Response
May 2nd, 2008Yes, I’m verbose.
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Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend
Nigel Does Utah
April 27th, 2008It didn’t take the movie The Italian Job
Once I became aware of them, I started noticing Minis everywhere. It was funky, odd, more in keeping with how I was beginning to see myself. I set my sights on a red Mini and began to save. Then I saw a review of the new convertible which said, “they’re so cute you want to pinch the fender.” I went onto the Mini web site and “built” my own, personal car - convertible, bright orange (a new color for them, then, even more funky then the red I’d planned on), with white wheels and bonnet stripes and lots of internal customization.
Of course I’d never been in a convertible, much less driven one, and didn’t want to spend all that money and decide a month later that I hated the thing. I found a car rental place that had one on it’s lot. It was even the same color I wanted, bright orange. No bonnet stripes, but that was completely beside the point. I rented it for a week. Two minutes off the lot, I knew I had to have that car.
Sebastian was well past the need for retirement and I finally had the money, so I had a friend drive me down to the Mini dealership. They had one on the lot that was very close to exactly what I wanted. The rag top color was wrong and it had a few extras I wasn’t interested in, but it was the end of the month and they wanted to get their stats up so I was able to negotiate them down to a very nice price, insisted they make a couple of modifications and wrote a check for the down payment.
A week later another friend drove me back to the dealership. There, in the showroom, was my car. Bright orange with a black top, white bonnet stripes, white wheels and white mirror covers. It was delightful. The salesmen were standing around it admiring the white mirror caps saying I wasn’t crazy after all. I walked around it, got the “new owner” talk, named it Nigel, put the top down and happily drove it away. The only time after that that the top is up is when it’s raining, freezing or the car is parked.
A year later I took a cross-country trip in Nigel. On the way back, I stopped in St. George, Utah, a fair sized town on the far western end of Utah’s stretch of Highway 70. I was sitting in the car writing down the mileage in my little notebook, but the door was open. A thin, older fellow in worn jeans and a dim white tee shirt looked over my way and said, “What the hell is that?” “A Mini Cooper,” I informed him. He shook his head and said, “I’d rather be shot dead than be seen in something like that.” He was smiling, but I didn’t believe it.
What an extreme reaction, I thought, and considered asking if he wanted a test drive. “It’s a cool car,” I said, completely unruffled, returning his smile. He looked in and studied the dash board. He seemed fascinated and slightly repulsed, like just looking might somehow make his feminine side bubble to the surface. “Does it really go 150 miles an hour?” he asked after seeing the speedometer. I let him know that it did indeed, that they raced them in England where they were made. He shook his head and said, “It’s just wrong, somehow,” and walked away. He had the same crooked smile the whole time, as if to say, “I really don’t like your kind, but this is a bright, public place and I can’t get away with stomping you.”
What a hoot. If I hadn’t already loved my little car I did then. It makes small minded people uncomfortable. It would really be poetic if I then sang sixties folk songs for the next twenty miles. I didn’t, of course, but my heart cockles were warm.
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Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend
Haiku
April 25th, 2008One two three four five
He thinks he’s written a poem
Instead, it’s just words
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Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend
Stealing Time - a Short Story
April 23rd, 2008(I have written short stories for as long as I can remember. They run from the personal to the surreal, from fantasy to horror, from satire to silliness. This is the first of many that I intend to post here. Please enjoy, and let me know what you think.)
(©2008 - do not reproduce in any form without express permission from the author.)
STEALING TIME
by Geoff Hoff
The box was big, and she made me help her carry it into the kitchen. George didn’t have to help because of his thing, so he just watched, lucky guy. He always gets out of stuff. I wanted to see what it was, but she told us to get out. “Go, go, go,” she said when I balked. I left and George clumped out behind me. I heard her tear the box open and grunt when she took it out of the box. I smiled, then, because she didn’t ask me to help and it was hard for her, too.
In the living room I was trying to decide where to go and turned to see George peeking into the kitchen. “George, she’s gonna holler at me if you don’t get away from there!” He waved me over and I guess I got like that cat mom always talks about and tiptoed over to him and bent around to see. She was plugging it in. It was just a big metal box, black, with a switch on the front and two lights over that.
