Legal Notice: This story, video and all the contents therein are purely for entertainment purposes. We are in no way affiliated with the actual Christmas, actual war, punditry, the extreme left, the extreme right, the extreme middle or any other group with any agenda other than humor. Joseph Coaler Productions did not set out to offend anyone, but sometimes, feelings get hurt. We hope it’s not yours, but if it is, we take absolutely no personal responsibility for your level of outrage.

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Several years ago, little Joe Coaler started noticing a trend that he thought was interesting. People in stores began saying “Happy Holidays” starting around December 1st and going through January 1st. (Some stalwarts started saying it in late November and continued until mid-January, but little Joe thought this was a bit extreme.)

Along with the greeting came bright lights, exciting and wonderful music with moving harmonies and extravagant instrumentation. There were brightly bedecked trees that smelled of lovely pine forests, large golden Menorahs with their nine flames, choirs in festive outfits, sculptures and dioramas in different sizes of an open stable filled with amazed animals and a small child in a straw bed, and everywhere he looked he saw the same large bearded man dressed in bright red. Snow, both real, plastic and flocked, lay everywhere.

Every movie, play, television show and radio program seemed to be either about the transformation of a fellow named Ebenezer Scrooge or a large green beasty called Grinch.

And shopping. Everyone was shopping. Money was being spent in amounts that boggled his little mind. He liked his mind being boggled, it felt all tingly, so he thought that this must be a good thing. The economy could always use the influx. The moving around of wealth from one to another. It made his tiny heart glow with pride in his fellow man.

But a darkness was lurking. People started talking about a war on Christmas. First in small whispers, then with louder and more strident voices. It frightened little Joe, but he could not see who was waging this war. He looked and looked, but there was no war against the season. No war against Christmas. No war against Hanukkah. No war against Kwanzaa, which had been born to Dr. Maulena Karenga in 1966. The season seemed completely unaffected by any kind of war against it. With a little study and research, he found that the warning had been being raised almost yearly since the late 1880s, but there had never been an actual war on Christmas. Little Joe was a good capitalist and realized, where there is such a need, there is a product, so he decided to take matters into his own hands.

The War On Christmas is being waged by Joseph Coaler Productions.

Joseph Coaler Productions is the brainchild of Steve Mancini and Geoff Hoff. It’s a problem child, of course.

Geoff and Steve have written the highly-touted, critically-acclaimed, laugh-out-loud-funny, satirical-serial novel, Weeping Willow and they’re currently writing the knee-slapping-hilarious, widely-popular, sure-to-be-a-legend, online-series, Poor Paul. They’re also exceptionally humble and despise hyphen abuse.

Happy Holidays to all and to all a good nightcap!

(Video first posted on http://www.WageWarOnChristmas.com in December, 2008.)

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Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend

And then America went crazy and tried to retroactively stop a bunch of zealots who turned a jet into a very lethal weapon.

I made my peace early with the illogic and humiliation of having to remove my belt and shoes to join a friend for lunch in their office building or keep my appointment with my cardiologist.  I try to interact like a human with the poor people manning the portals of a system designed to be very inhuman and inefficient.  I talk and joke with them and most will talk and joke back, or at least smile.  Some just give me that bureaucratic blank stare to let me know this is not a time for levity, thank you very much, but I feel it is part of my job to bring a ray of sunshine into people’s lives whenever and wherever I can.  Okay, I also always wanted to be the teacher’s pet.  You might try it, though.  It makes my day easier than if I grumbled through them.  I must go through, I might as well do it with a smile on my face.

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of flying to San Antonio.  At Terminal Seven of Los Angeles International Airport I checked in at the little computer console with my e-ticket.  Wonderful convenience, those, you do everything on-line, put your credit card in a slot, print out your boarding pass and you’re on your way.  The first console didn’t work.  Nor the second.  Nor the third.  Finally, one of the people behind the counter, whose load these consoles are supposed to lighten, came out, opened one of the consoles up, waved her hands voodoo-like over its innards and printed my pass.

I had packed my bags fulfilling all the regulations I was aware of for carry-on.  Not too heavy, not too big.  Only one suitcase and a shoulder bag.  They could both fit in the overhead or under the seat in front of me.  On the way to the main screening station at Los Angeles Airport, or at least at Terminal Seven, you must pass several mini check points.  It’s sort of akin to what I understand entering a country behind the Iron Curtain must be like.  Yes, there still is an Iron Curtain.  I joked and chatted with each person at each point and got my requisite smile, albeit sometimes patronizing, from most of them.

