The Electron Pencil

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Now’s as good a time as any to take a little break from the storyline, just to reacquaint my multitudes of loyal readers with the characters in the serial e-novel, “Black Comedy.”

And I realize there may be one or two literate people in the interwebs universe who haven’t yet begun to read this magnum opus. Well, here’s your chance to get hooked; the first one’s free, kids.

So, let’s take a look at the characters who’ve already made appearances in the story and a few who may have been referred to but whose time to shine is coming up in future episodes. Oh, and I’ve provided an extra little treat. Naturally, I fully expect Hollywood to be knocking down my door to turn this thing into a star-studded blockbuster. [The fact that no producer or director has called yet is only proof that the acquisition strategies have begun; none of these savvy Hollywood moguls wants to tip her or his hand yet.] Therefore, after each character thumbnail description, I provide a photo of a movie actor who I believe would fit the part perfectly.

I’m certain that whenever the Coen Brothers, or whoever the winner of the massive bidding war might be, get their hands on this story, they’ll appreciate my casting input.

Here we go!

● Joey Dudek He opens the story, sitting in a tree after midnight, a pistol in his hand, waiting to ambush a black man who has somehow humiliated the Dudek clan in the all-white, middle-class Galewood neighborhood on the Northwest Side of Chicago. Joey is pudgy and a little slow. He’s never done anything to make his Daddy-o proud but maybe, just maybe, shooting this black man will be the crowning achievement of his young life.

Jonah Hill As Joey Dudek

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● Anna Dudek Joey’s sister. Bright, aware, sensitive, curious about the outside world, she doesn’t belong in the Galewood neighborhood but she finds herself stuck there for a lot longer than she ever dreamed. She’s the first kid from either side of her family to go to college. Anna marries the gonzo underground journalist Anthony Pontone (see below), has a couple of kids, and then discovers the women’s movement. Oh, the troubles that follow!

Rebecca Hall As Anna (Dudek) Pontone

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● Al Dudek Joey and Anna’s daddy-o. Grew up an only child in an alcoholic home in the old West Side Chicago Polish neighborhood immortalized by Nelson Algren. Al’s determination and hard work were keys to the success of his business, Big Al’s Meats. While it’s true he was single-minded and he worked long, long hours, his company thrived mainly because his brothers-in-law torched restaurants that wouldn’t do business with him. Shh! His wife, Tree (see below), doesn’t know he’s playing footsies with her mobster brothers.

John Turturro As Al Dudek

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● Trescia Dudek Known all her life as Tree, she married the young, good-looking Polish boy, Al Dudek, mainly to get away from her abusive home in Little Sicily. Her Pa distilled bathtub gin for Al Capone’s operation. Her brothers Frankie and Louie ran with the notorious 42 Gang. Her Ma beat her at the drop of a hat. Tree came to despise everything having to do with Sicilians and the Mob. Had she known her husband was in cahoots with her mobster brothers she’d have brained him.

Winona Ryder As Tree Dudek

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● Anthony Pontone Anna’s husband. The son of Chicago’s Mob capo, Tony The Fist Pontone, he strikes out in his own direction. He pledges to move heaven and Earth to change the world — until he discovers that the The Man is more than happy to beat his brains in (or even blow his brains out) if he gets too close to shaking things up. After the assassination of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, Anthony decides to become a househusband. That’s when Anna decides the house is more a prison than a home.

Shia LaBeouf As Anthony Pontone

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● James Finnin Sr. Known to one and all as Mickey, he is Al Dudek’s best pal and, as the 36th Ward Democratic Committeeman, is Mayor Richard J. Daley’s (see below) man on the Northwest Side. Mickey, Al, and Tony The Fist Pontone (see below) form the business/politics/organized crime triangle that runs all aspects of life on the Northwest Side of Chicago.

Steve Buscemi As Mickey Finnin

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● Jimmie Finnin Jr. Joey Dudek’s best pal, known as The Jungle Man. The two hated each other as little kids but Joey saved The Jungle Man’s life while the city was burning the day after Martin Luther King was assassinated. They’ve been inseparable ever since. The Jungle Man helps Joey concoct the plot to ambush the black man who has humiliated the Dudeks and all of Galewood.

Paul Dano As Jimmie (The Jungle Man) Finnin

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● Julian Perdue Anna goes out into the world to find herself, but instead finds this man, a Vietnam vet, a failed musician, and the first black man ever to dare to live in Galewood. The neighborhood has a nervous breakdown when it discovers the presence of Julian Perdue on Natchez Avenue. Joey Dudek sees killing him as the key to earning his daddy-o’s respect.

