Southpaw Jones

CRUELTY is now available!
Order the CD now at southpawjones.com.
Purchase MP3s at cdbaby.com or .
Grab a copy in real time at Waterloo Records, End of an Ear, or Bookpeople in Austin.
Or buy one from me any Thursday at Flipnotics @ the Triangle.

‘Tis Thursday, which means Matt the Electrician and I will mount the stage of Flipnotics @ the Triangle and weave our magic for young and old at 8 pm. The song title of the week is “My Japanese Shaker.”

Indeed.

Let’s say, hypothetically of course, that I have not finished my song, even though it is now 10 am on the day of the show. Where might I begin?

Well, this is the 21st Century, so the first step in brainstorming is the ever-present internet search.

Over at Amazon, the only relevant products are a book called Kindred Spirits: The Eloquence of Function in American Shaker and Japanese Arts of Daily Life, a set of Japanese sumo wrestler salt & pepper shakers, and something called Funky Health Japanese Raddish Sprouting Seeds Shaker.

These items do not inspire me, although I ordered the sumo shakers for Sweet Maggie’s birthday.

A Google search of “my Japanese shaker” somehow led me to the wonderful world of pen spinning! Yes, that thing that students and talk show hosts do when they’re bored. There is a slew of international websites featuring video tricks, hot utensil modifications, and cutting edge combos. It’s extreme sports for the sedentary, extreme in that you could put an eye out or stain your shirt quite easily.

Is there a song in pen spinning? The tale of a ragged underdog from the streets of Newark who makes it to the Xtreme Pen Spinning Expo in Miami? A Sword in the Stone kind of story where a kid with only three fingers happens to be the only one to tame the mysterious, unwieldy highlighter called The Japanese Shaker?

No, that’s not doing it for me.

Let’s see, the Shakers were a Protestant group that made sturdy, tasteful furniture, like, totally pre-IKEA. They believed that making something well was “an act of prayer.” In 2006, the only had four members left. That’s kind of beautiful and sad. Perhaps one of them is Japanese.

Of course, it might be most fun to create a hot new dance song with instructions in the lyrics ala “The Twist” or “The Humpty Dance” or “Do the Bartman.”

Who knows how I’ll break free of this writer’s block? Come see us tonight to find out!

as reported in The New York Times

September 18, 1908
CALLS CHRIST AN ARYAN.
Religious Historians, in Spite of Prof. Haupt, Still Hold Him a Jew.
OXFORD, Sept. 17. — The International Congress of the History of Religion, the sessions of which began Tuesday, was aroused to a high pitch of excitement to-day by a paper presented by Prof. Paul Haupt of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, in which he endeavored to demonstrate by a process of ethnological reasoning that Christ was not a Jew, but an Aryan.

One clue whose answer consists of two rhyming words:

A variation of Tuesday’s puzzle: One dish features steak, and the next features sushi. The former plate sounds delicious, but I prefer the…

Highlight here for answer: [fish dish]


Wackyfun Food Art Time

What is this life? A frenzy, an illusion,
A shadow, a delirium, a fiction.
The greatest good’s but little, and this life
Is but a dream, and dreams are only dreams.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

EVERY DANG THURSDAY
8:00 PM
Flipnotics at the Triangle
4600 Guadalupe
AUSTIN, TX
(512) 380-0097
www.flipnotics.com
________________________________________________________________

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2008
9:00 PM (Doors open at 8.)
Matt the Electrician & Southpaw Jones
Anderson Fair
2007 Grant 77006
HOUSTON, TX
713.528.8576
www.andersonfair.com