The House Of The Rising Crap (Photo Three)

Photo by John Hoff

Here is the back of "The House Of the Rising Crap." Note four computer monitors (stripped to their cathode ray tubes?) soaking in a pink kiddie pool.

I can't figure out what THAT is about. My hypothesis is...

...it's a remnant of children playing messy, magical games. How else do you explain four identical computer monitors soaking in a pink kiddie pool? When I was a kid, we used to take large stalks of cocklebur and play a game called "Hang Your Head In Shame."

Cocklebur Performance Art

How did the game work? You're dying to know, aren't you?

Three or four or however many kids get in a line, each with a large cocklebur stalk, leaves and all. They march in a row, humming strangely, leaping into the air from time to time in unison exactly like "the monk skit" from the late night comedy show "Fridays," on which the game was loosely based.

The children take their cocklebur and WHAP! it against random objects like...junked cars. Picnic table scrounged from the Maple Lake Public Access. (Hey, workmen were about to haul it away as junk!) Tree stumps.

Each time the children hit the objects they cry out, "Hang your head in shame!"

At last, one of the "monks" will find his cocklebur has been completely destroyed. He has used up the precious weedy green resource too quickly. In stark, horrified realization, he or she holds the stalk with a baleful look, pleading for mercy with his eyes.

The other monks frown at him, intensely angry.

"HANG YOUR HEAD IN SHAME!" they cry, and beat him with their own cocklebur stalks to his frantic cries of pain. (Well, it was mostly an act. It hurts to get hit with a cocklebur stalk. Not as much, though, as a sunflower stalk)

And then the weird game started all over again.

It wasn't so much a game as a "skit," however. So many of the imaginative Hoff family games were mostly about performance. So the game was actually rigged, for the sake of comedy and opportunities to be extemporaneous. One of the monks (it was almost always Brother Judd, the youngest, the clown of the family) would whack objects REPEATEDLY, crying out REPEATEDLY in self-righteous indignation.

Trying too hard, as it were. Using up his resources too quickly. The other monks would shake their heads but say nothing. Sometimes they would try half-heartedly to stop him. But Brother Judd could not be stopped. He would run to other, non-designated objects and whack them, so much did he enjoy the whacking and so little did he care for the prudent preservation of his "sacred leaf."

So Brother Judd was almost always the monk who was on the receiving end of the frenzy of blows with the cocklebur. There were a number of variations, including one in which I played a self-righteous monk who did everything exactly as I should...but the others were holding back, pretending to WHAP! but secretly preserving their leaf.

He liked it, though. He was sick that way.

There were a number of variations, including one in which I played a self-righteous monk who did everything exactly as I should...but the others were holding back, pretending to WHAP! but secretly preserving their leaf. And random chaos was possible. Sometimes a stalk just...broke! Unexpectedly.

When it was "Sister Mary," she would run away, screaming bloody murder for dramatic effect. Our dear sweet mother would stick her head outside to make sure the playful games hadn't (once again) degenerated into a sibling brawl.

I thought of this game when I saw cocklebur growing next to the remnants of cayenne pepper. I can't help but think of "Hang Your Head In Shame" when I see cocklebur.

After we got bored with this game, sometimes we'd pretend we were the Donner Party committing acts of cannibalism. What can I say? We saw something about the Donner Party on television. It made quite an impression on our young, developing minds.

Remnants Of A Glorious Garden

There signs of gardening glory in the back yard, especially an excess of cayenne peppers. Here a lush and productive garden once existed...now going to waste, next to the electronic trash soaking(bizarrely) in a piece-of-crap pink kiddie pool.

How I would love to know the rules of that little game, which somehow revolve around soaking computer monitors in a kiddie pool!

I boarded up the door you see in this picture. Of course.