Big Mike: Black Comedy Excerpt No. 20 — “I’ll Tell You Who Public Enemy Number One Is”

Before we go on to today’s excerpt from my new novel-in-progress, Black Comedy, I’d like take a minute to remember Daniel Schorr. The old bird died in his sleep Friday at the age of 93. He was one of my few idols in the journalism racket. There are Ambrose Bierce, H.L. Mencken, Studs Terkel, Mike Royko, Matt Taibbi, some schmuck from the Chicago Reader by the name of Joravsky, and Schorr. If I could be a quarter as good as any of them I’d be happy. I listened to him every Saturday and Sunday morning on NPR’s Weekend Edition. Here’s how I knew Schorr was doing a bang-up job: he enraged Republicans and Democrats alike. At risk of sounding like a an old bastard (which I am,) journalism has gone all to hell of late. Thanks to the likes of Don Hewitt, Rupert Murdoch, and Roger Ailes, news reporting has become a carnival sideshow hosted by handsome and pretty airheads for the fat, the stupid, and the easily frightened. Schorr was homely and nerdy with poorly fitting dentures and messy hair. He looked lousy on TV. Good. I gave up on TV news a long time ago. While everybody else was breathlessly reporting the latest Oval Office blow job scandal or some out of context video tapes released by bullshitters who want to tap into white people’s deepest terror of brown people, Schorr just stuck to quaint concepts like issues and events. Ain’t many left like Daniel Schorr. Maybe no one. Now, read my stuff. — Big Mike

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The dinner will consist of Italian wedding soup followed by spinach salad drizzled with juice from fresh lemons. The main course will be the guest’s choice of veal piccata accompanied by mostaccioli marinara and french-cut green beans or sole meunière served with honey-glazed pea pods and carrots and risotto alla Parmigiana. Dessert will be a choice of spumoni, cannoli, or tira misu, although Joey has already indicated he will take all three.

The band is winding down, a signal that guests should begin taking their seats. The band is Jackey Pontone’s gift to the newlyweds, the New Colony Six, a real score, everybody agrees, considering they’d hit the local charts in 1966 with the huge smash, I Confess, and have appeared on national television shows in their trademark colonial costumes. Their brand new single, I Will Always Think About You, is just now beginning to rocket up the Billboard Hot 100 chart. For Jackey, booking them for this wedding was no big deal — he merely made a couple of phone calls.

Space

The maître d’ gives the signal for the waitresses to begin rolling in their carts. The band descends the stage and will eat in the kitchen. Already several guests begin clinking their water glasses with their butter knives, importuning Anna and Chet to kiss. The only two empty seats are Joey’s — he’s already horking in the men’s room — and Eddie Halloran’s.

The Cook County State’s Attorney wants to order his fourth highball of the young afternoon as the band leaves the stage but the bartender has stopped serving drinks. Eddie is incensed. He stomps out of the hall muttering the word fuck in all its permutations. He walks — or, more accurately, stumbles — around the corner to the parking lot where after a seemingly endless search he finds his Oldsmobile Toronado which he was standing next to when he stepped onto the lot in the first place. He opens the passenger side door and fishes under the seat until he locates his emergency fifth of Jameson’s.

Eddie Halloran fills his hip flask from the Jameson’s bottle. The flask is empty because he’d drained every last drop from it during the wedding mass at St. Giles. No one had seen him do it, of course, because he’d ducked into a confessional to slake his thirst in sanctified privacy. He had not sought the good Lord’s forgiveness for his intemperance while he was in the confessional because, he reasoned, one needs a strong bracer to make it through another of Fr. Jerome’s interminable sermons. Our Father in Heaven, Eddie Halloran thought as the Irish whiskey stung his esophagus, is not an unreasonable man.

A Place To Cleanse Your Soul Or Sneak A Quick Belt

Space

Eddie shoves the filled flask into his right rear trousers pocket where it makes a conspicuous bulge under the vent of his Marshall Field’s suit jacket. He walks — er, stumbles — into the alley behind Nuovo Mondo. He’ll need plenty of distilled strength to get through this goddamned dago dinner. These greaseballs cook everything in the goddamned world with garlic, for chrissakes. Christ in heaven, I’ll bet they put garlic in their Malt-O-Meal!