“I know you guys are peeking,” she said as she brushed that funny piece of hair that always falls down in her face back up. We both stood up straight and were about to run, well, I would have run, George would have clumped. “I just want you to know that when this light is on…” she said, but we weren’t looking in, we were about to run. “You can look.” We both slowly poked our faces around the doorway and looked in. “When this light is on,” she said, pointing to the machine. One of the lights was shining blue, but she was pointing to the other light, the one that was off, “you have to stay out of the room.”
George and I looked at each other. I know we were both thinking the same thing. “I mean it,” she said, and our smiles got bigger. “Now, shoo.” We backed away from the door. We both really wanted to see what would happen when she turned the other light on. We could just see her lean over and turn the switch on, then the light in the living room went dark and hummed for a minute. We both looked back to the kitchen, but the doorway was all wavy. George screamed and clumped out down the hall to our bedroom. I just stood there and stared at the wavy air in the door way. When I walked closer, it started to feel like it was tickling my nose and hair, and I don’t like to be tickled at all, so I went back, but I still just stayed there. After about a minute, the light in the living room got really bright for a minute, then the wavy stuff disappeared, and I could smell the most wonderful food I ever smelled in our house.
Mom usually just throws stuff into the microwave and makes us eat while she’s getting ready for her night-time job. George’s thing costs us a lot of money, and she has to work two jobs, I guess. “George,” I said. I could hear him snuffling in the bedroom. “George, come here.” “No,” he said. “George, she made dinner.”
I heard our bedroom door open just as mom came out of the kitchen. “Dinner’s ready, guys,” she said. She had on an apron. I didn’t even know she had one of those. I slowly went up to the kitchen door, but my nose and hair didn’t tickle, so I went through it. The table was set. With dishes, and glasses, and everything. There were pots and bowls in the dish drainer all washed and cleaned, and a pot roast on the table all steamy and beautiful. George must have gotten over his scardey-cats because he was already clumping over to his chair. “It’s a magic cooker,” he said. “No, dear,” mom said to him. “It just helps me find the time to cook. I always loved to cook, you know.”
While we ate, there was string beans and even a salad and potatoes, I kept looking up at mom and she was staring at us and smiling. It made me feel weird, but the food was good. “Do you have to go to work tonight?” I asked her. She nodded and smiled again. “There’s time,” she said. “You guys clean up.” “Oh, mom.” “I cooked, you clean up.” She smiled again, and got up to put the food away, then went over to the black box. It was on the counter, now. It had a handle on the top, and she unplugged it, and picked it up by the handle. It was really heavy, but she didn’t ask me for help, so I just watched as she lugged it out the room. “Come on, George. I’ll wash.”
While I was getting the sink all hot and soapy, the lights got dark and hummed for a minute, and George got scared, but they went back and we started washing. I was still doing glasses and hadn’t even gotten to the silverware when the lights got bright for a little and then back to normal. Then I heard mom come out of the bathroom and down the hall. “I’m going. Be good,” she said, and when we turned around, George screamed a little. Mom was beautiful. Her hair was all neat and she had make-up on and she smelled like roses. “You’re beautiful,” George said. “I thought you were going to work.” “I am, honey.” And she came over and kissed and hugged us both, then turned and left.
I looked at George and we both ran to her bathroom. Well, George clumped. Her bathroom was in the back of her bedroom, and as soon as we got into the bedroom, we could smell sweet steamy like she had taken a bubble bath. Her room was all neat and tidy, which it never was. The bathroom door was locked. I didn’t even know it had a lock. I guess the black thing was in there and she really didn’t want us to touch it.
That night, we watched television and didn’t even argue or throw pillows around. I know I was trying to figure out what the box was, and I guess George was, too. Once George got up to go to the bathroom, and I heard him stop to look into Mom’s room. With his thing, you can always tell where he is. It makes it easy to take care of him, sometimes. He didn’t go in, just clumped on down to the bathroom.
