The Daily Memphian’s sports notebook reports that the University of Mississippi may have to come up with a new nickname in the wake of the George Floyd protests – and I don’t mean just “Rebels,” which is obviously linked to the confederacy. A Sports Illustrated reporter claims that while it cannot be verified, “Ole Miss” is believed to come from a slave dialect, where they would refer to the owner of the plantation as “Ole Massa” and his wife as “Ole Miss.” If that’s true, it it mind-boggling that the nickname has lasted into the 21st century.
If you’ve ever thought about donating to the Hospitality HUB, now would be the time. A generous HUB supporter has offered to match any donations or registry purchases through the end of the day Friday, June 26. This is your chance to help decorate the new HUB Hotel, providing a place for women experiencing homelessness with all the comforts of home. You can purchase items from one of the following registries:
- IKEA
- Home Depot
- Amazon
- Wayfair
- Or you can donate
I’ll pass on a trick I learned this weekend for those with older iPhones: My iPhone 6s’s battery started acting janky to the point that I thought I was going to have to get rid of the phone. However, after I let the battery go all the way to zero and then recharged it to 100%, it started acting fine again. I’m not saying it had the battery power of a new phone, but I could live with it. Previously it would go from 100% to 93% to 87% to 81% to 76% to 69% in the span of less than an hour. Yesterday, after I ran it down and charged it back up, it went from 100% to 92% in two hours.
I was told yesterday that cars were doing donuts on Riverside Drive about 11:30 Friday night, the drivers holding pistols out the window. Why does the city allow this kind of behavior to continue?
There were 385 new cases of COVID-19 yesterday, a one-day record by more than 100. That is downright scary, although the health department has not issued a statement (that I’m aware of) about the cases.
Thieves stole all four tires and rims off a tourist’s rental car in the Central Station parking lot Friday night. She was paying $25 a night for parking. Geez, for that price you’d think they could afford a security guard for the lot.
I changed things up yesterday and led off at Slider Inn Downtown yesterday. They have mandatory temperature checks to keep everyone safe. The inside is now open, although the majority of people chose to sit outside where there was live music.
With no sports on, they had the TVs on all kinds of random stuff, and The Little Rascals were on. It reminded me that I own DVDs containing 57 of the episodes, including the seven episodes banned from TV because the content, while considered appropriate in the 1930s, is very inappropriate by modern standards – things like Spanky dressing up in blackface to hide from his friends, and Farina answering a newspaper ad for “colored boys” to work a pet show. I wonder if I could donate those CDs to be used for educational purposes. In the right context (as in, “these are things we don’t do anymore”) there might be some value in those episodes being shown.
The CDs might be valuable for a couple of other reasons as well. First of all, despite the racism, the black kids in the series are portrayed as the white kids’ equals, and were often leaders, unusual for the 1920s and 1930s. They were even shown attending school together, which must have horrified white Southerners back then. Also, some of the episodes are pre-1929 silents that were never shown on TV.
One of the other Slider TVs had a show from the ’80s on… can’t remember its name but it was Henry Rush and his wife living in San Francisco with their two grown daughters and the daughters’ goofy friend Monroe. I could get into binge-watching that.
After Slider Inn, I walked over to Longshot with my friends Randy, Theresa, and Big Papa, and we played a couple of games of shuffleboard. I had dinner there: a Southern patty melt with local ground beef, jalapeno jam, white cheddar, and smoked tomato aioli on a Hustle & Dough sourdough bun. It was excellent. I got a picture but the Internet at home is still crap so I can’t get it uploaded.
You know what’s weird about this Xfinity Internet problem? Other people at Number 10 Main are reporting it too, as are people in the Shrine Building… but I work in Brinkley Plaza, which is in between the two buildings, and the Internet works just fine there.
Normally I would go through Facebook and see what events are happening today to add to this post, but I can’t even get Facebook to load. So I’ll hit Publish and see what happens. Back tomorrow or whenever I next have a decent connection.