You don’t look the moon in the face and call it a liar. You just don’t. My friend Mintzy Oglethorp did that very thing, despite the advice of yours truly, and he drowned in an especially high tide one evening. Whoosh. The ocean is like a plaything to the moon. It’s a puppet, lifted to strike and released to fall clumsily according to its master’s bidding.

Mintzy thought he heard the moon promise him happiness one night when he was 16-years-old. Sally Conundrum had just run from his car, repulsed at some out-of-order idea he had proposed in a horny whisper. He ran after her trying to re-buckle his belt, and he tripped over a root, busting his head.

He told me that when he came to, he saw a big silver face in the sky, which said, “Don’t worry about it, son. There’s a big mound of joy and fulfillment waiting for you out there. Give it a little time.”

Mintzy thought twenty years was an exceedingly generous interpretation of “a little time.” He called the moon a liar, and he died within a week. I’ll say it again: Whoosh.

Some folks think he really did talk to the moon, most likely because they themselves have chatted with a celestial body or two. Others think he was already half-crazy, and the knot on his head sent him over the edge. Personally, I believe it was Flagrant Magillicutty who gave Mintzy those encouraging words. He’s a particularly pale, round-faced hermit who lives in a shack and loves to taunt teenagers with unrealistic dreams.

One time, I got stuck in a tree, and instead of helping me down, he told me I’d discover “satisfying office work.”

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

Few things are as stimulating as other people’s calamities observed from a safe distance.
George Will

Online Museum of the Week
Matt Forderer:



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

That spoonful of tart dessert really packs a punch! Woo! Each bite is a…

Highlight here for answer: [dollop wallop]

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

Thursday, August 30th, 2007
8:00 PM
Matt the Electrician & Southpaw Jones
Flipnotics at the Triangle
4600 Guadalupe
Austin, TX
(512) 380-0097
http://flipnotics.com
The New Weekly Show!

Knock, knock? How’s my little man? Can I come in? C’mon, Dickie, cut off the Mega Man and talk to your dad for a second.

Your mother told me you’re upset, and I honestly just want to understand why. I promise, I’m not going to yell or slap or shake or grill you. Let’s just talk this out like civilized people. To me, it’s all completely logical. Makes sense, you know? You’re my son. You’ve got my hair, my spindly figure, and my hairless legs. You are a late bloomer and a bit of a pizza face, just like your old man was. You know I’ve generated a great deal of prosperity for this family as Wiener Man, and now you’re too good to be Wiener Boi?

I don’t get it, frankly. Stop giggling, Daddy’s trying to be serious here.

This was always the plan. When you were born, after I had to watch four little girls come out of your mother, I felt pure relief. I finally saw my Little Wiener come out with a little wiener, and I relished your birth above all others.

You were to be the continuation of my story, our family, and yes, the hot dog business I built from the only thing my cold-hearted father left me in his will: 65 tons of pig entrails and cloven miscellany.

Now we have the factory, the grocery store displays, the billboards, and at last, television commercials featuring your dear old dad dressed as an enticing, happy-go-lucky Wiener Man. Suddenly, you’re too good for all this?

Was it not always our dream for you to reach 9th grade and run a lunchtime Wiener Boi stand for all your hungry, growing, expendable-incoming-hemorrhaging peers? How many do you think you’ll sell wearing a Dark Crystal shirt and dirty jeans?

Let me ask you something. How many people did Clark Kent save? Peter Parker? He might as well have killed his father with his bare hands, the way he acted!

Ok, uncle, whatever.

The point is this: The casing makes the man. Superman flies, shoots eye beams, runs fast AND wears a flamboyant costume. Spiderman shoots webs, sticks to walls, senses danger in some precognitive way AND wears a crazy suit. You can’t have amazing powers without a sweet outfit to tie it all together.

Wiener Boi is your birthright, your destiny, your ticket to local, regional, and maybe even tri-state glory!

If some kid wants to make fun, you say, “Buy a bun!”
If some joker wants to give you lip, you say, “Our products contain no bovine lips!”
If some bully calls you a chicken, you say, “Try our new Chicken Shaft! The Bird is the Word!”