We were already in bed when she got home that night. We usually are. Mostly I wouldn’t wake up, but sometimes I can hear her coming in, and then would just turn over and go back to sleep. I think sometimes she opens our door and watches us for a little while, because sometimes I wake up when the door closes. That night, I heard her come in, and then the night light on the wall near George’s bed, it’s shaped like a duck, he needs it or he’ll cry at night, got really dim for a moment. I knew George was asleep, because he would have whimpered if he was awake and he didn’t. I stayed awake staring at the duck light waiting for it to get bright. It was orangy and made the wall behind it glow a little. I was staring at it so hard, I couldn’t see anything else. After a long time, it got bright again. I was staring at it so long, I almost fell asleep, so when it got bright, I think I yelped a little. George moved and said “Huh?” and I told him to go back to sleep. He said, “No,” but I heard him turn over and snore a little. He doesn’t really snore, just breathes a little loudly when he’s asleep.
I must have fallen asleep, too, because the vacuum running in the living room woke me up. I listened to it for a while, then got up and went out there. “Hi, sweety,” mom said. “I’m sorry if I woke you up.” She was vacuuming the living room which she only did when we were going to have company, which we almost never did because she was always too tired. The table was all neat. Everything was shiny like she had dusted. Even our toys were put away.
“What are you doing, Mom?” She turned the vacuum off and wrapped the cord around the handle. “Cleaning. I never seemed to find the time to do that.” She smiled at me. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s put you back to bed.” I don’t think she went to bed all night because when we got up, all the laundry was washed and ironed and folded, and while we were eating breakfast, she put all our stuff in our dressers.
Our house changed after that. We always had clean clothes and when we got home from school, our room was always neat. We had good food every night and Mom always ate with us. She brought the box with her to the kitchen as soon as she got home from her daytime job and George would hide in the bedroom and I would watch the doorway get all wavy. She always wore makeup now, which she almost never did before. I kept waiting for her to slip and forget to lock her bathroom so I could sneak in and look at the box, but she never did. She gave a couple of parties that month. One for us, and she baked all sorts of cakes and brownies and cookies, and invited all of our friends with home made invitations. She made all that at night, after she came home from her night time job, and the duck light got dim and got bright. For a couple of nights before the party, I would always go to sleep smelling something sweet baking. I had a lot of fun, at the party, but George kept looking at the kitchen doorway. I think he was afraid she would turn on the box when everyone was there.
The other party was for her, and we spent the weekend with Grandma and Grandpa.
That was fun, too, even though the bedroom was upstairs and it took forever for George to clump up to bed and down to breakfast. I laughed at him the first day, but Grandma told me that was cruel. I guess it was, but it was also funny. When Grandma and Grandpa took us home Sunday afternoon, the house was really clean, but the garbage cans were all full of bottles and food and paper plates and stuff. Grandpa said “You really look good these days, what are you doing?” And Mom said, “Finding time for myself for once. It feels nice.” Grandma looked at her and touched her face and said “You look tired.” “Mom, I’m getting a full eight hours of sleep a night for the first time in my life since John left.” Then she got real quiet for a minute. She didn’t like to talk about our daddy. He never called or anything and I remember one time when George was in the hospital for his thing, she started crying and said “He’s his child, too,” then look at me and try to smile.
Grandma shook her head, then said “Okay,” and they started talking about something else until supper. Mom didn’t turn on the thing to cook that time, and George and I sat in the living room listening to her cook.
A little before summer started one morning, we were eating cereal before school, and Mom came in all pretty and made up and neat hair and I noticed that there was a lot of grey in it. She touched it when I said that and the next morning, she came in and it was dark brown.
That summer George had to go back into the hospital. Mom changed her hours at her night job to later and every day she would come home from her day time job and turn the thing on for a few minutes, then come out all rested looking and we would go to the hospital and visit with George and then go home and she would turn it on again, then go to her night time job, then come home and I would wake up when she turned it on again, then she would come out and give me breakfast and go to her daytime job. At the hospital, I would play with all the baby stuff they had in the playroom, but George wouldn’t play much because it hurt so bad. I didn’t even make fun of him for being a scardey-cat.
