Moments

I think that sometimes I don't really have a lot to say and then I think that I have too much to say and it will all come out wrong, so I don't say anything. This has been one of those latter moments where there is so much going on and yet nothing more than usual and I keep spinning around and still go no where.

Life, crazy huh?



Moments by Will Hoffman. This film is a celebration of life that was inspired by David Eagleman's book, Sum.

The 1st Philly Naked Bike Ride

I guess I have to set this up for a lot of people to understand this, but there used to be this British actress with the name of Googie Withers. She may have been big around the 40's or 50's, I'm not sure, but I came to know her in the 70's when she did a TV show called Prisoners of Cell Block H or something like that. You know, the type of show that was popular around that time. A show about life in a woman's prison where they show all the dirt and the power struggles and the latent lesbianism of those who have turned to the other side of the law.

Anyway, there were two comedians who were telling a joke and one of them said, something something, blah blah blah, Googie Withers. I remember the second one asked, "Who's Googie Withers?" The first comedian, turned and looked at him and replied, "Mine does when there's a cold wind." I bring that up because this Labor Day weekend was Philadelphia's first Naked Bike Ride.

Apparently the World Naked Bike Ride is an organization that has set up bike rides in many cities around the world in an effort to bring awareness to safety issues concerning the bike riding community and also the over indulgence in fossil fuel consumption and the environmental damages caused by it and by the use the combustion engine. And as everyone knows, sex sells, so what better way is there to make a point than by doing it nude? But since I'm really not that much of an exhibitionist, I only get nude when everyone else is nude, and since it is September with a slight chill in the air, I didn't want to see my googie wither. So here are some pictures of about a thousand braver souls than me.

Benny and the Jets

Saturday was my birthday and I spent it with sound of Benny and the Jets going on and on in my head. I think I’ve said it before that my birthday was the same as Michael Jackson’s and now it's the anniversary of when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. It’s funny how when I was much younger, I would so long for that day. That is until I realized how many people would celebrate their birthday with hundreds of other kids and I would, because it was at the end of summer, would have fun with just 5 or 6 children that were my closest friends or who just lived really close to me. As I grew older I stopped celebrating my birthday or even the need to bring it up in polite conversation. So it’s kind of strange to bring it up now, but it’s been a kind of strange summer this year anyway.

Although when I think about it, this year has probably been no different from any other year. Another Kennedy has died, two in fact, back to back. We’ve seen authors and singers go who you would never have thought would go so young. And then there were people that surprised you that they had died only because you thought they were dead already. The weather has been, not crazy, but really weird. It’s been something that you couldn’t depend on if you wanted to do something outdoors. Each time that I wanted to go somewhere or do something, it would be chilly or it rained.

Last week I had wanted to go to Sandy Hook the nudist beach with my friend Curtis. There is no better feeling you could have than walking along a beach with the sun on your back and your dick swaying left and right as you take each step, makes you feel…feel like a man. Unless of course you’re a woman, but I’m sure with a nice set of puppies the feeling is just the same. I recommend it to everyone. Anyway, that was canceled when the beach was closed because of the storm surge from Tropical Storm Bill or George or somebody; screwed again. I was left to think about how it was the last time and maybe it will be like in the future.

It’s funny the kind of things that make you think of your past. Music for me is one of those things that will take me back in an instant to a specific time or place, take Benny and the Jets by Elton John. That song will always take me back to going to a fair that would come into town every year. On one of the rides they would always play that song and whenever I hear that song I’m always taken back to a September evening just before dark trying to figure out if I had enough money to get on the ride. And then I would hear Benny and the Jets in my head whenever Melvin at work, who undoubtedly is the most popular person in the company was on the phone with a worker named Benny who was complaining about his paycheck and his child support and whatever else he had found wrong with it. Melvin would say, “Benny…Benny…Benny,” and I would go back to when I was nine or ten and hear Elton John in my head.

On Saturday people started calling me early in the morning. On the first call I couldn’t figure out how to answer the phone. No matter which button I pressed and said hello, the phone would continue to ring. The other calls I ignored and cursed silently to myself wondering why these bitches couldn’t leave me alone, didn’t they know I didn’t observe my birthday. It wasn’t until after midday that I got out of bed and decided to see who had called me. On the phone there was a text message from Wanda, “call me Melvin was hit by a car last night and he’s dead”.