I was happy to travel and secure in the thought that this minor inconvenience was stopping a child, somewhere, from starving to death.

After the last checkpoint, where you present your photo ID and prove you have a boarding pass, there are four lines to choose from in order to wend your way up to the row of abattoir that are the x-ray machines.  All four rows looked to be about the same length, so I chose the outermost one.  You don’t actually see the screening stations until you wind around the line a bit.  It’s kind of like Disneyland that way, without all the cloying music.

I started realizing my line was moving more slowly than the others.

I chatted and joked with those around me, in my line and the one across the rope.  Finally I saw our x-ray station.  The portal.  The conveyer belt.  The man, staring at his little x-ray screen.  He was stopping at every second or third bag to call his supervisor over to examine some supposed piece of heinous contraband.  The supervisor let all of them through.  No wonder we were the slowest line.  All the other screeners were looking intently into their screens, but letting almost everything by.  Our man had a look about him.  He was big.  He was angry.  He was bitter.

I got my shoes off, my belt unhooked and unlooped, took the laptop out of the shoulder case, took my toiletry bag out of the suitcase.  All my metal, coins, money clip, neck chain, into the plastic bin.  I was ready.  I knew the routine.  After all my stuff went through, the fellow at the controls stopped the conveyor belt and opened my toiletry bag.  Uh oh.

He took out my tube of toothpaste.

“This is over three ounces,” he said.

I sort of didn’t understand.  “I’m sorry?”

“It’s over three ounces.  No liquid over three ounces.”

“But it’s half empty.”

“It’s over three ounces.  The container is over three ounces.”

I was flabbergasted.  It’s not like I was going to blow up a plane with toothpaste.  I doubted even an experienced demolition man could do that.

“I’m going to blow up an airplane with toothpaste?”

I actually said that.  And I didn’t get arrested.  At least we can speak our minds, still.

I insisted there was far less than three ounces of toothpaste in the tube, but he was adamant.  He finally told me I could go back and check it if I wanted.  I’d been in the line for this moment for over forty-five minutes.  A short time, granted, given the state of some airport screening stations, but still.

This is a man who has little or no control of anything in his life and wields his petite power like a demagog.  It never even occurred to me to try to bring a ray of sunshine into his life.  The ray would have been instantly sucked into the black hole that is his void.  A complete waste of a good ray.

“I’m not going to check a tube of toothpaste,” I said to him with a heavy coating of sarcasm that was lost in that same void, never to be seen again.  Hey, it was Tom’s of Maine toothpaste!  “Keep it.”  He did.

I gathered my stuff with quick jerks and snippily put my shoes and belt back on.  That’d show him.  I still haven’t bought a new tube, either, just for spite.  I’d rather brush with salt water.

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Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend

Now, a few definitions are in order. Miracle Whip is not mayonnaise. It couldn’t even dream of being mayonnaise in its darkest fever dreams. It is a sweet goo that people who must be excused because they don’t know any better, mistake for mayonnaise. Mayonnaise is not sweet. Also, besides something hand made like the nectar of the gods served at Cassilles Hamburgers on sixth street in downtown Los Angeles, unless the mayonnaise is Best Foods (oddly called Hellman’s east of the Rockies) Real Mayonnaise, it isn’t the best.

I realize my mayonnaise addiction isn’t rational. (What addiction is? To paraphrase Kenneth Halliwell in Prick Up Your Ears, the whole point of an addiction is to not make sense.) Roommates have been known to hide the household stash from me. In stronger days, I’ve rationed it by buying the very small, much more expensive jars. I’ve even gone great periods of time without mayonnaise, but then someone will bring a jar to a picnic or pot luck and I’m off.

I can make a salad out of anything. Ever thought of corn salad? Frozen sweet corn (thawed, of course), garlic, a touch of onion, salt, pepper and mayonnaise. Sometimes, for pep, I squeeze a very small spot of yellow mustard into it. Pea salad? Same concept, no mustard, but you can add basil, parsley and a touch of sage and thyme to that. (Just a touch, you don’t want to actually tasted the sage and thyme, it’s there for a hint not a flavor.)

