Southpaw Jones

Paw Prints
Pics of Southpaw, his environ, and his interweb:

Is This Interesting?
Thoughts/feelings that just might not matter:

It’s time, my friends, to release the long-awaited Playing: Live at Café Mundi. As you may recall, Matt the Electrician and I recorded two sets back in July, and we scored fifteen whole songs that meet our standards of musical excellence.

These tracks have been sharpened and honed over the past five years we’ve been performing together, and we wrote several of them in response to Song Title Challenges. The CD contains see-saw action, back and forth, just like the Pirate Circus segment of our traditional Wednesday night show.

Copies will be available tonight for $10. Oh, and we’ll be performing as well, for Matt has finally returned from Japan.

Wednesday, February 21st, 2007
8:00 PM
Cafe Mundi
1704 E. 5th St.
Austin, TX
512-236-8634
http://www.cafemundi.com

Check out the track listing below and the cover art above. If you can’t make it, we’ll continue to sell them at shows, and I suspect they’ll be available for mail order and possibly download very soon.

Online Museum of the Week
Shaven Cats:

Sorry, no longer available.

Quotopia
Freshly-picked quotes from the ol’ reference collection:

Thanks to Mental Floss.

Often I hook up a plant and just go about my business, then observe what makes it respond. One day back in New York City I was making coffee. The coffee maker we had in the lab was a dripolater, where you put a teakettle on, boil the water, pour it in, and it drips down. We normally didn’t empty the teakettle, but just topped it off later. This particular day, however, I needed the teakettle for something else, and so poured the scalding water down the sink. The plant being monitored showed huge reactions. It turns out that if you don’t put chemicals or very hot water down the sink for a long time, a little jungle begins to grow down there. Under a microscope it’s almost as scary as the bar scene in Star Wars. Well, the plant was responding to the death of the microbes.
Cleve Backster

And Another Thing…
More verbosity with velocity and viscosity:

Here’s the track listing from the new CD!

1. No Bruce Tonight (Paw)
2. Black Blackness (MtE)
3. Women, Yes Sir (Paw)
4. Milo (MtE)
5. George (Paw)
6. Tokyo (MtE)
7. Tokyo (Paw)
8. Julie’s Sandbox (Paw)
9. Army of Kittens (MtE)
10. Everyman (Paw)
11. Good Enough (MtE)
12. Hot So Hot (Paw)
13. Champagne 40 (MtE)
14. Moon Whore (Paw)
15. Teenage Dirtbag (MtE)

Thank you, come again!
southpawjones.com
southpawjones.net
myspace.com/southpawjones
E-mail southpaw@southpawjones.com
©2007 Southpaw Jones. All rights reserved.

Is This Interesting?
Thoughts/feelings that just might not matter:

We’re already in the 20’s of February! Where does the time go? I took yesterday off, and that was lazy of me, but I got a good amount of rest and exercise. I returned to The Killer, a fitness routine I created back when I was funemployed. It consists of leaving my apartment, heading around Town Lake to Congress, and visiting 3 workout stations along the way. At each stop, I complete 22 push-ups and 33 sit-ups. Multiples of 11, I can’t explain it. It was a truly warm, spring-like day here, and I soaked it up.

Back on Friday, I spent a rare night on 6th Street to see my girl Maggie perform with the rest of Spank Dance Company at Emo’s Lounge. They really classed up the joint, and it was fun to see real art in a place where real civilians could be exposed to it.

Saturday, we saw Pan’s Labyrinth, a mind-blowing spectacle of child-like fantasy and adult-like horror. One of those films where you leave the theater having absolutely no idea how long you were in there. It is a must see, even if you detest sub-titles. The best and only film I’ve seen on the big screen in 2007.

Sunday, I woke up early enough to catch my friends Mike and Rob round the final bend of the Austin Marathon. 26.2 miles, it’s no joke. I knew a few other folks in the event, and they all amaze me. With legs like that, who needs mass transit? We should all just piggy-back to work on an assigned marathoner. Congratulations, participants!

What else is new? I’m trying a new segment in the Gazette today…5 Facts, 1 TX Town, 1 Springsteen Lyric & 1 Famous Jew. Pretty self-explanatory, I think. Hope you dig it.

Alrighty, let’s catch up on the Southpaw Jones Virtual Excursion des Pieds! It was a weak week for me, as I was busy with Valentine’s celebrations and sick with some sort of cold/allergy thing. I took four days off! Nasty. But I’m gonna be kind to myself and include yesterday in my tally. 17 miles on foot, 5 miles on the bike, which means:

Week 1: 30 miles to Taylor, Texas
Week 2: 27 miles to Rockdale, Texas
Week 3: 20.7 miles to Caldwell, Texas
Week 4: 22.3 miles to Bryan/College Station, Texas
Week 5: 21 miles through Gibbons Creek Lake
Week 6: 24.4 miles to Hunstville, Texas
Week 7: 22 miles to…

TRINITY, TEXAS!

Population 2,721. Not…much…going…on.

