If you notice some grease on the cashier’s safety glass it must be Lexington’s Pizza Week! Pizzerias, pizza parlors and buffets are serving up two slices or a small pie for $5 this week, but if you’re used to getting your pizza at a gas station for under $4 for you and your afternoon Tinder date then Speedway’s got you covered.

Speedway is doing a special promotion for Pizza Week. $5 gets you all the pizza under the lamp and a choice of Steel Reserve or an Arizona Tea tallboy.

Kitchen limitations haven’t stopped them from getting creative. Shift Supervisor Carol shows us her Pizza Week creation.”It’s our normal Good-To-Go pepperoni pizza topped with our chili sauce and a few squirts from the cheese pump.” She squeezes out a few airy sounding darts of the nacho sauce. “The real innovation is the Tornado Stuffed Taquito Crust. We call it ‘The Unlimited Gas Card’.”

The Speedway on Euclid Avenue is preparing for the expected rush by filling up 64oz cups with marinara sauce.

Pizza fans were eager to get their first slice. One gentleman in a tie-dyed shirt with “Smell My Finger” written inside an outline of Kentucky showed us his different eating techniques.

First he folded the pizza down the center “like they do in New York”. Next he twisted it around to eat it from the back “Chicago style”. Then he took a drag from his vape pen and released the cloud as he took a bite. “Steamboat Admiral SlugWave”.

We noticed one of the most popular ways to enjoy the Speedway Pizza Week pizza was waiting in line behind someone buying lottery tickets.

A man who had just finished eating two hotdogs without a bun was enjoying his dessert of smoking a cigarette outside by the propane tanks. He said he wasn’t aware of the Pizza Week promotion. “Sure, I guess I’m a foodie. I eat everyday. Like it helps me survive, you know? Any you know Herschel?”

With recent closings of local restaurants and businesses, plus looming construction projects like CentrePointe promising even more commercial space, Lexington’s leading economists are saying we’re headed towards a “Space for Rent” boom.

“If you like paying property taxes and getting on the first name basis with panhandlers, this is the opportunity for you,” explained local economist, Dwight Privilege, as we sat down inside a recently vacated restaurant. “One man’s location hosting 7 failed restaurants is another man’s treasure,” Privilege stood as he opened a fridge, “Ooooh looks like they left some Kombucha.”

Privilege says some common mistakes small business owners make are hosting open mics, being near Triangle Park and not putting an Authentic Kentucky Gargoyle on the roof. “They keep out bad mojo,” he winked, handing me a business card. Privilege’s son Doug is the “Owner/Chief Gargoyle” at “Kentucky Authentic Gargoyles” in Lexington’s booming distillery district.

Despite the economist’s praising of vacated spaces for investment, Privilege himself calling them “the next Snapchat,” some, like his son, are still insistent on filling those spaces with businesses. Logan Botyard, a Chase bank loan officer, ran us through some of his previous approvals. “Let’s see, before it was a gourmet popcorn warehouse, it was a tattoo parlour that only did tattoo’s of Harry Dean Stanton in a Y’all shirt, and before that a mustache growery.”

Botyard himself is wearing a tie-dyed shirt with “Smell My Finger” inside an outline of Kentucky. Pictures on his desk facing him are of himself at the Nightmarket PhotoBooth in a series of goofy hats and mustaches. “But I think those only failed because the owners were distracted by other projects. Like the stores themselves were very popular, so I think a record store that only sells cassettes should do really well here.” Botyard turns to a partial record collection in his office. “You mind if I put on some Modern Lover’s while we crunch these numbers?”

Back at the abandoned restaurant, Dwight Privilege is directing some employees hanging up a ‘For Lease’ sign. “They actually work for my son’s gargoyle shop but they know what’s really paying the bills.”

A couple walks up as the guys are rolling out some Bourbon Barrel bar stools. They put their arms around each other’s shoulders as they look optimistically at the building. “What if we opened something with a real  ‘Kentucky Feel’?”

Drivers headed out Nicholasville may notice some activity around The Summit at Fritz Farm. The shopper’s paradise, which opened this past summer with advertisements somewhere between a new Lumineers album and a pill for sleep apnea, has began construction on a border wall.

The construction project will bring more employment opportunities. The careers section of the Summit at Fritz Farm website added a new listing for Watchtower Guard for Northeastern Block. Job details include:

• Securing the perimeter of our luxury apartments, shops and restaurants.
• Intimidating representatives from rival malls in town. (Hamburg, Fayette Mall, Palomar, Turfland)
• Ensuring that customers have clearance to make purchases in this sector
• Includes shift meal at Shake Shack
• Paid time off for golf or yacht racing

“We aren’t trying to keep anyone out with this project.” says the Summit’s General Overseer Condor Van Rockabilt. ”We are just easing the minds of those within.”

A sign on the door of his office reads, “No Oxford Collar No Deck Sandal No Service.”

The Summit’s grounds are littered with popsicle sticks and flyers for the grand opening of a store advertising itself as a “high end Sharper Image”, or, The Sharpest Image.

Stores like this abound within its acreage: New Navy, Super Pac Luggage, Richard’s Sporting Good’s.

“The wall will ensure our clients a sense of community,” Van Rockabilt explains as we tour the food court. We pass by Woodford Reserve Bourbon Chicken and Steak In-A Chalice. “But we also hope a sense of exclusiveness. They’ve earned the right to shop here.”

We pass a board advertising a new store opening: For Boat Owners Only.

“Everything you buy here is tax deductible.” says Van Rockabilt.

