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Today’s Air Loaf features CL’s Chanté Lagon speaking with Andisheh Nouraee about some of those profiled in this year’s Atlanta’s 11 Least Influential list. From the unemployed dairy goat, to the bummed out cellist, to the non-racist guy with racist paraphernalia, we celebrate those who lack influence.

Air Loaf is broadcast weekdays on 1690 WMLB-AM at approximately 8:10 a.m., 12:20 p.m. and 6:20 p.m.

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Atlanta’s 11 Least Influential People is Creative Loafing’s annual tribute to the Joe and Josephine Averages of the world who try, but don’t necessarily succeed.

Winners 11 through six will be revealed, one-per-day, until Wednesday, November 12, when the 11 Least Influential issue hits newsstands.

PAT LANZO: His latest bar sign name-drop's MLK's assassin. (Photo by Joeff Davis)

No. 6 — Pat Lanzo

Can’t convince people he’s not racist.

Pat Lanzo insists he’s not a racist.

“I believe people are equal,” he says, “As long as they earn their keep as well as me.”

Nevertheless, the proprietor of The Peach bar and restaurant in Paulding County says that people often mistakenly assume he’s a racist.

The main reason, he says, are the signs he posts outside his restaurant. “Damn Yankees May Have Taken Our Niggers But Not Our Guns,” said one. “Obama Gives Us Hope Dreams and Maybe A New Holiday — Thats My Nigger” read another.

“The minute someone says the N-word, you’re labeled racist,” he explains.

But his signs aren’t the only reason some people think Lanzo is racist.

For years Lanzo hosted a neo-Nazi music festival at The Peach. He also displays in his bar a mannequin dressed in Ku Klux Klan garb.

Is Lanzo’s klannequin a gesture of support for the violence perpetrated by the Klan against black people?

“I don’t support violence,” he says. “[The KKK] is part of history. The original form of the Klan was to run Yankees out of the South.”

Lanzo says he welcomes all people at The Peach.

LANZO AND HIS KLANNEQUIN: “The minute someone says the N-word, you’re labeled racist,” he says. (Photo by Joeff Davis)

“I have blacks that come into my restaurant that treat me as equal,” he say proudly, adding, “I’ve had to throw more white niggers out of my restaurant than black ones.”

He does not, he says, have any hate in his heart

“If I was gonna hate anybody, I’d hate my ex-wife.”

See all of Atlanta’s 11 Least Influential People of 2008.

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Atlanta’s 11 Least Influential People is Creative Loafing’s annual tribute to the Joe and Josephine Averages of the world who try, but don’t necessarily succeed.

Winners 11 through six will be revealed, one-per-day, until Wednesday, November 12, when the 11 Least Influential issue hits newsstands.

SHANNON FELSOT: Can't keep her home from being burglarized. (Photo by Joeff Davis)

No. 7 — Shannon Felsot

Can’t stop her home from being burglarized.

In September, Shannon Felsot returned from a mid-afternoon visit to the gym to find her Southwest Atlanta home had been burglarized.

“I didn’t realize anything was wrong until I sat down at my computer and saw it wasn’t there,” she says. “They took all my computers, cameras, my TV, jewelry, pretty much what they could grab.”

A freelance graphic designer who works from home, Felsot’s stolen computers contained years of her work.

“It’s strange to think that someone bought my life for $20 on the street,” she said.

Though the burglary happened in the middle of the day on a busy street, and the thieves used her giant, green “herby curby” garbage bin to wheel away her possessions, no one came forward to identify suspects to police.

Felsot had a sense of foreboding.

“I just knew I was gonna get broken into again,” she says. “They already know what I have and they knew I was going to replace it.”

She was right.

Last week, her house was burglarized again. Her alarm system scared the assailants away, but not before they managed to haul her TV through a window and into some bushes outside her house.

Because her schedule is irregular, Felsot believes the person(s) breaking into her house live(s) or hang-out nearby, attacking her home when they see her leave the house.

She can only speculate, however, because Atlanta Police did not take fingerprints after the burglaries – as is department procedure.

“Me getting broken into is not that severe,” she says. According to Atlanta Police, residential burglary was up 23 percent citywide during the first half of the year — and 40 percent in the police precinct where Felsot’s home is.

Felsot expects to be burglarized again any day.

“I’m constantly waiting for the [alarm company to call].” (more…)

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Atlanta’s 11 Least Influential People is Creative Loafing’s annual tribute to the Joe and Josephine Averages of the world who try, but don’t necessarily succeed.

Winners 11 through six will be revealed, one-per-day, until Wednesday, November 12, when the 11 Least Influential issue hits newsstands.

GEORGIA BIGFOOT: "The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it." (Friedrich Nietzche, 1844-1900)

No. 8 — Georgia Bigfoot

Can’t convince anyone he exists.

