Southpaw Jones

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

Happy Friday! I don’t really have anything to write about that fits this light, weekend air. Adult conversations, that’s what’s on my noodle this morning. Serious adult conversations, like the kind between lovers, family members, spouses, or best friends. If good intentions abound, these talks are most often the story of one scared kid trying to find another scared kid in a grown-up’s body.

Such discussions are not easy or fun or often successful, because you can’t just open with “I’m a scared kid in an adult’s body, how ‘bout you?” You have to work your way through defense mechanisms, distrust, and shit-speak that society has pounded into our heads over the decades.

Here are a few characters you may run into on the way to another person’s buried, injured child:

The Condescending Librarian
“Shhh!”
“That is NOT how we look for information here.”
“This is neither the time nor the place.”

The Chilly-Chill Hippie
“Man, why you gotta harsh my mellow?”
“Hey! Relax!”
“Look, the sky is blue, the grass is green, what else do you need to know?”

The Media Fan
“This reminds me of a particularly powerful Hill Street Blues.”
“If you’re serious about this, I could Netflix Big.”
“Speaking of childhood, do you remember 3-2-1 Contact?”

The Popeye’s Chicken Cashier (When You’re Returning an Incorrect Order)
“Oh, no you dit’n!”
“Say what?”
“Do you wanna talk to the manager?”

The Baby Maker
“You are being so sweet right now.”
“I can see my first-born in your probing eyes.”
“Why seek out my figurative inner child, when we could make a literal one instead?”

The Investor
“This is about money, isn’t it?”
“You don’t think I’m a generous tipper, is that it?”
“Let’s just make a budget, and everything will work itself out.”

The Puritan
“Why dost thou trouble my still waters with the winds of worldly chatter?”
“Shush up and pray with me.”
“Inner child? I drowned him during baptism!”

Back-to-You Bob
“I know you’re a scared kid, but what am I?”
“What exactly are you trying to accomplish here?”
“Your blog sucks. Don’t you know how silly you come across?”

Adults are just old children with about one hundred pounds of scar tissue slapped on. Most of our dreams did not come true. We never got to flesh out our most wondrous ideas. We had our hearts broken over and over by squished pets, confused parents, and cruel lovers.

How on earth are we supposed to talk to each other?

Ghost stories! Ooo! Ahh! They represent our fear of death, right? Fear and hatred of our own mortality? Well, that makes perfect sense. But could they not also symbolize the basic unknowable nature of the very living, breathing people around us?

You push far enough into another person, past the fake, past the “real,” and what you find is a frightening mist. Mist, I tell you! Maybe they genuinely want to help you. Maybe they want to love you forever. Maybe they want to move to Alaska. Or maybe they just want a sandwich. Who knows? See “My Dinner with Andre.” See the lyrics to Bruce Springsteen’s “Secret Garden.” Yes, the one from Jerry Maguire. You had me at Friday. See you Monday.

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

She’ll lead you down a path
There’ll be tenderness in the air
She’ll let you come just far enough
So you know she’s really there
She’ll look at you and smile
And her eyes will say
She’s got a secret garden
Where everything you want
Where everything you need
Will always stay
A million miles away.
Bruce Springsteen, Secret Garden

Online Museum of the Week
Walking Illusions [For Sale!]:

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

Yes, ma’am, we cleanse, revitalize and massage your eyes and cheeks with a big piece of slow-moving ice. We call it the…
Highlight here for answer: [glacial facial]

Upcoming Show(s)
Where can I see Southpaw in the flesh?

Thursday, August 16th, 2007
8:00 PM
Matt the Electrician & Southpaw Jones
Flipnotics at the Triangle
4600 Guadalupe
Austin, TX
(512) 380-0097
http://www.flipnotics.com
The New Weekly Show!

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

Austinites, join Matt the Electrician and me live at the NEW Flipnotics @ the Triangle. Tonight!

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

There is a lot of speculation about Barry Bonds, and my only advice for people is to just let history be the judge.
President Geroge W. Bush

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

Yes, history will be the judge, Mr. Bush. You’ve mentioned this before. It makes you feel deep and big-minded. As a fellow Texan under this here Big Sky, I know how important that is to you.

I also know that you don’t want to go to prison. You don’t want to go on trial. You don’t want to answer for your presidency or, come to think of it, all the life failures that preceded it. So you’d rather put your fate in the hands of a researching grad student in the year 2245.

Who gives a flying carny flip, right?

“Let history judge” is much safer than “Let a living federal judge judge.”

And if you’re going to apply that standard to yourself, then naturally, you have to grant history’s gracey-grace to others, too. Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby, Barry Bonds, J.R. Ewing. Can’t we just sort out all this craziness when we’re, like, dust in the wind and stuff?

