tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-54026733106153013242024-03-13T04:09:56.282-07:00Gaga at the Gogo...Ellis Millsaps aka "Da"http://www.blogger.com/profile/02671041257771422723noreply@blogger.comBlogger64125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402673310615301324.post-36116165613678683622012-07-25T09:32:00.000-07:002012-07-26T09:00:04.751-07:00Movie Madness<span style="font-family: Calibri;"> Except for Libertarian views on certain social issues, I’m a
lefty when it comes to politics. Think </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Bill Maher. So I’m supposed to play the gun control card
when it comes to this horrific scene at the movie </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">theater in Colorado, but I’m not doing that because I’m looking
at the joker in the deck.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
don’t blame the NRA, I blame Hollywood. I don’t blame Charlton Heston, I blame
Heath Ledger.</span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There
are a handful of movies of which I recognize their brilliance and power, that I
never care to see again. Off top of my head <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Deer Hunter </i>and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Raging Bull</i> come
to mind, although after thirty years I’ve seen <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Deer Hunting </i>again, now able to face that scene in the jungle
hut without my initial horror. </span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
foremost on that list is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Dark Knight.</i>
Although I saw it in the middle of the day when prices are cheaper and crowds
smaller I can remember no specifics of Heath Ledger’s amazing performance
because I’ve blocked it from my mind. What I remember is that he portrayed pure
evil in a way not approached before in my experience. He embodied and indeed it
seemed became pure evil in a way that disturbed me to watch, and which I knew I
never wanted to see again.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
believe it killed those people in Colorado, and I believe it killed Heath
Ledger.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While I
think our allowing assault weapons in the hands of citizens is insane, I don’t
think a ban would have stopped this man in Colorado from committing mass
murder. And while I’m more troubled by background checks—should the fact that a
citizen who has sought psychological help prevent him protecting himself from
the crazies who haven’t? – no such law would have prevented this nutcase from
arming himself. He had no “red flags”.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>amassed this arsenal<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>over a period of months in preparation for a
movie premier he knew was coming, and calling himself “ The Joker” portrayed in
the flesh what he had seen on the screen.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When the
smoke clears I’m sure we’ll find he’s watched <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Dark Knight</i> more than once. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">My weak
mind saw that I shouldn’t revisit that place. His weak mind was sucked into the
dark side.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hollywood
certainly has the right to make that film. The First Amendment, as it should,
guarantees it, but just because you have a right to say something does not
exonerate you from its effect on your listeners. </span></div>Ellis Millsaps aka "Da"http://www.blogger.com/profile/02671041257771422723noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402673310615301324.post-37110610550671869852012-05-17T10:42:00.000-07:002012-05-17T11:02:22.431-07:00IGLESIA<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For almost a year now, I’ve been
attending a Spanish speaking Baptist Church.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This may come a surprise to you
given some of my writing on religious subjects and churchgoers, but two things
are important to note:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 40.5pt; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>1) I’m learning to speak and understand
Spanish and I get lots of practice there, and<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 40.5pt; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>2) I know this Baptist thing. I can talk that
talk even in Spanish.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 40.5pt; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Also
the music there is excellent. In addition to the church thing, I frequent
Hispanic markets and restaurants. My secretaria is of Mexican </span><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">descent.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 40.5pt; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This heavy dose of interaction with Latinos
brings with it two observations:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 40.5pt; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The first should be obvious to my
American readers (Norte Americanos).</span><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> T</span>hese are really hard working, law abiding
citizens. They do the work </span><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">the rest
of us have gotten too fat and lazy to do, and are glad to get the work.(But </span><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">they do
get fatter after being here, what with all that motorized </span><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">transportation
and fast food.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 40.5pt; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I use the word citizen loosely. Most are not,
unlike the Irish, Italians, East Europeans and eventually Africans who came
before, permitted citizenship. The vast majority of our laws that they break
are a result of their being denied the rights and privileges the rest of us
obtained by being clever </span><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">enough
to be born here: driving a car, going to school, working.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 40.5pt; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My second observation is that they are
much better parents than other Norte Americanos of similar economic status and
education. Ever see a Latino </span><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">yelling
at their children in a grocery store?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 40.5pt; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> O</span>k, I said two, but one more. With the
prior waves of emigration that built this country, the second generation lost
the ability to speak the tongue of their </span><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;">parent’s
motherland.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Children of South and
Central American immigrants not only speak fluent English, but Spanish as well.
The niños translate for me in mi iglesia.<o:p></o:p></span></div>Ellis Millsaps aka "Da"http://www.blogger.com/profile/02671041257771422723noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402673310615301324.post-11176499644422530012012-04-10T11:29:00.004-07:002012-04-10T12:01:45.596-07:00I Ham the Walrus You'll need:<br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="margin: 1em 0px;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";">One 6-7 lb. semi-cooked ham, or smaller or bigger,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A bay leaf</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";">the butt portion<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jalapeno hot sauce<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";">1 lb. fresh asparagus<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>12 oz. colorful </span></div> egg noodles<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";">4 cans chicken broth<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One pack</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"> split peas</span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";">1 can vegetable broth <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>4 eggs<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";">1 bottle dry white wine<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Half and half<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";">Onions<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One Marie</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"> callender</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"> pie shell</span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";">A carrot<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One pkg. Kroger</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"> creamed spinich</span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";">One stalk celery<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Swiss cheese<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";">1 banana pepper<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Parmesan</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"> cheese</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";">8 oz. mushrooms 14 oz can</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"> ripe olives</span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";">Butter<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";">Olive oil<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";">Flour<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Serves 3 meals</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"> to 6 people</span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";">Fresh herbs (thyme, parsley)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>or 4 Lost Boys</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"> at 3 am</span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>First bake a ham.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Take your ham, the cheapest one you could find, wash it <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and remove that little round plastic circle sticking in the big end. (What’s that about anyway?)<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You’re going to cook this ham on a rack over a baking pan sufficiently large to hold two cans of chicken broth. Go ahead and put the pan of broth in while the oven is preheating then put in the rack with the ham on it when you hit 325.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A 6 or 7 pound ham will take about two hours. Turn it over after an hour; you may need to add more liquid at this point. It’s done when a meat thermometer inserted in its thickest point reaches 140. Turn the oven off and take the ham out to cool. I can’t emphasize this enough. Stop cooking it when it’s done. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At this point you should be proud of yourself. As you peel off a piece of the outer brown part and eat it you’re saying wow! this is good, and wondering what the hell am I going to do with all this ham?<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Step two:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I Ham the Eggman<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once your ham has cooled enough to stop dripping succulent juice into the broth, put the ham on a cutting board and pour the broth in a saucepan. Deglaze the broth pan by boiling a half cup of dry white wine in it a few seconds. Add wine to broth. Now take a pound of fresh asparagus and break each spear where it wants to break. Take the tender tops and steam them for five minutes then plunge them in cold water. Preheat the oven 375. While this is happening, sauté two tbs. of finely chopped onion until tender. Next take one Marie Callender deep dish pie shell (or else make your own. The other brands all have sugar added). And make some slits in the bottom and every two inches around the sides. Cook in preheated oven for five minutes.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While this is happening, heat the pan of broth along with the tough ends of the asparagus and the juice from the can of olives to a boil then reduce to simmer for 20 minutes or so. Or 15 or 30. This isn’t rocket science. Crack 4 large eggs into a blender. Add enough half-and-half to make 2 cups of egg and cream mixture and a few drops of hot sauce and blend until smooth.