Pity Georgia Bigfoot.

He wanders our state’s forests in a lonesome purgatory of disbelief.

He has no friends. He has no family. And unlike his prodigiously pawed peers of the Pacific Northwest, he has comparatively few professional Bigfoot-seekers stroking his ego by attempting to track him.

Last summer it looked briefly like his luck had changed. His existence, it seemed, was about to be acknowledged, posthumously.

In August, Clayton County cop Matthew Whitton and former Clayton County corrections officer Rick Dyer claimed to have located the remains of Georgia Bigfoot in North Georgia.

The media was momentarily riveted, and Dyer and Whitton were reportedly paid $50,000 for their find by Bigfoot hunters.

A little late for him to fully enjoy it, it seemed, but Georgia Bigfoot had finally arrived.

Or not.

Dyer’s and Whitton’s manimal carcass was actually a monster costume covered in entrails, then frozen in ice.

When the Sasquatch-sicle finally melted, Dyer and Whitton were outed as hoaxsters. Whitton was fired from the Clayton County police force and the duo were sued for the $50,000.

Forgotten in all the media coverage, however, was the true victim of the hoax: Georgia Bigfoot himself.

Sure, the fact that the corpse was a fake probably means he’s alive, healthy, and wandering the state’s forests right now.

But this solitary, woodland-dwelling creature has once again, through no fault of his own, found himself trapped in the existential no-man’s land between greedy hoaxsters and a skeptical public.

What’s the point of existing if no one believes you exist?

See all of Atlanta’s 11 Least Influential People of 2008.

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Atlanta’s 11 Least Influential People is Creative Loafing’s annual tribute to the Joe and Josephine Averages of the world who try, but don’t necessarily succeed.

Winners 11 through six will be revealed, one-per-day, until Wednesday, November 12, when the 11 Least Influential issue hits newsstands.

WILLIAM TELLULATER: Will.i.am.not.getting.any

No. 9 — William Tellulater

Can’t find anyone in Stockbridge to hook-up with.

William Tellulater (as in, ‘I’ll tell you my real last name later’) is a half-assed Henry County Romeo.

William claims to want have sexual relations with people in and around Stockbridge.

We think this because William has a Facebook group called “stockbridge” where membership is based on “Common Interest — Sexuality” and the group’s description is listed simply as “meet locals — hook up.”

Unlike most people trying to leverage the power of social media to find a mate, William includes no photos of himself smiling, laughing, flexing, or holding a beer bottle while leaning into a friend who is also holding a beer bottle. William does not tell you what kind of music (if any) he may like, what TV shows (if any) he watches, or whether he was elated or disappointed by Tuesday’s election results.

William doesn’t even reveal if he wants to have sex with men, women, or both.

All he offers is an e-mail address, and an open invitation to “hook-up.”

Not surprisingly, of Stockbridge’s more than 22,000 residents, only one has seen fit to join William Tellulater’s online hook-up club: William Tellulater.

See all of Atlanta’s 11 Least Influential People of 2008.

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Atlanta’s 11 Least Influential People is Creative Loafing’s annual tribute to the Joe and Josephine Averages of the world who try, but don’t necessarily succeed.

Winners 11 through six will be revealed, one-per-day, until Wednesday, November 12, when the 11 Least Influential issue hits newsstands.

No. 10 — The Bum Bot

THE BUM BOT: Can't solve Atlanta's homelessness epidemic. (Photo by Joeff Davis)

Can’t solve Atlanta’s homelessness epidemic

The Bum Bot is a homelessness-fighting robot.

Its inventor, former military weapons engineer Rufus Terrill, built it by attaching a disused meat smoker to an electric wheelchair and armoring it with thick, black rubber.

Terrill steers the Bum Bot from inside his Midtown bar, O’Terrill’s, using a handheld remote control. He can see where the Bum Bot is going through a real-time video feed from a wireless camera mounted on its body.

He uses the Bum Bot, he says, to get rid of homeless people — to keep them from his bar or from camping on the property of a nearby day care center, of which he is on the board of directors.

The Bum Bot is armed with four weapons: a flashlight, a loudspeaker, the fact that it’s really creepy-looking, and a high-pressure water cannon.

As Terrill explains it, he, his patrons, and his neighbors are victims — not just of homeless criminals, but of a city that does not treat trespassing, theft, or vagrancy as serious problems.

The Bum Bot is Terrill’s attempt to address the problem on his own.

Does Terrill’s Bum Bot work?

Well, it’s really good at generating publicity for the bar. The Bum Bot has made Terrill a local media favorite, garnered him a sympathetic story in USA Today, and earned him a hilarious feature on The Colbert Report.

However, the Bum Bot is evidently lousy at tackling homelessness and the problems associated with it.

