|
k |
kkkkkkkkkkkk |
k |
|
k k k k k k k |
BLACK
HELICOPTERS EPISODE 32 SATURDAY the EIGHTH - 10:56 AM The Supervisor of the gray-uniformed City workers
was still shuffling microphones and cables when Andy approached him. He was short,
red-faced and short-tempered and shoving an official form at Andy, snarled:
"Ready to go! Hurry up and sign off on this, I got men with
families..." "Sure!
Sure!" Andy said, glancing down the form. "Say, all your guys are
already clocked out at noon..." |
k k k k k k k |
"Hey, we were here before eight!" bleated
the union man. "You gotta problem with
that?"
"I
just want to test the speaker system... OK?
Five minutes, OK, ten maybe... unless somebody's fucked the connections
up."
The
Supervisor curled his lips and shrugged, raising his hooded eyes toward the
stage. "Wise guy! Just because some people still work for a living don't mean we fuck up... yo,
Billy! Elvis here wants to test the speakers." A civil servant poked his
head up out of the control bank, hair only slightly longer than the City
standard. Andy recognized him... bassist in a band as used to play round the U.
a decade past, a few benefits for what people were doing benefits for in those
days. Still played, according to listings in the Urinal, only now for an
impersonation – check that, tribute –
combo; Boston, Toto, one of those... doing frat parties, Holiday Inns and such,
never far off the Interstate. He stared back at Andy, eyes a pair of
flashlights with very, very weak mnemonic batteries, trying to shine through
heavy fog.
Billy?
What was the rest of his name?
"Get
on the board!" the Supervisor roused him.
News
kept emanating from the ghetto blaster at the precipice of the City's stage.
"Three boatloads of CV-twenty two infected Algerians intercepted eight
miles off the Spanish coast. Massacre of
civilians in Moldavia while U.S. troops advance on San Jose in Costa Rica. Fires continue burning in Olympic National
Park but the real story, says the Secretary of the Interior, is how much of the
park is not burning. Now back to our
request line..."
Andy
reached for the microphone, tapped it. Dead. He whistled a few bars of old
Motown, tapped it again. Still dead. Emil Hill moseyed towards the stage,
expensive reptile boots brown with dust.
"Uh...
I have a request," said someone on the ghetto blaster. "Uh... could
you play, like Herman's Hermits like, uh… I'm into something good?"
Emil
waved.
"Sure,"
said a friendly DJ. "And who am I speaking to?"
"Roy.
Roy Cohn."
"Roy
Cohn?" Andy wondered aloud as Hill made a gunbarrel
of his index finger, rotated it next to his head. "Cut that thing
off!" he ordered the City supervisor.
"Oh
say can you see, by the dawn's early light..." Andy began scatting,
unamplified, as the music was decapitated, "... all power to the
power-hungry perverts in the pizza parlour basements,
fascist insects preying on the pulpits of the people. I been workin’ on the railroad.
We, the People of United States... when you go to San Francisco, be sure
to wear some Bel-Ayers in your hair. It's crying time again, I'm gonna leave
you... Ho, Ho Chi Minh, NFL is gonna win... and you had..."
The
Holiday Inn guy... furiously tweaking dials and shifting wires... finally made
the right connection and Andy's voice boomed out over the park, even across the
street to Masty Hall...
"...a
do, whack-a-do, whack a... first thing that we do, Emil, is whack all of the lawyers..."
He
stepped away from the microphone, staring down at Hill and the plump, balding
fellow in a dark Hillary Clinton pantsuit, ten pounds of mascara and shimmering
Conk dogtags accompanying him. Behind their backs, a fierce little old man
carrying something crumpled up, dangling from a rope, began scuttling up the
steps and creeping towards the unprotected live mike...
Andy
squatted at the front of the stage so his words wouldn't be broadcast.
"Emil," he warned, "we're expecting an accounting of every penny
you shake down from this demo."
"Of
course!" agreed the lawyer. "We're both professionals, aren't we? Not
that it'll amount to beans... this could have been good, real good,
all..." and he waved a desultory wrist, "...pffht!
