Southpaw Jones

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

It’s the 21st Century, folks, and we’ve got to work hard to keep language fresh and vibrant. The last thing we need is another “bling bling” going from underground to street level to high school to sitcom to local news anchor at breakneck speed before slamming into a cultural wall. Blam-blam!

No one calls me an expert on modern language, no one has asked me to perform this chore, and maybe no one cares, but I’m taking it upon myself to hurry up the process of finding The Next Big Phrase. From now on, when you’re moderately disgusted, try one of these:

• I’m about to give you some applause, but not that boring old hand-slapping kind. I’m thinking more like a smattering of half-digested food hitting the pavement.

• You just became Béla Lu-gross-I, and this conversation vants to suck, my bud.

• I’d rather look at Courtney Love naked in twenty years than hear/see/feel that again.

• I think my breakfast just met my lunch, and they’re about to have brunch at the cutest little outdoor café. They told me to invite you.

• I would dry heave right now if I hadn’t just swallowed my tongue.

• Wow, that was like Harold & Maude without the pathos.

• I’m looking to buy a Hurl-ey Davidson, and you just gave me a no interest loan.

• Does anyone else taste bile right now? Literal? Figurative? I know, it’s both, right?

• I could easily let myself be sickened, but I don’t have health insurance.

• You guys don’t mind a little Public Display of Affliction do you?

• Man, that just gave me gas. No wait, there’s liquid, too. And a few solids!

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

Instead they sit at home and make their own records, which is sometimes OK but it doesn’t bode well for long-term artistic vision. It’s just a means to an end. We’re talking about things that are going to change the world and change the way people listen to music and that’s not going to happen with people blogging on the internet. I mean, get out there — communicate. Hopefully the next movement in music will tear down the internet. Let’s get out in the streets and march and protest instead of sitting at home and blogging. I do think it would be an incredible experiment to shut down the whole internet for five years and see what sort of art is produced over that span. There’s too much technology available. I’m sure, as far as music goes, it would be much more interesting than it is today.
Sir Elton John, needing to shut up and not be so old

Online Museum of the Week
Song Title Movie Posters:

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

This squirmy piece of fish bait has curly hair! Did someone give this thing a…
Highlight here for answer: [worm perm]

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

Thursday, August 9nd, 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:

I’ve allowed my mother to write today’s message regarding the big debut show tonight. Thanks, Mom!

Well, it’s just big event after big event for “Southpaw Jones,” which is NOT the name his father and I chose for him. Buford — that’s his preferred nomenclature ’round holidays — was such a lovely child. Never caused an ounce of trouble. Never spoke out of turn. Never cared about kissing girls below the collarbone.

Then, first grade came along, and my charming little angel seemed to fly away, leaving a ponderous, question-filled, and questionable little boy. I gave up on him then and there. He ate oatmeal and chocolate milk until he ran away at the age of 17. He said something like, “A few dozen people in America need to see me play a guitar upside-down. And we’re out of booze. So see ya.”

That was the last I saw of him. Of course, he called me today, whining about having to “provide soooooo much content to keep southpawjones.net fresh.” He begged and begged me to write this silly e-mail for him, so like a good mother, I jumped on the ol’ Commodore and let the textuals fly!

My boy don’t play weekly shows at Café Mundi no more. He’s graduated
from that five-year masters course of performing & songwriting.

Now, he and his partner — whom I’ve neither met nor approved — Matt the Electrician are taking their little legend of a show uptown to Flipnotics at the Triangle. That’s located at 4600 Guadelupe in a great big Triangle where clean people live, work, and eat Italian food. Yes, Southpaw’s my son, and you don’t have ter take my word for it, but these boys are going to sound great, look great, and feel great in their new home.

Join them Thursday night, and leave me be! I find it to be a bunch of godless, hip-fracturing hooey.

