While the rest of the country was reacting to the vandalism of the world-famous Hollywood sign in Los Angeles, folks in Northern Kentucky had to deal with some vandalism of their own, as the iconic “Florence Y’all” water tower was transformed to read “Florence You All” by a group of unknown, unnecessary, but still technically grammatically correct miscreants.

Traffic on I-75 (or Interstate Seventy-five) was backed up for hours while travelers stopped to take pictures in front of the water tower that’s (or that is) literally the only thing Florence is known for.

It’s (or it is) still unclear who’s (or who is) responsible for the graffiti, but the water tower wasn’t (or was not) the only location in Florence the vandals targeted. The sign outside the local Chuck E. Cheese was changed to say Charles Edward Cheese, while the sign at JCPenney was changed to James Cash Penney.

Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the town
The former Vice Mayor was nowhere to be found.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes North Lime Donuts soon would be there.

The WKYT newsteam was all snug in their beds,
While visions of natural disasters danced in their heads.
Barbara Bailey in her ‘kerchief, and Chris in his cap,
The team settled in for their long winter’s nap.

When out in triangle park there arose such a clatter,
The news team sprung up to see what was the matter.
Down to the skating rink they flew like a flash,
Stopping just briefly so Officer Don could report on a crash.

When they arrived, they found a red sleigh
And a man delivering presents, that man was Jim Gray.
He snapped his two fingers and what should appear?
But Vice Mayor Steve Kay, leading eight tiny reindeer.

Gray sprang to his sleigh, and he spoke up himself
“I must hand out these gifts and clean up the commonwealth.”
The next thing that happened gave Officer Don quite a thrill
Jim Gray’s sleigh took off like a chopper and headed north to Louisville.

“Now, Katina! Now, Carly! All you dancers and vixens
Leave Minardi hall, there’ll soon be an NCAA conviction.”
Jim Gray next headed off to Eastern Kentucky
To grab a lump of coal for some politician unlucky.

He dropped off a four star recruit at the home of Mark Stoops
And a book on how to keep kids from transferring for UK Women’s Hoops
An out of court settlement was wrapped up for Morgan and Morgan
Immanuel Baptist Church was gifted a brand new pipe organ.

The last stop he made was to the Governor’s home.
There he found cookies and his favorite chai latte with foam.
When he knelt down to place his gift under the tree,
He found a box waiting and called out “this one’s to me!”

He unwrapped the gift and opened the box
And the look on his face was quite unorthodox
A tear came to his eye as he realized with cheer
He and the governor got the same gift for each other that year.

Gray went to his sleigh, and gave his reindeer a whistle
They galloped and the sleigh took off like a missile
He looked down and called out as his red sleigh took flight
“Merry Christmas to all, and to all a goodnight!”

A video of a woman’s racist tirade at Louisville’s Jefferson Mall went viral on Wednesday, and while the content is disturbing to watch, the biggest victim appears to be the woman’s nine-year-old grandson Brandon, who was forced to find out the hard way that not only is his grandmother a racist pile of garbage, but that his Christmas gift from her was purchased at JCPenney.

“I asked her for a new game for my Playstation,” Brandon told us, “but it’s pretty clear from the video that all she got me was some socks or maybe a shirt or something, and that she’s a horrible racist.”

While it’s uncertain from the video what caused the obvious Trump voter’s bigoted rant, her words are being universally criticized.

“You’re probably on welfare,” said the woman who’s probably on Social Security.

Also drawing criticism is the lack of reaction from the other shoppers in line, who stood by and said nothing while the woman hatefully berated the two women in front of her.

“That’s just the policy at Jefferson Mall,” one customer told us. “The customer’s always alt-right. Also, this was that lady’s third racist tirade so far that day, it just happened to be the first one we got on camera. We don’t have the iCloud storage to capture them all.”

Brandon is not looking forward to unwrapping the gift at his family’s Christmas get-together in a few days.

“If there’s one thing I know about Christmas,” he said, “it’s that there’s no place for racism, or socks as presents.”