Remember those first discussions back before Christmas? We could have brought
in some first-class sounds, done a concept album. I've heard the Surf-Qaidas were interested!" Emil pretended to dry an
imaginary tear. "And what happened to the books, t-shirts, all that
shit?"
Andy
waved him off. "Ask Pinhead! You didn't have to make all
those calls and send e-mails through the University library system computers
saying we were off... I did, so of course all the people who sat
on their butts waiting for money to drop out of the sky want to crucify me. What did they expect? That we invite
the whole world in and forget to tell them it was an illegal assembly?"
"They'd
have had legal advice..." Emil reminded him.
"At
the price of having their heads bashed in without anybody knowing what they
were being martyred for, especially themselves?
That kind of manipulation died with Abbie, Jerry and Pigasus.
If you were going to..."
But
the rest of what he wanted to say was abruptly drowned out by an angry old
voice at the microphone.
"...part
of the PLO terrorist faction that works with the Commonists
and Civil Rights movement!" Andy, turning, saw the old man grinning into
the mike and rose. "Never again! Never again! The Coalition for a New Consenthus is just the latest front for the..."
Andy
tried to guide him away - the old man threw a well-intentioned but glancing
punch to his shoulder. The fetish he'd been dangling dropped to the boards and
a City supervisor pinned the zealot from behind, guiding him towards the steps.
With a last, pathetic unmiked "Never
again!" he descended back down the steps, sulfurously,
rejoining the steadily growing throng.
Andy
picked up the discarded object, looking up as a UN helicopter made a pass over
the park, its rotors thumping and humping, halfway drowning out Emil's remarks.
"What'cha got there?" was all Andy heard.
"Barack
Obama, I think, wearing a noosetie. O.J.?
Or, maybe, Puffy or Ye? Jesse
Jackson… heard he’s in town, hyping that new black party. Guess the Klan's made it thisaways
after all." He crumpled the grinning rag darkie in his fist. "Who's your
friend? Are you a Proud Boy?” he
wheedled, as if addressing a puppy.
"Orville
Creighton, sir," the man said eagerly. "CNC delegate from the
Massachusetts Transgender coalition. Just wanted to thank you personally for
the hospitality you folks have shown us. Why... I don't know just which way to
turn, there's so much to see and do. That motion picture theatre you have,
showing movies about peace? I've waited years
to see some of them..."
"Wunnerful,
wunnerful, enjoy your stay..." Andy sped them along, casting a second
glance at the old Embassy.
The
supervisor from the City started tapping on the microphone. "If it's
alright with you, we're going to start breaking down now."
"What
for?" Andy replied as Creighton craned his neck for attention, heavily
rouged lips opening and closing like an exhausted, beached glitterfish.
"You just went to all this trouble to set up."
"City
rules. Look... we can't leave this stuff out overnight! Gone,
before dawn, and on E-bay within an hour! Now that we got the wiring OK, it
should go easier tomorrow. We'll have you ready to go by noon."
"Noon? We're supposed to start at ten. Fuck this,
man; it's gonna be a warm evening, no rain... how about we get some people to
stay on the stage all night. Like guards. The guy supervisin'…
a licensed security agent, uniformed."
"Rent-a-Guards?"
said the puzzled Supervisor.
"Sure.
Even a dog or two," Andy promised, improvising, “bite the vandalorians, "It'll still be there come morning. I
mean, do you want to spend the rest of the afternoon breaking down and all
tomorrow morning setting up again? Don’t
some of your guys go to church? Mow
their lawns? Watch the games? Look, you gotta paper says they was there, I’ll initial it… all
except for what’s-his-name there…" and he jerked his head towards the
console. “Him, he’s gotta
stay.”
"Well
if you put it that way," the man said, mentally counting up the free saved
and billable hours as Glenn Savitt waved to Andy from
across the park. "I dunno, I'd have to call our
insurance carriers..."
"Perhaps
I can help," Hill interrupted. "I'm a lawyer. And the Mayor's an old
friend of mine."
"What's
up?" Glenn asked innocently, having cut through the crowd in, as it
appeared, nanoseconds.
Andy
glanced from Glenn to Hill to the stage. "Oh, hi Glenn... uh, this
creature is Mr. Hill, the lawyer and uh, some of your delegates from..."