Eddie places his hand gingerly against the brick rear wall of the banquet hall, steadying himself for the short walk to the service entrance door of the place, set in from the alley, giving him a little privacy. Poor Eddie. He steps into a pile of dogshit just as he reaches the recessed entrance. “Goddamn fuckin’ prick shit,” he says. He looks around for something to wipe the shit off his oxblood wingtips. He eyes a poster stapled to the utility pole. It reads, “Rats. Public Enemy Number 1! Danger: Poison. This alley has been treated by the Department of Streets and Sanitation, Richard J. Daley, Mayor.”

Eddie rips down the poster and mutters, “Fuck you, Dick. I’m the fuckin’ State’s Attorney. I’ll tell you who public enemy number one is.”

He does as well as he can with the stiff cardboard. Still, there’s shit bits in the awl-punched holes of his wingtip. Eddie shakes his head and makes a decision. He carefully removes the shoe and tosses it into a garbage can. Satisfied, he unscrews the cap of his flask and takes a long, well-earned slurp.

Eddie’s Wingtip, Pre-Dogshit

Space

At this moment, another similarly braced soul stumbles into the alley. For Eddie Halloran, the alley is a temporary watering hole. For this newcomer, it is home, a place he has pride in. He’s not terribly pleased with the presence of a man missing a shoe sneaking booze in his alley, as if the habit is somehow undignified. “Where the fuck is your shoe?” the man asks Eddie Halloran.

“What the fuck is it to you?”

“Tough guy, huh?”

“Kiss my balls.”

The man stares at Eddie for a moment. “Hey,” he says at last. “I know you. You’re that guy from the papers.”

“That’s right,” Eddie Halloran says. “I’m Martin Luther Fuckin’ King.”

“No you ain’t. You’re that Halloran. It’s a pleasure to meetcha.” The man extends his hand toward Eddie. The two shake. The man pulls Eddie uncomfortably close to him.

“I’m Billy O’Connor. Former middleweight champ of the world. I beat Tony Zale in Soldier Field.”

Eddie Halloran isn’t the biggest fight fan in the world but he knows enough to know nobody named Billy O’Connor ever fought Tony Zale in Soldier Field for the championship of the world.

Tony Zale, “The Man Of Steel,” From Gary, Indiana

Space

“Okay, champ,” Eddie says, pushing the man away. “That’s enough now.”

The man is highly insulted. He balls his fists. “That’s the play, huh, tough guy? Tell you what — whyncha do somethin’ about all them niggers? Or they too tough for you?”

Eddie Halloran can take all the insults you can throw at him but one. Never — ever — imply there’s a tougher man than he is. Eddie Halloran has fought a thousand fights over just such a canard — and lost every single one. He winds up and smashes his tin flask against the forehead of the man who claims he was once the middleweight champion of the world. He wasn’t, of course, but matched up with Eddie Halloran he may as well have been. The man, in whose bloodstream there is more alcohol than in Eddie Halloran’s and two other men’s, sets upon the State’s Attorney in a fury. His rapid-fire right hand pistons blows against Eddie’s face, drawing blood from his lip, his nose, and above both eyes. Eddie flails about harmlessly with both arms. He feels nothing, thanks to the general anesthetic qualities of strong Irish whiskey but he will surely know he’s been in a fight when he sobers up. Well, not exactly a fight.

After what seems many long minutes, the man’s jackhammer right arm becomes tired. Eddie Halloran sinks to the concrete, dangerously near the dogshit he’d stepped in moments before. Somehow, Eddie’s white boutonniere has wedged itself between the fingers of the man’s fist. He pulls the rosebud out and flings it disdainfully at the collapsed public official. “Here’s your flower, ya fag,” he says. “And get yourself a shoe.” He begins to walk away then remembers to add a pièce de résistance: “And do somethin’ about them niggers!”

Some fifteen minutes later, Eddie Halloran feels recuperated enough from his beating to reenter the banquet hall. Al Dudek, Mickey Finnin, Rocco Bianco, and Jackey Pontone all see his battered face and understand that Eddie simply has just done what Eddie always does. Eddie’s wife, though, slaps her hands against both her cheeks and shrieks. It’s as though she’s never seen him wearing his hamburger face when, in truth, she’s seen it dozens of times.