With chestnuts roasting next to an enormous fire (that you’ll hear more about tonight at 11) WKYT’s annual office Christmas Party came to a close in its typical fashion, with Rob Bromley telling everyone about the time he stopped by a now famous barn in Bethlehem, on the night Jesus Christ was born.

Bromley began the story with a bit of a history lesson for the younger staffers, “So you see at the time there was a census going, and back then they didn’t go door to door like the millennials do now, you had to go to them.”

“I didn’t want to show up to the birth of our Lord and savior empty handed, I wasn’t Sean Moody going to a dinner party,” he paused and had a deep gulp of eggnog as laughter engulfed the room, “so I brought the little guy some frankincense, and keep in mind this was back before everyone was super into essential oils.”  Bromley added, “Sure they call me a wise man now, but back then I was just a dumb kid.”

While Bromley’s gift of essential oils to the crew was well received, others in attendance had participated in their annual secret Santa gift exchange.

Victor Puente started off the exchange, “I got Monique Blair a starter deck for Magic The Gathering, or as I called, the gift of the Magi-c.”

Blair was confused and thought it was a white elephant gift exchange, “I apparently got Bill Bryant, but I had just picked out a cute candle and some body spray that I was hoping to steal back.”

Bryant, “I feel bad I just got Chris Bailey a Starbucks gift card but Monique got me the most wonderful candle and some lovely body spray.”

Eccentric Lexington playboy Dudley Webb received quite the wake-up call this week after he was visited by three ghosts during his nightly slumber; the ghosts of CentrePointe Past, Present, and Future.

Webb, the millionaire miser responsible for the massive real estate failure known as CentrePointe, was quite upset after being awoken by the first ghost.

“Bah, Hamburg,” grumbled a half-asleep Webb when the ghost of CentrePointe Past startled him in his dungeon chamber.

Webb, or Scrooge McDudley as the ghost called him, was shown how great CentrePointe used to be, when it was just The Dame, and whatever else used to be there.

Then Webb was visited by the ghost of CentrePointe Present, which showed him how awful the project looked in its current state, a desolate wasteland void of any hope to be completed. The ghost also showed Webb an apparition of Tiny Jim, a boy who could have become a senator if only CentrePointe had been completed on time, or even eight years late, but instead will only be known as a former vice mayor.

Finally, Webb was visited by the ghost of CentrePointe Future, which basically showed him the same thing as the ghost of CentrePointe Present.

Employees at Lexmark International are still trying to recover from what optimists are calling “the worst scavenger hunt anyone’s ever attempted” and pessimistic employees are calling “crimes against humanity.” The printer enterprise attempted to boost employee morale after the recent sale and split of the company by holding a fun scavenger hunt but things did not go as new CEO David Reeder had planned.

“We were just trying relax everybody, we had no idea something like this was even possible,” said a shaken and somewhat bewildered Reeder. “I mean I never really understood the technology behind laser printers, I had no idea the lasers were capable of such destruction.”

The scavenger hunt began innocently enough with some team building exercises and a “go around the room and remember everyone’s name game” that for some reason Todd from IT was having a real tough time with.  However, as soon as the scavenger hunt began, “you could tell something was amiss,” began Greg Washington’s (from accounts payable) extremely slow recounting of the events,  “it’s as if someone had planned on it derailing before it even began.” Just then we decided to find out what happened from someone else, anyone really, and grabbed Carol Simmons from sales “The original game plan for the scavenger hunt was stolen by that intern we had working here from Wake Forest, so I just kinda had to throw something together this morning.”

The first clue had Carol sending a team of fun-loving employees from research and development to check the paper tray of an “MX310de” (which we’re going to assume was some kind of printer) to find the next clue and that’s when things began to unravel. “I removed the paper jam and the entered the word on the sheet into the very user friendly touchscreen and then…” employee Bill Mullins said before he broke into tears upon reliving the horrors of that day.

“Look, things didn’t work out like we thought. There were a few more casualties than last year but all things considered, I think the scavenger hunt served it’s purpose,” Reeder said. “This event came at a considerable cost. We had to print off a map for each team and if you’ve ever purchased an ink or toner cartridge from us you know that a printing a few hundred maps means this event cost us a few hundred thousand dollars.”