Tristan Wilds As Julian Perdue

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● David Pergler Like Anthony Pontone, David Pergler dreams of becoming a world-changing journalist. But he’s doing it from within the system. He sees his chance to become a big man in TV news when Julian Perdue moves into the Galewood neighborhood.

Michael Stuhlbarg As David Pergler

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● Tony (The Fist) Pontone The Outfit’s front man. Tony The Fist, Al Dudek and Mickey Finnin rule Galewood.

Michael Lerner As Tony The Fist Pontone

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● Eddie Halloran The hard-drinking, brawling, devoutly Catholic Cook County State’s Attorney. He could have been the mayor one day. But conspiring with J. Edgar Hoover turns out to be his downfall.

Vince Vaughn As Eddie Halloran

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● Sal Sanfillipo A patrolman for the Chicago Police Department. He loves using brute force to right the world — witness the bulge in his crotch whenever he lays the lumber on a protester’s skull. His Natchez Avenue neighbors appreciate his defense of our holy land, even if he did once break his wrist on his wife’s jaw.

Ben Stiller As Sal Sanfillipo

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● Alderman Rocco Bianco The face of 36th Ward politics. Rocco’s finest political skill is knowing when to say “D’at’s right,” to his City Hall or Outfit superiors. The alderman finds himself in a sticky situation when Patrolman Sal Sanfillipo recognizes him in a raid on a gay bar.

Michael Badalucco As Ald. Rocco Bianco

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● Lenny LaFemina An eager and ambitious lawyer in the city’s law department, Lenny suffers a debilitating injury when he tries to tackle an anti-war protester. Wait’ll you see how he parlays that tragedy into triumph.

Jeremy Piven As Lenny LaFemina

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● Mayor Richard J. Daley Black Comedy spans the Daley Dynasty’s reign. Richard J.’s and son Richard M.’s terms in office bookend the tale.

Oliver Platt As Mayor Richard J. Daley

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The next installment of Black Comedy will appear here Thursday. Grab every chance you can to read it now because one day soon this’ll be the hottest property in Hollywood. Then you’ll have to pay a cool $25 for a movie ticket, a jumbo popcorn, and a Diet Pepsi if you want to know what happens next.

And to think you coulda read it here for free!

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All fictional characters, descriptions and situations are the property of the author.

BLACK COMEDY by Michael G. Glab ©2013

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BLACK COMEDY

By Michael G. Glab

© 2013

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— Forty-five —

Anthony Pontone has seen the evidence that Black Panther leader Fred Hampton was assassinated. He has seen Cook County State’s Attorney Eddie Halloran announce the Chairman’s death in triumph and glee.

Who can blame Anthony for thinking the world has gone mad? Since the spring of 1968 he’s seen Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy rubbed out. He’s seen the black ghettoes of more than a hundred cities around the nation go up in flames. He’s been whacked over the head three times by officers of the Chicago Police Department as they carried out their sacred duty to serve and protect. (To be fair, he can’t remember any of the whackings — what with the resultant concussions he suffered.) He’s seen a city official break his neck trying to tackle a protester during the Days of Rage and then he has watched as the cops took the protester into custody and charged him with attempted murder.

Anthony is only human — all too human, his wife Anna might assert — so his dedication to the Cause of Justice and the Toppling of The Man have flagged. This revolution business is liable to scramble your brains — or worse. Only six months ago, Anthony was reinvigorated after meeting that magnetic young black man, Fred Hampton, from suburban Maywood. But this morning that young man was summarily executed by the Chicago cops. Or J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI men. Or whomever — all anyone really knows, as Sister Deborah said, was they were Pigs.

The radical attorney Barry Paulsen drops Anthony off at the North Side office of The Seed, the underground newspaper where Anthony works, earning less than some of the Outfit kids in his adopted Galewood neighborhood make in weekly allowance. He’s stuck with The Seed for all these lean months because for it, he can write articles that can Change the World. But now Anthony wonders if the world can ever be changed — and at what cost.

At The Seed office, Anthony learns that some Weathermen are heading toward the Town Hall police station, the headquarters for the 23rd District, the city’s smallest. The little station was plunked down a couple of blocks west of the lakeshore on Addison Street late in the 19th Century when the swells who occupied the nearby mansions and exclusive apartments demanded extra police protection from the rabble who were beginning to agitate for crazy things like fair wages, 40-hour work weeks, and — horrors! — social justice. The Weathermen aim to storm the station because…, because…, well, just because. It doesn’t matter why; it matters only that the Weathermen are on their way.

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Still in a daze, Anthony heads toward the station at the intersection of Halsted and Addison, not far from Wrigley Field. As he nears the intersection on foot, he notices some shopkeepers hammering sheets of plywood over their front windows as if a hurricane is on the way. He sees squad cars racing toward the station. He runs his hand over his head, feeling underneath his hair the vestiges of three lumps. He stops at the corner of Halsted and Cornelia, one block south of the station. He won’t go any nearer the place. He figures, Three lumps are plenty for anybody.