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In your half-baked pie shell, put some of your asparagus cut into one-inch pieces, not more than a layer. Put the rest in a baggie and refrigerate. Add the sautéed onion and about ¾ cup of chopped ham followed by a half cup of grated of Swiss cheese. Pour in the egg mixture. This should fill the pie shell. (We made those slits so the pastry wouldn’t puff up. If it does anyway, poke it back down. We need the room). <o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bake in the preheated oven for around 45 min. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pie is done when firm to touch in center. Again, stop cooking it when it’s done .<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Step three: Goo Goo Goo Goo Goo, Goo Goo Goo Goo Goo, Goo Goo Goo Goo Goo,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Goo Jube<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pie’s still cooking. Finely chop one small onion, half of a large banana pepper, mince three cloves garlic, and cut mushrooms in wedges. Sauté in 3 tbs. butter and 3 tbs. of olive oil (you know the drill,) until tender, adding the mushroms and garlic only when onions and pepper are almost tender. Take a tablespoon–sized soup spoon, heap it with a much plain flour as will stay on it and add to pan. You need 3 of these. You’re going to be stirring constantly for a while now. Add more oil if necessary to saturate all the flour.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hope you’ve got a timer on that pie.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now take the ham-broth-wine mixture, discard the asparagus and add a few tablespoons to the pan, stirring until you achieve uniform consistency. Repeat this process until all the liquid is gone. DO NOT just dump a bunch in while you still have a thick paste unless you want lumpy gravy.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Remove from heat add a handful of parmesan cheese, not the powder, the refrigerated shred. Stir until melted.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Prepare colored egg noodle spirals per package directions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While this is happening, microwave until fully thawed one packed of Kroger creamed spinach, or else make your own. Bird’s Eye and such don’t use real half and half.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Stir the creamed spinach, along with half the olives each cut in half, into your sauce mixture. Add a few drops Jalapeno hot sauce. Don’t go crazy with this. You can always add more.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now you need another cup of chopped ham.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pull the sections of the ham apart and cut/scrape off all the fat. Do not feed this fat to your 120 lb. Lab no matter how much interest he shows in the fat removal process. He doesn’t need it. He can lick the cutting board when you’re through. Feed the fat to cats. They love it. (Unless your cat is Black Tuesday, who won’t eat anything that doesn’t have a picture of a cat on the label). <o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Drain noodles when done. Mix ham, noodles and sauce. Let sit for at least a half hour before eating. Oh, and you’re probably going to need a stock pot to mix all this in. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Step Four:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>English Rain<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wash one package of split peas. Chop one onion, one carrot, one celery stalk, and the other half of your banana pepper. Mince 3 cloves garlic.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is a lot of chopping. Maybe your son will drop out of <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>graduate school about now and he’ll do some of this chopping for you. <o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mix 2 cans chicken broth, one can vegetable broth, one cup white wine and enough water to make 8 cups total liquid. Put this in a saucepan and add peas and chopped vegetables along with the bone from your ham and a bouquet garni.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bring to a boil and reduce to simmer for a long time. Hours. Until the peas turn to mush. You’ll have to stir occasionally and probably add more water.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Remove bone and cool for dog. Add a cup of chopped ham. Remember the asparagus you put in the baggie? You didn’t get up in the middle of the night and eat it in a pool of ranch dressing did you? No? Good. Chop it up and put it in the soup.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You now have quiche for breakfast, soup and ham sandwiches for lunch and the piece the resistance, the Goo Jube, for dinner. The cats had a feast and the dog got a bone.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yes you still have ham left. Either freeze it or prepare to eat ham sandwiches for weeks.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt; text-align: justify;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: "Alaska","sans-serif"; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span>Ellis Millsaps aka "Da"http://www.blogger.com/profile/02671041257771422723noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402673310615301324.post-55050915154382735542011-11-15T13:25:00.000-08:002011-11-15T13:28:27.522-08:00More on favorite films When listing my favorite films, those I watch over and over, I forgot one: Who Framed Roger Rabbit?<br />
The only singing is done by toons, but that Jessica Rabbit can really belt out a torch song, (not Kathleen Turner doing the singing I recently learned, ) and it's just as funny to me as it was 15 viewings ago.<br />
In fact it contains what I nominate for the funniest line ever in a movie, up there with, "Can't swim? Hell, the fall will kill us." It goes something like this.<br />
"Delores , can the rabbit stay here a coupla hours?"<br />
"I don't know Eddie. He's not gonna do anything crazy is he?"<br />
And I now have a new film on the list, the first since Mama Mia. I first watched Pirate Radio one day this summer, then watched it eight more times in the next two weeks (HBO).<br />
It has a splendid cast headed by Phillip Seymore Hoffman, (my pick, you may recall, as the best male performer in cinema today,) but Kenneth Brannaugh should have won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his protrayal of a tight-assed British bureaucrat.<br />
But what really makes the movie is the best sound track ever. All the songs are ones played on the radio in 1967, arguably the best year ever for rock and roll, and they're almost continuously playing.<br />
Also it has a just-keeps-getting-bigger lump in the throat ending worthy of It's A Wonderful Life.Ellis Millsaps aka "Da"http://www.blogger.com/profile/02671041257771422723noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402673310615301324.post-69780853609980435282011-11-02T15:14:00.000-07:002011-11-04T08:17:48.146-07:00Excess<span style="font-family: "Calibri", "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> </span>(I had intended to get all literary with this piece and introduce it with a quote which, until I tried to find it,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was sure is from Robert Pean Warren in All The King’s Men, which I’ve read at least three times. Anyway it’s essentially that drinking in excess is the only way that will do a man any good. [The author said “man” I’m sure.] if anybody can point me to the exact quote I'd appreciate it.)</span><br />
<div style="text-align: left;"></div><div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri", "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We recently learned that Amy Winehouse died from alcohol poisoning. According to the coroner’s report, she had no other drugs in her system, but had a blood alcohol level of .40, the over the limit line for driving both here and in the U.K. being .08. According to reports, a period of abstinence was followed by the discovery of her body surrounded by empty vodka bottles. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri", "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A friend of mine in the mid 1970's went with her roommate to the roommate’s home in Tennessee. There they went to visit some of the roommate’s friends. At the house they visited there was a guy named Moe. I don’t recall whether Moe did what he did on a dare or from pure exhibitionism, but I think it's safe to assume that Moe was already intoxicated when he opened the fifth of Jack Daniels, turned it up and downed the entire bottle. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri", "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Shortly thereafter Moe passed out and was the subject of ridicule until someone realized he wasn't breathing.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri", "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The punchline of this sad story is that Moe was no mo.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri", "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I found some humor in Ms. Winehouse's demise as well. It's in the British gift for wry understatement. Her official cause of death was labeled "misadventure."</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri", "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, consuming a gallon of vodka at one sitting is certainly an adventure gone awry.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri", "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri", "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div>Ellis Millsaps aka "Da"http://www.blogger.com/profile/02671041257771422723noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402673310615301324.post-66653208823963483782011-11-02T15:03:00.000-07:002011-11-03T10:50:28.367-07:00Eye Of The Beholder<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri", "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> You know everyone doesn't love Raymond. Me for one. He and his show might be very funny but I'll never know, because I can't stand the way Ray Ramano looks. Everybody has actors who are like that for them.</span></div><br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri", "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Another for me is Billy Crystal, but unlike Raymond, I'll watch some things with Billy Crystal because of the quality of the whole. And if I dont have to look at him, I think he's great, as in his narration of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> some </span>of the Ken Burns baseball series.</span></div><br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri", "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I used to feel that way about the guy from Home Improvement, which I never watched, but he's won me over--largely with his part in the fantasic film Galaxy Quest-- and I'm now OK with how he looks. I wouldn't want my daughter to marry him and produce grandkids with his weird face genes, but I don't have to change the channel when he comes on anymore.</span></div><br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri", "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is purely personal preference. Jack Palance and Don Ameche were weird looking, and I don't think this is a minority opinion, but somebody must have found their looks appealing or they wouldn't have got<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> those leading men roles. (</span> You'd have to pay me to watch City Slickers, which has both Billy Crystal and Jack Palance. )</span></div><br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri", "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some people feel this way about entertainers I like. Jerry Seinfield, OK, I can see that, but I know people who don't like to look at Meryl Streep.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> She doesn't have a classic movie star face,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> but I think she's beautiful.</span></div><br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri", "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have a friend who doesn't like to look at Cameron Diaz, and her eyes are a little weird, but he also doesn't like the looks of Uma Thurman. Can't see how anybody could think that.