When he got home Mom kept her late hours so she could spend more time with us, which I didn’t like because now we couldn’t have pillow fights and stuff. We probably couldn’t anyway, because George had a harder time clumping around. When school started again, I came home one day and Mom was sitting on the couch looking at the backs of her hands. They had little spots on them, but when we came in, she rubbed them a little, then got up to make dinner.
That Christmas was the best ever. We bought a tree and George and I put tinsel and Christmas balls and stuff all over it, but when we woke up the next morning, the whole house was decorated with lights and fake snow and there were presents everywhere all wrapped and beautiful. On Christmas day we couldn’t wait to get up and tear into all those presents. When I handed Mom the perfume I bought for her, I noticed her hand shaking a little when she unwrapped it. George gave her socks and I told him that was a stupid present, but Mom laughed and put them on. There were blue lines in her legs that I never noticed before.
After New Year’s George deid. He woke up in the middle of the night and screamed. It was when Mom had the box on, so I had to go over to his bed and try to make him be quiet. In a minute, the duck light got bright, and he was still screaming, and Mom ran down the hall. “How long has he been screaming,” she shouted at me. “Only a minute,” I said, and she picked him up and ran him to the car. “Call Grandma and tell her I’m going to the hospital.”
I called Grandma and she came over to stay with me. The phone rang and woke me up, and it was dark blue outside the window. I heard Grandma talking on the phone and cry, then she came in and told me. After that Mom would stay in her room with the box on for maybe twenty minutes which she never did before. At first when she would come out her eyes were all puffy, but after a few days, she would come out and just look sad. She stopped putting brown in her hair and it was all grey and thin. Her dresses looked funny on her, all baggy.
The morning after George’s service, when I woke up I couldn’t hear Mom cleaning or anything, so I tiptoed to her door and knocked on it. I opened it a little, but the crack was all wavy so I got scared and started to cry like a little cry baby. I just stood there, but then the light in the hallway got bright, and she came out. “You look like Grandma,” I said.
The next week I got up and went to her bedroom and opened the door a little, but stopped again when the crack was all wavy and it tickled my hair. I waited for the lights to get bright, but they never did. After about a half an hour, I went into the kitchen and waited for her, but she never came. I knew it was almost time for school, and I didn’t know what to do. I called Grandma and Grandpa and told them Mom wouldn’t get out of bed. “Stay put,” Grandpa said, and a little while later he came over. He went to her room and tried to open the door, but jumped back when the wavies tickled him. He said a bad word, and asked me what the heck was going on, so I told him about how mom would turn the black box on and then come out and clean and then turn it on and then come out all dressed and turn it on and then we would eat.
“I can’t even go in there,” he said. “If that’s what’s doing it, we’ve got to turn it off.” I looked at him and said “How?” “Where is the fuse box?” I didn’t know, so he started to look. It was in the back of the broom closet in the kitchen, which he found after a long time. I tried to help him look, but didn’t even know what a fuse box was. He opened it and started turning off these big black switches and all the lights went off when he did. Then he went into her bedroom. He said another bad word, and I ran in. “Don’t come in here,” he said, but I was already there. There was dust all over everything, and there was a mummy in the bed. It had little wispy hair and a scull face and skin like paper.
“That’s Mom,” I said. Grandpa unplugged the black box really hard and threw it on the floor. It bounced and a little puff of dust came up. He went into the kitchen to find a hammer and came back and smashed it up into a million little pieces and kept smashing it, then he sat on the edge of the bed and started crying like a cry baby, which I’ve never seen a grown up do. The bed creaked when he sat down. “She’s only thirty-six,” he said and he reached out to touch her hand and it fell apart.
I live with Grandma and Grandpa, now.
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Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend
I Am a College Graduate
April 16th, 2008It would probably come as no surprise to anyone who knew me that I’m a college graduate; I’m fairly well spoken, fairly well read, use multi-syllabic words and have a subtle air of pretension that precedes me into any room. It may come as a surprise, however, to know that not once in the thirty years (!) since I graduated has it made any difference that I hold a Bachelor of Arts degree. In fact, no potential employer, potential business partner, potential casting director, potential arresting officer or potential date has ever even asked if I even attended college. It was all, it seems, entirely solipsistic. (Okay, I’m sorry. I’ll try to behave. Solipsism is a theory that the self is the only reality, so a solipsistic experience is one that only matters to the person who experienced it. But you knew that. And it doesn’t matter.)
