Vanilla Ice paid a visit to Ho Ho Jo’s Holiday Light Show on Tuesday night, January 2. We asked how Ho Ho Joe how his light show came to fruition. “I think, that’s kind of yeah…a funny story. So six years ago, my neighbor over there moved in and one night I was coming home from work about 5:30. It was Christmas time and already dark. I had I icicles hanging from my gutters and he had an amazing light show. I decided there’s no way the neighbor is beating me. This is a competition. So I googled, ‘What’s better than this Light-O-Rama that he’s using’ and it kind of blew up from there and it just hasn’t slowed down yet.”
We then asked what inspires or motivates him to keep the light show going each year. He said, “It’s hearing the people laugh. That’s the best part. I do that little PT Barnum quote, ‘The noblest art is that of making others happy.’ So, I can be inside working on another song for out here and hear little kids out here laugh and then see them dance and stuff. It’s like that might be the only time that kid or that family laughs together today. So, that’s really the biggest thing for me.”
We asked Ho Ho Joe how much it costs each year to continue to put on the light show. “The electric bill only goes up about $100 a month,” he told us.
We have heard from several people that you can see the light display from I-95. When we asked him about this, he replied, “I’ve heard people say that they can. I have moving spotlights on the roof. Something that even people in this hobby, most of them, don’t have. I’ve had people from I-95 come to the show by following the spotlights and they’re not in every song. So they will say, ‘Yeah, we would start going towards your house and all of a sudden the lights disappear for 10 minutes. We’d stop in a parking lot and wait until we saw them again.’ So, yeah, we’ve had people say they can see them from 1-95.”
We then asked about Vanilla Ice’s visit. “So, I was trying to grow my Facebook audience. I have about just cleared 2,000 followers. As we were doing that, I kept seeing these posts about Vanilla Ice and Bronx House Pizza. I’m like, ‘Okay the guy lives around here let’s have some fun with this.’ So I started joking around and everybody started tagging him and tagging him and tagging him. I’m like, ‘I’m gonna make this guy a little unhappy with me, but oh well, I’m gonna keep it going.’ It was kind of like a joke. It really was a joke and then a neighbor from, maybe four houses down, stopped by here one night.”
The conversation went something like this:
Him: “Hey, you really want Vanilla Ice here?’
Me: ‘Yeah, why?’
Him: ‘I’m friends with him.’
Me: What?
Him: Yeah, I own Bronx House Pizza.
Me: You’re kidding me.
Him: Now, I can’t promise anything, but I’ll do my best.
He continued, “So, I write all the sequences that I play. They take between 60 and 80 hours a piece to write per song. I‘m like, ‘Ok, I’m going to put the ‘Ice Ice Baby’ song in there.’ So, I spent seventy hours sequencing the song and put it out here. And at that point, I was like, ‘This better not be a joke anymore.’ I decided I was going to record it this coming Friday. New Year’s Eve was going to be the last show. Last night, I got a message on Facebook saying, ‘Hey, we’ll be there in 15 to 20 minutes.’ I’m like, ‘You’re kidding. I’m not even running tonight. He’s like, ‘Can you be? And I’m like, ‘I’m Ho Ho Joe. I absolutely can make this happen.’ They rolled up twenty minutes later. It was pretty cool.”
We asked him what went through his head when he realized Vanilla Ice was watching his light display. Joe explained, “It’s pretty cool. I mean, his reaction to watching everything that the props all do during that song, I think he was in amazement. You can hear him a couple times as I’m doing a Facebook live with him there (kind of feeling a little intrusive at that point). I’m recording this guy standing in the middle of the road. He’s like, ‘Oh, wow, that is so cool. That’s so neat.’ Yeah, so I think he really enjoyed it and then I got a little feedback from the guy that brought him here and said, ‘Yeah, he absolutely loved it.’”
We then asked if he was shocked that he actually showed up. “I was, because I thought, you know, the season’s over. I’m not going to run anymore. It’s cool. I put 70 hours into a sequence. It’s still a really cool looking sequence anyway. People like it. I run a sequence store. So not only did I program it for myself, but I programmed for others in the hobby and I went ahead and did a sale. I put the sequence in my store,” he said.
Finally, we asked if he had any ideas for next year’s light display. “Gotta figure out what other celebrities live around here.” We also asked if ‘Ice Ice Baby’ was going to become a regular fixture in the show. “Absolutely, it’s going to be a regular. We also do Halloween and I like the Halloween show better. We run flame machines and you can get away with more songs. Christmas you have to stick with Christmas songs and Halloween you can do anything. I mentioned the Halloween show to him and he was like like, ‘Yeah, I’m going to check out the Halloween show.’”
Ho Ho Joe posted the following today on this Facebook page: “Ok, ok, ok! Lol last night re-energized me. And we are getting a ton of new followers on our page. So to return the love, we will run our show a few more nights so the new people that haven’t had the chance to see it live will have the opportunity. The length of the show will be reduced down to around 30 minutes and be mostly non-Christmas songs, but they are definitely entertaining. We will run from 6:30-9:00 these nights. We will run Wednesday, 1/4 and Thursday, 1/5 for sure, unless we get nasty weather. We will run Friday, 1/6 as well but will be doing a lot of recording that night so you may hear the same song multiple times so we get good video of our key songs this season. Thanks again to all of the folks following our page and helping to get Vanilla Ice to visit us last night. It was pretty cool hanging out with him for a bit.”
To learn more about the dates, times and location of the show, visit www.hohojoes.com