Saturday was my birthday and all I could hear in my head was “buh buh buh Benny and the Jets” and it's been a strange summer.

Barney Frank

I love it when politicians say what they really think and not just what they think will keep them in office. I think if I lived in Massachusetts and even though I don't like him sometimes, I would vote for Barney Frank just because politics without him would be deadly dull.

Fun at the Town Hall Meeting

I think that if you are looking for drama, suspense and maybe even a little action, you can’t go wrong by heading to your local town hall meeting where a congressman or senator will be discussing the virtues and or evils, depending on your political persuasion, of health care reform this summer.


Now I’m not talking about the type of telephone town hall meeting that Bob Andrews, congressman for the district I live in is having where everyone is picked in advance and the questions are screened and the answers are formulated well in advance of the entire thing. I'm talking about the kind of town meeting that Arlen Specter, senior senator for PA does. The ones where old white people come orchestrated with their white paper in hand and their carefully scripted questions ready to shout and scream that there will be a special place in Hell for the President and all the socialist, elite, Kenyan lackeys that follow him.

Of course Sen. Specter’s meetings might not be a good example since I think he may be experiencing a backlash for changing his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat and, in the eyes of some, may be seen as a traitor to their cause. But there are other politicians that have experienced that same kind of virulent outburst that will bring a member of the House almost to tears as they try to explain that the government has no intention of creating a single payer health care system. They will shake at the knees and look peevishly at security as they tell their constituents that the government will not create death panels in order to kill off old people and save money. Naturally this kind of town hall meeting doesn’t happen when the President is having one himself. I would think that the secret service would put an end to that kind of behavior even before they took the offenders outside and beat them to a pulp.

However, I’m starting to wonder if these protest meetings are really about stopping health care reform or more about having President Obama, as that one congressman said, face his Waterloo. When people are showing up at meetings with posters ridiculing a man who has been in office less than a year and comparing him to Hitler or the Joker, I have to wonder if the disruptions are really about saving the welfare of the nation and its citizens, or about correcting a perceived mistake that was done at the last election? Is this the meaning of what being post-racial is all about?

Regardless, last year I thought that it was the most thrilling political year that I had ever experienced. This year, tops last year in spades and it’s just August. I wonder what will happen next year. Will the revolution be televised this time?

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The Manchurian Candidate

I wasn't going to comment on this story because I thought it was a dead issue. In fact I thought it was dead a long time ago even before the election was run, but apparently this horse won't die.



Hmmm, now that I think about it I really have nothing to say other I'm not sure who I'm scared of most, the people who have determined and set this heinous sleeper plan in motion over 40 years ago for a puppet to become President and take over the country, or the numb skulls at this meeting who actually believe it.

You know the real sad thing is, is that these fuckers vote. Sometimes I wonder if getting rid of that intelligence test at voter registration time was such a good idea.

Death & The Obituary page

Larry called and said that E. Lynn Harris had died. I knew of course already because it had been all over the net. In fact the first time I read it was on someone’s Facebook page.

I was never a big fan of Mr. Harris, I remember reading his first book when he published it himself, Invisible Life, and thinking how much potential he had. Then he went to a big publishing house and I read the second one and thought that it was trite. There may have been a third book of his that I read but I can’t recall. I felt that he had sold out and I had long lost interest in his work by that time which listening to his last interview on NPR this year, he knew already.

When I was young my grandmother would scan the obituaries page in the news paper to see who had gone to glory before she had. She would see a name and recognize the person as Mrs. So & So’s hairdresser’s cousin who had lived 4 blocks up from where she did as a child and who had gone away for a few months when she was 16 and had come back with a new baby sister. Or she would see listed Mr. Such & Such who lived at the end of the street who was a drunk, or a fancy man, or both and used to make her laugh with his antics when she was young. Now granny doesn’t do that anymore. Partly because being almost 90, most of the people that she knew have passed on already and partly because even if she did know them, I’m not sure she’d recognize them. Come to think of it, I’m not sure she’d recognize me and I’m her only grandson.

