the deal with David Keith at these political events all of a sudden? Folks have been noticing that Knoxville's homegrown movie star has been showing his face (which they report is tight and taut these days) at numerous political soirees, most recently a fundraiser for City Judge John Rosson at the showplace home of lawyer Bob English.

So far, two candidates have billboards—the high ID mayoral frontrunner Bill Haslam and the less well-known City Council hopeful Mostafa Alsharif, who is a recent University of Tennessee grad with a degree in chemical engineering. Alsharif's billboard, which says "Vote Mostapha," is on I-40 West at Gallaher View Road. He is having a fundraiser at 3 p.m. Sept. 14. Missy Mayfield, widow of the late Councilman Danny Mayfield will speak.

Alsharif missed the big Fountain City Town Hall candidate forum this week, but his two opponents, Marilyn Roddy and Nick Ciparro were there. Roddy gave a polished performance, and Ciparro (who is being dubbed the candidate with the most hair) charmed the audience with a humorous give-and-take. Attendees (informally) gave the Golden Apple award to 5th District candidate Bob Becker, who wowed the audience with his mastery of issues. They wondered, however, if his opponent, Tim Wheeler, was having flashbacks when he launched an attack on mayoral candidate Madeline Rogero, whom he unsuccessfully opposed for a County Commission seat in 1994.

And, speaking of Rogero, she managed to keep a straight radio face a couple of weeks ago on WNOX's Sunday morning Soundoff show when host Mike Hammond floated the suggestion that instead of subsidizing bus service, the city should maybe consider buying every KAT rider a good used car. Rogero didn't snicker, and politely nixed the notion.

They won't have GOP chairman Chad Tindell to kick around on k2k anymore. Discussion got a little heated between Haslam and Rogero supporters on the k2k messageboard last week after Democrat Anne Woodle posted the results of "a cursory Google search" on her girl, Rogero, and Tindell's boy, Haslam. Tindell, who chairs the local GOP, took issue, and soon the Haslamics (who are an on-line minority) and the Rogerians (who dominate the list) were Googling each other all over the place. ("Google THIS, Big Boy!") Googlemania ended, however, when Tindell, a former k2k moderator, denounced the forum and unsubscribed.

Shades of Littleton?

When photo studio Reflections & Images mass mailed 2004 high school graduates around here with a postcard bearing a coupon good for a free portrait session, at least one parent of a West High senior was enraged. He sent us the card, which bore examples of the kind of individualized, vanity photos any "all-about-me" grad might want to treasure. The examples included a boy in a tee shirt and broad-brimmed hat holding a heavy-looking rifle or shotgun across his chest. "We didn't think it would offend anyone," says the studio's co-owner, Dennis Dockery, who explained the young man with the gun is a hunter and shooter who wanted to be depicted that way.

Frost to Sequoyah Hills?

For most of the summer, it's been whispered that 4th District Councilman Rob Frost, who lives in the 4th and Gill neighborhood with his wife Erin and son Sonny, is about upgrade his zipcode by making a westward move. It's a shocking rumor, since Frost has made a name for himself as a pitbull defender of his North Knoxville constituents,

T'aint so, says Frost, who also says he knows how the notion got spread around town. It started with a real estate transfer notice in the News Sentinel that said Bob and Judy Frost, who live on Bluff Drive, had sold their house to Rob and Erin Frost. Turns out, however, that the senior Frosts are just prudent folks doing a bit of estate planning. "Erin and I aren't going anywhere for a long time, and most importantly, I hope my parents aren't going anywhere for a very long time," Rob Frost says.

Muddy Motoring

An elderly motorist drove his Honda Civic right through the construction zone in Market Square Tuesday evening, pausing only when his car slammed into a small tree, leaving a few auto parts behind. He backed up and drove out of the park onto Union Avenue and departed west, the wrong way on the one-way, leaving onlookers, including Metro Pulsers, agape,

A Good Man Gone

Captain George Whitfield of the Knoxville Fire Department died last week after struggling for months with the after-effects of an aneurysm. Several years ago, Metro Pulse told the story of how Whitfield, who looked like G. Gordon Liddy and was known as one of the finest among firefighters, was awakened in the dead of a cold December night and led a crew through a wall of fire and up the front stairs of a fully-engaged Old North Knoxville boarding house to try and rescue a young woman who was trapped on the third floor. Whitfield's crew fought flames and choking smoke with a fire line, but were unable to find the girl in the dark bedroom in the rear of the house where she had fallen. They were willing to die trying. There'll be big boots to fill at Station #3.