Ellis Millsaps: Commercial Break, Pt II

 Rock and roll has been the soundtrack to my life but there were many commercial interruptions, On the radio that brought me the music and on the television which once it arrived in the mid-1950s was always on when we were home. I'm cursed with recollection of sixty year old TV jingles with still pop into my head uninvited. (“Sing it over, and over again, Fros-ty Morn.”

The Millsaps of Mansfield always muted commercials except during the Super Bowl when we would often mute the game instead of the commercials. I still mute commercials but I'm too inattentive to get them all and there are some commercials I enjoy.

 Some commercials I not only mute but have to look away from: animals being mistreated, the Navage ad in which a woman holds a clear tank of saline solution over her nose and circulates snot through it.

 There are entertaining commercials-- mostly from insurance companies-- but some TV ads are absurd. For example,the ones where car companies tell you everyone gets the employee discount. That is patently false. They don't have an employee discount. Such a discount would be one where employees get a better price than the general public but if everybody gets it there is no “employee discount.”

 Then there are the ads that urge you to use their product when you don't need it, like the Tide commercial which warns about “invisible dirt.” I really worry about invisible dirt (This shirt looks clean but I better wash it because it might have invisible dirt.) And the Cascade ad which encourages us to run the dishwasher even if we have only a few dirty dishes because it saves water compared to washing them by hand. The last time I checked Cascade costs considerably more than water.

 The commercials I enjoy? Progressive has many storylines running at the same time. We love the antics of Flo and Jamie but their best series is the one this guy,, a good actor, exercises intervention to keep new homeowners from turning into their parents. It's SNL level humor. I look forward to new episodes the way I used to with “Twin Peaks.” 

- - Ellis Millsaps

Ellis "Da" Millsaps is a recovering Attorney but has worn many hats over the years: father, bus boy, stand-up comedian, novelist, wiffle ball player, rock'n'roll band manager, and at one time wrote a popular and funny column for The Covington News. A Fannin Co. mountain boy originally, Mr. Millsaps now stays at the mill village of Porterdale by way of 20 years in Mansfield. Usually funny and at times irreverent and subversive, he leans left in his political philosophy but can always be counted on for a pretty darn good write-up. The Chronicles are proud to have him involved...

Good Cop, Bad Cop: A Novel by Ellis Millsaps

Ellis Millsaps: All Star Break

  *ed note: This piece was written by Ellis on September 8th.

OK there's no All Star Game this year and hence no All Star break. As a matter of fact we’re two-thirds of  the way through this sixty game season and MLB has managed to pull this off fairly well.

The  Braves are in good shape. As it stands now we would be the second seed in an eight game league tournament and play the seventh seed, a third place team in one of the divisions  

It looks as if we might have come up with a second reliable starter, young Ian Anderson. How far we can go in the playoffs likely depends on whether Cole Hamels comes off the injured list this month and reliably fills the third spot. We have the best and deepest bull pen in either league. We have six starters batting over 300, Austin Riley is on a tear, Freddy just completed an 18-game hitting streak and Albies will return soon. Oh, and we have excellent defense.

 If we're able to return to a full schedule next year, I don't want to see all the pandemic rule changes retained. I don't like the seven inning doubleheader games. Even worse is the start extra Innings with a man on second rule. It isn't fair for a reliever  to receive loss or lose a save because a runner on second base --which he didn't put there-- scores on a bunt and a sacrifice fly. I don't want to see these extended playoffs again. Keep one wild card team and make all series four out of seven.

 I don't like these rule changes because they mess with the history of the game. Baseball has been keeping records for a hundred and fifty years. fans like me rely on these like the Bible. Some of these changes don't really mess with the records. I surprised myself by finding that I have become accustomed to the designated hitter rule. The American League has had this rule  for forty-seven years. That's long enough that it's already part of the history and I confess I like to see that extra bat in the lineup. Likewise with the new rule that a pitcher coming in from the bullpen must face at least three batters. It speeds up the game and I think makes it more interesting. 

- Ellis Millsaps

Ellis "Da" Millsaps is a recovering Attorney but has worn many hats over the years: father, bus boy, stand-up comedian, novelist, wiffle ball player, rock'n'roll band manager, and at one time wrote a popular and funny column for The Covington News. A Fannin Co. mountain boy originally, Mr. Millsaps now stays at the mill village of Porterdale by way of 20 years in Mansfield. Usually funny and at times irreverent and subversive, he leans left in his political philosophy but can always be counted on for a pretty darn good write-up. The Chronicles are proud to have him involved...