</span></div><br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri", "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There's only one female who comes to mind that I feel that way about, Kerri Russell. I wanted to watch that show she broke<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>out in, Felicity, because the story line appealed to me, but I couldn't get past my<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> distaste </span>with her looks.</span></div><br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri", "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The most outstanding example of this in my life involves a TV commercial. At my house we always mute the commercials, but there was one for which my friends and I had to kill the visual as well.</span></div><br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri", "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Courier New"; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Said commercial came on during Braves games a few years back. I guess it was for some exercise program, because its spokesman was a large bare-chested man with a buldging torso on which sat a tiny head. His image was so repulsive it was as if we were vampires and he was a crucifix. Shouts of "Agh! Agh! Man tits!" were heard as we tried to find the remote with our hands over our eyes.</span></div>Ellis Millsaps aka "Da"http://www.blogger.com/profile/02671041257771422723noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402673310615301324.post-75308541264060667252011-10-06T15:03:00.001-07:002011-10-18T08:28:26.391-07:00The Lost Boys and the Last Days off Wiffleball<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"> Boys come to my house in the middle of the night. I call them boys. They're in their mid-twenties. They were boys when I met them, and boys they remain.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"> They come in my bedroom at 2:00 A.M. exhorting Da to get up and play with them. Sometimes I do when I don't need to be up early. They consume everything consumable that they don't have to cook. When they leave it's as if a swarm of locusts has passed through, empty husks strewn everywhere.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"> But to understand about the lost boys and why I call them such, you first need to know about. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"> THE LAST DAYS OF WIFFLEBALL:</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"> A LOVE STORY</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"> We played wiffleball at least once a week for three or four years. We started as soon as it was warm enough and continued until it was too cold. It was never too hot and it took a lot of rain to stop us.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"> The players were me, my son and from three to twenty boys in their early twenties, occasionally a female or two. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"> Some of them had spent a lot of time at my house; most I had known since they were little; all were and are my friends. I could bore you to tears explaining our game and its elaborate rules-- how to turn a double play, (Base runners were all imaginary. There was diving by intrepid defenders, but no base running in our game.) how the cedar tree in left center (the green monster) came into play, but suffice it to say that we kept meticulous statistics and published them weekly on the interweb.<br />
And we lived from one wiffleball day to the next.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"> People regularly drove from Athens and Atlanta to play our game. I remember Daniel Lanford saying more than once that wiffleball was the only thing he looked forward to. He usually followed by saying how this showed that he had no life, but I knew at the time he meant he loved us and there was no place he'd rather be. <br />
We all felt that way.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"> Until the very end, almost all the boys who played this game had grown up together, gone to school together, played rec ball together, climbed the water tower together. The last summer of wiffleball the game had grown by word of mouth to include boys some of us had never met, so many that no one got to play that much.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"> We all thought, the original wiffleball "core" that is, that the next year we'd politely rid ourselves of the new kids and resume our old game. That was two years ago. There's been no game since. What happened was that most of them got jobs, went off to graduate school, got wives or demanding girlfriends that weren't of our circle, in short, grew up.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"> We didn't realize then that that last summer was the end of childhood, that that summer was the last time this circle of friends would be together. Oh, a lot of them will still get together at Christmas holidays, but it will never be the same as the summers of wiffleball, more like a class reunion.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"> They all grew up except the few who were left behind, the lost boys who raid my refrigerator in the night. They roam the Newton County night looking for what has been lost, and although I stay home and go to bed on time, I’m not blind to the fact that I’m also one of the lost and left behind.</div>Ellis Millsaps aka "Da"http://www.blogger.com/profile/02671041257771422723noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402673310615301324.post-18774226879017476342011-09-27T07:36:00.000-07:002011-09-27T07:36:06.830-07:00More to follow Hello fans,<br />
As you can see, I've pretty much taken the summer off from writing. I've been busy with other things and until lately without reliable help. (I don't type these things myself , short e-mails and texts constitute all my typing ).<br />
<br />
Look again next week, there will be at least one new post.<br />
<br />
THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE...... Ellis Millsaps aka "Da"http://www.blogger.com/profile/02671041257771422723noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402673310615301324.post-27865610056672017022011-05-18T08:42:00.000-07:002011-05-18T08:42:37.537-07:00"Come Saturday Morning, I'm Going Away With My Friend" <span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"> Jesus is coming Saturday. I know this to be true because I've read it in the newspaper, on the internet and even in "Doonesbury." Some preacher in California who's had people all packed to go before says his math was off last time but he's sure he's got it right this time.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"> So what does that mean for you? Well kids you can stop doing your homework and skip school. For that matter, you can stop heeding those commercials warning you not to try meth even once.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"> And your parents? Drop that plan to quit smoking. Take the rent money and spend it on crack.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"> This advice is only good if, like me, you're a Baptist. Because, you see, we Baptists believe "once in grace, always in grace" and that's a wonderful doctrine.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"> Methodists, Catholics and some other sects believe in "falling from grace." Thus they need to be on their really best behavior, get right with God if they're not real soon and go out and start proselytizing.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"> Sample conversation between a Methodist and Baptist this week:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"> Methodist: Brother, are you walking in grace? Would you like to kneel down and pray with me? The hour of his coming is nigh.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"> Baptist: Don't think so. Want some crack?</span>Ellis Millsaps aka "Da"http://www.blogger.com/profile/02671041257771422723noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402673310615301324.post-17422950548890059752011-05-16T09:17:00.000-07:002011-05-16T09:17:55.991-07:00Same Old Song Songs get recycled. Sometimes an artist will release a hit song and try to follow it with something that sounds much the same hoping to recapture that success. This was especially true when the recording company essentially owned the artist and called the shots.<br />
<br />
The Four Tops had a smash hit, the wonderful “Can’t Help Myself,” and followed it with the self-mockingly titled “Same Old Song,” which sounded a lot like the earlier song but not as good.<br />
<br />
Similarly, The Drifters’ “On the Boardwalk” was followed by “Up on the Roof.” I can just see the record company calling Tin Pan Alley and telling young Carole King, “Honey, we need you to write something for The Drifters which sounds like ‘On the Boardwalk.’” <br />
<br />
Jim Morrison kicked and screamed about it, but he was forced to follow The Doors’ single “Light My Fire” with “Love Me Two Times.”<br />
<br />
But what I really want to talk about is when people just copy an earlier tune and change the lyrics. Sometimes this is OK because it’s so obvious. Everybody has a “Bo Diddley.” Buddy Holly quickly followed it with “Not Fade Away.” The same song, but you can’t really sing “Bo Diddley” if you’re not Bo Diddley anyway. And just to cite one of many others: Springstein’s “She’s The One.”<br />
<br />
Other times songwriters just lift tunes and claim them as their own. Those bobbysoxers in the fifties had no idea Elvis Presley’s “Love Me Tender” (the only of his hits I know of that he “wrote”) is the Civil War ballad “Aura Lee” with substituted lyrics, but Elvis wasn’t trying to con anybody and the song was public domain.<br />
<br />
Not so with Gary Wright’s “Dream Weaver.” We’re not supposed to notice that the verses are Neil Young’s “Helpless”? This riles me. Neil only has about a dozen tunes which he recycles into hundreds of songs and this guy just rips one of them off?<br />
<br />
But Neil’s too nice a guy to sue.<br />
<br />
Not so the guy who wrote “He’s So Fine” for the Chiffons and sued George Harrison for “My Sweet Lord.” I must confess that I and nobody else I knew or heard of who grew up with “He’s So Fine” and walked around campus singing “My Sweet Lord” caught it. Maybe it was changing “doolang doolang” to “hare krishna” that threw us off, but once you know, it’s straight “He’s So Fine.”<br />
<br />
Sometimes, as with “My Sweet Lord,” the masking of the earlier tune is quite an accomplishment in itself. Have you ever noticed that the Indigo Girls only hit, “Closer to Fine,” is Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” slightly speeded up with some interesting harmonies? Beck’s “Loser” is sung over the “Midnight Rider” backbeat riff. And Gary Wright gets some measure of his due with Springstein’s “The Rising.” Sing the chorus of that song then the chorus of “My Love is Alive.” Where’s the difference?<br />
<br />
(Readers are invited to cite similar instances in the “comments” section.)Ellis Millsaps aka "Da"http://www.blogger.com/profile/02671041257771422723noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402673310615301324.post-43770081054323196562011-05-16T09:15:00.000-07:002011-05-16T09:15:54.642-07:00Flip Side And then there are those who refuse to keep doing the same old song. I imagine one of the reasons the Beatles started Apple was to get out from under Capital Records pressure to keep producing songs that make you feel happy (clap, clap) inside.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, they were probably so big by then they could have called the shots anyway, like, say, Bob Dylan. The record companies were happy to get whatever Mr. Zimmerman had to offer, but he at now famous times infuriated nearsighted fans by producing radically different sounds. (I must admit I fell into that group when he went on the Jesus binge)<br />
<br />
Springstein had his first big selling LP with “Born to Run”—itself a major departure from the style of his earlier albums—but “The Promise,” a video/cd box set I highly recommend, shows him going to great lengths to produce an album that would sound distinctly different from “Born to Run.”<br />
<br />
Some others with the gumption to keep changing their sound: Beck, never the same thing twice; Elvis Costello and Paul Simon going from folk to salsa to gospel to Afro-beat. <br />
<br />