The news team at LEX 18 has been on its best behavior the last few weeks after believing that Sunrise correspondent and leather jacket aficionado Lee Cruse was an Elf On The Shelf.

The confusion began on Cyber Monday, when Dia Davidson mistook a napping Cruse for the popular children’s holiday toy. Rumors of a spy from the North Pole quickly spread around the office, causing several staffers to adjust their behavior to avoid being placed on Santa’s “naughty” list.

“I’m a big believer that Santa is always watching,” said Conroy Delouche. “So when I saw the elf in the studio, even though he was way smaller than all the other Elf On The Shelf toys I’ve seen, I made sure to cut back on some of the rough language I’ve been using, at least until January. No more ‘dangs’ or ‘shoots’ for this guy.”

Once Cruse discovered his coworkers thought he was an Elf On The Shelf, he decided to keep the charade going while pretending to go on vacation.

“I’m glad Lee Cruse was on vacation this week,” said Hayley Harmon. “If the elf had seen the things Lee gets away with around here, he’d definitely be getting coal in his stocking.”

Though many at LEX 18 had fun getting into the Christmas spirit, not everyone was up for having Lee on the shelf at the studio.

“I don’t like this elf thing spying on me man.  I’m just saying man, to me, it’s just like another window the government can watch us through, man,” argued Alan Cutler.

This isn’t the first time a vertically-challenged employee has been mistaken for a children’s toy at LEX 18. A few years ago, Bill Meck took pictures of Chris Goodman at all of Lexington’s most famous landmarks, as he thought Goodman was a Flat Stanley left at the studio by students from Liberty Elementary.

Thirsty Thursday became Hungover Friday at Two Keys Tavern this week, as the bar was forced to remain open overnight after a bouncer misplaced each of the establishment’s two keys.

“We take the name Two Keys very seriously, it’s why we’ve always just had two keys for the door,” an employee told us. “And sure enough, Brad lost both of them.”

The mishap meant the bar had to stay open past its usual closing time of 2:30 AM, causing dozens of college kids to hang around until Friday morning, despite the fact that they could no longer order alcoholic beverages.

“You don’t have to go home, but you also don’t have to leave here,” yelled the bartender once the two keys had not been located. “A round of waters on the house!”

It’s still unclear when the tavern will finally be able to lock its doors, but we were told having a locksmith just change the locks and issue a new set of keys was completely out of the question.

“Management doesn’t joke around about the whole two keys thing,” another bartender told us. “They fired a guy once because he tried to have a third key made. As far as I can tell, we’ll be open until they find at least one of the missing keys. It’s a real Highlander situation when it comes to those keys; there can only be two.”

Count Chris Bailey among those that can’t seem to leave work at work. Bailey took to loudly forecasting partly clouded judgement as he attempted to win Bill Meck-like affection from the crowd at Shamrocks Tuesday evening.

“It looks like we’re going to see some partly clouded judgement with scattered hangovers in the morning,” Bailey shouted to the crowd as he raised his glass. The crowd was moderately annoyed with the shouting of Lexington’s second most charismatic weatherman but they loosened up when Bailey offered to buy a round for everyone.

“It was like he really wanted us to like him,” said Shamrocks regular Frank O’Sullivan. “He came up and shouted in my ear, ‘hey man drink this.’ I said I didn’t really want to and he said ‘that’s cool man, it’s a low pressure system, no worries. Then a few drinks later he went over to my wife and said ‘hey I’ve reached my dew point baby, you know, the point where I’ll DEW anything’ then he fell off the stool laughing at his own joke. Then he bought the whole bar some more drinks, everything after that is pretty foggy. Crap, now I’m doing the weather puns.”

The night ended for Bailey after a few more drinks, bartender Brian McShane took the keys to what ended up being Bailey’s moped and called his mother Barbara to come pick him up. “Everything was pretty normal after that, his mom came and picked him up around 8:45 and everyone got back to having a good time.”