Good Cop, Bad Cop: A Novel by Ellis Millsaps

Ellis Millsaps - Son of a Preacher Man - Chapter 8. Rock of Ages: Let Me Hide

- Read previous installments of Son of a Preacher Man -

Son of a Preacher Man

A Rock And Roll Cowboy Grows Up Southern Baptist

Chapter 8 

Rock of Ages: Let me Hide

You might get the impression from the last two chapters that I was well on my way to becoming a juvenile delinquent. No, in elementary school ( didn't have middle school then) it was just smoking in the woods, the hijinks that resulted in school paddling's with a few minor thefts thrown in that were necessary to prevent me from being seen as the goody-goody chickenshit preacher's kid in the neighborhood and at school. In high school I would graduate to minor criminal vandalism that resulted in rewards being offered for the unknown perpetrators, but nothing that endangered anyone was involved.

 My church life remained unaltered. I was sort of like the 50s TV show ”I Led Three Lives” but in my case there were just the two. It's noteworthy and probably fortunate for me that very few kids from my class at school (I recall only two) and very few kids from my immediate neighborhood with whom I associated attended my father's church. i.e. few chances for anybody to rat me out.

 I attended Sunday school every Sunday-- not that I had any choice-- but I didn't mind, rather enjoyed Sunday morning services. They didn't interfere with any TV I wanted to watch. ( All three networks carried televised church services.) I obtained a white, gold and blue medal for one year’s perfect attendance, a gold wreath around it for the second year, and bars which hung down from it for succeeding years. I looked like a small three-star General with this brass hanging from the pocket of my suit or sports coat (everybody dressed for church back then) on Sunday mornings.

 By age nine I could recite the books of the Bible in order and could recite a few Psalms and select New Testament passages. I was the undisputed all-age champion at something called sword drill. 

In one of these sword drills someone, usually an adult, stands before the group and says “Attention!” The kids stand erect with their Bibles at their sides. Next,” Draw swords.” Contestants bring their Bibles to chest level, title cover facing heaven, one hand underneath with the other  on top. The adult then announces a Bible verse, e. g, Job 3:17, then says“Charge!” The first contestant to locate the passage steps forward and and reads it.

 It was as close as I could get to the gunfights of my beloved TV westerns and here, I was the fastest gun in town.

 Summers, if it didn't conflict with My Little League schedule, I attended Baptist summer camps, first Camp Pinnacle, a mountain retreat near Clayton, Georgia, and later Camp Glynn, located in the marshes near Brunswick. I looked forward to camp. Yeah, there were the daily church services, but there was swimming, canoeing and various sporting activities. At Camp Pinnacle there was a contest with an elevated smooth log parallel to mattresses on the ground underneath,  across which two combatants would shimmy to the center and slug it out with pillows until one went down. At Camp Glynn we learned to catch crabs with chicken necks and how to disengage them without getting pinched. ( Although I don't remember eating crab, or for that matter an artichoke or a pizza I didn't make myself from a Chef Boyardee box, until I was in college.) At camp we braided necklaces, from which often hung an also braided cross, from a colorful plastic material called gimp, a name I wasn't to hear again until I saw Pulp Fiction in 1994.

 More about my sister Wylene. When she was an upperclassman in high school and I was around seven years old she supervised various youth groups and activities. I would later caution my children, “Beware of any organization that refers to you as ‘youth’. Hitler Youth, Communist Youth, Baptist Youth, they all have an agenda which doesn't involve thinking for oneself.”

 But we youth loved Wylene’s groups. There would be games like Red Rover on warm summer evenings. I remember she would host “soup parties” where each kid would bring any can of Campbell's Soup and she would dump them together in one pot. Although we always disparaged the kid who brought onion, we thought it was a great adventure eating the soup.

- Ellis Millsaps

 Ellis Millsaps is a recovering Attorney but has worn many hats over the years: father, bus boy, stand-up comedian, novelist, wiffle ball player, rock'n'roll band manager, and at one time wrote a popular and funny column for The Covington News. A Fannin Co. mountain boy originally, Mr. Millsaps now stays at the mill village of Porterdale by way of 20 years in Mansfield. Usually funny and at times irreverent and subversive, he leans left in his political philosophy but can always be counted on for a pretty darn good write-up. The Chronicles are proud to have him involved... 

**Also: be sure to check out the first chapters of Ellis's new novel...

Good Cop, Bad Cop: A Novel by Ellis Millsaps

[Ellis Millsaps] - Who Is That Masked Man? Part I

As you know there's a blight of bad news out there, some getting worse daily, but I've seen two items recently that give me hope.