It’s not coincidence that the artists just listed are or were at some time at the head of the pack.Ellis Millsaps aka "Da"http://www.blogger.com/profile/02671041257771422723noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402673310615301324.post-6047769979639688592011-05-16T09:14:00.000-07:002011-05-16T10:41:15.560-07:00Solitaire For a couple of years, while I watched T.V. I played guitar and wrote songs. One day it started to seem like work and I stopped. Now I play solitaire.<br />
<br />
I’m something of a manic-depressive. They don’t use that term anymore. Now it’s bipolar. People seem to be proud of being diagnosed bipolar but nobody liked manic depression. Being bipolar, you have a condition, an excuse, but if you’re manic depressive there’s something wrong with you dude.<br />
<br />
Anyway, I go through streaks of giddy creativity interspersed with periods of lethargy. This solitaire phase corresponds with one of the latter.<br />
<br />
But even playing solitaire for hours on end can be rewarding. You have to shuffle cards a lot, and I find that soothing. “Fl-l-i-i-c-k-k-k, fl-u-u-u-m-m-m-p-p-p” a magical seven times.<br />
<br />
I’m developing a philosophy of life based on solitaire. First of all, obviously, you face it alone. That and the playing of the game are in a way like Zen meditation, something that’s always there, like your breath, on which you can focus attention and maybe free your mind.<br />
<br />
As with life, if you can pay attention in solitaire, see what’s coming and have a plan for dealing with it, your odds of success are much better. Of course you can just automatically play whatever card you can and sometimes win by dumb luck, but if the cards are stacked against you, if it’s not in the cards, your best just won’t be good enough.<br />
<br />
There are parallels between playing solitaire and being a criminal defense attorney, the most obvious being that you have to play the hand you’re dealt and the cards are usually stacked so that you cannot win. But if you pay attention to the way the cards are falling, occasionally there’s an opening to pull victory from defeat---if you can see it. And of course you can occasionally win by pure dumb luck.<br />
<br />
So, Da, isn’t this just a rationalization for spending a big chunk of your life doing nothing more productive than playing with yourself?<br />
<br />
Well yeah.Ellis Millsaps aka "Da"http://www.blogger.com/profile/02671041257771422723noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402673310615301324.post-92131263070387694412011-03-28T12:12:00.000-07:002011-03-28T12:14:41.551-07:00More on Movies It seems to me we’re in a golden age of cinema today which rivals the studio glory days of the 1930’s. The nominees for best picture this year were largely outstanding, although I thought Inception was just too full of itself and I’m not about to watch the movie where the guy cuts his arm off.<br />
<br />
I attribute this in part to the wealth of independent producers who’ve largely replaced the studio system, and of course to technical innovations which the computer age has brought, but I think the biggest reason is the wealth of acting talent that has lately erupted.<br />
<br />
In the generations of actors immediately preceding the young crop, three, to my mind were preeminent: Dustin Hoffman, Jack Nicholson and Robert De Niro. The best actors of the current crop are Johnny Depp, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Sean Penn.<br />
<br />
Coincidentally or not, these three align in talent with the three older actors, Sean Penn with De Niro, for the kinds of in-your-face realism roles that made them famous, and Depp with Dustin Hoffman. They both have that chameleon ability to assume a wide variety of roles.<br />
<br />
Philip Seymour Hoffman, whom I consider to be the best of the latter three, also shares with his Hoffman namesake the chameleon thing, unlike Jack Nicholson, but in addition to that, as with Nicholson, he has a personality that one can see underlining all his roles with which one feels an affinity.<br />
<br />
Although I appreciate their acting—Penn in Milk and Dead Man Walking is brilliant—in contrast to Nicholson and Philip Seymour, neither De Niro nor Penn strike me as someone to whom I could relate well. You may recall from a recent post that I mention two brilliant films I don’t care to see again and both star Robert De Niro.<br />
<br />
I see six actors as being almost on that top three level: Russell Crowe, Denzel Washington, George Clooney, Colin Firth, Casey Affleck and Leonardo DiCaprio. Clooney is old school Clark Gable and Carey Grant rolled into one, and DiCaprio has gone miraculously from pretty boy to James Cagney.<br />
<br />
Very Honorable Mentions I give to Tommy Lee Jones, Jeff Bridges, Geoffrey Rush, Alan Rickman, Tom Hanks, Kevin Costner, Terrence Howard, Joaquin Phoenix, Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman, Matt Dillon, Stanley Tucci, Liam Neeson, Billy Bob Thornton, Samuel L. Jackson, Steve Buscemi and the sublime Kevin Spacey.<br />
<br />
And the women are better than the men. Meryl Streep is the best actor in the history of cinema, period.*<br />
<br />
In the top three tier with her are Julianne Moore and Nicole Kidman. There isn’t a generation-before these three women trio who could compare. Who would the outstanding actresses of the 70’s be? Jane Fonda, Goldie Hawn and Barbara Streisand? Not in the league with the current three. One has to go back another generation for three of this caliber, Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn and Ingrid Bergman, I’d say.<br />
<br />
Almost there on the level of Moore and Kidman I’d put Cate Blanchett, Helen Mirren, Joan Allen, Laura Linny, Annette Bening and Kate Winslet. Then there’s Natalie Portman, Jodie Foster, Julie Roberts, Judy Davis, Joan Cusack, Dianne Lane, Naomi Watts, Selma Hayek, Judi Dench, Reese Witherspoon, Halle Berry, Catherine Keener, Amy Ryan, Patricia Clarkston and probably at least a dozen others whose names don’t come to mind presently.<br />
<br />
Finally, note from the list presented the infusion of Australian talent that’s occurred only with this generation. It’s on a smaller scale like the influx of German talent which produced the first golden age.<br />
<br />
*That’s my opinion limited by my lesser knowledge of foreign actors whose work I couldn’t fully appreciate anyway.Ellis Millsaps aka "Da"http://www.blogger.com/profile/02671041257771422723noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402673310615301324.post-38573765468996858232011-03-16T11:49:00.000-07:002011-03-16T11:49:22.211-07:00The Dude Abides My favorite movies are not the best movies I’ve ever seen, but they must be my favorites since I watch them over and over. They are The Big Lebowski, That Thing You Do, The Wizard of Oz, Mars Attacks, It’s a Wonderful Life, Bad Santa and Mama Mia. (I didn’t realize I was a closet Abba fan until I saw the movie.)<br />
<br />
Except for possibly Mama Mia, the most recent release, I’ve seen all of these films at least ten times. Unless there’s some serious sports on T.V., I’ll watch any of these films whenever I see they’re on. It doesn’t matter if there’s only 10 minutes left. For three of these—It’s a Wonderful Life, The Wizard of Oz and The Big Lebowski—if you say a line of dialogue I can tell you the next one.<br />
<br />
With the exception of The Wizard of Oz and It’s a Wonderful Life, I’d rate none of these films in the best 100 ever made. I’ve seen Casablanca, Gone With the Wind and North by Northwest, films that would be on that list, probably at least ten times each, but I wouldn’t watch either of them several times in the same week the way I do The Big Lebowski. (And there are other films in that top 100 I don’t care to ever see again, e.g. Raging Bull and The Deer Hunter.)<br />
<br />
So what is it about these films that hooks me so? Except for the Christmas films and Mars Attacks, these films are full of music. Two are out and out musicals.<br />
<br />
But what really links them is that they’re all “feel good” films with happy endings. True, Donny does die, Martians incinerate thousands and perform grotesque medical experiments, and Bad Santa disappoints children, but in the end, George really does have a wonderful life, Dorothy gets back to Kansas, Bad Santa turns out to have a heart of gold and the Dude abides.Ellis Millsaps aka "Da"http://www.blogger.com/profile/02671041257771422723noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402673310615301324.post-79955087953473320902011-03-16T11:47:00.000-07:002011-03-16T11:47:17.295-07:00Musicals There was a time in my life, not that long ago in geological time, when I would have said I didn’t care for musicals, that I couldn’t watch a movie where someone just up and started singing out of the blue. I’ve changed my attitude about that.<br />
<br />
Part of the reason is that during the heyday of the musical, 1930-1970, there were so many bad ones made. Films with maybe one good song and a bunch of really bad songwriting. But if pressed on the issue, I’d have had to concede that some of my favorite films were musicals: The Wizard of Oz, My Fair Lady, Cabaret and Funny Girl.<br />
<br />
You’ll note that two of those films “cheat” at being musicals. In Cabaret, and for the most part in Funny Girl, people don’t just up and start singing, they’re singers on stage.<br />
<br />
So why are Cabaret and Chicago musicals (they definitely are) and not That Thing You Do or The Buddy Holly Story? I think the answer is that the songs relate to and advance the plot.<br />
<br />
Which, along with the quality of the songwriting, is what separates good musicals from bad ones, The Music Man from those Nelson Eddy and Jeanette Macdonald atrocities.<br />
<br />
So while I can’t watch Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, An American in Paris or West Side Story, all considered to be excellent musicals, because they are just too corny, I think that Mary Poppins and Funny Girl are wonderful entertainment.<br />
<br />
I now wouldn’t say I don’t like musicals generally, because the new generation of musicals is mostly so good. Chicago, All That Jazz, Moulin Rouge and Mama Mia are all excellent.<br />
<br />
(Also you might observe that I think sexy women in garter belts and stockings are a definite plus.)Ellis Millsaps aka "Da"http://www.blogger.com/profile/02671041257771422723noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402673310615301324.post-5686207198374656422011-03-09T10:05:00.000-08:002011-03-11T11:17:57.213-08:00Rhymes with Blinker 1.<br />
Football Stinker<br />
<br />
I’ve been thinking about Pittsburgh Steelers’ quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. For those of you who might not follow sports, he’s the guy who was suspended at the beginning of last season over allegations that he sexually assaulted a female college student in Milledgeville, GA last winter, after, I believe, previously settling a law suit filed by another young woman. <br />
<br />
What kind of disturbed creep is this guy? The short answer is, “not one that I would call that to his face,” but why is he sexually assaulting college girls in bathroom stalls?<br />
<br />
I mean, he’s rich and famous and he’s won a Super Bowl ring. Haven’t seen his picture lately, but he’s probably handsome. The QB is usually one of the handsomest players on a team, and usually one of the most intelligent, intelligent enough in this case to learn a complicated offense, read defenses and make lightning speed decisions under pressure.<br />
<br />
So why doesn’t he have a girlfriend who’s a Hollywood star or cover-girl model? And if he’s currently between supermodels and somehow finds himself in Milledgeville for the evening, why can’t he secure the hottest woman in Milledgeville?<br />
<br />
He has to be such a demented asshole he can’t conceal that fact long enough to have consensual sex with admiring groupies. The man needs to attend the Keith Richards’ School of Social Grace.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
2.<br />
Roundball Sinkers <br />
<br />
A few weeks ago my friends T.J. and John played in the Newton County Recreation Department Church League Championship. Of the several hundred or so churches in the county, four fielded teams.<br />
<br />
T.J. and John played for St. Augustine, the county’s only, I think, Catholic Church. I’m not saying St. Augustine recruited non-Catholics for its team, I’m just saying at least there were no overt Klansmen on the roster.<br />
<br />
Their opponents were The Church at Covington, the oh-so-nineties name of which will someday look like a tattoo on some embarrassed child’s grandmother.<br />
<br />
