John Malkovich
Last night I caught part of the SNL Christmas show and I happened to surf in about the same time that villainous actor John Malkovich was starting his cynical reader treatment of “Twas The Night Before Christmas” for a group of little children. He spoke to them in resonating tones from a cozy chair by a snowy evening window, next to the glowing Christmas Tree, as the kids all nestled around on the floor, hanging on every word of this benevolent-looking man in the Santa Claus cap.
Got the picture?
The rest of it, the substance, is all found in the annotations. After every two lines from the classic seasonal tribute to grand old St. Nick, Malkovich pauses to offer some differential kind of disparaging comment on life that he derives from the words of the poem.
Early in the recitation, when Malkovich reads these lines: “The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there,” we get the presenter’s explication that inspires the central and only essential thought behind this column, And that’s good too in the sense that not all the columns by yours truly are either inspired or stopped by the absence of deep thought.
“You know what they say about ‘hopes’, children?” Malkovich charges with cynical eye and smirk. “Hopes are what we cling to when reality has left us nothing else.”
Once I recover from the quiet inner guffaw that Malkovich inspires by his sadly ironic explanation, it occurs to me that his simple formula for determining the presence or absence of one of the most copiously offered bromides to the downtrodden communities and heroes of all time, hope, applies fairly square as an explanation for the essential reason that Houston sports fans of the Astros, Rockets (yeah, I know about those two NBA crowns we picked off during the MJ sabbatical), the Oilers, the Texans, the Cougars, and the Owls (OK, so the bluebirds do have Wayne Graham and one national baseball title, but they also have that football team history) have so much HOPE.
Hope is what we cling to when reality has left us (all of or next to) nothing else.
Happy New Year, Houston sports fans. And never give up. And thank you, John Malkovich, or your writers, for shaking that one size fits all apple from the tree of truth sublime.
The Pecan Park Eagle 
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