This is not about that, however. It’s about my experience getting my degree at a small, private, liberal arts Catholic girls’ school. Okay, so it was no longer a girls’ school when I attended, they had started letting boys in a few years before. They also closed down a few years after I graduated. They’d been having financial trouble for years, a circumstance that I assume contributed to both milestones.
Fort Wright College was run by the Sisters of the Holy Names and was housed on what at one time had been the base and barracks of the famous Indian killer, Colonel George Wright, on the outskirts of Spokane, Washington. I first became aware of it the summer out of high school while performing a very small role in a play at a local civic theater in Spokane called Spokane Civic Theatre. The two leads in the play were the couple who ran the drama department at the Fort and I fell instantly enamored of them. They seemed to know things about acting and theater in general that I had never imagined.
I applied, and with government grants, work study and a job at the campus cafeteria in hand, entered academia. The school was very progressive; most classes were “pass/no pass” with evaluative comments that went on your permanent record. You could request actual grades, of course, at the beginning of each term, which most of the math and science students did and few of the art, music or drama students did. The Sisters of the Holy Names were a fairly liberal order, few of them wore habits, those that did either very old or very Korean. In fact my English professor, Sister Jean Concannon, often said she feared sounding too “nunny”. She needn’t have worried, of course. She taught Dylan, both Thomas and Bob, and Joyce, both James and Carol Oates, who have all been accused of everything from sensualism to obscenity. One professor, who taught math, had been kicked out of several African countries for agitating. I liked it there.
There was a subtle tension between the nuns and the lay faculty (I wonder if they’re called that because they’re allowed to get laid. I digress) and all but one teacher in the drama department was lay, so it was natural that there was tension between our department and the rest of the school. (That one non-lay teacher moved to the English department after only a year with us, poor thing.) The year before I got there, they were preparing to mount a production of The Marat/Sade, a play in which, among many other questionable activities, the inmates of an insane asylum attack and rape a bunch of nuns. The college didn’t demand they not do the play, but made their life so miserable they closed down the production and instead did the “happy and likable” James Thurber comedy, The Male Animal. The nuns were quite pleased, saying that it was a grand show and exactly what should be being done. They entirely missed, it seems, the theme of the play, which was a plea for academic freedom and against censorship.
I was one of perhaps three people in the drama department, students and teachers alike, who didn’t smoke. I was one of very few students who didn’t also smoke pot, drop acid and sleep around. (It was, after all, the Seventies.) I was the only one, as far as I can tell, who didn’t drink. I was naive. (Least you think me unnecessarily pure, I assure you I made up for lost time in the Eighties.) Even so, my four years at the Fort were a happy blur. I fell tragically in love with one of my roommates, a big, burly straight man who always smelled slightly of marijuana, spent hours upon hours every day in the ramshackle theater building that always smelled strongly of stale cigarette smoke, successfully straddled the divide between “us” and “them”, making lasting friendships in and out of the department, acted in four or five plays a year, started classes most days at ten and finished rehearsal most days at midnight, learned so much about so much and graduated never having had to write a single term paper.
I say I’m a college graduate, but I barely remember our actual graduation. It was in the Commons building, I remember, where the cafeteria was, one of the very few “new” buildings on campus. I also remember one of my classmates, that same burly roommate, getting angry upon hearing someone say “now we enter the real world.” “No,” he insisted. “This is the real world. This is as much the real world as any place you will ever find.” I also remember the party afterwards, at the house of Chris and Heather Welch, a couple who had actually been married, where we all helped to prepare and bake a huge tray of “Nachos Especial”, everyone ate and everyone else drank and we never thought to say good bye to the Fort.
In the thirty (!) years since then I’ve moved to Los Angeles, owned several businesses, had several careers, grown slightly less neurotic, loved and lost, written and published, loved and gained, made up for lost time and, now, on an almost daily basis, get email come-ons to get my degree on-line. I would consider it, of course, but no one would care.