Chop-chop,
Southpaw’s mom

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

Because gifted children are able to consider the possibilities of how things might be, they tend to be idealists. However, they are simultaneously able to see that the world is falling short of how it might be. They discover that others, particularly of their age, clearly do not share these concerns … and by as early as first grade can feel isolated from peers and family members. When their intensity is combined with multi-potentiality, these youngsters become particularly frustrated with the existential limitations of space and time. There are simply not enough hours in the day, and making choices among the possibilities seems indeed arbitrary; there is no ‘ultimately right’ choice.
Dr. James Webb

Online Museum of the Week
Song Title Movie Posters:

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

That kid who now runs the creepy Chocolate Factory rides around on pricey hogs. Have you seen…
Highlight here for answer: [Charlie’s Harleys]

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

Thursday, August 2nd, 2007
8:00 PM
Matt the Electrician & Southpaw Jones
Flipnotics at the Triangle
4600 Guadalupe
Austin, TX
(512) 380-0097
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:

Good morning and welcome. Welcome to Year Two of The Southpaw Jones Gazette! Yay! Today marks one year since the debut of southpawjones.net, and it’s still going strong with 259 daily posts and counting. You can still see that original edition HERE.

I know I didn’t provide much build-up to this day. That’s because I just didn’t have time to prepare. I want to present a new look and organization to things around here, and I need a few more days to accomplish that. So let’s say Monday, August 13. Yes, I now proclaim it to be The Day of Rebirth of Blog and Man. Prepare thyself.

Thanks to everyone who visits, subscribes, and helps to spread the word. If this Gazette has a soul, and I like to think it does, you are its horcruxes.

Speaking of great dailies, well, Rupert Murdoch has finally done it, sealing a deal to purchase The Wall Street Journal. May I just be first to say I won’t be reading THAT ONE anymore. Won’t be curling up with a hot cup of joe and THAT ONE in the morning. You won’t see THAT ONE sailing over my white picket fence to rest its rubber-banded folds upon my “Home Sweet Gnome” doormat. I guess my parrot Farnum won’t be pooping on THAT ONE after I’ve read it from cover to cover. I guess the recycling bin won’t be feeling the weight of THAT ONE pile up day after day anymore. I suppose my buying and selling of stocks and bonds won’t depend upon the reporting of THAT ONE no more, dig it?

What I’m doing there in the preceding paragraph is “being facetious.” I’ve never read that paper and I never will. Don’t know anyone who does. But more importantly, one simply can’t trust a single source of information. It’s not healthy in the past, present, or future. I don’t care if it’s owned by Rupert Murdoch or Ollie the Objective Octopus. Everything is biased. It’s the 21st Century, and we are our own reporters, editors, and publishers now. Of course, that’s only if you want to find some modicum of truth. Most people don’t.

So that’s depressing and preachy, unlike The Simpsons Movie, which I saw with Maggie (my girlfriend, not the youngest of the Springfield clan) last night. I gotta say, I was a big fan of the show in the early years, then it started to get bad about a decade in, then sometimes it gets better, sometimes way worse, and now there’s this movie. So I expected to be entertained in a sort of nostalgia-and-goodwill-trumps-unfunny-jokes sort of way.

Well, this movie did not need any help from the past. It did not need the 12-year-old Southpaw begging the 30-year-old Southpaw to give it the benefit of the doubt. I did not watch it sober, but I don’t think sobriety would have hurt it. It was very fun and very funny and cool to see on the big screen with a good crowd. Most folks who aren’t my mother or hyper-critical “fans” of the show should be able to dig it with no problem.

Go see it, even if it is indirectly owned by, that’s right, Rupert Murdoch. The same Rupert Murdoch who popped out of a joey’s pouch in the outback with nothing but a boomerang and a vicious desire to destroy all that is good and holy. Oh, well.

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

The paper, published in the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, was based on the theory that humor comprehension is a result of resolving incongruities—resolving the conflict between the expected and the actual, which requires a combination of cognitive skills. As older adults age, they experience cognitive declines that the researchers indicate affect their ability to comprehend humor.
Wingyun Mak and Brian Carpenter, Ph.D., Washington University in St. Louis

Online Museum of the Week
Song Title Movie Posters:

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

That sea cow sure does think highly of himself. Rather conceited. He’s got a lot of…
Highlight here for answer: [manatee vanity]

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

Thursday, August 2nd, 2007
8:00 PM
Matt the Electrician & Southpaw Jones
Flipnotics at the Triangle
4600 Guadalupe
Austin, TX
(512) 380-0097
www.flipnotics.com
The New Weekly Show!

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