 A week ago today (today being July 5th) I saw a clip on TV where a reporter wanted to find out how effective facial masks are in controlling covid-19 spread. He visited a researcher and they conducted a test. Somehow the scientist set up eight disks coated  in something that could  retain water droplets and, after bacteria formed, display them on the disks.

 The reporter performed four times without a mask: talking, singing, coughing and sneezing and then repeated the experiment wearing a simple cloth mask. With the maskless test the drops ranged from a sprinkle with talking to a deluge with sneezing. To my amazement there was a zero transfer of  droplets through the mask even while sneezing.

 I was astounded.  Initially scientists told us masks didn't help. Now it appears they are near perfectly effective in preventing transfer of the virus. What that says to me is that if everyone wore masks in all social situations the spread of the virus would be stopped cold. In four weeks we could take them off and go on about our business.

 We need a federal mandate to require masks. We're not going to get that before January but some states have done this and all could.

 The problem is enforcement. We're going about this backward. We don't have the resources to expend looking for people without masks and citing them. The onus should be placed on businesses and all other places open to the public. All should post signs saying no one may enter without a mask. Law enforcement officials should make random spot checks on establishments. If there's anyone inside not wearing a mask, shut the business down for a week for the first offence.

  Some people will disregard the Walmart greeters and enter anyway. You know, those people who insist they have some spurious right to disregard  public health. ( You may not wish to vaccinate your children but you can't send them to school without doing so. Same principle) When this happens the business must call the authorities who will arrest that person.

 The second bit of hopeful news is that many large corporations are boycotting Facebook and the list is growing. Facebook can control false information, hate speech and conspiracy theories; they just have no incentive. Facebook is a major reason we now have an inept president.

 The next move is for the boycott organizers to provide a list of companies who advertise on Facebook and encourage consumers to boycott those companies. That would bring Zuckerberg to the table. No more “We know we have a problem and we’re working on it.”

Part II to follow...

- Ellis Millsaps

Ellis "Da" Millsaps is a recovering Attorney but has worn many hats over the years: father, bus boy, stand-up comedian, novelist, wiffle ball player, rock'n'roll band manager, and at one time wrote a popular and funny column for The Covington News. A Fannin Co. mountain boy originally, Mr. Millsaps now stays at the mill village of Porterdale by way of 20 years in Mansfield. Usually funny and at times irreverent and subversive, he leans left in his political philosophy but can always be counted on for a pretty darn good write-up. The Chronicles are proud to have him involved...

Good Cop, Bad Cop: A Novel by Ellis Millsaps

Ellis Millsaps: Liberals on the Warpath

 The Cleveland Indians have changed their nickname to the Guardians effective next year.( Guardians of what?  Foster children?) There's no more Washington Redskins. Until they come up with another name they're called the Washington Football Team. The Atlanta Braves, the Florida State Seminoles and eventually the Kansas City Chiefs will lose their monikers in the next few years.

 Okay, with the Redskins I get it. ( And by the way DC didn't pick that name. They got it the same way Atlanta got the Braves. In the 1930s the Boston Redskins moved to Washington.) That name is widely seen as a denigrating term. They've been the Redskins for over ninety years and I think that for the next ninety they should be called the Washington Palefaces.

 But with the others it seems to me to be political correctness taken to absurdity. Liberals see some fragment of Native Americans protesting these names and they knee jerk ”me too.” I don't think the average Native American wakes up worried about the name of the Cleveland Indians.

Yes we took their land and killed the vast majority of them, but taking on the names of their warriors ( will San Francisco, that liberal enclave, escape?) seems to me to be an act of contrition, admiration for the vanquished foe. I'm at least 1/16 Cherokee just on my father's side. (Hell, maybe I can open a casino.) and I don't feel any insult to my Indian heritage of which I am proud by Cleveland naming its team the Indians.

 And what of other ethnic or cultural groups with sports teams named after them? New Englanders aren't up in arms over New York calling their team the Yankees. I'm part Cherokee but with my Scotch Irish heritage I'm considerably more Celtic. I'm not at all upset that Boston named their team after my clan-- even though they mispronounced it. Similarly I don't hear rednecks up in arms over the North Carolina Tar Heels, nor rodeo performers  bothered by the Dallas Cowboys.

 So the Braves will be forced to change their name and tomahawk logo. We can go back to being the Bean Eaters but that's not very southern. Better would be to be called the Atlanta Grits. Grit is a good thing, somewhat akin to bravery, but that's not my first choice. Rather than revive an old Boston name or naming ourselves after cuisine I think we should bring back an old Atlanta professional baseball name. We should be rebranded as the Atlanta Black Crackers. That would be authentic and would represent the majority of Georgians. 