"We've
met," said Hill. "Call the carrier, gimme
the phone and meanwhile I'll see what I can do," he told the Supervisor,
looking to Glenn for confirmation. "You haven't seen Pinhead inside, have
you..."
"Sorry.
Andy, I just... Anne wanted to invite you to dinner tonight at the Oak Room.
That's... I just said I'd let you know if I saw you."
"Hey,
you see Beedle?" Emil persisted.
"Got a good one for him... 'we need a t-shirt President to replace a T-Vee
President!' For t-shirts, get it – now that Ol’ White Joe is following the
Donald’s lead in opening a merch website? Or, to medicalize the elections, a T-Pee chief executive… that’s a double ontonder cause of the disease and the hoarding and then
that tape from Russia? Or 'we need a bumper
sticker President...' et cetera! I'm not one of those guys lookin'
for ten percent, I'll take five. I got more! Free the Viagra sixty-nine...
those smugglin’ geezers doing time in North Dakota, hard
time… get it? Actually, there’s
seventy-one of em now, but who’s counting?
More, like that. Plenty more!"
"I'll
be sure to tell him," Glenn said, marching sourly off across the park. At
the far sidewalk he stopped, lifted his shoe and scraped it against the curb
before pivoting towards Masty Hall.
"Whatta guy!" Emil acknowledged. "Leo tells me you
and him were tag team champions of the babyface brigade here, back in the good
ol' days. You wanna sleep onstage? I'll fix it. See, us
lawyers earn our keep! Let's hit the road, Orvie!"
Andy
tossed him the little hanged rag doll.
"I'm
not accountable to anybody for where I sleep," he snapped.
"Herb Clark's the licensed guard - he's a red but Old Red. I’ll take him
off booth detail,” he smiled, wanly, “and Pinhead can trust him – he’s wearing
a uniform. Souvenir of the Conk convention," he added. "Hang on to
it... might be worth something, some day. Real collectors’ item!"
As
the stout delegate and stouter attorney waddled away, Rael rushed the stage,
thrusting a note scrawled on the back of a Solidarity With
Costa Rica flyer into Andy's fist. "Read this into the P.A.!" she
wailed, "...you've got to help..."
"Uh...
yeah," Andy said, taking the note, sight unseen, and unfolding it once
he'd hopped back onstage. He tapped the mike. Working. "Uh... listen, I
have announcement... need a doctor or a vegetar... a veterinarian
by the flagpole, uh..."
Heads
all over the plaza having turned in his direction, Andy took a step back,
looking down at the notice.
"It's
real, man... really happened!" Rael kept pleading with him.
"Fil saw it too... some winos, fighting..."
"OK,
whatever..." He stepped forward again, leaning into the microphone.
"If there's a doctor or veterinarian here, please go to the flagpole. Someone has just stabbed a
dog!"
He
stepped away from the microphone, and the City engineer patched in, from his
boom box, a tape of lively Caribbean dance music. And out, from behind a tree,
stepped the foxy old Klansman who'd slipped back as soon as the security people
released him... pointy, whiskered chin jabbing the air as he rotated bony knees
and elbows round in a sort of chicken-dance that, to Andy, discharged more
entropy in that half a second than could be found in all of Parnell's books,
and those platforms of the rest of those Democrats and the Republicans, too!
|
kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk |
k |
RETURN to "BLACK HELICOPTERS" directory
VIEW CURRENT COLUMN by JACK "CATFISH" PARNELL... "ENTROPY and RENAISSANCE"
Have a glance at the current episode of our occult
serial, wherein a young American encounters bizarre foreign artists and occultists
– from Aleister Crowley and William Yeats to Alfred Jarry and a young, very
feral Adolph Schicklgruber…
Follow the mob of desperate football fanatics
who, after the FCC approves moving the Superbowl to a
premium channel accessible only by a scarce and expensive black box, storm their
local electronics outlets to fight for their right to spectate,
in…
And delve into the story of the last
successful Native American revolt in the jungles of southeastern Mexico where
an implacable tribe of rebels ousted an imperial army under the command of
their mad General in…
“THE INSURGENCE of CHAN SANTA CRUZ”
7