I’ve put mayonnaise in mashed potatoes. I’ve put it on mashed banana sandwiches. I learned this treat from my Grandpa Hoff, who also, sometimes, added peanut butter to the mix. Also, sandwiches made from dill pickles sliced lengthwise and cheddar cheese with thinly sliced white onions and a healthy dollop of mayonnaise. Trust me on this one. I’ve converted many people to it. Not so many to the whole banana peanut butter thing. Most people simply aren’t that adventurous, culinarily speaking.

My mother used to make this warm German potato salad. She was very proud of it. No, she wasn’t German. I think it was a leftover part of the pact between Hitler and Italy before the fall of Mussolini. I hated it. First, it was warm. Second, it had no mayonnaise in it, which, as far as I’m concerned, is the main reason for the existence of potato salad. Sort of like popcorn’s only positive attribute is as a vehicle to bring butter into the system, but that’s a subject for another post. Potato salad should contain potatoes for substance, chopped celery for crunch, chopped dill pickles or olives for salt and pep, and mayonnaise. (I also like to add some spices like salt, pepper, garlic and onion, but I’m Italian, and that sort of goes without saying. I said it anyway. I’m verbose that way.)

Due to several varied health issues, I’ve given up cheese (very difficult), bread (relatively difficult), chicken skin (I usually say a small benediction over it before tossing it down the garbage disposal) and several other delectable edibles, but not mayonnaise. Perhaps some day I’ll need to. It will be a very sad day. I may have to recover with several days a-bed, wearing black pajamas and listening to Joni Mitchell and early Simon and Garfunkel albums. Until that day, I’ll continue to try to ration myself, but won’t feel too very guilty when I notice another jar has mysteriously been emptied.

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Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend

But don’t worry, I took a nap and it went away.

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Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend

In the far distant future, I expect someone will invent a way for the text message to become an actual spoken conversation between two people in real time. I would call this innovation “two-way voice interaction”. Although the technology needed for this revolution does not yet exist, never underestimate the cleverness of mobile phone company R&D departments.

There is one manufactured issue that crops up every year, (and has, I find from my study, for over a century, with some variance in particulars) and that is the supposed “War on Christmas.”  In the last several years, this banner has been hoisted mostly by a television commentator and pundit by the name of Bill O’Reilly, who is offended, OFFENDED, by the fact that some folks have decided to be more inclusive in their holiday greeting and say “Happy Holidays” instead of the more traditional “Merry Christmas.”

There is so much wrong with this stance that it’s difficult to know where to begin.  At a store, the time of year is, by definition, a buying season, not a religious one.  The more people you include in your greeting, ipso facto, the more people available who will shop.  Also, most of the Christmas iconography (Crèches aside) are pagan, or at the very least secular, not Christian.  It can be argued (and has, often, by many Christian scholars) that The Christ was actually born in the spring and that the day of Christmas was chosen to mollify locals in Northern Europe in the Great Conversion.

Okay.  Enough logic and seriousness.  Even I am susceptible to the need for outrage.  (Damn it, why, Lord?  Why?)  In the spirit of anti-outrage, we have created something that, I think, finally brings the War on Christmas home.

http://WageWarOnChristmas.com

Now.  Let’s see if we can all become angry about something that really matters.  Like wearing pants below your underwear to show off your boxers or combing your bangs straight up to show off your forehead.

If I have a muse, she seems to have fallen asleep. I wish her good dreams. That she can convey to me once she wakes up and has her first cup of strong coffee. I’ve had my coffee and my pen is poised for the flow of genius.

What interests me about the creative process as much as those times when you can’t stop creating are the times when you don’t seem to get much done. I used to get nuts when I was in that seemingly stagnant place until I realized that it was a necessary part of the process, that I’m always creating and in those times it’s just more subtle. A gestation, perhaps. There are several stories and a couple of novels coalescing in there. Am I mixing my metaphors? Ah, well. As Walt Whitman said:
“Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)”

I am also, I fear, repeating myself. Old Walt has conveyed my feelings on a number of diverse occasions. His passage seems more elegant, somehow, than Emerson’s oft quoted dictum about a foolish consistency being the hobgoblin of little minds. It’s also much more apt to the subject at hand.

Yes, now I am simply rambling, using other poets words to appear knowledgeable and creative, and doing it without any orderly theme or plan. Of course, A. A. Milne said, “One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.” And as soon as my muse awakens, I’ll convey some of those discoveries to you.