Actually, our lawyers are still looking into a trademark on that last one, so keep it to yourself for now.

You are going to be ridiculed, yes, but think about this: if they really want to get in your face, they’re going to have to get close enough to smell them tasty tubes boiling between you. By this point, you’ve got ‘em! You’ve got a sale! You just took a whole dollar from someone who might otherwise have been your enemy. And you can spend that dollar taking said loser’s girlfriend out for a Deluxe Smothered Wiener at Wiener Man Headquarters, where, of course, you can take advantage of your 5% in-the-family discount.

Your P.E. coach has assured me that you can shower between lunch and 5th period. We both know how hot it can get in that suit. He said that varsity football players hang out in there after lunch, and they’ll be sure to give you some privacy. Maybe you can ask them how to bulk up your Wiener arms! Rawr!

Buck up, Boi. Most kids only dream of having their whole lives set out before them like a summer picnic. No decisions, no regrets. All you have to do is dig in! From Wiener Boi to Wiener Man to Wiener King to Retired Wiener at 45-years-old. Is that so bad? Is that embarrassing somehow?

You tell those jealous kids to Suck This Wiener.

We got that one trademarked last month. You can use it freely.

Yeah? Feel better? Sleep tight, son. Remember, you’ll never be a loser when you’re so obviously a Wiener.

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

For the most part, pianos are female to me. Sometimes they’re dykes, and they’re always good fun.
Tori Amos, happy birthday to you.

Online Museum of the Week
Cassette Tape Culture:



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

I found a great piano on the beach in an East Coast resort town. Will you help me get the sand out of my…

Highlight here for answer: [seaboard keyboard]

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

Thursday, August 23rd, 2007
8:00 PM
Matt the Electrician & Southpaw Jones
Flipnotics at the Triangle
4600 Guadalupe
Austin, TX
(512) 380-0097
http://flipnotics.com
The New Weekly Show!

Welcome to the new and improved Southpaw Jones Gazette! What do you think? How’s it look?

First Lines
Introductions to classic works I will never finish:

The gracious everglade pixie Morning Dew had flown through three storms and across seven highways to pick up an abused suburban bunny named Shorn. Shorn’s “caretaker” was a vicious ten-year-old boy with a penchant for ear-pulling and an endless supply of matches, rubber bands, and creative ideas.

Morning Dew heard about Shorn through a helpful and hopelessly drug-addicted grackle with a pierced beak and trembling wings. Morning Dew provides mushroom caps, peyote, and occasionally pixie dust in exchange for the straight dope on abused pets in town. He rationalizes to his wife, “If that mite-riddled flapper doesn’t get the good, natural stuff from me, he’s going to end up snorting Comet with those hummingbirds.”

Morning Dew’s wife doesn’t argue. She has a secret.

Shorn was bracing himself for some Monday after-school torture when Morning Dew swooped in trailing more glitter than a homemade valentine, third grade, peer to peer.

“Shorn! Do not be afraid! Let me help you. I come from the wooded woods of Leafington. You can stay with my wife and me. Let’s go!”

Morning Dew was like nothing Shorn had ever seen. This made Shorn more skeptical than amazed.

“I…I’ll stay with you and your wife? Forever?

“No, Shorn, we run a half-way program for beautiful creatures just like you. We’ll get you ready for forest life, and you’ll be on your own. A free bunny! Now pack your things quickly. I’ll explain everything as we fly far away from here!”

“Oh, I don’t know. I can’t fly. And my owner really seems to depend on exploiting me to work out his childhood demons. I suspect only a couple more scorchings should put him right and set him on a proper course for adulthood. Yes, I think right here is the best place for me. Thanks anyway.”

Morning Dew had nothing but pity for this ragged white sack in its rusty cage. “Shorn, you’re delusional. You’ve got to do what’s right for yourself now. Bunnies in your situation don’t get to see their hair turn gray. That boy is going to kill you.”

Shorn bit his lip and thought hard. “My hair is going to turn gray? All of it? That’s grody.”