Contributing Writer & Editor Emeritus of The Piedmont Chronicles

 Ellis Millsaps

Ellis "Da" Millsaps is a recovering Attorney but has worn many hats over the years: father, bus boy, stand-up comedian, novelist, wiffle ball player, rock'n'roll band manager, and at one time wrote a popular and funny column for The Covington News. A Fannin Co. mountain boy originally, Mr. Millsaps now stays at the mill village of Porterdale by way of 20 years in Mansfield. Usually funny and at times irreverent and subversive, he leans left in his political philosophy but can always be counted on for a pretty darn good write-up. The Chronicles are proud to have him involved... 

Good Cop, Bad Cop: A Novel by Ellis Millsaps

Ellis Millsaps: Junk Mail

 I'll never be lonely again. Since I gave him twenty bucks Uncle Joe
texts me at least once a day, sometimes Kamala, occasionally his wife.

Same is true of The Lincoln Project and I didn't give them any money.
I just filled out checked boxes on a questionnaire. I texted them back
but there's nobody reading them, just the algorithms and they only
read bank card numbers and the checked boxes. I texted each of them
with an idea I have for an anti -Trump ad.  I received no
acknowledgement of my texts. I've gone further and texted simply,” Is
anyone reading this?” No reply.

My idea invokes the 1994 Dionne Farris hit “I Know” ( “what you're
doing and it's not gonna work this time.”) Google the song and listen.
Imagine the song played with images of Trump coming down the escalator
in ‘16,  boarding of the plane after the Tulsa rally this year, tie
undone and orange makeup on the collar, children in cages, etc.

During the instrumental breaks in the song, a badass rock repetition
of the “Gimme Some Lovin’ riff, we could take breaks between the
verses and Trump could speak some of his greatest hits, e,g,,” rapists
and drug dealers,’’ "good people on both sides,” “inject people with
disinfectant,’’ “Two Corinthians” etc.

I've decided to go old school and send him (Maybe it will get there
before the election.) a letter. Somebody has to read his mail. I thought
handwritten or maybe with letters cut out of magazines to get their
attention, but I’ve now decided on a typed business letter. I'll send
the same one to Uncle Joe, Senator Harris and the campaign's Director
of Communications.

I'll let you know if I get a reply.

- Ellis Millsaps 

 

Ellis "Da" Millsaps is a recovering Attorney but has worn many hats over the years: father, bus boy, stand-up comedian, novelist, wiffle ball player, rock'n'roll band manager, and at one time wrote a popular and funny column for The Covington News. A Fannin Co. mountain boy originally, Mr. Millsaps now stays at the mill village of Porterdale by way of 20 years in Mansfield. Usually funny and at times irreverent and subversive, he leans left in his political philosophy but can always be counted on for a pretty darn good write-up. The Chronicles are proud to have him involved...

Good Cop, Bad Cop: A Novel by Ellis Millsaps

Ellis Millsaps: TPC Post 1002: A Space Oddity

 

I was so inspired by Marshall's decision to revive the CF Floyd series that I decided to try my hand at it, to elaborate and further develop the themes he advanced there. After all, I’m one of the few left standing here at TPC. So here goes.

( I realize this is not the 1002nd post but if I'd written it when I conceived it it would have been. I had to finish reading Jane Smiley's “Some Luck,'' which I highly recommend, before I could start writing, but I liked my title and kept it.)

 Why in the world should I have to get a government mandated license to drive an automobile? That's an infringement on my liberty. and not only is there the license requirement. you have to take a government mandated test to show you can drive in their politically correct manner and that's a far more invasive test than the Covid test they're trying to mandate.

 And what about all their “rules of the road” enforced by government employed jackboot thugs? If I want to drive on the left side of the road that's my business and not the government's. They do it in Britain..

 Now I can hear you lily livered liberals saying the government has a right to restrict my liberty for your protection. Well that's the same ridiculous argument you use to try to make me get your Covid vaccine so that I don't infect your kids.

Well you can just keep your snot nosed, mask wearing kids away from me and mine. Those masks spread disease, you know.