“Eddie,” she hollers, “what happened?”

“I fell.” With that, Eddie Halloran bestows upon his long suffering wife a look which says, Say no more about it. He calmly takes his seat next to her at table Number Three.

It is now time for the toasts.

***

Join us Wednesday for the next installment of Black Comedy.

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America At Its Best: Daniel Schorr

Benny Jay: Inception

As part of my effort to be more up on the national conversation, I drag my wife to see Inception, the movie everyone’s talking about.

Unfortunately, I can’t contribute much to the conversation cause I didn’t know what the hell was going on.

For one thing, the movie’s filled with super smart characters who talk really fast and I’m always not sure of what they said.

In general it reminds me of the Sneak-Up Game, which is this game I used to play with my kids and nephews when they were much younger. We’d give ourselves secret code names – mine was Jordan – and creep around the housing sneaking up on unsuspecting grown ups and turning out the lights.

Then we’d run back to our base – which was the landing over looking the living room – and watch in delight as the other grown ups turned on the lights we had just turned off.

Is that fun, or what?

Another thing about Inception is I think I might have drifted off at some point in the middle of it. All I know is that I remember seeing Joseph Gordon-Levitt floating in the air doing some really weird stuff in the shaft of an elevator, and the next thing I know I’m watching Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Page wearing these funny looking white snow suits and they’re skiing down a mountain.

What the fu….

How did that happen?

I have no idea what happened in this movie….

In general, I’m confused by Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character. He’s always really busy, but I never know what he’s doing.

At one point, I lean toward my wife and whisper: “What’s going on?”

“Shh,” she says.

A lot of help she is!

What I need is a personal tutor — like with The Matrix. I didn’t know what was going on in that movie either, but at least I had Michael Rodriguez to help me.

I didn’t know what was going on in this movie either….

Michael was this 12-year-old kid who played on the little league team I coached a few years ago. Heck of a kid, by the way — great parents – and a totally awesome power hitter. When Michael got a hold of the pitch, man – good-bye. That baby’s gone….

Michael had seen The Matrix dozens of times — at least. I nicknamed him Neo – after the Keanu Reaves character – cause I swear he knew every line in that movie.

He was always telling me things about The Matrix. Once we were sitting on the bench while the game was going on and I asked him: “All right – one more time: Who was the big black lady Neo was talking to?”

He was about to answer, when he had to leave the bench to bat. He hit a homer, circled the bases, got congratulated by coaches and teammates, returned to the bench and started in where he had left off.

“The big black lady is….”

I’ll bet you anything Neo would know what was going on in Inception.

Here’s the real embarrassing thing – my wife understood Inception better than I did. After we see a movie we always have this competition over who understands it more. Sometimes I win and I get to look all smart and everything.

But not this time. As we walk back to the subway, she’s telling me all sorts of stuff I didn’t know.

Like Michael Caine’s character is Leonardo’s character’s father-in-law.

“Are you sure?” I ask.

“Positive,” she says.

“How do you know that?”

“They said it….”

“Who said it?”

“Leonardo DiCaprio….”

“When?”

“I don’t know – probably when you were sleeping….”

“Damn!”

Then she tells me that the Japanese guy, played by Ken Watanabe, was the – oh, forget it. I don’t want to spoil the movie for you.

The thing is – until she told me. I had no idea who the Japanese guy was or what he was doing in the movie.

Oh, brother. Let’s be honest. If Inception were a test, I flunked it.

It reminds me of what happened when I took the ACT and the SAT five thousand years ago. I’d read the questions, then I’d look at the answers I had to choose from and I’d think – it could be this one. But then again, it could be that one. Oh, hell – which one is it!

Then I’d get bored and my mind would drift and I’d be thinking about something else, probably girls. I was always thinking about girls back then….

The good news is that in the total scheme of things, it didn’t really matter that I sucked at the ACT and the SAT. I hope it’s the same way with Inception….

