Thanksgiving!

Well - this is how bad it’s gotten: I was just reading the paper (okay - I confess I get the bulk of my news info from that dubious source, but I got my pillar of salty skepticism on hand for any reportage - including YOURS!) - and there was this article about how live television captured an enraged mob of hundreds of otherwise average Mexican citizens, as they turned against a trio of federal undercover agents, apparently mistaking them for kidnappers (!), and burned two of them to death near their overturned car. And I started laughing! I couldn’t stop myself! Then I was laughing more at the fact I COULD laugh at this horror, ‘til finally I had to wipe tears from my eyes! I was howling out loud! I scared the cat! Oh, I’m dyin’ heah! HOOOO! HAAAA! HEEE! I laughed ‘til I was SICK! Even the image of those fried corpses was HILARIOUS - like the many times my mom burned the turkey - oops! Crusty!

I feel terrible for the families of those agents, and burning to death seems like one of the most torturous horrific ways to enter the great beyond imaginable. I don’t think my laughter is likely to endear me to them.

And the mob is the symbol of civilization disintegrating in its purest and most frightening form (our last “mob ruled” elections are barely a metaphor compared to this, even though the outcome on a global scale will be much worse than the loss of two officers’ lives).

But it’s a mark of the tenor of this moment, when truth is so hopelessly marginalized, that trouble for any agent of authority (any of whom you can assume, with a probable .05 margin for error, to be absolutely corrupt) seems cause for outright celebration! Victory by proxy and happenstance! Bash Black Bart! I couldn’t sucker-punch the establishment, but those angry vigilantes can! It’s especially easy to laugh with the distancing of the filter of a Wile E. Coyote media, where nothing is believable and everything looks like a cartoon.

Add to that my own habit of running off having actually understood perhaps ten percent of the story, knowing nothing of the contextual history and socio-economic structure of the region, and not bothering to do any further research. “Too painful” is my threadbare excuse, as I run to my current painkiller addiction, e-bay, with a disposable income I assume, in my ignorance, most of those vigilantes will never have - they could all be upper middle class homeowners and I’d never know.

It’s how the story gets me to my sweet spot of high indignation or condescending snorts of superiority - I’m an American, after all! Knee jerk - that’s my motto! Identification with the pain of others? Trying to understand their motivations? Actually looking into the dry facts? Don’t they pay someone in Washington to do that for me?

So - I’m not proud of that laugh, although it was a great stress relief. In fact, I’m suppressing a chuckle right now, and accessing all the liberal guilt I can muster to excuse it! But, pardon me, Off the pigs! Please!

Being righteous is so tiresome, even when you’re right!

But the laugh is indicative of...something? Like, take how poor Dan Rather has been pilloried. Now, don’t get me wrong - I was never a Dan Fan. Icky! But is there ANYONE in the WORLD who doesn’t KNOW for an absolute FACT that Bush received “preferential treatment” during his Vietnam era service in the Texas Air National Guard? ANYONE? Preferential treatment? DUH! He’s been handed EVERYTHING by his Manchurian Candidate backers ever since he proved he could get that lopsided crack in an eight ball he calls a smile around his fake home boy patois. His phoney college achievements, his escape route from the reverse Midas Touch that bankrupts everything he comes near (now the United States itself and the natural resources of the world!), the presidency. YOU ALL KNOW IT’S TRUE! Come on, you cretinous FUCKERS!

So a piece of paper was copy-shop forgery. Well then, Bush must be cool after all! That’s our America!

And that’s how truth works now - the whole fucking steak is sitting right in front of you, and some outraged (crafty republican - fill in the blank) says “Hey - doesn’t my napkin have a GRAVY STAIN on it?”

And the whole dunderhead world goes home hungry.

Where was I? Oh : Thanksgiving. -

A BRIEF MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSORS

Well, you rant fans can skip this part - Thought I’d list a few things I’m actually grateful for, sort of as leavening, or just because I’m an unreformed hippie, or as bet-hedging in case there IS a higher power.

Basics: Roof over my head (and a grand rickety gimcrack Charles Addams sprawl of a roof it is!), a car that runs, food in the refrigerator, and some petty cash in the bank. That sets me ahead of 90% of the world’s population. I don’t know why it happened, but I’d rather not die penniless in a filthy gutter, so, thanks!

