22 May 2019

[Ellis Millsaps] - The View From Porterdale: Let It Bleed

This is the view from my front porch. In particular, it is the view of our neighborhood gang’s territorial marker. I've written about this before. Other than the shoes, I've seen no sign of their existence. I mean we haven't had a decent drive by shooting since I've lived here. I'm beginning to think they're like Spanky and Our Gang or Kool & the Gang, or maybe I haven't seen them because they're all now in the chain gang.

I was sitting on my porch a few weeks ago when a kid on a bicycle pulls up. I guessed he was about seven years old.

“Hello,” he says.


“How are you doing?”

“I'm doing well. How about you?”

“I'm pretty good.”

The conversation seems to be lagging so I say, "nice day to ride a bicycle,” for it is indeed a fine spring day.
“Yeah.”  Long pause. “I can ride my bicycle without training wheels.”
“I can do that too.”
Another long pause. “ Yeah, but you're an old man.”


I get my television from YouTube TV.  Thirty five dollars a month and I can watch it anywhere.

Something that puzzles me is  that in the last month they have started pre-empting commercials. You'll see the start of the commercial, then you see a screen that says” You're watching MSNBC [ or whatever]  on YouTube TV, accompanied by innocuous porn movie music, i. e., music they don't have to buy the rights to.

This doesn't bother me-- I'd likely mute the commercials anyway-- but how can they get by with this? Advertisers paid money to produce this show. The show wouldn't exist without them. The deal is” we’ll make your show and in exchange you air our commercials.” How can YouTube present the show without the commercials? Yet they show some of them. How does this work? Someone explain this to me. Google doesn't seem to know...

This is the entrance to the Porterdale community garden, a wonderful Institution excellently managed by Candace Hassen, who also designs beautiful quilts.

Here is my plot. The things with the alligator looking leaves are the artichoke plants I started from seed indoors in February. I'm hoping for 30 or so artichokes in late summer.

These are shots of Porterdale in the spring.

I seem to have made it to another one. As WC Fields said,” If I had known I was going to live this long I would have taken better care of myself.”

Should I get around to executing a living will before I in fact need it, my first dictate on when the doc should pull the plug is when I am no longer able to control hair growing out of my ears.

Here is the array at the Porterdale Bar and Grill where I do some of my writing. Such a lovely sight, and speaking of lovely sights,

Here are my PB&G girlfriends, El and Tina.


I've always wondered what MLB does with all those baseballs which are thrown out when they hit the ground. My friend TJ Alexander used to maintain that they clean them off and put them  back in the game. That would defeat the whole point of this wasteful practice which is that the pitcher should not be able to throw a scuffed baseball which could increase movement on his pitches. If he were caught scuffing the ball himself-- and it has been done. Sandpaper hidden in the glove-- he would be a ejected, fined and suspended.

I always figured they sent them to the minor leagues. Turns out I too am wrong. I've written about how emphasis on launch angle has led to a record-breaking number of home runs in the past two years. and maybe they juiced the baseball. No way of knowing.

Well it turns out we do have a way of knowing, and they have juiced the ball. I recently heard on ESPN that this year for the first time the baseball hierarchy is using the major league ball at the Triple-A level. The number of home runs there has doubled.

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