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Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend
Peas, Thank You Very Much
April 15th, 2008As a young boy in the remote New Jersey town called Flatbrookville, I hated peas, those grey-green orbs piled on my dinner plate threatening to roll over into the mashed potatoes (a favorite) and pollute Grandma’s wonderful pot roast. They smushed on my tongue into a slimy mess that tasted unnatural with an undercurrent of vaguely chemical sweetness. And heaven defend us when they appeared surreptitiously in an otherwise wonderful beef stew, nestling among the carrots.
I was not a picky eater. Both my mother and grandmother were wonderful cooks and I liked almost everything they made, except fish (more to do with small bones than flavor), Brussel sprouts (everything wrong with a cabbage, condensed) and, of course, peas. I ate everything put before me, I was, generally, a well behaved child. I have fond memories of most meals: pasta with summer sauce, home-made ravioli stuffed with spinach and cheese or luscious Italian sausage filling, corned beef, venison, al olio, pasta con pesto. The simple mention of these staples make me salivate.
But occasionally my dinner plate was offended by peas.
One morning when I was, perhaps, eight or nine, I “lost” my breakfast and had to stay home from school. My mother had planed at day trip to visit our Aunt Lou, a two hour drive in each direction. The other kids were in school and Grandma had the business to run, so I went along for the visit. Shortly after we got there, it became obvious that I didn’t have a typical flu and Aunt Lou insisted we visit her doctor.
It was acute, gangrenous appendicitis. I was rushed to the hospital and prepped for emergency surgery. I was told that my appendix actually burst in the doctor’s hand as he removed it. I’d been twenty minutes away from major complications or even death. But I was kid from a large Italian family and all I knew was that I was getting individual attention from doctors, nurses, and even my mother and Aunt Lou. It all seemed a fair trade.
A day or so later I was lying in bed, one vestigial organ lighter, when the doctors started me back up on solid food. The vegetable in my first dinner was peas. But they were unlike any pea I had ever encountered. They were bright green, almost shiny, a pat of butter was melting on top of the small pile, its edges taking on the contours of these tiny marvels. I tasted one. No smush! No slime. It actually popped when I bit down on it. And the sweetness. The wonderful sweetness. I pondered this for some time, then finally asked my mother.
“Well, they were probably frozen,” she said.
Frozen. We didn’t get frozen vegetables at home. We either got fresh (corn or green beans from a neighbor’s garden) or canned. It was a different time. Even my Italian grandmother used canned vegetables.
I haven’t allowed canned vegetables in my house since I moved out on my own. And peas are still my favorite meal-time treat.
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Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend
Small World
April 14th, 2008I think the whole “six degrees of separation” theory is based on faulty science, but has become so ingrained in the American Zeitgeist that anyone daring to disbelieve it is at best considered an idiot and at worst labeled a heretic.
That being said, I recently had a series of “small world” experiences.
I decided to join the social netorking site MySpace, in part to promote our book, and in part to see what all the hoo ha was about. Not knowing quite how to build a circle of friends, which you need to survive on a social networking site, I’m told, I did a search for gay men in Los Angeles that were around my own age. I looked at their profiles one by one and those that seemed interesting I sent friend’s requests to. After the initial contact, I corresponded with very few of them. So much for social networking.
One, Peter, had been in my friend’s list for quite some time when he posted a bulletin regarding a blog in which he had linked a video discussing a conspiracy about possible government involvement in 9/11. In his blog, he was skeptical but intrigued by the notion. I sent him an email with my thoughts on the matter - there was a loud rumor that Roosevelt knew ahead of time that the Japanese were headed for Pearl Harbor but did nothing so he could have an excuse to enter World War Two. If we can believe that, why couldn’t we believe that at least someone in the government may have known about the imminent attack and not only did nothing but prevented others from doing anything in order to start, say, a war over oil - and he wrote back.
We started a delightful correspondence having little to do with politics. We talked about pop culture, travel, our lives thus far. And we made each other giggle. At least he made me giggle.