Less basic: Family that loves me. Wonderful Boyfriend. A fantastic supportive inspired posse of co-conspirators and collaborators in the effort to keep light, love, beautiful music, and crazy art alive! I might call that a community - that’s a good word. And many people who are fighting with me to preserve vintage Halloween ephemera. That cannot be overstated! Thanks! Oh, and a pretty cool record collection.

America. It’s a grand old flag! There’s no village or town or hamlet I’ve had the wonderful privilege to visit in our great country where I haven’t met fantastic inspiring creative (did I say friendly and generous?) people, and every single place in America has some terrific defining characteristic that is so unique you just want to live EVERYWHERE at once. I LOVE America. And the natural wonders! You just can’t visit Yellowstone enough. Or El Chavo.

And a voice - to rant with, and share what little vision I’ve been given as an artist and a human. I’m grateful for that! And the right - for the moment at least - to use it! And I’m grateful for the voices of others to share and dispute and kick my ass! I LOVE America! For everything it promises and offers and shares. Cause it was started by SMART people, who liked being smart, and liked other smart people! But who were also compassionate enough to want to protect EVERYBODY - even against the SMART people! (I’d complain about the lack of socialized medicine - but - this is THANKSgiving.)

And ALMOST lastly, for the international community that has somehow seen fit to become my pen-pals, and reminders, and historical correctors, and supporters to whom I hope to somehow return the favor in kind - wow - life is rich!

But I’ve saved one of the best for last - Joanne, my lovely webmistress, who puts up with me, has untold reserves of patience and positive feedback, to say nothing of her astute editorial suggestions (you don’t believe it? You should see some of this shit BEFORE she fixes it! You don’t want her job!) and makes this outrageously self-indulgent hobby of a Kristian Hoffman one-stop info archive possible. Love and Thanks!

NOW BACK TO OUR SHOW

Now wipe that sticky saccharine glop off your faces, take a quick acid bath in the hazardous waste removal percussion showers, and back to kvetching! Thanks, schmanks!

I was just throwing away the October Issue of Rolling Stone with the John Kerry cover story and interview. I am OUT of love with the guy - the honeymoon was over with that candidate (or, more accurately, can’t-i-date) long ago - why why why why why why WHY isn’t he demanding a huge embarrassing tabloid legal wrangle investigation into the Ohio vote count? At least it would distract the Bush Follies from a few weeks of planet destroying! You should at least be holding the incumbent responsible for this debacle of an election til that darn electoral college convenes. Get out there and WHINE and GNASH and HOWL, loser!

So it surprised even me how difficult it was to relegate that dream to the recycling bag. I had to reread the interview. Revisit the loss. You show me a scab, I’ll pick it!

Of course one of the single defensible things about the determinedly blah content of Rolling Stone (they’d be almost as radical as a Gap ad, if they could afford the Viagra) is that it is a (lonely) mouthpiece for unabashedly liberal journalism. Refreshing!

So this was not a hardball interview. It was basically, “So John - why don’t you just feed me your teleprompted platform and I’ll coo at the appropriate moments?”

But still, I caught MYSELF cooing at the appropriate moments! This was a smart, thoughtful, experienced guy who seemed to want to return some balance to the American vision, some security to the American people, some safety nets to the world environment, and some friendship to the other nations of the earth. And even seeming to want that is so unheard of in this grim moment that I could barely force the magazine into my bale of old newspapers in my minute bid to at least do no further harm to the trees of this earth. Even if Kerry is a goddamn loser who equivocates about gay marriage and war and all that other "minor" shit - he was OUR loser!

So now I’m rethinking my position on hope - or at least somewhat muting my support for its vaccine of choice, known as despair. Suddenly the high you get from indulging in either of those prismatic emotional drugs seems innappropriate. Like I said in one of the lyrics for my next record (if I EVER get that together):

Despair is the cheap window dressing on the obvious

Which certainly means I don’t think it’s a particularly clever response to an unfortunate turn of events.

But why not just try it on for size? Go on a little binge? Once they found out that red wine was actually a healthy stress reducing regimen to adopt for the human heart, why not binge on a few mood enhancers for the soul? Sometimes a wallow is all that we’ve got.

I was reading how George Carlin has resigned from his former position as acid tongued idealist, having relinquished any hope of people being evolved enough to facilitate positive change for society. At least this year, you got that right buster! He’s ready to WATCH the tragedy, but no longer ready to emotionally invest in preventing the tragedy. So he’ll keep the acid tongue, thank-you, but lose those burdensome ideals.