Randolph Street: Trail to Xecotz

Trail–Xecotz, Guatemala

There are no roads to Xecotz–just a long trek up and down the mountains of the Central Highlands.    Xecotz was newly reconstituted after the military abandoned it during the civil war.  They had forced the people move to refugee camps where they could be more closely watched in the 1980’s.  These were taken in 1990, after they had moved back.

War Relic

Clearing Farmland

Michael Shawcross–Fundraiser & Book Seller

Boy With Hat

Boy with Straw Hat

Headscarf

Belt

All photos © Jon Randolph

Big Mike: Black Comedy Excerpt No. 19 — The Dudeks’ World

It’s that special moment when the bride and groom seem to be an island unto themselves up on the dais. Anna and Chet are in their own little world as the rest of the Nuovo Mondo crowd swirls in front of them before dinner is served. Anna is Chet’s tour guide, discreetly pointing out this one and that one, neighbors and associates, the people who make up the Dudeks’ world in Galewood.

She points out Mickey Finnin and Rocco Bianco and Jackey Pontone and more. There, she says, is Mister Adamowski. Ben Adamowski. Lives on the next block over, Nagle Avenue, in a nice bungalow.

Once a rising young star in the Democratic party, Adamowski did the unforgivable and tried to clean up Chicago’s dirty politics. Even tried to expose a bit of the unholy alliance between government and the Outfit. As a reward, he was frozen out of the Democratic inner circle and eventually had to bolt the party. Ran as a Republican in 1956 for State’s Attorney and won.

Adamowski then tried to take on the corrupt Chicago Police Department and the even more corrupt Traffic Court. May as well have tried to spit on the flag and piss on everybody’s apple pie. The Outfit even considered taking out a contract on one of his lead investigators. One of Adamowski’s boys got a late night phone call once — the voice on the other end said, “I just read your brother’s obituary in tomorrow’s paper.” Still, Adamowski and his guys helped uncover a ring of bad cops up at the Summerdale district station; the cops had been working hand in hand with a band of professional home burglars.

Adamowski figured he’d capitalize on his successes and run against Mayor Daley. Took him on in 1963. Didn’t do too badly for a Republican in Chicago. Daley’s Machine only beat him by a shade under 140,000 votes. Still, he was finished. The big powers downtown hardly knew he was alive anymore. The Galewood big shots kept inviting him to their kids’ weddings because they felt sorry for him. He was, they all agreed, really a nice guy, albeit not too bright.

Oh, and there’s Charlie Solari and his wife. The fireman. Lives up the block. Chet looks at the man and asks Anna, “That guy? I’ve seen him. He drives a great big Cadillac. He’s a fireman?” Yeah, Anna says. She tells Chet the dirty little secret about Charlie Solari that everybody in Galewood knows. Charlie was stationed in the Chinatown firehouse on 22nd Street, a mile from McCormick Place. World’s largest exposition hall. All gleaming white concrete and steel, big as the Empire State Building laid on its side on prime lakeshore property. Everybody knows the place is fireproof.

One night in January last year Charlie’s asleep at the firehouse when the alarm sounds. It’s McCormick Place. Charlie’s engine company is the first on the scene. Flames are already licking out 40 feet in the air between cracks in the concrete on its north side. Within an hour the place is destroyed. 60,000 visitors in town for the National Housewares Manufacturers Association convention are stuck in their hotel rooms with nothing to do.

For the next few weeks, all Charlie’s neighbors and friend want to talk about is the city’s second biggest fire ever, next to the Great Chicago Fire. Charlie only shakes his head and mumbles, as if it’s far too painful for him to discuss the destruction of one of the city’s icons. In February Charlie buys himself a new car — the Cadillac Eldorado, tan with a white landau roof. All the neighbors admire his car and tell him, “Not bad, Charlie. Not bad for a fireman.” Then in March Charlie and his wife go to Hawai’i for two weeks. Now Charlie’s neighbors tell each other, “Not bad for a fireman — but I w0nder how he does it.” When Charlie comes back, he wife’s got diamond earrings the size of chandeliers.