It is this mix of James Bond villain and Zen-ish hippie that our great state is prone to produce.

Mr. President, you have driven the final nail in the coffin of Republican Accountability, which died a withering child, emaciated because its parents kept it locked away without love or food…hence the closed casket. (That’s a sad metaphor in more ways than one. Leave it in, SPJ! Let history judge this Thursday morning rant!)

You can’t fool me, Mr. Bush. I know how truly smart you are. I know that you know that history, especially mainstream history, is a blind, forgiving grandmother, knitting on the porch swing, repeating her mantra “Boys will be boys.”

We both know that war can be simplified as follows: Rich men telling poor men to protect, steal, secure, or take back some prize of money, land, or resources. And yet, our history books, great and wise judges they be, tell us that wars of the past were about Freedom, God, or The Little People. Oh, that it were true!

History is your friend, Your Highness. History won’t care if there’s an * beside Barry Bonds’s name in the record books. History can’t see an * without her reading glasses! History won’t care that all your contemporaries know you’re a double-dunked dunce. History knows how hard you tried, history knows it wasn’t your fault, and history can’t touch you until you’re long dead, buried, decomposed, perhaps converted, over the course of millennia, into oil.

Black Gold! Texas Tea! History will make your dreams come true, so you have all the reason in the world to love yourself and grin, grin, grin during endless war, war, war. Heaven awaits, and you will become what you most desire.

Yee-haw.

Online Museum of the Week
Walking Illusions [For Sale!]:

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

There are accepted methods for being a mom or a dad, and you just don’t follow them! You’re an…
Highlight here for answer: [errant parent]

Upcoming Show(s)
Where can I see Southpaw in the flesh?

Thursday, August 9th, 2007
8:00 PM
Matt the Electrician & Southpaw Jones
Flipnotics at the Triangle
4600 Guadalupe
Austin, TX
(512) 380-0097
http://www.flipnotics.com
The New Weekly Show!

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

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

Congratulations, Barry Bonds! You juicer (alleged)! You prick (proven)! You did it!

AT&T Park was abuzz last night, which reminds me, I need to pick up an iPhone. Thank you, National Pastime, for using public funds to put up a massive reminder that AT&T exists. Thank god someone breaks a record from time to time, or else I’d forget to renew my cell phone contract.

756 Major League Home Runs. Let me type that out in a southern accent: Seven-hunurd an’ fifty-see-ux! I certainly haven’t written that many songs. I haven’t had sex that many times!

Speaking of which, isn’t Viagra a performance-enhancing drug? If one has major league sex with a little help from a blue pill, does one have to put an * beside it in one’s personal record book? Let me know.

Good god, what am I doing writing about baseball?

In Spanish, it’s “béisbol.” I’d rather it be “pelota de basamento” personally.

There is one important thing to remember in the Barry Bonds legacy, my friends. It’s not the power hitting. It’s not the shaky state of baseball’s innocence. It’s not the Giants, AT&T, Sports Illustrated, or maple bats. It’s not the question of steroids or the numerous public relations missteps. It’s not Hank Aaron’s graceful surrender by video. It’s not the color of Barry’s skin or his bald head or his age.

Do you sense where I’m going with this?

Barry Bonds is one of many great, accomplished Southpaws. For that and for being strong and for 756 home runs, I give him mad props. We left-handers will take over the world someday, Barry, and I’m glad you’re on my team. Righties just don’t understand us. Righties only know how to criticize and hold us back. Righties can’t believe the things we accomplish. They’re jealous and fearful. Don’t Trust Righty!

When President Barack Obama asks us to be in his left-handed cabinet with Jon Stewart and Bill Clinton and resurrected Kurt Cobain, I want to be the first to shake your hand.

You know which hand, brother. Way to represent!


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

I think of doing a series as very hard work. But then I’ve talked to coal miners, and that’s really hard work.
William Shatner

Online Museum of the Week
Walking Illusions [For Sale!]:

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

She makes money by proctoring little tests. She’s in the…
Highlight here for answer: [quiz biz]

Upcoming Show(s)
Where can I see Southpaw in the flesh?

Thursday, August 9th, 2007
8:00 PM
Matt the Electrician & Southpaw Jones
Flipnotics at the Triangle
4600 Guadalupe
Austin, TX
(512) 380-0097
http://www.flipnotics.com
The New Weekly Show!

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

Yes, for a month now, I’ve been entering David Letterman’s Online Top Ten Contest, and I haven’t had a single item selected. That means I haven’t won a t-shirt. But I keep going, keep striving, and someday, it’s gonna get me somewhere, and I shall have a casually clothed torso for free.