But Anthony can see enough from this vantage point. Dozens of Weathermen are running around in a dance with dozens of blue-shirted Chicago cops. And those cops…, those cops — Anthony feels his scalp again.

The Town Hall Station House, Today

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Of course, three whacks on the head from a policeman’s nightstick are nothing compared to having your brains blown out. Anthony was willing to take those three whacks. He may even be willing to suffer one or two more. But he’ll never be willing to be killed for Freedom, Justice, and Changing the World.

His hesitance to risk his life for The Cause isn’t based on some lofty precept. Nor is he able even to rationalize it. The great philosopher Bertrand Russell, for instance, once said he wasn’t willing to die for his beliefs. He reasoned: “What if I’m wrong?” Anthony’s hesitation is borne of a more immediate consideration. He is afraid to die.

So what? So is every sane human being on this planet. Some of them, though, can overcome the imperative for self-preservation. Live free or die. I regret I have only one life to give for my country. I may not get there with you. Stirring, lovely sentiments all, but that impending nothingness, the looming loneliness, the imagined blackness of non-existence, the emptiness — it’s all too terrifying.

Martin and Bobby and Chairman Fred, they all soldiered on, suspecting — no, knowing — they were going to die. Weren’t they afraid? Were they supermen who could overcome the icy terror? Anthony wonders, Why can’t I?

He only knows he hasn’t got the stomach for it anymore. We shall not overcome. I shall not overcome. Some revolutionary.

So, as Anthony watches the revolution from a block away, he understands he is now the former gonzo journalist and young man on the make who’s going to Change the World.

At this very moment, as the Weathermen and the Chicago cops pirouette around each other in their whirling dervish dance, three ear-shattering blasts emanate from the direction of the Town Hall station’s motor pool. Three bright orange-yellow balls of gasoline flame engulf three blue and white squadrols. The brilliant flares rise to twenty feet in the air and become three distinct mini-mushroom clouds.

As Anthony stands riveted, watching this pyrotechnic display, there come within his field of vision three young Weathermen, arms thrust skyward, fists clenched, faces crimson, mouths agape, three animal screams — “Yeah!” — issuing from deep within them, three triumphant players whose team has just scored the winning touchdown in the Big Game.

Later, watching the ten o’clock news, Anthony would learn three homemade pipe bombs had been placed under three police cars at Town Hall.

Now as Anthony watches the three dash madly, victoriously, off into the alleys and gangways of East Lakeview, he begins to weep, for this phase of his young life is finished. Even though he is afraid to die, he has willingly taken one step nearer the end.

To be continued

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All fictional characters, descriptions, and situations are the property of the author.

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BLACK COMEDY

By Michael G. Glab

© 2013

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— Forty-four —

An air of triumph permeates the crowded conference room at the County Building. An all-star cast of luminaries stands a few feet behind the lectern decorated with the plaque of the Cook County State’s Attorney. They’re grinning and buzzing and giggling like frat boys who’ve just won this year’s Turkey Bowl. Barry Paulsen nudges Anthony Pontone and whispers, “I think they’re gonna break out in a fight song.”

Anthony snorts, mirthlessly.

At twelve minutes past noon, one of the assistant state’s attorneys nudges the guy next to him who, in turn nudges the guy next to him, all the way down the line until the police brass, the city attorneys, the FBI field agents, and all the rest of the two dozen law enforcers who wish to get in on the victory party pipe down and turn their eyes left to watch the grand and glorious entrance of the man in whose name the shooting was done early this morning. Striding purposefully, Galewood’s own Eddie Halloran mounts the stage, firmly grasps the lectern and looks out over the sea of reporters, pencils poised above their notebooks, and the battery of television cameras pointed at him. A picket fence of microphones separates him from this raggedy crew. He surveys the assembled reporters and cameramen, a Mona Lisa smirk on his face as if to say, See what men of power and will can do?

The packed conference room becomes hushed. Eddie Halloran puffs out his chest, swallowing enough air to praise himself and his men for setting civilization right. “This morning in an apartment on the West Side, officers of the Chicago Police Department were brutally attacked by violent and extremely vicious members of the Black Panthers revolutionary group,” he says. “The Black Panthers possessed a large arsenal of firearms including shotguns and semi-automatic machine guns. The officers announced their presence and informed the occupants of the apartment that they had a warrant to enter and search the premises. The Black Panthers responded by firing shots. The Chicago police officers defended themselves by returning fire. The officers showed remarkable restraint, bravery, and professional discipline for not firing upon and killing all the members of what was a dangerous guerrilla army of insurrection.”

