Big News Day Hurray

YET ANOTHER PRESS CONFERENCE called by some roly-poly politico and it's on the courthouse steps and it's snowing cold missiles and the TV crews are miserable, mean and hostile, that's quite visible. A cameraman snips, "What the city needs is the H-Bomb, not some weak sneak with roaming hands." Mr.-Snafu-Finding-Rent-A-Reporter combs his hair in the glass of the courthouse doors. He smiles and kisses at himself, winks, then straightens his paisley-speckled tie. I'm thinking of finding a quiet, serene place in which to hide from the cold and dream of gold and a sunny beach and scheme with a long reach while bartering for a drug or a gun to quell my manic depressive nerves. The rest of the boys are eyeing up some new blonde on her first day at the radio station way down the dial. She's cute and nice but in two weeks she'll carry a knife and think like Franz Kafka. I shake and smoke a cigarette. There's waves of snow now and I wonder how my long deceased father would view me now, looking so ridiculous at 8:30 a.m. on the steps of a courthouse of a long dead city (still dying). Shit, if it was up to him I'd be retired from the military by now and if I wanted to fiddledick around with a stupid job like this, at least I'd already be pulling in a pension. Shit, I can't even afford a few miserable magazine subscriptions on my pissable salary. Finally, Mr. Pigswalla Politico exits the long, courthouse doors and walks up to the makeshift podium. He clears his throat and I hear him talk but I can't understand a fucking thing he's saying. What this city needs is ink, and plenty of it, and paper, yes, tons of it. And film, yes, plenty of film, enough film, in fact, to circle the earth a few million times. That's the cure and that's the curse -- an information super-duper highway covering the potholed streets of this long forgotten by-way. Yes, an unending media war with a whole cast of heroes and whores, and gore, yes, plenty of gore. Political gore, to be exact. And the city needs a touch of fame, maybe something bordering on the antithesis of fame, which is infamy, because great men are borne of that stuff. But the only great men here are drinking down lunch, and later, dinner, all the time making deals over barbecued wings, beer, bad breath, body odor and broads (Yes, we still call women broads around here, I'm ashamed to say. But really, we're so cosmopolitan and pure, after all, this city has four TV stations, two and a quarter newspapers, five or more radio stations [ah, that blonde], an ag journal, a gag journal and let's not mention a shag journal, plus, this city has a never ending hunger for more gore, more gore, more gore, more gore, more gore, more gore and even more gore). I think he said that, but I'm not quite sure. I was listening. I think I was, anyway, as I watched the glistening snowflakes fall on the courthouse steps. I'm not the only one shaking my head. Three other reporters look like ostriches. Maybe Mr. Portly Shortly Politico was talking, instead, about the demolition of a bridge. Maybe he was talking about another local politico caught up in a fraud investigation. Maybe he was talking about the car plant closing and 15,000 people losing twenty dollar an hour jobs. Jobs that will go to Mexico and Canada. Maybe he was talking about how he'd like to shove his limp penis into every officegirl in the courthouse. I'm not sure. It was all a blur. I'll smoke a cigarette and watch the snow fall. Hell, I'll make something up this afternoon after I take my Lithium, warm my arthritic bones and sort through my notes.

You can email Sam at ssvargo@hotmail.com.