Morning Dew heard the school bus brakes squeak at the end of the block, and he knew he had no time to argue with this poor, poor creature. He blasted the cage door off with white hot light, gave Shorn the Pixie Kiss of Temporary Sleep, and scooped him up and out in the Heimlich position.

A ten-year-old boy missed their flight by mere seconds. He ran into the backyard with math homework, a juice box, and three bottle rockets. He wore his most expectant expression, which would only reappear five years later, en route to the touching of his first boob.

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

I felt more and more alienated. I didn’t feel included in George’s thinking or his plans. I wasn’t his partner in anything any longer. He was surrounded by yes-men. When I challenged him about it he said: ‘Well I’d hate to be surrounded by no-men.’
Patti Boyd, on ex-husband George Harrison

Online Museum of the Week
T-Shirts from Lollapalooza 2007:



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

Crazy Spanish chocolate!

Highlight here for answer: [loco cocoa]

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://flipnotics.com
The New Weekly Show!

First Lines
Introductions to classic works I will never finish:

Chormley has to walk a long way to school every day. His daddy says five miles, but Chormley thinks that is a conservative estimate.

Around mile three, he meets up with Clem, his 3rd best friend and possessor of an in-ground pool. Daddy says that Clem is slow as a two-ton tortoise on Quaaludes, but Chormley finds that to be a generous appraisal. Even Clem thinks of it less as an insult and more of an invitation to daydream about terrorizing villages at a glacial pace. Chormley says, “Two tons is big, but it’s not like you’d be fifty feet tall or anything.” Clem, lost in fantasy, says, “Rawr! I know you’ve got lettuce in there, so let us in there!”

Mile four features the leafless, haunted tree where Chormley’s mother fell two weeks before his first day of kindergarten. He doesn’t blame the tree, but he doesn’t underestimate it, either. When Chormley is ahead of schedule, he takes a moment to sit and stare from ten feet away. Clem studies the pit of an ant lion nearby.

When she was in the hospital, Chormley prayed to her, “Don’t leave me alone with him, Mommy. What on earth is going to make sense without you?”

Now, he looks at the tree and whispers, “He’s not as bad as I thought he would be. He offered to buy me a bike, but I don’t like the idea of speeding by here every morning and every afternoon.” He turns to ensure that Clem isn’t listening. “Plus I wouldn’t want smelly Clem on my handlebars.” He giggles, and he knows that she giggles too. Time to get going.

Dad says, “Talk to me about that tree again, and you’ll be living next to it in a tent. Come visit your mother at the cemetery with me like a normal kid, or drop it.” But Chormley can’t stand that place. Each visit is an excruciating hour of watching Dad shuffle his feet and whisper at the ground. Hearing a grown man cry is worse than crying yourself.

The only upside to those visits is getting a hot dog in the square afterward and listening to Daddy criticize the single women of town as they walk by.
“Too chatty.”
“Too needy.”
“Too cold, that one.”
“Who does she think she is, Marilyn Monroe?”

“They don’t make ‘em like they used to, do they, Dad?”

“No, boy, they broke the mold. Smashed it into a million pieces.”

“Like with a sledgehammer?”

“Yeah, like a two-ton tortoise stomped it, chewed it, and spit it out.”

The school doors are in sight. Unfortunately, Chormley is downwind of Clem, who finds a way to get “Sweet Home Alabama” stuck in his head every morning. Seven hours of school, the long walk home, chores, homework, television, bedtime, then dreams.

Chormley’s daddy says life is just a series of chores. Chormley wishes it was that simple.

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

Duties are not performed for duty’s sake, but because their neglect would make the man uncomfortable. A man performs but one duty – the duty of contenting his spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself.
Mark Twain

Online Museum of the Week
Pimp Cups!:

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

Uh, guys, I just dropped our whole sack of stolen loot. Sorry ’bout the…
Highlight here for answer: [plunder blunder]

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

Thursday, July 26th, 2007
8:00 PM
Matt the Electrician & Southpaw Jones
Cafe Mundi
1704 E. 5th St.
Austin, TX
512-236-8634
http://cafemundi.com

Thank you, come again!
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