Last week, the topic was Signs the Space Shuttle Astronauts Have Been Drinking. HERE are my suggestions, and HERE are the unfunny winners. I mean, really, one winner was “They do a shot every time they circle the earth.” Um, that’s not a sign they’ve been drinking, that’s a blatant procedure for drinking. Yes, it’s just a silly talk show gimmick, but I have always found the List to be a logical universe of joke-dom, and we can’t have random citizens defiling the tradition. Again, I ask: Who judges this thing?

And now, my attempts for this week:

Top Ten [Nay, TWELVE] Least Popular Presidential Campaign Promises

12. More accomplished missions.

11. An end to violets.

10. Forget alternative fuel, fund research of alternative rock!

9. A return to rational thought.

8. Mandatory polygamy.

7. More bubbles per bottle! (Sorry, that’s a champagne promise.)

6. Bring the troops home…to attack anti-war protestors.

5. Retroactive paper clip tax.

4. A New Day in America, a New Coke for All.

3. Cheaper gas, but you have to pay inside.

2. Equal opportunity military aggression against people of all colors and creeds who don’t pose any threat to us.

1. Cleavage!

This is my week, I can feel it!

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

To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence.
Friedrich Nietzsche, an evil man who poked God in the eye to see if he was alive.

Online Museum of the Week
Walking Illusions [For Sale!]:

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

There was a crazy brawl, because everybody wanted the last tasty, underground mushroom. Did you see the…
Highlight here for answer: [truffle scuffle]

Upcoming Show(s)
Where can I see Southpaw in the flesh?

Thursday, August 9th, 2007
8:00 PM
Matt the Electrician & Southpaw Jones
Flipnotics at the Triangle
4600 Guadalupe
Austin, TX
(512) 380-0097
http://www.flipnotics.com
The New Weekly Show!

Thank you, come again!
southpawjones.com
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 Monday to you. Congratulations to Chris & Julie, my girlfriend Maggie’s brother and brand new sister-in-law! I spent the wedding weekend in Houston, and everything came off beautifully. I met one-hundred-forty-seven people. I told them that I love Austin, it’s been a wet summer, and I don’t really understand my day job. They asked me what my “real name” is.

The smoothness of the event became all the more impressive when I considered this: All extended families [especially my own] are freakish, self-preserving organisms. It’s amazing to me that every wedding doesn’t break down into tribal warfare with faces decorated in cake icing war paint, candlestick spears, and broken wine bottle stabbers. Someone should write that screenplay: “Uncle Roy has been spying for the Groom’s side! He’s getting ice on the 5th floor. Attack via the service elevator!”

Anyways, we did stay in a very nice hotel, and though I enjoy visiting the world of the rich, I certainly can’t imagine staying there for too long. When strange hands move grabbingly toward my luggage, I instinctively slap them. Really hard. (My bad, Raul.) The time in a fancy hotel and the homeless dudes right outside got me thinking…

It sucks to be very poor, and it sucks to be very rich! For many of the same reasons!

Don’t believe me? Check it out:

Problems Shared by the Very Rich and Very Poor

• You have to figure out what you’re going to do with yourself all day. You don’t have a proper job, and the wide open spectrum of possible activities can be overwhelming. Hitchhike to Denver? Play racquetball with Jacques?

• You are isolated and paranoid, and you can’t understand why.

• No one likes you or trusts you, and you can’t understand why.

• Someone drives you around, while you passively sit in the back seat.

• You never know who is going to touch your stuff and take your money. At the shelter, at the Y, at the Four Seasons, the song remains the same.

• You have to wear uncomfortable, strange clothes that you would never pick out for yourself.

• You drink too much wine.

• One of your family or friends is always on the news, accused of some awful crime.

• Your spouse is very disappointed in you.

• All your friends are eccentric chatterboxes.

• Politicians lie to everyone, but especially you.

• You have to eat odd, risky foods. You don’t know where it came from, and some of it might kill you.

• You constantly wish you had more money.

So, you see, it’s nice to be in the middle. Real nice. Enjoy it as much as you can on this Monday morning.

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

William next invented a system according to which everybody had to belong to someone else, and everybody else to the King. This was called the Feutile System…
1066 and All That, by W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman

Online Museum of the Week
Walking Illusions [For Sale!]:

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

A lacy thigh band that dies for the sake of principle.
Highlight here for answer: [garter martyr]

Upcoming Show(s)
Where can I see Southpaw in the flesh?

Thursday, August 9th, 2007
8:00 PM
Matt the Electrician & Southpaw Jones
Flipnotics at the Triangle
4600 Guadalupe
Austin, TX
(512) 380-0097
http://www.flipnotics.com
The New Weekly Show!

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