The image of Sister Deb sitting in her housecoat and bedroom slippers, eight and a half months pregnant, flashes simultaneously into the heads of both Anthony and Barry.

Now Eddie Halloran directs an aide to unveil a couple of blowups of photos taken inside the apartment. Using a long wooden baton, Eddie points at what appear to be two holes in the jamb of the apartment’s front door. “These,” he explains, “are some of the bullet holes created by offensive fire from within the apartment and directed at sworn law officers carrying out their legitimate duties.”

Anthony and Barry crane their necks and peer through squinted eyes at the photos. Anthony whispers to Barry, “I can’t see anything. Can you?” Barry shrugs. Anthony happens to glance at the reporter standing next to him, scribbling furiously in his notebook. The reporter is sketching the doorway. He adds the bullet holes that Eddie Halloran is pointing at. Anthony finds it odd that the reporter appears to be drawing mortar shell holes. “Hey man,” Anthony says to him, “that ain’t cool.”

The reporter rotates his shoulders a few degrees to the right to shield his artwork from Anthony. “Fuck you,” the reporter says.

Barry places his hand on Anthony’s shoulder. “Let’s get out of here,” he whispers. “We’ll go to the apartment.”

The two drive to the West Monroe Street address that until ten minutes to five this morning was the residence of Fred Hampton. But, of course, Fred Hampton is no more. Barry parks the Plymouth a block away. Anthony asks him, “What do you think?”

Barry takes a deep breath. As the two near the apartment on foot, they can see the rays of the late fall sun slanting through the picture window. The front room is packed with young black men, grim looks on their faces. “I’ll tell you what I think,” Barry says finally as they turn up the walkway. “I think the Chicago Police are too smart to walk into an ambush.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. The Brothers are in there right now plotting out the bullet holes. That’s what I think. At least that’s what I’d do if I were them.”

Barry is right. The remaining members of the Chicago chapter of the Black Panthers — those who weren’t killed or busted this morning are poring over the apartment. They don’t have the high-tech equipment or forensic training of the police department’s evidence technicians but they don’t need them. The evidence is plain to see.

After exchanging soul shakes with the Panthers and expressing their condolences, Barry and Anthony are taken on a tour of the place. There, on the floor outside the bedroom, is the dried black oval of blood that had gushed out of the hole in Fred Hampton’s head. There’s the bloody mattress. There are the dozens upon dozens of gaping holes made by police fire in plaster walls, window sashes, and door frames. And, look, there’s the kitchen chair the Pigs made Sister Deb sit in while they executed the Chairman.

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Their docent for the tour is a small, quiet man named Brother Ronald. “I was wondering,” Barry asks him, “Where’s Brother Otis.”

“That’s a good question,” Brother Ronald says. “Nobody’s seen him since he left a little after midnight. Maybe The Man got him.”

“Maybe,” says Barry.

“C’mon this way,” Brother Ronald says. “Let’s go look at the front room.” Brother Ronald stops at the the very door jamb pictured in Eddie Halloran’s blow-ups at the press conference. Brother Ronald points at two nail heads sticking out of the woodwork. “There’s your bullet holes,” he says.

A disturbance at the front door. A breathless young man has run in. He’s got news. Brother Otis has been found. Dead. In his apartment. A bullet hole in his head. A pistol in his hand. A note next to him.

The last communication Brother Otis made with the world before he squeezed the trigger of his pistol was a confession. He’d been working for Hoover’s men for months. Brother Fred hadn’t taken a piss without the FBI hearing about it since October 1st. And worst of all, Otis Bryant wrote, the single act that drove him to point his pistol at his temple: he’d slipped five caps of secobarbital into the Chairman’s Kool Aid at dinner. The cops hadn’t wanted Hampton awake when they arrived. Swear to the Almighty Lord in heaven, Otis Bryant wrote, I didn’t know it was an ice job.

Despite the fact that seventeen people are standing in the apartment, having listened to the all-too believable tale related by the breathless young man, there is silence. After a long, long moment, one of the young black men opens his mouth. He says, loudly, drawing the syllables out, “Mutha fucka!” He bolts from the apartment, runs down the front stairs, tumbles to the sidewalk, and shrieks madly, repeatedly bouncing his forehead on the concrete. The rest stare wordlessly at him through the open front door or the front room picture window.

“The world,” Anthony Pontone, the gonzo, underground journalist, says to Barry Paulsen, the earnest, activist lawyer, “has gone mad.”

A minute later, Anthony adds, “I dunno if I can hack it.”

To be continued

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 All fictional characters, descriptions, and situations are the property of the author.

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