Instead, I seem to have taken her place when it comes to looking for news of the dead. Of course I don’t actually do the Obits page in the news paper. In fact I don’t think I’ve read a newspaper in about 5 or 6 years now. I mean I do read the Metro that you get at the train station for free, but everybody knows that’s just a glorified excuse for advertising pamphlet. By the time you’ve read headline for each story, you’ve already read a third of whatever it is that they’ve written. What I do is search for names on the web.

This means of course that if you are a nobody like me, you’re probably still alive as far as I’m concerned since there will probably be very little news about you. But if you are a celebrity, a someone worthy of mention on CNN or *choke* Fox then I’ve got you. I‘ll be able to tell small stories about how I almost met you or how someone I knew almost met the next door neighbor of yours. I will be able to say this, that and the other about how my life was changed and how I became a better person or how I found Jesus.

From Maude to Malden, from Richardson to Jackson and from Harris to…I don’t know Cronkite, I will be able to find something to reflect on, and I guess that’s okay with me. At least then I won’t have to mourn for someone I know. I won’t have to grieve over a family member that lifted me up when I was down, or miss a friend that listened to me when no one else would. I can pretend that death happens to other people and not to those I know and love.

And that's the way it is.

How Things Change

Does anyone not remember the Obama slogan of “change you can believe in” when the junior senator from Illinois was running for President? The things that he had to do and will have to do to make that true must be astounding.

If I were ever to run for high office, Lamont would be the first person that I would have to have knocked off. He knows more about me and the dirt that I used to get into more than anyone else in the world, including lovers and family members. There are things that we love about each other and things that we hate. That’s why we can go around not speaking to each other for months if not years and pick up right up at the same spot that we were arguing about and not miss a beat. It’s like time doesn’t pass for us. One of the things that we will fight over is how I like to go to Fire Island in New York and he’d rather lose a foot than go.

Lamont thinks that as a black man I should be ashamed to go to such a place that doesn’t seem to welcome people of color and that he for one wouldn’t spend a red cent or a minute trying to get there. Whereas I have always believed that if you want people to accept you, you have to make yourself visible and let them know that you exist. That’s why I have never been afraid to go anywhere to make my little non-political, political statement.


The last video that I did was on Fire Island and I must have shot about an hour’s worth of stuff, much of which was edited out because I wanted to hit the 10 minute maximum that they have on YouTube. The clip above was part of the video that I left out and although things said were done in jest, they still kind of bother me and I’m not quite sure why.

The “black man, black man,” reference from Designing Women is a line that I have used myself on people. The “black boys are delicious….” Line from Hair is something I’ve heard before from other black people, well from one other black person and he used to wear t-shirts with The Brady Bunch or That Girl on them. Does that count? I’ve never seen That Girl so I don’t know. Anyway, maybe it was the “people of color on the dock,” that disturbs me. Funny how when I was growing up and a little before that, we used to be called colored people and Negroes. Then it was black people and Jesse Jackson got people to use the term African Americans. Now it’s people of color. Oh how things change.

That brings me to the incident at the Valley Swim Club a private swim club that advertised open membership in the suburbs of Philadelphia. 65 children from the Creative Steps Day Camp, which consists mainly of black and Latino kids, showed up at the swim club late last month after their dues had been accepted and were turned away after hearing some perhaps racist remarks. Their money was refunded with the original explanation of, "There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion … and the atmosphere of the club," from the management. This was later changed to there being a safety issue and the club was unable to accommodate such a large number of people.



Now, after that story was taped and with the hue and cry of racism in the air and that faint whiff of litigation, the Valley Swim Club has invited the children back. Apparently the safety issue is no longer a concern to the club when compared to pending law suits and condemnation from the govenor and senior senator for Pennsylvania; two fellow gym members may I say.

My, how things change.

Fire Island Invasion 2009

On Friday at around 4pm I was at Independence Mall in Philadelphia. There was, as some people may call it, a protest rally by some black owned construction companies. They were demanding that more construction work be opened for black people in the city. They said that the President’s House that George Washington lived in before the White House was built and which John Adams moved into, should be reconstructed on the mall with black labor at the exclusion of others since the first house would have been originally built with slave labor. All very interesting I thought, but not quite the spirit of “Brotherly Love” the city is supposed to have especially when we were supposed to be celebrating the birth of the nation in the city that it all began. I decided to go my gym and come back later for the concert that was being held on the mall with Peter Nero and the Philly Pops.