5 Facts, 1 TX Town, 1 Springsteen Lyric & 1 Famous Jew
In no particular order:

1. Edward Craven Walker invented the lava lamp in the 1960’s.
2. He originally called it the “Astrolight” or “Astrolamp.”
3. Flower Mound, Texas
4. Lava lamps can be used as a physical random number generator, due to their chaotic behavior.
5. Wynona Ryder
6. The two ingredients in the lamp are transparent oil and translucent wax.
7. Wendy, let me in, I wanna be your friend, I wanna guard your dreams and visions.
8. Lava lamps generally operate at 140 °F.

Online Museum of the Week
Shaven Cats:

In honor of Ms. Britney Spears.

Sorry, no longer available.

Quotopia
Freshly-picked quotes from the ol’ reference collection:

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.
Henry David Thoreau

Plumb, Plumber, Plumbest
Signs o’ the times from Austin’s singing Jewish plumber, Herman Bennett:

Thank you, come again!
southpawjones.com
southpawjones.net
myspace.com/southpawjones
E-mail southpaw@southpawjones.com
©2007 Southpaw Jones. All rights reserved.

It’s President’s Day, my friends. Happy that! I have the day off from work, and putting the Gazette together is so much more fun at work.

So I’m gonna sleep in this morning and return to bloggishing Tuesday morning. Please visit again then.

Is This Interesting?
Thoughts/feelings that just might not matter:

It seems to me that the goal of civilization is to spare each man from involuntarily smelling and/or seeing another man’s waste. We are not achieving this goal in the semi-public bathrooms of my workplace, American Money Team.

And similarly, is it not the point of home ownership/apartment rental to have some modicum of control over one’s senses? When you’re in “your place,” you determine what you see, smell, touch, hear, and taste. That’s what you pay for, and that’s why we have TVs, incense, walls, stereos, and kitchens.

Yes, well, I have a neighbor who loves the bass on his stereo, while I adore the silence and control of my apartment. He enjoys mediocre music and television at a very loud volume. He claims to be half-deaf, and I can only imagine why. Sometimes it sounds like distant bombs going off. Sometimes it sounds like a tyrannosaurus rex is stomping its way to gobble me up. These sounds conjure up a fight or flight response instinctively, and that’s just not what you want when you’re trying to relax at home.

But the absolute worst is having to hear, through my wall, the bass lines of awful songs that we all know and hate. Artists like Train, B-52s, Damn Yankees, Chumbawamba, and of course, Metallica. If you think their tunes are hard to listen to full out, try listening to the kick drum and bass guitar duet while you’re trying to watch a political documentary. What have I done, oh Lord, to deserve such local vibrations of horror?

And Another Thing…
More verbosity with velocity and viscosity:

But I can’t complain too much. After all, it’s Friday! And my darlin’ Maggie is dancing tonight at Emo’s. She’s a rock star! Here’s the official word:

Spank Dance Company is performing Flowers and Bon Voyage at Emo’s Lounge. These are two long-form modern dances (about 15 minutes each), full of character and beautiful movement. You can see videos of these dances at www.spankdance.com. Fun!

Friday, 2/16
Spank Dance with the Hello Lovers
Emo’s Lounge (6th and Red River)
9:30pm
$7

Online Museum of the Week
Indexed:

Life beautifully diagramed by Jessica Hagy.

Quotopia
Freshly-picked quotes from the ol’ reference collection:

Thanks to Maggie and Ron for sharing this one:

It’s hard to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him NOT understanding it.
Upton Sinclair

Fool Around Friday
Silly games for silly times:

Enjoy RED, which I found here.

Thank you, come again!
southpawjones.com
southpawjones.net
myspace.com/southpawjones
E-mail southpaw@southpawjones.com
©2007 Southpaw Jones. All rights reserved.

Is This Interesting?
Thoughts/feelings that just might not matter:

Hello, and happy pre-weekend to you. I am a bit under the weather this morning, so before we move on to the rest of the Gazette, I’d like to cast some wellness spells I remember from my Warlock days.

Spindly, crindly,
Blakely, moat!
Demons clog my achy throat.

Edelweiss, Turkey,
Flinge and krim!
Do I look alright in this sweater?
It’s really cold out there.
Brrr.
Who brought donuts?

Rhyme Time!
One clue whose answer consists of two rhyming words:

Subtraction symbols belonging to the air-filled cavities of the head.
Highlight here for answer: [sinus’s minuses]

Online Museum of the Week
Indexed:

Life beautifully diagramed by Jessica Hagy.

Click for a better view.

Quotopia
Freshly-picked quotes from the ol’ reference collection:

I enjoy convalescence. It is the part that makes the illness worth while.
George Bernard Shaw

Plumb, Plumber, Plumbest
Signs o’ the times from Austin’s singing Jewish plumber, Herman Bennett:

Thank you, come again!
southpawjones.com
southpawjones.net
myspace.com/southpawjones
E-mail southpaw@southpawjones.com
©2007 Southpaw Jones. All rights reserved.