Man, how that resonated with me after MY angry rant! I WANT to give up on humanity - they seem to have given up on me!

But then even I indulge in a little mealy-mouthed equivocating: the neanderthal portion of us is really only MOST people, and barely that - it’s only MOST by one or two measly percent. Perhaps it’s only MOST but not all people who voted, and only MOST but not all rich people, and only MOST but not all Christians, probably seasoned by a goodly portion of fundamentalists of all religious persuasions.

But that silver lining only gets you so far - and up close it looks suspiciously like one of those copper sandwich quarters.

The knowledge that so many great artists whom I admire find this blackening of their world view as they mature into what should be the glorious sunset years is taunting me: if these geniuses ended in a despairing wallow, who I am I to disdain the tainted water of that sulphuric fumarole? Dip a toe, pussy!

So, does knowledge and perspective necessarily mean despair? The fact that this observation is not new - it is forever renewed and revisited, like the grave of a childhood friend - and that it seems to come to so many artists, gives it the unwelcome weight of truth.

And even the childhood friend may have only been so in a dream, for aren’t memories edited and shaped and sculpted by experience and denial? Perhaps believing in the power to change really IS a young man's folly. Perhaps knowing better is the bitter crop of an observant mind.

I was listening to this fabulous NPR show on the Life of Leonard Bernstein (although they did gloss over his inner conflict about his bisexuality, as well as any possible male sexual partners who may have figured in his life, with one or two sentences about his pre-marital status in the 40’s - at least in the FIVE HOURS I listened to!) - and the correspondence he kept up with his creative community was such a privilege to hear! Their eloquence, insight and humor! It was like a drug - one that makes you more CLEAR, rather than more addled.

Now I was listening while driving to and from my Mom’s house, so I’m sure I’ll get some of the names wrong, but one writer whom I found particluarly involving was named Martha.......Gilbert? Gilmore? I did a google search and only came up with some modern geophysicist - surely not OUR Martha. Marte?

But after many wondrously clever letters, she wrote mournfully about the Kennedy assasination - in my mind an historic event that somehow seems weirdly disproportionate in cultural resonance to the actual wit, charm or soul of the man. Oh, symbology. But then I heard this letter which, paraphrased, said something like:

‘I just want to resign from the human race. This climate of cruelty and hatred among the human species has me despondent. It doesn’t even matter who the perpetrator was - they are not the cause; they’re merely one of the tragic effects. This is not a time I would choose to live in, and I’m in such despair I almost don’t care what happens......Of course Texas is an abomination - it always has been.’

Sound familiar? Maybe this is a human moment that returns to us - like Christmas, or World War.

Perhaps the human cycle is destined to have a few of those startlingly brief titillating moments where the spirit and culture peeks its nose above the surface of our cruel and reckless fallibility, to smell the glistening fresh air of brotherhood and possibility, and then - IMMEDIATELY! - wantonly, willfully dive back into to the dark clouded mire of fear and suspicion and meanness of spirit, where we rush to destroy whatever is left of the world. Where we feel safe under the stones with the other invertebrate mollusks.

On the same show, some Viennese companion of Leonard’s said, “When you are protected, covered, secure - you are safe - but cannot reach the heavens. When you are uncovered, heaven is sometimes within your grasp.”

He was of course talking about La Bernstein’s penchant to embarrass himself while stumbling in his enthusiasm to try for the stars. But that mind set helped me think of a new equation about people who want to be “secure”:

Those who voted for Bush hate, fear, and distrust other people. They think people need to be coerced and punished into a narrow course of “acceptable” behaviour.

Those who voted otherwise like and trust people, or at least WANT to like and trust people. They think encouragement, debate and example, as well as generosity and sharing, encourage “acceptable” behaviour, which they decline to define.

Which way would you rather be treated?

I know it’s idiotically simple - but show me an exception! PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE!

This never seemed so urgent before, now that the toys of the Gods are in the hands of the dolts.

Because hasn’t the reclamation of any sort of balance in the world been made more impossible by every technological leap forward?

When the industrial revolution blackened the urban skies with coal smoke, it seemed like humanity had reached its technological nadir.