In April Charlie has a new roof put on his house. In May, he has central air conditioning installed. By then the neighbors aren’t saying a word. They’re just looking at each other and shaking their heads. In June, one of the garbagemen starts telling some of the neighbors about a little story he’s been hearing. It’s about the McCormick Place fire. Seems one of the exhibitors had stored $25,000 dollars-worth of small diamonds in a strong box at his booth. Was hoping to give the diamonds away in a series of raffles throughout the convention, maybe generate a little publicity for himself and his company. Went to McCormick Place the afternoon after the fire and inquired about his diamonds. Talked to cops and firemen and the managers of the hall. They all had the same response: “Diamonds? What Diamonds?” The guy says, “Yeah, I had them in a strongbox at my booth.” The response: “Strongbox?”

One day Charlie asks the garbageman to step into his gangway for second. They get there and Charlie grabs the garbageman by the scruff of the neck and says, “Hey, no more stories. Ya got me?”

And there, that’s Angie Zaharias. Sweet girl. Married her grammar school sweetheart, Glen Nielsen. They didn’t go to St. Giles. Went to the public school, Lovett. Still, they were nice kids. She works at Cook County Hospital. A nurse in the emergency room. Was on duty one night two years ago when the ambulance brings in a drifter who’d apparently downed a bottle of sleeping pills at some flop house on Skid Row. She sets him up on the examining table. Grabs his hands. Sees tattooed lettering on his knuckles: Born To Raise Hell. The resident on duty walks into the ER bay and sees Angie staring at the guy’s knuckles. “Whatcha got there?” he asks. She shows him the tattoos. The resident had just read in the paper that the lone surviving nurse in the most notorious mass murder in the city’s history has told the cops that the killer had Born To Raise Hell tattooed on his knuckles. The resident places his fingers on the drifter’s carotid arteries and squeezes. The drifter’s eyes begin to roll to the back of his head. The resident says, “You did it, didn’t you?” The drifter says, “Yeah, I did it.” Within minutes, the Cook County ER is lousy with cops and reporters as Richard Franklin Speck is taken into custody.

And there’s Greg LaPorta. Runs LaPorta’s Realty over on Harlem Avenue. Lives near Newcastle and Bloomingdale. Always kept his nose clean, Always kept to himself and his family. A real hard worker. Then, out of the clear blue, he gets a call from the mayor’s office. It’s the mayor’s own secretary. She says he’s been invited to a special meeting of real estate men to be held the next day at City Hall. Don’t tell anybody about it, she says, just be there, on time. Mister LaPorta thinks it’s a gag and tells the woman so. He hangs up. Ten minutes later, Mickey Finnin calls him. Mickey yells into the phone, “Whaddya think yer doin’ hangin’ up on the mayor’s secretary?”

So Craig LaPorta shaves extra closely the next morning. Combs his hair for about five minutes. Wears his best Montgomery Ward suit and his tie clip from the Realtors Associaton. Takes the elevator up the to Fifth Floor at City Hall. Is ushered into a mahogany office. And there’s the mayor, sitting at the head of the conference table like Henry VIII in a dark suit. Bunch of businessmen on either side of the table. Mister LaPorta recognizes a few of the faces. They’re big names in the city’s real estate world. Big names! And at the other end of the table, several Negroes. He doesn’t know who they are except for one. And that man is one of the most recognizable human beings in the world. Martin Luther King Jr. For the next couple of hours, Mister LaPorta just sits there and listens as the real estate big names and the Negroes argue back and forth. Now and again voices are raised so high that the Mayor has to stand and rap his gavel on the table. The Negroes say, “There must be open housing!” The real estate big names say, “There can’t be open housing!” Mister LaPorta never says a word. When it’s all over, Mayor Daley shakes Mister LaPorta’s hand, hands him a glass paperweight with the seal of the City of Chicago etched on it, and says, “Thank you for your wonderful contribution to this momentous meeting.” Mister LaPorta took the Lake Street el out to Oak Park and called his wife on the public phone at the Harlem station and asked her to pick him up.