 And don't get me started on that mandatory polio vaccine. If liberty loving Americans can't fight off a minor bout of polio they're not what they claim to be. It's just your weak willed socialists like FDR that can't. And you know he was a racist don't you? Not as bad as that dike Eleanor, but still.  *ed. note: it's actually TPC's 1004th post but who's counting (plus, that wouldn't give us an inversion of 2001 naturally). Also, I believe Da's post here will finally kick off our next Point; Counterpoint that several of you have been asking for. As always, thanks for reading - MBM

Contributing Writer & Editor Emeritus of The Piedmont Chronicles

 Ellis Millsaps

Ellis "Da" Millsaps is a recovering Attorney but has worn many hats over the years: father, bus boy, stand-up comedian, novelist, wiffle ball player, rock'n'roll band manager, and at one time wrote a popular and funny column for The Covington News. A Fannin Co. mountain boy originally, Mr. Millsaps now stays at the mill village of Porterdale by way of 20 years in Mansfield. Usually funny and at times irreverent and subversive, he leans left in his political philosophy but can always be counted on for a pretty darn good write-up. The Chronicles are proud to have him involved... 

Good Cop, Bad Cop: A Novel by Ellis Millsaps

And A Word From Ellis Millsaps

 Fuck you, Donald Trump. 

- - Ellis Millsaps

Ellis "Da" Millsaps is a recovering Attorney but has worn many hats over the years: father, bus boy, stand-up comedian, novelist, wiffle ball player, rock'n'roll band manager, and at one time wrote a popular and funny column for The Covington News. A Fannin Co. mountain boy originally, Mr. Millsaps now stays at the mill village of Porterdale by way of 20 years in Mansfield. Usually funny and at times irreverent and subversive, he leans left in his political philosophy but can always be counted on for a pretty darn good write-up. The Chronicles are proud to have him involved...

Good Cop, Bad Cop: A Novel by Ellis Millsaps

Ellis Millsaps: How I Spent My Summer Vacation, (Part One?)

  I spent a lot of time on my porch this summer watching hummingbirds and squirrels. Of the many squirrels I've seen in my section of Porterdale, only once have I seen one on the ground. Squirrels here travel by tree, rooftop and to a great extent by utility line. We have some really thick electrical lines on West Palmetto, I assume because when installed they were furnishing power to a huge mill on the river, the one up river from the one that is now The Lofts and equally as large.

 The last of the hummingbirds left for Costa Rica in late October. Now it's just me and the squirrels.

 As noted in a prior post, I spent most of my indoor summer hours reading. I started this reading binge in New Orleans while staying in my daughter's in-laws’ empty for the summer house. I looked at their book collection and discovered The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead, a writer with whom I was familiar. In my semi-educated opinion Whitehead along with Donna Tartt are the best American novelists at work today.

 The Nickel Boys won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2019. It is not a fun read. It will leave you unsettled. It's based on an incident I remember from the news in 2014. After years of complaints about abuse at The Dozier (reform) School For Boys,  South Florida University students at the behest of the state discovered over a hundred (the number is still growing) unmarked graves around the school’s official graveyard. These were the graves of boys who over the years were reported to have escaped the facility. In fact they were each beaten to death. Whitehead gives the story through fictional characters but spares no detail of the gruesome and well-researched factual account. I highly recommend this book.

 Over the rest of the summer I read fifteen more books. I rated them for myself on a scale of one to five ranging from a low of Fahrenheit 451 at 3.0 to three books I gave the full five. Some of these  books were really long. War and Peace, Anna Karenina and The Magic Mountain are over 4000 pages all together. My three books rated five were The Nickel Boys, The Secret Commonwealth by Phillip Pullman, the second in a proposed fantasy trilogy which like his earlier prequel trilogy rivals Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, and the only non-fiction book on my list, The Body by Bill Bryson. If you've read any Bill Bryson you know that he is a widely self-educated man. He has no medical training that I know of but this work is erudite and fascinating,  It contains interesting tidbits such as the fact that all of the penicillin in the world came from the mold on one cantaloupe in Peoria, Illinois discovered during WWII, and that ,in spite of what we’ve always been told, hair and fingernails do not grow after we're dead. Look it up.

 I've continued this reading frenzy in the fall and I am now up to twelve more  lengthy volumes finished. Maybe I'll talk about them next time or maybe I'll talk about something else. Till then, TTFN. 

Contributing Writer & Editor Emeritus of The Piedmont Chronicles

 Ellis Millsaps

Ellis "Da" Millsaps is a recovering Attorney but has worn many hats over the years: father, bus boy, stand-up comedian, novelist, wiffle ball player, rock'n'roll band manager, and at one time wrote a popular and funny column for The Covington News. A Fannin Co. mountain boy originally, Mr. Millsaps now stays at the mill village of Porterdale by way of 20 years in Mansfield. Usually funny and at times irreverent and subversive, he leans left in his political philosophy but can always be counted on for a pretty darn good write-up. The Chronicles are proud to have him involved... 

Good Cop, Bad Cop: A Novel by Ellis Millsaps