I attended the game and sat with the other three St. Augustine rooters, a turnout which doubled the team’s previous fan base. The Now had called for their fans--I’d estimate around a hundred--to wear all black. Covering my bets, I wore a black velvet sports coat lest a fight break out.<br />
<br />
T.J. sent me a message before the game asking for ideas for an ESPN poster. That’s where fans at an ESPN televised game hold up a poster with a four word slogan exhorting their team, the capitals ESPN written in vertical descending order and their slogan horizontally, i.e., Entering SMU Power Node, hoping for their, in this case, three seconds of fame.<br />
<br />
I sent back slogans exhorting St. A. (Every St. Augustinian Plays Nasty), self denigrating (Entire Squad Perceives Nothing) and provocative (Eradicate Some Pious Nerds), but my favorite was the theologically themed “Eat Sacrament. Pray Nightly.” Ideally (we were too lazy to actually make a placard anyway) it would be wired to subliminally flash “Embrace Superior Papist Notions.”<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
3.<br />
Oddball Thinkers<br />
<br />
I’ve recently seen video clips of Ron Paul and his son Raul (and his name isn’t Raul, but wouldn’t it be cool if it were?) speaking before the Nothing To The Left of Limbaugh Convention. (One speaker, Pawlenty I think, was in fact attacked by Rush for suggesting Republicans might need somebody left of Limbaugh in their camp to win a national election.) Not having to address people centered in reality, they set out their vision of life in a Paul and son America. <br />
<br />
I was immediately struck by the similarity to John Lennon’s “Imagine” in that they’re speaking of a place that never existed and never will, a utopia existing only in the mind.<br />
<br />
Leaving aside that one utopia is based on ultimate giving and the other on ultimate greed, it’s easy for one to advocate either position when you know there’s no way in hell a sensible populace would adopt either form of (non?) government and the anarchic nightmare that would ensue.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
NEW RULE: The Prince Avenue Baptist Church (of Athens, GA) is no longer on Prince Avenue and, as far as I can see, in Athens, GA. It has to change its name to a symbol meaning “The Church Formerly Known As Prince Avenue Baptist.”<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Terrible song lyric: “The first cut is the deepest” (in fact the title and repeated refrain) Oh yeah, why? Who says? Butchers? Sword Swallowers? No, Cat Stevens actually, always my go-to-guy for conventional wisdom.<br />
<br />
The fact that so many have covered this tripe astounds me. I mean no one I much respect (Rod Stewart, brain-dead since 1971, Sheryl Crow, wasn’t she married to a biker on steroids?), but still, lots.Ellis Millsaps aka "Da"http://www.blogger.com/profile/02671041257771422723noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402673310615301324.post-70121773078166314232011-03-02T13:11:00.000-08:002011-03-16T14:08:23.021-07:00espanol Since mid-October I’ve been learning Spanish, mostly while I drive my car. I’m using the Pimsleur Method, of which I highly approve. I can now speak Spanish far better than I could after taking three quarters at Emory.<br />
<br />
<br />
I can speak, but not read or write it very well. That’ll come later. They don’t want me doing that yet.<br />
<br />
The Pimsleur Method is based on the recognition that most people on the planet who’ve learned a language, i.e., children, learn to speak it pretty dang well before they can read anything. They learn by speaking and hearing, a little bit at a time, and figure out on their own verb tenses and conjugations.<br />
<br />
I spend about 45 minutes a day speaking and hearing Spanish. What I’ve learned is mostly tourista Spanish. We talk about making reservations, ordering food, make small talk about the weather and people’s families.<br />
<br />
After finishing the first 86 of 120 lessons, I can now order Mexican food and converse with my servers in Spanish about it. I can make small talk with lovely senoritas at the bar. That goes something like this:<br />
<br />
Me: Vienes aqui con frequencia?* (Do you come here often)<br />
<br />
And the senorita generally says something which in context sounds something like, “I think you’re a creepy old man.” (There seems to be intercultural consensus on this point.)<br />
<br />
But I’m also learning basic conversational structure and a reasonably good ability to be understood that I think will serve me well in a variety of situations. <br />
<br />
Let’s say I’m in Mexico and am confronted after dinner by a bandito in a dark alley who says, “Hey gringo, I want your lunch money muthafucka.” <br />
<br />
Now, if the guy looks stoned, I might take this tack: “Lo siento, no hablo ingles. Entiendo “muthafucka,” pero que quere decir “lunch money” in espanol?” (I’m sorry. I don’t speak Spanish. I understand “muthafucka,” but what does “lunch money” mean in Spanish?). And then, while he’s trying to parse that out (“Quere decir su dinero para comprar su almuerzo”), I run away.<br />
<br />
But let’s say he doesn’t appear likely to fall for that one, then I go with the in-your-face assault. I say, “Acabo de terminar comer mi madre,” which I believe to mean, “I just finished eating my mother.”<br />
<br />
To which he might reply, “Lo siento, no es el hombre pense. Quizas prodria comprar le una cervesa.” (I'm sorry, you are not the man I thought. Maybe I could buy you a beer)<br />
<br />
But let’s say he presses the issue, that he’s one of those desperate hombres about whom one hears so much, and he says, “No creo que a comido su madre.” (I don’t believe that you have eaten your mother)<br />
<br />
I then say, “Mide! Mide aqui entre mis dientes. Hay mi madre.” (Look! Look here between my teeth. There’s my mother)<br />
<br />
At this point he’s looking worried, unable to tell your common carne from mama meat, and I press the advantage.<br />
<br />
“Quere que debo comer su madre. No hace me hacer lo. Donde esta su madre? Creo que va a sere muy deliciosa.” (Do you want that I should eat your mother? Don’t make me do it. Where is your mother? I think she’s going to be very tasty)<br />
<br />
But now he’s impressed that I’ve remembered to use “deliciosa” instead of “delicioso” since I’m still referring to his mother, a feminine noun, and he says. “Por favor senor, podria ayudar me con mi ingles?” (Please sir, could you help me with my English)<br />
<br />
“Compra mi muchas cervesas, entonses podemos hablar.” (You buy me many beers, then we can talk)<br />
<br />
*A note on spelling. No lo sais. I’m just making my best guess from the way it sounds.Ellis Millsaps aka "Da"http://www.blogger.com/profile/02671041257771422723noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402673310615301324.post-23770786534031308062010-12-16T08:22:00.003-08:002010-12-22T07:54:46.764-08:00American Pride I’m not proud to be an American. I have no right to be. It’s like being proud of being born rich.<br />
I feel fortunate to have been born an American. Most of the other locations on the planet to which I could have been born range from somewhat worse to horrific.<br />
While I feel extremely fortunate to have been born a citizen of a country which grants and respects so many freedoms and opportunities, the only people who have any right to be proud of their citizenship are immigrants who have earned it.<br />
This is somewhat different from being proud “of” one’s country, as Michelle Obama famously said. One can be proud of one’s country’s actions, e.g., liberating Europe from the Nazis, or ashamed, e.g., our support of dictatorships throughout the twentieth century which has come back to bite us so hard. To the extent that one may have played a part in the action of which one is proud, as did Mrs. Obama in her husband’s election, one has even more reason for pride.<br />
Great song line: “Six hundred pounds of sin/ Was grinning at my window/ All I said was come on in/ Don’t murder me.”Ellis Millsaps aka "Da"http://www.blogger.com/profile/02671041257771422723noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402673310615301324.post-80114738188392712252010-12-08T09:23:00.000-08:002010-12-22T08:06:10.983-08:00December 7, 2010, My 59th Birthday, In Which I See Jesus It’s been a real cold spell here in the Georgia Piedmont, especially for so early in December. I have some pets, as faithful readers may recall, and one of them, Honey, the cutie-pie cat, terrorizes Kirby, the black cat I know to have been born in the U.S.A.<br />
<br />
As a consequence, Kirby stays away days on end, not far—I see him around. I assume he gets some food at neighbors’ houses and kills small game in the Mansfield bush. Sometimes he’ll come and sit in the driveway casing the joint, wondering if he can get inside and eat some chow without being mauled by Honey.<br />
<br />
A few days ago he was sitting in the driveway when I went to take out the garbage, but Ginsberg, the dog, was with me and he chased him away. A little later I looked out the window and saw him sitting in the driveway again.<br />
<br />
I fed the other two cats, then locked them out of the kitchen and went out and fetched Kirby.<br />
<br />
I fed him two and a half cans of Friskies. There’s no telling how much he would eat if I would let him after these sabbaticals, but I fear making him sick if I were to find out.<br />
<br />
I shut the other two cats out of the two warm rooms and let Kirby stay. Ginsberg and he rub up against each other fondly. “Sorry about chasing you away. I can’t help myself. It’s a dog thing.”<br />
<br />
I tried to let him out before I went to bed, but he was quite comfortable where he was, thank you, and I let him stay. In retrospect this was foolish because he’d eaten two and a half cans of chow.<br />
<br />
In the morning there was a pool of soupy cat shit in the kitchen which the poor fellow apparently had deposited on an empty Ingle’s bag on the floor, but when I first saw it Ginsberg had the bag in his mouth and said poop was on the floor in front of the microwave.<br />
<br />
I couldn’t face cleaning up cat shit at 7:00 A.M., so I decided to leave it until later. Unfortunately, as I was going to reheat my coffee before leaving for work, I forgot about it, stepped in it and tracked it around the kitchen.<br />
<br />
I was wearing my new suede saddle oxfords which I soon discovered had indentations in the sole. What were the people at Bass shoes thinking? Certainly not about stepping in cat shit I can tell you.<br />
<br />
As a result I went through the day with an odor of cat shit always near.<br />
<br />
My next move regarding the kitchen problem was to put newspaper on the pool and the places where I’d tracked it. When the next day I tried to remove it, part of the paper was glued to the floor, so I sprayed it with 409 and put paper towels on it. I hoped this would soften it up and kill germs.<br />
<br />
So far you’re thinking this story stinks, but it gets better.<br />
<br />
When I came back to attack the problem again, I looked down at the site of Kirby’s mishap and there on the paper towel looking at me is the image of Jesus, smiling like he has a passel of kids in his lap.<br />
<br />
I was dumbstruck. I knew there had to be a message here, that Jesus was trying to tell me something, but I was having trouble concentrating because of the angel choir’s rising crescendo.<br />
<br />
I closed my eyes and there was the message printed in English on the back of my eyelids. It said, “Wassup dude?”<br />
<br />
I look down at Catshit Jesus and he’s still smiling benignly when it hits me. Jesus is thanking me for the shout out I gave him in the recent Apocalypse/Recycling post.<br />
<br />
No way am I going to clean this up now, but I should have taken a picture while I could. What I did was call the Pope.<br />
<br />
It’s not as hard as you might think to get the Pope on the phone. Just say you’re a twelve year old choirboy and you have a secret to tell him.<br />
<br />
The Pope gets on the phone. “Habla Espanol?” I ask. “Une poco,” he says “pero hablo Ingles mas mucho.” “Que bien,” I say because I don’t speak much Spanish.<br />
<br />
Then I tell him about Catshit Jesus. I’m figuring he’ll want to send out investigators to confirm the miracle, but what he says is “Someone is full of shit here, but it is not Our Savior. Perhaps you should call your National Enquirer.”<br />
<br />