But now we can do that in an instant, on a global scale! And now there’s so many more of us to do that! With so much less restraint! While you’re breathing, or wasting time reading this stupid paragraph, some species has just become extinct. Some forest has been razed. Some child has starved. I think there’s a one-liner in there somewhere!

Now, of course, my ventures into real literature are laughable! I always loved Paul Zone’s quote in New York Rocker, when they asked him his favorite book : “What? Me? I don’t read!”

And I subscribe heartily to Lux Interior’s offer in "Most Exalted Potentate" to show me the book of life “or you can just look at the pictures if you like.” I’m a skimmer. And I love the pictures.

But I did read Mark Twain’s “The Mysterious Stranger” (and of course his earlier despairing look at the advantages of technology in the horrendous pile up of bodies at the end of “A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court”) and that was enough to help me realize that, towards the end of his life, this great humorist and humanist found little to laugh at in the brutish unthinking amorality he could no longer deny was at the soul of the species.

And in “The Once And Future King”, Camelot may be felled by romantic betrayal, but wasn’t it also a kingdom that was built on the blood of battle and the religious zealotry of the Crusades and the misery and gold of the conquered? The bones of the crushed are always the foundations of the palaces, and when they rot the palaces crumble.

So when some clever man tries to chide human nature to take stock of itself with laughter and fun making, and then to redress its foibles with a little kindness, the man himself often absorbs the bilious poison of knowing the souls of those around him better than the vessels which contain them. And insight - or is wisdom too grandiose a word? - becomes bitter, or even dangerous: witness Oscar Wilde.

So the knowledge that at least half of this country that votes are mental midgets with no capacity for compassion, easily manipulated to feel threatened by the spectre of say...Gay marriage! (who ARE these groundhog people? gotta laugh to keep from crying)...into taking a stand against their own best interests - Well, that knowledge is NOT a conduit to a satisfying peal of superior laughter - it’s a conduit to the much heralded slough of empathetic despair, a sort of soul defeat. If they can be that stupid, might I not be as well? As Daryl Hannah as Pris said so succinctly in Blade Runner, “Then we’re stupid and we’ll die!”

Not a fun concept!

As a point of America’s monumental stupidity - let’s take a closer look at the words “gay marriage”. Take the word marriage out of the Christian context it’s been forced into - because, um...don’t Hindus, Buddhists, and atheists marry? To say nothing of Episcopalians and Protestants and Catholics, and Jews? Maybe all THOSE marriages should be outlawed too!

To me marriage is just a word, with a finite meaning. But to many Americans it is apparently a flaming sword, the future of which threatens their capacity to shop at Wal Mart and fill their tacky homes with idiot shit, and kill strangers in far off lands, and teach their kids that God hates fags, and that evolution is just an ugly rumor, and to remind their kids that poor people don’t deserve medicine or food and neither do you! Somehow "marriage" is the key to all that.

“Gay” “Marriage” was so divisive to these staunch folks that it was apparently THE ONE stealth weapon that mattered when it came time to vote. It’s funny that people were concerned about little things like the economy, the war, and the fate of the planet, but when it came time to vote, the idea of having to accept two fags getting a hitched in a civic union was REALLY their prime concern. At least the Republicans were smart enough to know that THEIR constituents are REALLY THAT STUPID!

So: the word “Marriage”. Marriage is NOT a religious word. It implies a social contract. “Social” does not imply “religion” except as various religions, or lack of same, affect various parts of social interaction. DUH! Are you listening, you morons?

So the word “Marriage” is a CIVIL word. In our culture, civil and social contracts are not stable - they evolve. DUH SQUARED! Um - can you spell women’s suffrage? Slavery? I know those comparisons are tired, but at least they’re easy to grasp - at any rate I thought so until I realized Americans were so STUPID - and they CAN’T spell!

So, marriage is described in the dictionary as “a person being united to a person or persons of the opposite sex as husband and wife in a special kind of social and legal dependance” - “of two general types: monogamous and polygamous”.

Further down it says, in describing various cultural perceptions of marriage through the ages, “a bride was often secured by capture, theft, purchase, or the exchange of a sister”.

And only then, and only WAY WAY WAY after that does it bring up religion AT ALL, saying that since the Reformation there have been two conflicting views: “a sacramental and indissoluble union” and “a purely civil union which is dissoluble with just cause”.

Now I know all you zealots are gleeflully clinging to the phrase “of the opposite sex”. Go ahead - cling! After all, that’s what you do! But then indulge me, and read a little further.