Walk or drive around O’Terrill’s at any time of day and you’re likely to see dozens of homeless men and women.

The Bum Bot’s fatal flaw is conceptual. Terrill is trying to attack homelessness by making homelessness unpleasant.

But being homeless was pretty damn unpleasant long before the Bum Bot came along. People don’t live on the street because it’s fun. They live on the street because they’re poor, running away from an abusive relationship, mentally-ill, or substance-addicted.

A steroidal Roomba might make someone get up and move from the spot where they were sleeping, but it’s not going to make anyone un-homeless.

See all of Atlanta’s 11 Least Influential People of 2008.

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Today begins Creative Loafing’s annual countdown of Atlanta’s 11 Least Influential People, a tribute to the Joe and Josephine Averages of the world who try, but don’t necessarily succeed.

Winners 11 through six will be revealed, one-per-day, until Wednesday, November 12, when the 11 Least Influential issue hits newsstands.

NO. 11 — JOSHUA RILEY: Can't sell SUVs anymore. (Photo by Joeff Davis)

No. 11 — Joshua Riley

Can’t sell SUVs anymore

It wasn’t that long ago that SUV brands like the Hummer, the Expedition, the Denali and the Suburban were kings of road in metro Atlanta.

Cheap fuel and easy credit made the behemoths affordable to millions of middle and working class Americans, while high profit margins and lax federal fuel efficiency regulations for large vehicles encouraged car makers to flood the market with them.

“2006 and 2007 were prime time for SUVs,” says Joshua Riley, a 20-year veteran of the car business. “Prime time.”

Today, he says, the SUV business has crashed.

“The Hummer is a dead model,” he says with no emotion.

How about the Suburban?

“The Suburban is a dead model.”

By dead he doesn’t mean they’re not running. He means they’re not selling.

People who want large cars, are now going with a sedan or a mini-van.

In his opinion, two things killed the SUV: volatile gas prices and tighter credit.

“Banks don’t want to loan money on them anymore.” Lenders are less sure of consumers’ ability to pay back large car loans, so they’re jacking up interest rates, thus steering buyers to smaller cars.

Riley says dealerships, including his own, are reluctant to take SUV trade-ins because they can’t easily turn around and sell them like they used to.

“I’ve had a Ford Explorer sitting here forever,” he says.

He estimates his income is down 50 percent from 2006. He can’t afford to go on vacation, go out to eat, or buy new clothes.

And what kind of car does Riley drive?

“A Toyota Corolla. I bought it used.

See all of Atlanta’s 11 Least Influential People of 2008.

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In November, CL honored Barbie Bandit male co-conspirator Benny Herman Allen III as one of Atlanta’s 11 Least Influential People.

Despite acting as the “inside man” during the infamous bank heist, Allen was little more than a footnote in the coverage.

Today’s AJC.com coverage of the Barbie Bandit sentencing hearing drives home the point:

Amid a gaggle of media jamming the courtroom, Staley ordered Miller to serve 2 years on the bank theft and drug possession charges with 8 years on probation.

Benny Allen III, the Bank of America teller who was their inside guy, was sentenced as well.

He was sentenced as well.

For how long? Who cares?

It’s not like he’s a white woman from Gwinnett County or anything.

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Atlanta fifth Least Influential Person and notorious online dater John Fitzgerald Page is back.

(photo by Joeff Davis)

Yesterday he posted a video guide to online dating on MySpace.

Before you ask, yes, he’s kidding.

Hats off to John. The video is very funny. I suspect, however, the people who make sport of beating up on him online will find something nasty to say.

Be sure to watch the final scene and the credits.

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Recent Creative Loafing cover star John Fitzgerald Page appeared on CBS this morning.

Atlanta’s 5th Least Influential Person got to tell his story to “The Early Show’s” Julie Chen, but only after a voice-over actor read painful excerpts of his infamous Match.com letters on-air.

“Any regrets about the e-mail?” Chen asked.

“No, I don’t have any regrets. I should be able to correspond with people as I wish,” was the reply.

Ugh.

Watch the full video here.

(Sombrero tip to Brooke Hatfield for sending me the link.)

(photos by Joeff Davis)

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In light of some of the comments I’ve read online about Atlanta’s 11 Least Influential People, I want to clarify a few things. (more…)

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The countdown is over.

CL’s complete list of Atlanta’s 11 Least Influential People is now available online.

Enjoy.

Or don’t.

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Creative Loafing’s countdown of Atlanta’s 11 Least Influential People is a tribute to women and men everywhere struggling to meet the challenges of life in a modern American city.

The top five will be revealed online at midnight. It will also appear in the Nov. 8 print edition of Creative Loafing, which hits newsstands tomorrow.

No. 6 — Troy Bronsink

Pastor with