Then he hangs up before I can call him a Nazi, but I get to thinking about it and realize that maybe that’s it. Jesus wants me to make a little money for our respective birthdays. <br />
<br />
So I get the National Enquirer on the line, and while they say they’re not coming to my house to look at cat shit, they’ll pay $1,500 for a good photo of this phenomenon. I tell the guy to hang on, that I’ll take the picture right now. <br />
<br />
I go in the kitchen and there's Ginsberg eating Catshit Jesus.<br />
<br />
I consider giving him some wine to go with it, but I don’t want him to start acting all holier than thou, so I get him outside and go back to the phone. “My dog ate the work Jesus did in my home, but it looks like we’ve still got one of Jesus’ legs from the knee down. What’ll you pay for that?”<br />
<br />
The son of a bitch hangs up on me. I'm noticing that this subject tends to make people cranky.<br />
<br />
So what did it all mean? Catshit Jesus doesn’t appear and ask you “Wassup dude” for nothing. On one’s birthday no less.<br />
<br />
I’m toying with the idea that maybe Jesus was telling me that I’m his second coming and I’m to lead my ragged company to the Pearly Gates.<br />
<br />
I’ll need to leave some money for Aunt Ida.<br />
<br />
Kool-Aid, anyone?Ellis Millsaps aka "Da"http://www.blogger.com/profile/02671041257771422723noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402673310615301324.post-62447088875700403342010-12-07T09:26:00.000-08:002010-12-22T08:11:44.991-08:00Best and Worst Lyrics Some of my favorite lines in songs I like because they’re just so funky. In that group I’d put “It’s fever in the funkhouse now” from “Tumblin' Dice,” “They’ll go gaga at the gogo” from the song “Hair,” “His body hit the street with such a beautiful thud” from “Lost in the Flood,” and “Wearing afros and braids in every gangsta ride” from “Players Ball.”<br />
<br />
Others are my favorite because I like the ideas expressed: “And you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here” from “Once in a Lifetime, “Now some guys they just give up living, and start dying little by little, piece by piece. Some guys come home from work and wash up, and go racing in the street,” because it expresses a basic tenet of my credo, and “I wanna' be Bob Dylan” from “Mr. Jones” because of course I do, and when you can put that line in a kickass song that evokes “Ballad of a Thin Man” it’s all the better.<br />
<br />
Another class would be lines that are verbal hooks that drive the song. The best example of this I can think of is “Mother what a lover, you wore me out.” Would “Maggie Mae” have ever become the radio standard it is without this line? “Whoop. There it is!” is another example.<br />
<br />
Some hook me because they’re just so unexpected. Steppenwolf released “The Pusher” two years before “Workingman’s Dead,” and hearing “god damn” in a song was something we hadn’t heard before, but the long groans of “The Pusher” lack the startling and delightful force of “God damn, well I declare, have you seen the like?”<br />
<br />
Others are on my list because of the beauty of the language and the imagery evoked, none better than “To dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free.” It’s right up there with Coleridge’s “Woman wailing for her demon lover” which some critic has said is the best line in English poetry. (I’m an English major)<br />
<br />
Finally there are the lines I like because of the cleverness of the rhyme. At the top of this list is “One thing is for certain, you will surely be a hurtin’, if you throw it all away.” As a matter of fact this song has the best lyrics of any song ever written, and that includes “Like a Rolling Stone,” “Amazing Grace” and the French National Anthem.<br />
<br />
(Have you ever heard or read a translation of the French National anthem? It has lyrics like, “Let us march! May impure blood water our fields!”)<br />
<br />
The entire “Nashville Skyline” LP is lyrically wonderful, like Hank Williams if Hank had been smarter. The showstoppers are “Tonight I’ll be Staying Here With You,” and “If You Throw it All Away,” (Mr. Dylan had by this time stopped giving his songs maddeningly disconnected titles) but “If You Throw It All Away” has a half dozen lines that would be in my top twenty list if I made one. “I once had mountains in the palm of my hand/and rivers that ran through every day.” Jesus is sitting on your shoulder and whispering in your ear when you can write a line like that.<br />
<br />
About that top twenty list: I’d originally intended this post to be just that, but then I realized I’d need six months to think about it so as not to forget a gem. For example, as I write this I realize I’ve left out “I’m wishing I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then /Against the wind.”<br />
<br />
So as more come to me I’ll stick them at the end of future posts and I encourage my readers to add their own through the “comments” section.<br />
<br />
(Which reminds me. There’s someone in Moscow—Russia, not Idaho—who reads my blog. Tell me please, what brought you here and what causes you to return?)<br />
<br />
Worst lines in songs are another matter. Bad lines in good songs are the exception. Most bad lines are in bad songs piled one upon another, and you have to be willing to listen to bad songs to know them. Therefore the ones we know we remember from our youth when our tastes were less refined and we listened to whatever came on the radio.<br />
<br />
In my case that would be songs like “Wonderful World,” Sam Cook’s celebration of ignorance, “Knock Three Times” (on the ceiling if you want me), and Bobby Goldsboro’s makes-me-want-to-stick-hot-knitting-needles-in-my-eyes “Honey.” Oh, and “Last Kiss” a song for which I still have a perverse affection. Are you old enough to remember when syndicated columnist Dave Barry solicited suggestions from readers for worst songs ever recordered? (1993) “Honey” was nosed out by “McArthur Park” (someone left the cake out in the rain), an asinine song but for my money it can’t touch “Honey” as a stinker.<br />
<br />
I offer two examples of bad lines in good songs and I’ll probably catch some flak for this. “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.” Sorry Mr. Lennon, but the fact that there are other dreamers makes you no more or less one. Al Qaida and the Nazis could make the same claim,<br />
<br />
“Him and I, Aquemini.” Sorry Mr. 3000, but it’s either “he and I” or “him and me.” You can’t go juggling noun cases just to make a good rhyme. It’s bad form.Ellis Millsaps aka "Da"http://www.blogger.com/profile/02671041257771422723noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402673310615301324.post-45215825923733900602010-12-07T09:14:00.000-08:002010-12-07T09:14:34.435-08:00Some Thoughts on Recycling and the Apocalypse A relative of mine—we’ll call her Aunt Ida—like much of my family is a fundamentalist Christian and regular churchgoer. A former Baptist, she now attends one of those non-denominational mega- churches. Her Sunday school teacher there--we’ll call him Mr. Jimmy—is an educated man, somewhat handsome, whom she idolizes.<br />
<br />
Mr. Jimmy has lately been teaching from the book of Revelations. He told the class that John the Revelator says that when the Rapture occurs the chosen ones will be taken up to heaven and that will be followed by seven years of terrible turmoil before, I assume, those left behind will be sent to the lake of fire and brimstone.<br />
<br />
Mr. Jimmy says that the signs are in place and this should come to pass any day now.<br />
<br />
This is all news to me—not the end is near part—we’ve been hearing that regularly since 33 A.D.—but the part about the seven years of turmoil, and I went to church an average of five times per week for the first seventeen years of my life. My father was a Baptist preacher but he didn’t have much truck with Revelations. I think he considered it pretty much symbolic mumbo jumbo.<br />
<br />
Anyway I’ve always been under the impression that all this shit was supposed to come down at once.<br />
<br />
But Aunt Ida puts any proclamation of Mr. Jimmy on a par with scripture and believes she’s heaven bound any day now. As a consequence she’s told my wife that she is putting money aside at a hidden location in her house.<br />
<br />
This money is for Cynthia and me after the Rapture comes, because she’s certain that we won’t make the cut.<br />
<br />
My reaction to this was to tell Aunt Ida the Rapture had already happened. They took Mr. Rogers, Mother Theresa, and a few thousand others, but she and Mr. Jimmy didn’t make the cut. Witness the turmoil the world is in now.<br />
<br />
I know many people, and again, much if not most of my family, who believe, or claim to, that this second coming thing is going to happen. I say claim to, because I don’t believe that many people who say they believe this actually do. They say they do because the rest of the clique in which they move say they do.<br />
<br />
It’s kind of like the old preacher’s joke—I heard a lot of them growing up—where the preacher asks the congregation to raise their hand if they want to go to heaven. All do but one man.<br />
<br />
After the service the preacher asks him, “Brother Jones, don’t you want to go to heaven when you die?”<br />
<br />
Brother Jones answers, “Oh yeah, when I die. I thought you were getting up a load to go now.”<br />
<br />
I have no problem believing that Jesus Christ died for my sins. There’s considerable evidence to support that and there’s nothing illogical about the premise, but to believe that a supposedly loving god is going to send to hell everybody who’s not down with the program is absurd. And his dropping in out of the blue to make up or down calls for every human to heaven or hell—surely no sane person actually believes that. <br />
<br />
The Catholics at least allow for some middle ground on the up or down call.<br />
<br />
People in the Middle Ages, I think, actually believed this nonsense. Many Muslims today are still living in the middle ages and believe similar folderol. How many neo-Christians do you think would be a suicide bomber for their cause. I mean if you really believe you’re going to heaven, why wait?<br />
<br />
This claimed belief that the Rapture is imminent is apparently widespread on the religious right. I have read that higher ups in the Bush administration justified not taxing the rich or controlling pollution by their supposed belief that the end is near and you might as well get it while you can.<br />
<br />
How convenient.<br />
<br />
And if you claim to believe this malarkey, why recycle? Aunt Ida doesn’t, and I’d be willing to believe that most of these other “believers” don’t either, because they don’t seem to share another basic religious tenet, one given lip service at least by all your major religions, that being that one should sacrifice for the common good even without direct benefit for oneself. Like recycling and energy conservation say.<br />
<br />
Even though I’m sometimes guilty of riding around in my car just to listen to the stereo—why is it that music sounds best riding in a car at night—I’m something of a fanatic in other ways. For example, I won’t take an elevator unless I have to go over say six floors, and I refuse to go through automatic doors if a normal one is available. In both instances I’m saving fossil fuel and getting exercise.<br />
<br />
I don’t, as you see, subscribe to the Machiavellian philosophy of these so called believers.<br />
<br />
One other thing and I’ll stop this rant. I’m willing to bet that on a circle graph, the circle representing “idiots who have our car remotes set to honk the horn when we lock the car” is almost totally contained within the circle of self-proclaimed fundamentalist Christians. I’m also willing to bet that none of the idiots contained in the smaller circle recycle. Having the horn honk when you lock the car so the rest of us have to hear it is the same “it’s all about me” attitude demonstrated by putting glass in the garbage.Ellis Millsaps aka "Da"http://www.blogger.com/profile/02671041257771422723noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402673310615301324.post-40576354526499489282010-11-10T10:04:00.000-08:002010-12-07T09:02:13.480-08:00The Natchez Trace Last week I went on a three day bike ride on the Natchez Trace. The Trace goes from Nashville Tennessee to Natchez Mississippi. It’s a wide two-lane road with a 50 mph speed limit. The entire road is a national park. Originally it was an Indian trail, but in the early 1800’s people on the Ohio River began floating goods on barges down the Ohio and Mississippi to Natchez, selling their goods there and walking back on the Trace.<br />