Well. Seeing as how Americans can get up in arms so quickly about silly things as to send death threats (and, by the way, offers of marriage) for a humor piece about shoes and vociferously obscure reasoned debate over a manufactured misunderstanding, I figured the best way to become known in the general population is to piss someone off. And to do that, I must create a controversy. 

I realize I must choose wisely, not just any controversy will do. It would seem that it must go to the heart of some widely held, deeply felt ideal. On closer inspection, however, admiration of plastic shoes may be felt deeply, but is not very widely held. There are many options. Questioning the patriotism of a true patriot wouldn’t work, a true patriot wouldn’t need outrage, so there wouldn’t be any controversy. Questioning the patriotism of a rascal would do the trick. Samuel Johnson famously said, “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” And outrage, it seems, is the scoundrel’s idiom.

That, however, is too easy, too often used, and wouldn’t get me noticed at all. I could come out against broccoli, but that one was already taken and I actually like the stuff. I could defend the vegetable content of school lunches because they contain catsup but that barely raised a stir when a well known politician tried it.

I think I have it:

People who blog are idiots.

If that doesn’t bring the juices of the on-line community (the most virulently vociferous community around) to a rolling boil, I would be greatly surprised.

People who blog assume that the very act of blogging makes them an expert, that having a blog makes their opinion more weighty than those without blogs. Without benefit of any journalism school or experience, they assume their investigative techniques are superior to those of “mainstream media” (a pejorative for reporters who actually get paid for their opinions, and whose opinions are actually read by more than just a handful of like minded blog writers.) People who blog spend countless hours pontificating to their keyboards and monitors, mindless of the fact that keyboards and monitors are not enlightened by their infinite wisdom. People who blog are probably all impotent and have problem sweat. People who blog wear Crocs. I dare you to find evidence to the contrary, evidence that I couldn’t repudiate with a swift stroke of my ergonomic human interface device.

I now await my deservedly brutal thrashing. (And any proposals of marriage you may be willing to send my way.) As the son of a broccoli hater once said, “Bring it on.”

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Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend

I rarely say “dandy” anymore, although I’m not sure why. I have found recently that I answer that question with the word “fabulous.” A friend once said to me that he could tell how good I really was doing by how long I stretched out the first syllable. “Only two ‘A’s today?” he’d say. If it were a one “A” fabulous, it was merely a good day. A five “A” fabulous would likely send one into convulsions of ecstacy. I think I usually hover around three.

I like the word fabulous. Okay, yes, it sounds really gay, but so the hell what. And they called Frank Sinatra fabulous and no one would ever consider calling him gay. I dare you to say you’re fabulous and, at least for the few moments you’re saying it, not actually feel fabulous. It’s impossible. The vibrational tones of that particular combination of letters won’t let you. I challenged one of the tellers at the bank I go to to try it. The next time I was at her window, I asked if she had. She said she’d tried it once and it didn’t work. I said to try it one more time. The next visit I was at a different window. That teller asked me how I was and I simply said “Fine.” The first teller called over three windows to say, “well, I’m fabulous!” She smiled and so did I. She was, indeed, fabulous. It works, I tell you.

More people should say they were fabulous. The more they say it, the more fabulous they’d be. President Bush should say it. If he were fabulous he might not be so inclined to incite war and strife all over the place. Andy Rooney should say it. At least momentarily he wouldn’t be so grumpy. It probably wouldn’t last with him, but we can all savor moments.  We should start a movement. The Be Fabulous Movement.  “How are you? You’re fabulous, of course!” It would be the only acceptable answer.

I think it’s a dandy idea.

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Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend

Steve is a guy. He loves sports and women and action movies. And grilling steaks on a raging barbeque fire. He also loves cooking a delicate spaghetti sauce, but that is how straight Italian men behave. I’m also Italian and love making a good sauce, but prefer a Scandinavian tear-jerker to an action movie and date men. When I date. Which isn’t often. (I tell people that, if being gay means you sleep with men, I’m not gay anymore. It usually gets a laugh.)

So it was with a bit of glee that I chuckled when Steve called me a few moments ago and asked if I wanted the cuttings from his pothos. They were already rooted, he said, and there wasn’t any room for them in his pot.

I reminded him of his previous response to cuttings. He said that must have been someone else. I love inconsistencies in people. It’s part of what makes good writing interesting. It’s part of what makes people interesting. As famously gay Walt Whitman once famously said, “Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”

But the main point is that Steve is now officially an old lady.

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Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend