An Exerpt from Chapter One

WEDNESDAY:

It’s night, and Jersey Jane stands in line at the grocery store, holding a basket with 8 packs of Ramen, 4 cans of slim fast, a plastic bag with 8 apples, and a jar of Vlassic pickles. She looks over the tabloids by the register, and her eyes read the headline, “Vic Mitchell - THE KING OF LATE NIGHT” Underneath in smaller font, “How the once too graphic for television comic became bigger than Lenno or Letterman.” She throws her items on the conveyor, and pays for everything with crumpled one dollar bills she pulled from her cargo-short-pants pocket. And she counts all the change. Every last penny.

Jersey’s home is a small studio apartment, set in an old junky Hollywood brownstone. Even though nobody’s cared for it for decades, it still has a ton of charm. She enters carrying her small sack, and the daily mail. She kicks the door closed with a ripped fishnet covered leg, and combat-booted foot. Then throws the mail onto a stack of bills, envelopes and junk mail resting precariously in a tall pile, on a tall side table. The keys follow, tossed haphazardly. They hit and spin across the table, knocking half the mail-stack to the floor. She sees the keys don’t fall, and walks past. In the kitchen, Jersey unloads her things in a bare cupboard and nearly empty refrigerator.

Two easels stand by a double window overlooking a parking lot, and beyond that, just a wedge is visible, of Hollywood Boulevard. She fiddles with a canvas on one of the easels - the one closest to the window. Jersey throws some paint on, but lackadaisically, the form of the bridge and birds she’s working on, transforms a touch…but her eyes are pulled towards a huge grade-school clock mounted above the television, which silently and gently, sweeps towards twelve. After a bit, the clock wins. She gives up, sits down on a ratty Laz-y-boy and knocks a button on the remote with a slim paint-spotted index finger. Her television clicks on - the only nice thing in her place.

The tail-end of a Chevy commercial ends, and the opening of the Hullabaloo show hits like a ton of bricks. A big band on a bandstand, sits on a polished black marble stage. They play Big Spender (it’s the Hullabaloo theme -and they always do it different, and they always do it justice) and tonight, it spills from the mouth of a gorgeous brunette who’s lips were clearly the cameras desire. She wears a red evening gown cut with equal shades of elegance and slutty allure. Her shoes are pure stripper, her legs something to kill for, and her bust-size would cordially be called “ample.”

“So let me get right to the point,” She croons, runs her hand over her breasts, and sucks on her finger for a split-second. “I don’t pop my cork for every guy I see…Hey Big Spender! Spend…a little time with me.”

And the music builds into a big band climax that doesn’t stop. Instead it gets faster and faster. The horns drop out and the drummer begins knocking out a drum-solo that makes Gene Crooper sound like a hack. The band rips back in with a punk-psychobilly vibe that the brunette matches with her luscious voice turning harder and faster along with the song.
“The minute you walked in the joint.” She spits out - her mouth now a machine-gun of words. “I could-tell you-were-a-man-of-distinction-a-real-big-spender. HEY BIG SPENDER! SPEND-A-LITTLE-TIME-WITH-ME!” She finishes screaming “me” that moves from pleading to anguish to desire, to pure hate, all in one breath. The band is rocking at breakneck speed, and then on a dime, and not a second before the brunette finishes, stops.

The crowd goes crazy. People are on their feet cheering - not at all prodded, just blown away by a brilliantly cool performance, and at that moment, to nearly deafening cheers and claps, Vic Mitchell walks onto the stage.

Honestly, he stands there for a good three minutes while the crowd goes nuts. Whether they’re cheering for him or the band, it’s impossible to say. He’s handsome, tall and slim, sort of Carson-esque, but a little thicker, and with dark hair that’s begun to sprout some frost of gray. He has a baritone voice, plush as red velvet, and there’s a twinkle in his eye, like he’s known all the fun things the devil‘s been up to.

“Good evening” He says softly, aware that the audience is louder now than the P.A. When he speaks, enough of the crowd falls quiet, that the next words can be heard.

“Good evening, and welcome to the Hullabaloo Show. I’m your host Vic Mitchell.”
The audience goes ballistic. The crowd rises up with a roar like a wave pounding towards a cliff. Ear piercing whistles fall from the balcony, people are literally insane.

“Okay, okay…look I’ve been noticing something.” Mitchell takes his hands and reaches up above his head-above the level of the cameras, and grabs a mike hanging off a boom. It’s one of those square old-fashioned chrome ones-like Elvis used to sing into. He crams it into his face with both hands and speaks in a soft whisper.

“Russians, Serbs, Iraqi’s…” He stops for a moment, then turns, crouching down on one knee, hiding his face with the back of his dark well-tailored sports coat. He repeats the words.
“Russians. Serbs. Iraqi’s.”

The crowd is silent, waiting on every soft word. He says again.
“Russian. Iraqi. Serb.” God there is a pause. Like a real pause. Like, twenty seconds of dead airspace. An eternity on network television. Then he screams, “SERB!”

“Can the United States just for once!” He pivots up and faces the audience with a sweeping gesture connotating the crowd and viewers as the whole world, as America. He pauses, and speaks very softly again, “Just for once, can’t we have a conflict with a people that don’t have, A FUCKING SCARY-ASSED NAME!?!?”

Vic paces the black marble stage, “Howabout we first deal with MICRONESIA! Next - howabout we take care of Luxembourg? After that…” He peers over the chrome mike stuck in the front of his face, framed there by his two hands, straight into the cameras and right into people’s homes, “After that we’ll take on that Pussy-Assed-Named nation of El Salvador. Jesus Christ - “The Savior?” they’re begging for an ass kicking! Then Uruguay! Pussies! And after that Iowa! I suggest we start fighting countries we can BEAT!”

“I’m from Iowa!” Shouts a man in the audience, Vic looks up in his general direction.
“Then sir, I tell you that America is tired of your aggressive nature to your neighbor states, your oppressive regime, your numerous human and more importantly ANIMAL RIGHTS violations! I’ve heard what you bastards do to goats, and dogs…and won’t somebody please think of the SHEEP! I FOR ONE AM TIRED OF YOUR SHEEP FUCKING! THEY CAN’T SAY NO! ALL THEY SAY IS BAAAAAH! And after we’re done with MICRONESIA, LUXEMBOURG, EL SALVADOR, AND URAGUAY - WE’RE COMING FOR YOU! FUCKING IOWANS! WE WILL CRUSH YOU! SHEEP FUCKERS!”

The crowd is rolling. Vic Mitchell stands for a second looking hate in the heckler’s general direction, like he‘s hated Iowa with a passion for years…then his handsome face breaks it’s look with a bunch of movie-star teeth. And to the desire of everyone watching, he cracks himself up.

“C’mon I love the hell outta’ Iowa! Hawkeyes! Des Moines! And God Micronesia’s soooo CUTE nestled down there with all it’s little archipelago. Look - tonight we have a great show planned for you, so let me introduce Stan Tucker-Willmington the IV! Yo Stan!
Stan is in a black suit, black tie, black shirt, black hat and black sunglasses, and white wingtip shoes. He flips his finger along the edge of his hat in a salute to Mitchell.
Hanging from his neck with a black leather strap is a wicked black Les Paul L-5 with silver pegs, bridge and pickups that gleams in the spotlight.
“Victor, how you been man?”
“Real good Stan, you?
“My hamster Virgil died the other day, it’s got me bummed.” The audience sighs sympathetically.
Mitchell looks sad. “I hope you’re going to be okay.”
“Well Vic, he was always biting me anyways. Turned out he died of rabies…looks like I’ll have to get that checked out.”
Mitchell and the audience crack up.
“Then Stan,” Mitchell says, “Before you start foaming at the mouth, howabout you do that VOO-DOO that YOU DOO!!?”
And with that, Stan rips the beginning notes of Benny-Goodman’s Sing-Sing-Sing off his gleaming axe like his fingers were bringing down the word of God. The band behind him, explodes into a pure orgy of those great notes, it nails it. And while this is happening, Vic walks to his desk.
Jersey Jane’s phone rings and jars her out of the show.
She reaches over and answers it. It’s Tom.
“Are you ready?”
“Fuck you.” She mumbles.
“Nervous?”
“Fuck off. What are you doing up at this hour?”
“This hour? I’m always up at this hour. I’m plugging the hell out of you on my blog.”
“Great. Thanks.”
“I get a thousand hit’s a day. Fuck, you think that’s nothing? …Okay, well, I expect great things.”
“You know exactly what to expect. I’ll see you tomorrow, fucker.”
“Sweet dreams sweet talker.”
She hangs up the phone. Her eyes are pulled to a stack of flyers on the coffee table. An evening at the Mundane Gallery (they read) featuring, Penny Fortune, Jersey Jane , and Emily Tantrum. The cheap paper flyers are decorated with a logo in a thick wood-cut style, of Lady Liberty, Artemis, and a mermaid.

She looks back at the clock, which reads 12:12. On the television, Vic sits at his desk, and there is a cutaway to where studio security is pulling the heckler from Iowa from his seat, and dragging him down the hallways of the studio, and out into the parking lot. They surround him with big black shirts.

“And make no mistake about it people, “ Vic says over the footage. “I will say anything in order to catch America’s enemies off guard.” The camera jerks around in the parking lot, as the security detail pulls out pistols. The Iowan screams.

“NOOOO!” The camera cuts to black, but in the true definition of overkill, about a hundred shots ring out. The Iowan makes various statements during the hail of bullets. “Owch, Oooh! Arrg! Ieee! Oh, that hurts! Oooph! Dear god no! Stop!”
There is a close-up in on Mitchell at his desk. He points a pencil at the camera.
“And that, is how we handle sheep-fuckers at the Hullabaloo Show. We’ll be right back!”
Jersey kills the T.V., and flops onto the bed.