Asked about the new job postings, specifically the intimidation of employees from rival malls, Van Rockabilt was eager to quote from The Art of War.  “Are you familiar with Sun Tzu? ‘Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.” Behind him, some goth kids are being escorted out by a security guard in a stretch limo golf-cart.

A meet and greet discussion between best-selling authors John Grisham and Sue Grafton held at the Kentucky Theater Wednesday night was hijacked by local lawyer and king of aliases Darryl Isaacs who entered the event carrying a VHS copy of The Firm for Grisham to sign.

Isaacs seized the microphone from the hand of known Grishamite Bill Meck, who clutched his treasured copy of The Rainmaker to his chest. As he commandeered the mic, Isaacs began waving around his VHS copy of The Firm like a piece of evidence implicating a big insurance company in a mesothelioma lawsuit.

“I keep it on the shelf between Kentucky Revised Statutes and Judge Judy’s E! True Hollywood Story,” Isaacs said in reference to his prized VHS tape. Then he pulled out the magnetic tape so he could read from his favorite chapter.

Grisham was in town promoting his newest legal thriller The Rooster Bar. Isaacs, a known fan of Roosters, the local sports bar, kept asking him how he gets his wings. “I like all drummies,” Isaac said.

The moderator attempted to take the microphone but Isaacs said he hadn’t finished questioning the witness yet. “Don’t you think it would be more realistic if your lawyer characters constantly gave themselves new nicknames?” the Heavy Hitter/Kentucky Hammer/Indiana Jones Impersonator asked.

Isaacs told the two literary giants present that he wrote all his own bus ads. “Most people read OUR work on the bus,” he said gesturing with his thumb at himself and Grisham. He even offered to create Grisham’s next dust jacket, promising lots and lots of smoke. All he asked in return was that Grisham make the villain in his next book mesothelioma.

Then he tried to buy The King of Torts title from Grisham before he realized that tort does not stand for tortellini.

The moderator unplugged the microphone only to discover that Isaacs brings a hammer-shaped megaphone with him everywhere he goes. “HOW MANY NICKNAMES DO YOU HAVE, JOHN?” he asked before he was escorted out by security.

After Isaacs had been removed, an obviously nervous Gary Becker shakily held the Q&A microphone and asked, “Permission to approach the bench?”

Driverless cars have been licensed in several states but are not yet legal in Kentucky. However, as technology advances, it is looking likely that soon you will be able to sit completely still on Nicholasville Road and let a robot alternate accelerating and suddenly stopping for you. As scientists at Google and Tesla make developments in personal vehicles, a group of innovators in Lexington are testing and preparing to have driverless construction cranes manning the CentrePointe construction site by the year 2024.

“We’re still claiming that the construction project is nearing completion,” said CentrePointe spokesperson Carl Webb. “We are towing the company line and still telling folks that the CentrePointe hotel will be ready in time for the 2010 Alltech World Equestrian Games, as promised. However, we’re also getting these driverless cranes ready, just in case.”

In the presentation Webb previewed the driverless construction cranes and claimed that the autonomous cranes can be controlled via the internet, whose service will be provided by Spectrum, just to make the project a little more frustrating than necessary. “With this technology we can be getting little to no work done 24/7. “

Some worry that the cranes could become self aware and realize the meaningless of their existence and then try to finish the project themselves. Webb scoffs at the idea. “That kind of conscious decision making won’t happen in our lifetime.”

Governor Matt Bevin promised to soon release formerly top secret files on the Goatman, a half-man, half-goat creature reputed to haunt the Pope Lick Creek bridge in Louisville.

Twenty-five years ago the Kentucky State Police sealed their investigation into the cryptid. Bevin accidentally stumbled upon the files while investigating whether the KSP was investigating him.

“Time to let the people and cryptozoologists of Kentucky draw their own conclusions,” Bevin said, in a series of increasingly misspelled tweets. Bevin then added the caveat, “As long as that conclusion does not involve me or anything I’ve done as governor or private brilliant business man.”

Bevin takes credit for releasing the classified information but critics have been quick to point out that the files were scheduled to be released soon by law.

Allegations have circled for years that the Goatman is not the only half-man half-animal who haunts the bridge. “He wasn’t a lone demon,” said conspiracy theorist and local news personality Lee Cruse. Cruse, whose garage is covered in photos pinned to corkboard of different combinations of possible Goat Men, elaborated, “We have 6 missing train linemen. A sheriff’s daughter. And a whole congregation of house pets. And people still wanna tell me I’m wasting my time.” Cruse then continued to talk about the creature at length as he tinkered with his model train set.

“I’ve been saying the government has known about a second demon on that bridge for years,” Cruse said. “The video shows there was someone else involved, and that someone looks a whole lot like Ted Cruz’s dad.”

Texas Senator and former Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz denies he is the son of a centaur.

“If that Goatman hadn’t started haunting that bridge we would’ve never went to Vietnam!” roused Cruse. Cruse then went on to claim his now defunct radio show was taken off the air because he was “digging too close to the truth.”

“There are… stranger things… at work here,” Cruse said before looking into a camera and winking. But no camera was actually present. “Ask Jeff Ruby.”

Steakhouse magnate Jeff Ruby claims to have assassinated the Goatman in the 80’s but says he failed to drag the corpse back with him. “I would have liked to have mounted it on the steakhouse wall.”

Bevin believes the Goatman is still alive. The Governor is excited to get to the truth because he says the Goatman is what inspired him to go into politics. “Seeing what a half-goat, half-man creature that lived in a swamp eating injured deer and baby possums could accomplish inspired the rest of us.”