Hmmm. Heady stuff. Polygamy. Has the cultural and social view of marriage evolved beyond that in our country? Or is the concept of marriage static and inviolate? Better ask your third wife - the one that reads!

Let’s see - capture, theft, purchase - I don’t THINK we do that anymore. Well, I guess movie stars still get to purchase - and I imagine corporate heads do too. This is America. Maybe that’s a God given right - after all, His name is on every dollar! Better check the Bible.

Let’s get to the “Christian” view point. (At least “since the Reformation” - or do we recognize the Reformation? Perhaps they fiddled with the WORD OF GOD a little too freely!) A “sacramental and indissoluble union”. Hmmm. I don’t know ANY divorced Christians - do you?

OOOOOPS! Maybe those Christians who decided marriage SHOULD be dissoluble are letting their concept of marriage “evolve” - maybe they’re even getting a little bit “CIVIL”! (No, I don’t mean they’re polite! That is no longer a Christian value.)

So obviously, if marriage is NOT kept static and the concept of it is EVER tampered with, SOCIETY CRUMBLES, and there is ANARCHY, and people begin marrying their DOGS to their pre-teen CHILDREN. It’s happened very other time, hasn’t it, you GAY DIVORCEES? Watch out, your Jesus is giving you a broad humourous wink from the bloody cross, but I don’t think he’s laughing WITH you!

So I guess the civil and legal definitions of marriage DO evolve as a society evolves. TRIPLE DUH!

Now one other aspect of marriage is that, even though it must be done legally to be recognized by courts of law, the actual public ceremony may be practised along the guidelines of your religion of choice. (Get it - choice? This is America!) So is a Jewish marriage not recognised by those who were married in a Catholic church? Or is a civil ceremony presided over by a justice of the peace perhaps not recognised by either a Jew or a Catholic? Oh - only when they cross state lines. Gee, I’ll have to think about that.

Are you with me you morons? You can have any goddamn rules in your idiotic religion you want! You can sacrifice goats and drop black wax on your nipples in a satanic pentagle made of human blood and keep out the fags and yell that black people are only half human and buy a farm and stockpile arms (until the GOOD people in this country make that illegal and take them all away and leave you brats bawling in your diapers of ignorant fear) and EAT Jesus’ BODY and DRINK Jesus’ BLOOD in some cool goth bizarre archaic cannibalistic ritual, and think HATE is a family VALUE, and teach that to YOUR CHILDREN and grow soy beans and eat that shit they call tofu or whatever the fuck you want! That’s your religious RIGHT as an AMERICAN!

Just keep your religious nose out of my legal and civil union, so I can visit my spouse in the hospital and be present at the reading of his will and be covered under his health care! Like even Walt Disney (the fascist organization whose wholesale destruction of children's literature has warped the impressionable minds of your helpless children for decades) - even they have same-sex couple health coverage, YOU DOPES! OOOOPS! Better get that fag Mickey Mouse out of your infant’s brain pan. I always thought that squeaky voice was a little fey. Put a stop to his influence now, otherwise your kids might grow up and be FRIENDLY and NICE!

Did you ever stop to think that gay marriage might be STABILIZING to your idiot SUBURBS? Did you ever think it might be an advantage to have a nice quiet stable two income gay couple invest in your neighborhood and raise the property values? That their commitment meant they probably WOULDN’T be having the speed addict leather clad crisco orgies next door that you assume every “gay” person has? Darn, if that party doesn’t sound an AWFUL lot like the heterosexual no-fags-allowed SWINGER parties I’ve seen several documentaries about recently! And these were “CHRISTIAN” swngers! Since I’ve seen it on T.V. and on film, it MUST be true! I bet ALL HETEROSEXUALS ARE LIKE THAT! Boy, I wish they’d move out of my neighborhood! I wouldn’t want a STINKING AMORAL CHRISTIAN SWINGER (and on top of that THEY’RE OLD AND UGLY AND DON’T GO TO THE GYM) heterosexual to be tempted by the sight of my poor innocent cat! If they’re allowed to “swing”, who knows what’s next? DIVORCE?

A brief aside: have you ever seen a Gay person marching for the right to marry his dog or his brother? Happy Thanksgiving! The next time some native Americans see some stupid Western European religious nuts starving in the woods, they’ll know better!