I did go back and since I had my video camera I shot a few scenes of the Pop’s version of the theme from ET and something from Benny Goodman. Then when they started playing “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again” it was time for me to go home before the South started to rise again. Plus I knew that I would have to get up early to celebrate July 4th, the next day, not by coming back to the mall to listen to speeches or thinking of the Founding Fathers or heading to someone’s horrible barbeque, but to where I seem to go every year now, Fire Island.

The story is that back in 1976 a few drag queens were refused service from a bar in the Pines on Fire Island. The men went back to Cherry Grove on another part of the island and with their friends on the day the country was celebrating the bi-centennial anniversary for independence, they boarded a boat and invaded the Pines in full drag regalia. They and others have been doing that every year since then and organized by Panzi in the yellow. It has become known as the Fire Island Invasion of the Pines.

I have been going for the last 5 or 6 years and I wish I could say that I have been in costume, but I haven’t worn mother’s wig and pearls since I was about 8 and never in public. Usually I just head to the beach, strip down and relax. This time however because of the mass of people this year they ran out of room on the ferry that I usually take so I arrived at Cherry Grove at around 1pm just as the revelers were about to leave the Grove for the Pines. I decided to shoot this video with too much wind noise going on and to steal some pictures from flickr.com and some of the music from Priscilla Queen of the Desert.

I hope you enjoy it just as much as hope you enjoyed your weekend as I did mine.

The King & I

It's been sometime since I have actually written anything and this was something that I had never in my wildest dreams thought that I would ever do, but here it is.

There isn't much that I can write about the King of Pop that you could not think for yourself or read somewhere else. There isn't anything more that I could or even develop into something even slightly interesting that hasn't already said. For the last couple of days I’ve been thinking of Michael knowing that my life will not change one iota because of his death but realizing that my life has in a small way already been changed or at least been affected by him being alive.

I remember the first time I saw the Jackson 5 back in '69 on the old black and white. Some people with more significant lives will tell you about chasing or running from the VC in 'Nam, but I will tell you about looking up at a boy not much older than myself and wondering why I couldn't be as magnificent as he seemed to be. The Jackson 5 were and Michael was magic and they knew it and they knew I knew it too.

I think I’ve said in this blog before that both Michael Jackson and I share the same birthday. It’s a line that I use to show how I really hip and cool I am and I want people to remember me by stating something that’s different from whatever else they may have heard. Of course using a phrase like “hip and cool” only shows how much I really am not but I have always tried to ride MJ’s coat tails by showing people the similarities between us. Although undoubtedly we have a few differences.

I am or was just a few years younger than Mr. Jackson so that was one difference and another minor one would be the talent thing. I know that I have no talent because some years ago for some strange reason I was watching with my mother, Barbara Walters or somebody interview Michael Jackson. My mother said to herself something like “such talent.” Then she turned towards me and said the word “if”, lowered her eyes and let the smile fall from her face. I swore to myself then, perhaps not with words but at least pictures, I would hate Michael Jackson and everything that he stood for, for the rest of my life and maybe a little more beyond it.

It goes without saying that I never could hate Michael anymore that I could hate my left shoulder when it clicks and hurts me when I raise my arm. Like my shoulder he has been part of my life for as long as I can remember.

I remember when I started to grow an afro because he had one. I remember the choice of clothes and the platforms that I wore were because of him. I remember posting the bedroom walls with pictures of him and his brothers that I tore out of the teeny bopper magazines. In fact the only thing that I did before he did was to catch my hair on fire, and at least I did it without getting third degree burns. I supported him when he did his Thriller album when early on, black people were thinking that MJ’s music was too pop, which is a euphemism for being too white, but I was there. I never bought the album of course; there was no need to go over the top. I was there in spirit.

I was also there in spirit during the cosmetic surgeries that made him look like another version of the Joker. I was there during the Martin Bashir interview and I realized my idol from yesteryear had either gone berserk or had never developed an adult thinking brain and my heart and my stomach fell. But I was there. I think I will be there when he is finally laid to rest. Not the memorial/spectacle "Joe Jackson somehow it’ll make money" money scheme they intend to put on in Los Angeles for him, but the one where everyone realizes that it’s all over, and then like the line that keeps going on and on in my head,

“I'll be there, I'll be there,
just call my name, I'll be there....”