Shortly before this, my writing partner Steve and I went to a marketing seminar where we met (among other people) a movie director named Marc Rosenbush, who had made an independent movie called Zen Noir. I talked with him, picking his brain about movie making. (I’m picking the brain of anyone I can about movie making these days.) When he put up a MySpace page for his movie, added that to my friends.
One of the Zen Noir page’s friends was a strange fellow called The Alien. He was so weird, surreal and wonderful, I had to have him join me and invited him to be my friend.
Back to Peter. One afternoon, feeling I knew him well enough, now, to ask personal questions (we still hadn’t really met, mind you) I asked him if he had a boyfriend. He said he did, and that his boyfriend was one of my friends, The Alien, whose real name was Jon Harris and who was one of the actors in Zen Noir.
Well. I’m not done, yet.
Peter, Jon and I decided we should actually meet at some point, so I joined them for lunch at a charming little café in West Hollywood. During lunch our conversation was so easy and our sense of conection so strong, we all decided that we must have known each other through several incarnations. We were talking 
about our travels and lives and Jon told a story about when he lived in Seattle. He directed a play there and in it was this wonderful actress who made him laugh. Her name was Therese Diekhans. Well, I dropped my teeth (which is fairly amazing considering they’re all originals). I went to college with a wonderful actress named Therese Diekhans! We were both founding members of the original Interplayers Ensemble in Spokane, Washington. (Really. I still have letterhead.) Jon went outside for a moment and when he came back, he handed me his cell phone and said, “It’s for you.” It was Therese! We chatted briefly, caught up and have kept in touch since.
I now have two wonderful new friends who came at me from entirely different directions and have been reacquainted with an old friend who I cherish!
Small world.
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Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend
Logrolling in Our Time - An Essay
April 9th, 2008
Spy Magazine
The movie, of course, is Infamous
It is, moreover, not about why we are as fascinated by the masterful In Cold Blood as we are by Capote, the
silly, pretentious little gossip who wrote it. So fascinated that, within a year, there were two movies
So what, exactly, is this essay about? It started with a description of how a defunct magazine feature relates to a movie based on a book about a man who wrote a book about a real life event, then moved into a condemnation (or celebration, perhaps) of voyeurism and a confession of talking about something I don’t know anything about. It is about the random connections our spinning minds make, connecting immediate input with data stored so long ago its accuracy might be questioned, and thinking, in the moment the connections occur and coalesce in our conscious minds, that we have discovered or realized something brilliant that others will be moved or intrigued to read or hear. I have just plunged into the icy water and the log is now spinning on its own, quite out of my reach.
It’s not about anything, ultimately. It is logrolling. There is a website that sells a tee shirt that says, “More people have read this shirt than your blog”. I think I’ll buy that shirt. It makes me laugh every time I think about it.
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Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend
Recovery
April 5th, 2008I’m tempted to start this post with a fart or nose picking joke. You see, I have been told by many people who should know that my humor is too intelligent and I want to get along.
Hello, my name is Geoff and I’m a recovering intellectual. It all began in grade school when I started reading Shakespeare in secret. I started small, Twelfth Night was all I could handle. Eventually, of course, I moved up to Love’s Labour’s Lost, then on to Julius Caesar and Hamlet. By junior high, I was up to two or three monologues a week. By my senior year in high school I was mainlining Buckminster Fuller.
It came to a head about two years ago. They found me wandering around the West Side of Los Angeles. I was listening to Joni Mitchell on my headset, muttering passages from the Bhagavad-Gita. I was clutching a Thesaurus and had a copy of Jung’s treatise on male archetypes in my back pocket.
I was incarcerated. They only let me out when I agreed to enter the program. Now, thanks to my sponsor and my Higher Power, I have been clean and stupid for six months.
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Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel “Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend“
A Poodle in a Sweater
April 3rd, 2008There is a dentist who has an office just under ours in the building where we have our office. He has a late model BMW. Not even a particularly nice late model BMW. Whenever he drives it to work, he spends several minutes putting a custom fitted cloth covering over it. The covering has snug little mittens for the side-view mirrors and a little plastic window for the licence plate. I wonder. Does the cost of this cover and the time it takes to put on and take off every day really make up for not having to take the silly car to the car wash every few weeks?
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Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel “Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend“