<br />
No commercial vehicles are allowed. There are no stores or houses on the Trace. The only towns it goes through are Tupelo and Jackson. It’s perfect for bicycling.<br />
<br />
In the 1970’s I took two trips on the Trace. The first was three friends and I bicycling from Tupelo to Jackson, about 100 miles, and back. One of us, Rodney Temples, a crazy Vietnam vet, borrowed a bicycle to ride with us even though he had no experience, unlike the rest of us who cycled all over Atlanta. Setting out from Tupelo—after of course visiting the King’s birthplace—Rodney took off and yelled over his shoulder that he’d see us in Jackson.<br />
<br />
We caught him in about five miles and for the next ninety-five we’d have to stop and wait on him periodically and we filled that time singing to him, “Yeah, yeah, go to Jackson/ Go ahead you big-talkin’ man/ Go on go to Jackson…”The June Carter part of the song.<br />
<br />
The second trip was three years later. Dan Denoon and I rode from Jackson to Natchez and back, again a 200 mile round trip. We pulled into Natchez in July heat so hot you could see it rising off the pavement. On an otherwise deserted narrow street in an old part of town, while I was leaning against a wall to rest in the shade, an old black man appeared and told me he didn’t believe in that civil rights, that white folks were superior and the young coloreds were messing with the divine order.<br />
<br />
I also encountered my first armadillos in south Mississippi. They were still decades away from North Georgia. On both of these trips we rode the whole way the first day and stayed in a motel, then took two days to ride back, camping in sleeping bags without a tent along the way. Armadillos are so stupid they will crawl over a person in a sleeping bag scavenging for garbage. They do not fear tennis shoes flung at them. They got body armor.<br />
<br />
On last weeks’ trip my plan was to ride about 120 miles, from Muscle Shoals to Nashville, over three days, with my assistant Michael driving me to the starting point and Cynthia picking me up at the Nashville end. I figured three days to do the 120 miles because it’s hillier in Tennessee and I’m 30-odd years older than on the earlier trips. Also, I don’t sleep on the ground anymore. I booked two places to sleep in a bed near the Trace.<br />
<br />
This is a long tale so I’ll be giving it to you in installments. The next will be “Day One” and then with “Day Two” we’ll get some pictures, because it wasn’t until then that I figured out how to take pictures with my cell phone.Ellis Millsaps aka "Da"http://www.blogger.com/profile/02671041257771422723noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402673310615301324.post-73073893037375620062010-11-09T10:14:00.000-08:002010-12-07T09:03:37.989-08:00Day One: Collinwood Michael and I set out from Covington at 9:30 AM last Wednesday morning thinking we’d be in Muscle Shoals in four or five hours. It ended up taking seven and a half. We were idiotically using a map of the eastern U.S. I had in my car which of course doesn’t give you a very blown-up view of Alabama and doesn’t include a lot of smaller roads.<br />
<br />
We were fine until we got off I-20 near Birmingham to head northwest. We kept missing our turns and having to fall back on various plan B’s. We never stopped to buy an Alabama map. I’ve already alluded to why that was.<br />
<br />
We only stopped once, to eat at so-and-so’s Barbeque in, I think, Gadsden, Alabama, where they had a large menu but DID NOT HAVE BRUNSWICK STEW, and even though it took so long I don’t think we could have shaved more than half a hour off the trip if we’d been riding with someone who knew how to get there or had sense to get a better map. It just took a lot longer than we expected. <br />
<br />
I’d intended to start riding at about one or two o’clock Alabama time and to get on the Trace just before it crossed the Tennessee River because the bridge looked so cool in the pictures. That would’ve been about a 30 mile ride before my first night’s stay in Collinwood, TN. But since I wasn’t going to be getting out of the car until after four, I decided to get on the road about 10 miles farther north.<br />
<br />
Near the end of our drive, not being sure how to get to our next road, we did the girly thing and stopped for directions in Florence. It turned out that the real estate office I went in had a woman at the desk who said she didn’t know how to get to highway 20, so she called her boss out to tell me.<br />
<br />
It was about fifty yards away on the street that ran beside her office.<br />
<br />
A few minutes later I started pedaling north. The entire twenty miles to Collinwood was uphill but it was a very slight incline and really easy pedaling. In this very southern part of central Tennessee I crossed five or six small streams per mile. There were also many swarms of small black bugs, bigger than gnats but much smaller than houseflies, so that I had to keep my mouth shut and be continuously brushing them out of the hair on my arms.<br />
<br />
The city limits of Collinwood were only a few hundred yards from the Trace. Collinwood is about the size of Social Circle, Georgia in 1960, less than a thousand people I guess and like Social Circle in 1960 it had one of everything one might need in easy walking distance: a Piggly Wiggly, a drug store, a florist, a hardware store, a bank, one church each of your common denominations, and a restaurant, but I was soon informed that better food was cooked to order at the Exxon station, advice I took and was glad I did.<br />
<br />
It was getting dark when I pulled into Collinwood and called Mr. and Mrs. Butler, proprietors of Miss Monetta’s Country Cottage where I was to stay. They had already decided to come downtown and watch for me. I followed them the three blocks to the cottage.<br />
<br />
The cottage, which I’d reserved for $75, was a two bedroom house with a living room, dining room, large kitchen, breakfast nook, a front and back porch with rocking chairs and swings and a large screen cable T.V. for the first game of the World Series.<br />
<br />
When I left the next morning around 10:00 (I was waiting for it to warm up some) I wrote a whole page in their guest book. Among other things I wrote: “It’s just like being at home, only better—cleaner, no Sarah Palin calling me every 15 minutes.”<br />
<br />
I highly recommend Collinwood and Miss Monetta’s.Ellis Millsaps aka "Da"http://www.blogger.com/profile/02671041257771422723noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402673310615301324.post-1244338686061431362010-11-08T09:21:00.000-08:002010-12-07T09:06:18.419-08:00Day Two I left about ten o’clock on Day Two, waiting for it to warm up some and figuring that would get me there in time for supper in Falls Hollow where I’d spend the night. I took two miniature Snicker bars from Miss Monneta’s jar for some lunch time energy.<br />
<br />
<br />
The ride on Day Two started out with some mild climbs and descents and I thought “Oh, this is much more interesting than the monotonous gradual ascent.” I would later come to yearn for that old monotony. <br />
<br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_PV0BYkgktrQ/TPUzY7Pc20I/AAAAAAAAAE8/r7xWWwtlkCk/s1600/1028101412.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; height: 182px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; width: 321px;"><img border="0" height="150" ox="true" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_PV0BYkgktrQ/TPUzY7Pc20I/AAAAAAAAAE8/r7xWWwtlkCk/s200/1028101412.jpg" width="200" /></a> I decided I’d learn to work the camera on my cell phone but the pictures I attempted didn’t show the scene I was aiming at. This picture depicts my discovery that up until this point I’d been holding the phone backward.</div></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> A couple of observations about the Trace are worth mentioning here. Throughout my entire ride I saw six empty cigarette packages, five beer empties, two plastic soda bottles and a Reynolds aluminum foil box. That’s it, period. At no time did I see prisoners picking up garbage.</div></div><br />
Throughout the ride I saw only three instances of road kill: two small snakes and a frog, all near the side of the road. On the other hand, until the middle of day two, the only animals other than birds I saw were squirrels and one dog. I know there were at least deer there because I saw their droppings in the road and many tracks on the old unpaved Trace—more on that road later.<br />
<br />
Finally on the afternoon of Day Two I came silently upon a large doe, about forty feet off the road in the woods. She didn’t run—no hunting is allowed there—I just looked at her and she looked at me and that’s the way we wanted it to be. I called her Lola.<br />
<br />
I thought a lot about this absence of road kill. Much time for thinking is available on a three day ride through the backwoods. I attribute this lack of carnage to the low speed limit, the fact that the road is for sightseeing, which can’t be done very well at night, and the fact that most of the traffic is RV’s and campers pulled by retired people who don’t drive at night anyway.<br />
<br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> The picture of the goofy guy looking in the camera was taken on the “Old Trace.” The road I was cycling follows the “Old Trace” pretty closely, but better equipment was used to straighten curves, reduce inclines, and build bridges.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> My first successful shot is of a section of the Old Trace about two miles long. It’s roughly paved for one-way traffic so that motorists may briefly experience the old road.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_PV0BYkgktrQ/TPUzo8y1CPI/AAAAAAAAAFA/4XkMpV9ByGw/s1600/1028101412a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" ox="true" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_PV0BYkgktrQ/TPUzo8y1CPI/AAAAAAAAAFA/4XkMpV9ByGw/s200/1028101412a.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> This shot is of a “scenic overlook” on the Old Trace. Not very impressive for a mountain boy but about as good as it gets in these parts.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_PV0BYkgktrQ/TPU0Hd7EyjI/AAAAAAAAAFE/D4siE7zEVyU/s1600/1028101423.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" ox="true" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_PV0BYkgktrQ/TPU0Hd7EyjI/AAAAAAAAAFE/D4siE7zEVyU/s200/1028101423.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> Meanwhile back on the ride, the uphills and downhills turned into a long steady medium uphill grade. I can now report that from Muscle Shoals, Alabama until about fifteen miles from the Trace’s end near Nashville, it is 90% uphill and after Collinwood the ascent is much steeper.</div><br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_PV0BYkgktrQ/TPU0VT-5luI/AAAAAAAAAFI/IeXC4XK1MWA/s1600/1028101514.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" ox="true" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_PV0BYkgktrQ/TPU0VT-5luI/AAAAAAAAAFI/IeXC4XK1MWA/s200/1028101514.jpg" width="200" /></a> Sometime around mid-afternoon, I started to suffer. The tendons covering my right knee, heretofore having been body parts whose existence I had little reason to consider, proclaimed themselves through steady aching. The little streams of Day One were not to be seen. Now when I saw water it was like this picture here. This one in the Little Buffalo river. I came to hate seeing streams like this, because although there was some coasting down to them, that didn’t compensate for the steep ascent to follow.</div><br />
Sometimes streams would follow the Trace for miles on end, but they always flowed in the opposite direction from which I pedaled. <br />
<br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_PV0BYkgktrQ/TPU0mTFpl9I/AAAAAAAAAFM/yaJ1snQIsXQ/s1600/1029101143.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" ox="true" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_PV0BYkgktrQ/TPU0mTFpl9I/AAAAAAAAAFM/yaJ1snQIsXQ/s200/1029101143.jpg" width="200" /></a> This is a picture of what the road always looked like in the direction I traveled. You see where the road disappears from sight and it looks as if it might level off there? Well, it doesn’t.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> Historical markers on the Trace are common and a big deal for the aging uphill cyclist, because other than the call of nature, there’s not much reason to get off the bike. You read them all. Some of them twice.</div><br />
About five miles from Falls Hollow I came to signs pointing up a paved road to the left telling me that 1.1 miles off the Trace is the burial site and memorial of Meriwether Lewis. Mr. Lewis, by all accounts a mentally unstable person, had after his famous exploration been appointed by a grateful President Jefferson as governor of the Louisiana Territory, and during that tenure had somehow managed, under mysterious circumstances, to get himself shot and killed at an inn formerly located here on the Trace.<br />
<br />
There are milepost markers every mile along the Trace. At this point they were getting farther and farther apart, and I would not have ridden another 2.2 miles if Meriwether were going to rise from the grave and explain how he got himself shot.<br />
<br />
The last mile and a half to Falls Hollow was a steep descent and while I was glad not to be pedaling for the nonce, I cursed what I knew would counterbalance it in the morning.Ellis Millsaps aka "Da"http://www.blogger.com/profile/02671041257771422723noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5402673310615301324.post-5371153130997958442010-11-07T09:21:00.000-08:002010-12-08T12:09:33.714-08:00Falls Hollow and Day Three<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> The best thing about the Falls Hollow Restaurant and RV Park for the cyclist is that it’s located almost directly under the Trace on a highway the Trace bridges over. The worst thing is that it’s called<em> Falls Hollow</em> which should have tipped me off that it’s in a hollow which must have seriously steep sides if there are falls there.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div> The place advertised two “motel like” rooms one of which I’d booked, primarily because it was right on the Trace at a distance from Collinwood where I needed to stop before the 53 mile ride to Nashville.<br />
<br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> After finding the proprietor in his house behind the restaurant, he led me through the restaurant where people where prepping dinner to one of the aforementioned rooms.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> The room was a pretty sorry affair. The bed creaked. There was no table for playing solitaire, and although it had Dish T.V., the set was so old that the dish remote would not operate its volume. It was also so small and out of focus that I couldn’t read the score in the baseball game wearing reading glasses and from six inches away. It reminded me of spending the night at a poor relation’s house, e.g., it took a half hour for the bathtub to fill.</div><br />
I’d arrived at around four o’clock, and after two airline bottles of vodka was the first person in the restaurant for dinner. I had a ribeye and fries, which was O.K., and several cups of pretty good coffee. (I always order steak in a questionable restaurant—say I’m at the Holiday Inn and decide to eat in their restaurant—figuring they can’t screw that up too bad.)<br />
<br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> As I say the bed creaked, I couldn’t see the T.V., and the four cups of coffee were a mistake. I alternated playing solitaire on the bed with reading Made In America by Bill Bryson which I highly recommend. It’s about the development of peculiarly American English and it’s full of interesting trivia. Do you know why the South came to be called “Dixie”? I do. You could borrow my copy but I gave it away to a guy I met in a bar who I thought would like it.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> The Falls Hollow experience was at the other end of the spectrum from the endorphin euphoria I felt at Miss Monnetta’s. Despite repeated attempts I didn’t get to sleep until three A.M.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> Nevertheless I was up at 7:00 eating a good breakfast which the proprietor came over to make for me and was pedaling by 8:00. It had turned cold and there was frost on the ground, but Day Two it had taken me six hours to ride forty miles and I had 53 to cover on Day Three.</div><br />
The hill leading out of Falls Hollow was steep and continued upward past the falls to my right as far ahead as I could see. These falls were nothing like Niagara or even Amicalola. They were more of a long steep cascade.<br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> My knee hurt continuously for the rest of the trip. It took me thirty-five minutes of lowest gear pedaling to cover the first mile. I winced with every down pedal on the right. Cyclists use their strong side, their “right handed” side in my case, to do more of the work. I developed a mental count of “easy, left, easy, left,” trying to concentrate on doing the hard pushes with my left leg. I must have looked like <em>Gunsmoke’s</em> Chester riding a bicycle.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> I gave some brief thought to getting off and pushing, but that would cost me time and I needed to get to Nashville before it got dark and cold, but the bigger concern was that serious cyclist machismo says you don’t get off and push, i.e., I didn’t want another cyclist to see me pushing.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> Here’s a good place for an aside about other cyclists. I only encountered four other cyclists on the Trace. I’m pleased to say that none of them overtook me from behind. Three of the four were my age or older. One of them was an old guy on one of those bikes where you sit back in a “chair” and pedal out in front of you. He complained that he was having to ride into the wind. Although there was a brisk cold breeze on Day Two when I encountered him, I had little sympathy for the old fart because the wind was blowing from my left to right—which does make pedaling a little harder—and he was going down the incline I was steadily climbing.</div><br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_PV0BYkgktrQ/TPfaBm_37sI/AAAAAAAAAFQ/UI53VWA3xCo/s1600/1029101013.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" ox="true" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_PV0BYkgktrQ/TPfaBm_37sI/AAAAAAAAAFQ/UI53VWA3xCo/s200/1029101013.jpg" width="200" /></a> After a mile and a quarter of climbing out of Falls Hollow, I returned to the steady medium ascent of Day Two.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> Pictured here is another section of the Old Trace, unpaved, and it’s supposed to look much as it did when Colonel Jackson led his men down it to fight the bloody British in the town of New Orleans.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_PV0BYkgktrQ/TPfafazIedI/AAAAAAAAAFU/r3CfWZo3hEQ/s1600/1029101126.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" ox="true" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_PV0BYkgktrQ/TPfafazIedI/AAAAAAAAAFU/r3CfWZo3hEQ/s200/1029101126.jpg" width="200" /></a> This picture shows me as I looked bundled up for the cold of Day Three. It was taken by an old couple in an RV who told me that I’d be pretty soon reaching some long downhill. The headgear was fashioned by Yours Truly from a bicycle helmet and an old lady’s gardening hat which I cut the crown off of and attached the brim by cutting holes in it and passing the helmet straps through them.</div><br />
This was around noon and indeed that downhill was about twenty miles ahead. It came after a historical marker denoting the Tennessee Valley divide. At one time it had been the boundary between Tennessee and Indian lands to the south. What I discovered on my own about it is that it is a high ridge which separates where water flows south to the Tennessee River and where streams flow northward to the Cumberland.<br />
<br />
(The Tennessee River comes down out of the Appalachians, goes through Chattanooga, then down into north Alabama to get around the highland I was climbing before it turns north again and joins with the Ohio and on to the Mississippi).<br />
<br />
But before I was to reach the aforementioned divide, there came the episode of Fly which is a small settlement about a mile off the Trace where I intended to have some lunch and which was to become a fly in the ointment of this tale.<br />
<br />
A few miles from Fly my rear tire went flat. I stopped and pumped it up, hoping that it was a slow leak. In another mile it was flat again.<br />
<br />
I stopped at a bridge where I could sit on a concrete ledge while I patched the tube. Did you know that they now put a green oozy slime inside of bicycle tubes now so that you can see where a hole is? It was news to me.<br />
<br />
I’d come equipped for this contingency, but it was an aggravation that took about fifteen minutes. Although I could see some green stuff of the other side of the tube from the hole I was patching, I thought it came from the same hole.<br />
<br />
My patch job proved ineffective, and my tire soon went flat. Being only about a mile from the road to Fly, and being hungry and cranky, I decided to push the bike to Fly and eat something. After that I could see if I could fix the leak or else call Cynthia to pick me up there. I’m happy to report that no cyclists saw me pushing.<br />
<br />
The attempted tube repair and the two miles of pushing put me an hour-and-a-half behind schedule. It was 2:30 when I reached the Fly General Store.<br />
<br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_PV0BYkgktrQ/TPfaqpQ42SI/AAAAAAAAAFY/N8m4h-Fsp9Q/s1600/flygeneralstore-inside.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" ox="true" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_PV0BYkgktrQ/TPfaqpQ42SI/AAAAAAAAAFY/N8m4h-Fsp9Q/s1600/flygeneralstore-inside.jpg" /></a> If you ever have the opportunity, by all means go to the Fly General Store. Like Collinwood, it is a vanishing fragment of Americana. It’s a small wooden building with gas pumps and a little bit of a lot of things inside. It’s like the country stores I frequented as a kid. While there I spoke with a pretty British woman who said the store was like one her grandmother had operated.</div><br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_PV0BYkgktrQ/TPfazlFeLZI/AAAAAAAAAFc/72bS_r_Y1mA/s1600/flysgeneralstore2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" ox="true" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_PV0BYkgktrQ/TPfazlFeLZI/AAAAAAAAAFc/72bS_r_Y1mA/s1600/flysgeneralstore2.jpg" /></a> They also had the best ham and American cheese on white bread sandwich which I’ve ever devoured, and an air pump which saved my arm some exertion.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> My cell phone wouldn’t get a signal, but a friendly customer whose would let me use hers, and I was able to leave a message on the cell of Cynthia who was en route to Nashville. The elderly and gracious Mr. Fly let me leave her the store’s land line number. (Fly is named not after the insect, nor because it is phat, but after the Fly family, whose French ancestor fought with LaFayette during the American Revolution and was given a large land grant in which is now Fly. Other than the store and a lumber yard, there are no other businesses in Fly.)</div><br />
After the sandwich, I took the tube off again and discovered that there were inexplicably (at least to me) four holes going all the way around the tube at the spot where I’d patched the first one. A much larger patch and Mr. Fly’s air did the trick. <br />
<br />
While I was patching the tire, Cynthia called and I told her she’d need to ride down the Trace when she got to Nashville and find me there or, worst case scenario, sitting outside the Fly General Store which closed at 5:00.<br />
<br />
It was four o’clock when I got back on the Trace and pedaled as fast as my knee would permit. It was indeed getting really cold and dark when she found me seventeen miles from Nashville.<br />
<br />
If you’re ever in Nashville and especially if you’re staying at the Vanderbilt Courtyard by Marriott, I recommend the Midtown Café, a wonderful upscale restaurant in what looks like a large old tool shed right across the street, a blessing to me since I could barely walk. Our waitress was a twenty year veteran who knew everything about the wares and was just plain fun. After martinis and a bottle of wine she insisted it was Tequila Time.<br />
<br />
There’s an eighty mile segment of the Trace from where I started this trip to Tupelo which I still haven’t ridden. I hope to do that this spring and then drive to Graceland.Ellis Millsaps aka "Da"http://www.blogger.com/profile/02671041257771422723noreply@blogger.com1