An Emerging Tidbit from My Sordid Past

From 1996 to 1997, I was the co-chair of the student-run movie theater at the University of Maryland. The theater was called the Hoff and it was my home away from home. I did most of the movie selection, and also worked there as a projectionist. It was a great time. We were programming during the height of the 90's indie heyday, and grew business for the theater quite a bit. It was a good time.

This week, the Hoff was back in the news. My successors decided to bring some hard core porn to the theater, in the form of the pirate-themed "Pirates II: Stagnetti's Revenge." Classy. The Maryland State Senate was peeved enough that they passed a quickie bill stipulating that any educational institution showing XXX movies would get state funding pulled. Doubly Classy.

We never quite went that far in our programming, but the article did name-check one of our more popular events, the double-feature of Showgirls and Striptease elegantly titled "Take It Off At the Hoff." It's nice to see I have a legacy. (We also planned the Cannibal Festival, featuring Alive, Silence of the Lambs and Cannibal: The Musical, but it never got off the ground. And we spent an evening hollowing out coconuts for a special showing of Monty Python & The Holy Grail.)

Without getting into the issue of whether or not it's appropriate for a state college-run theater to be showing hard core porn, I think the state senate's reaction is out of line. There are dozens of other far more pressing issues relating to the college that the state could intervene on... this is just stupid.

But it's good to see the Hoff in the news and still stickin' it to the man. [Pun semi-intended.]