Anna points out David Pergler, a young news reporter for WBBM-TV. Everybody calls him Galewood’s TV star. She points out Sal Sanfillipo, the cop who once broke his hand on his wife’s jaw. “I hate him,” she hisses. She points out Muggsy Collera. He’s a Cook County Sheriff’s deputy. Joey says Muggsy’s always bragging about knowing where the pot fields are in the unincorporated areas of the county. Muggsy says, “Whenever youse guys wanna go pick some pot, you just lemme know.” That’s what Joey says, Anna tells Chet as she rolls her eyes. And that chubby guy there, Anna says, that’s Louie LaFemina. Works for the city — who doesn’t? — but he isn’t a garbageman or a fireman or a cop. He’s a lawyer. He’s with what they call the corporation counsel’s office, whatever that means.

Chet smiles at Anna. “You’ve got quite a lineup out here in Galewood,” he says.

“Ah,” she says. “It isn’t much. Nothing ever happens in Galewood.”

In our next installment of Black Comedy, Anna and Chet’s wedding becomes almost as chaotic as the West Side ghetto. See you on Sunday!

Benny Jay: The Odd Couple

On the hottest day of the year – the bank sign says it’s one hundred and five – I see The Odd Couple.

Go to the Raven Theater. Take my 81-year-old mother. She had a big operation a few months back, but she’s feeling better. Says she’s bored – wants to get out of the house. So it’s all good….

This is the perfect show for us to see. We love Neil Simon. The guy’s so freaking funny. And there’s always this tinge of sadness behind the one liners. Just to remind you – in case you could possibly forget – that it’s not all fun and games in life, even when you’re laughing.

Point of information for all you youngsters out there in Third City land – The Odd Couple’s the show about the neat guy (Felix Unger) who moves in with the slob (Oscar Madison), whereupon they drive each other batty.

You probably saw the movie….

I love The Odd Couple – especially the movie with Walter Matthau and Jack Lemon — it just may be my favorite Neil Simon play. I’ve seen this particular production three times. That’s right – as in one, two, three. I’ve seen it so many times, I could be the understudy.

I think I like it so much cause I can relate to Felix. Not that I’m fastidious. It’s just that I live with a bunch of women who leave their shoes lying all around the house. Late at night – when the house is dark and they’re asleep and I’m going to bed – I’ll stumble over some discarded sandal. And – Goddman it!!!

Ask my dog – who’s up late with me – she’ll tell you all about it.

Plus, I love those poker scenes in The Odd Couple.  Back in high school, I used to play tons of poker with my buddies. Five or six of us in Jonny Seidman’s basement. Just like the boys in The Odd Couple – Oscar, Felix, Murray, Speed, Roy and Vinnie – we’d be cracking wise.

One time we were listening to the Beatles on the tape player and this kid — I think it was  Tom Marx — was singing along to Fool on the Hill. He got the lines twisted. Started singing “but nobody wants to know him” when he should have been singing “but nobody ever hears him.” Or whatever.

He tried to play it off by quickly jumping to the right words, but Jonny didn’t let it slide.

“That’s okay,” Jonny deadpanned. “The Beatles made a mistake.”

That was – what – 40 years ago? I’ve been shameless using Jonny’s line ever since….

Anyway – where was I? Oh, yes – taking my mom to see The Odd Couple….

I used to play poker with my buddies, just like the boys….

Get there 45-minutes early, cause my mom didn’t want to be late.

On the way from the car to the theater, she tells me, “If it’s hot in the theater, I’m going to have to go home.”

While we’re waiting in the lobby, her allergies flare up. She says if it’s hard to breathe, she’ll have to leave the theater early.

I’m happy to tell you that everything works out great. Her sinuses are fine. The temperature’s perfect – not too hot or cold. And my mom and are laughing like crazy.

Especially in the scene when Oscar blows his top at Felix: “You leave little notes on my pillow. `We’re all out of Corn Flakes. F.U.’ It took me three hours to figure out that F.U. was Felix Unger.”

We’re still smiling when we leave the theater and go back into the heat. That Neil Simon’s a genius, I tell you. He’s got that priceless comic touch very few people have. Like Woody Allen said: “Dying’s easy, comedy’s hard.”

Except for Neil Simon. He makes it look easy.

So anyway, do yourselves a favor. Go see The Odd Couple over at the Raven Theater. It’s playing through August 7.

Take your mother – she’ll love it….