Clown Jewels

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Art Kumbalek

I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So listen, as right-wing cracker-jackanape jackboots goose-step inside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and thereabouts, I’ve decided it would be more patriotic of me to forgo whipping out a bombastic blowhard essay and instead patronize an Americanly small business whose customer service cannot be cheaply outsourced to some godforsaken outpost outside the Lower 48, what the fock.

So I’m off to the Uptowner tavern/charm school majestically crammed onto the corner of wistfully hysteric Humboldt Boulevard and the fabled Center Street. Tag along if you like, but you cover the first round. Let’s get going.

Little Jimmy Iodine: All I’m saying is that if I owned a major league team, as part of my 9/11 hoopla I would’ve hauled out a handcuffed, naked Dick Cheney and had him waterboarded at home plate following the top half of the seventh inning.

Emil: God bless America. This 9/11, there’s got to be a bright side to it somewheres, ain’a?

Julius: Such as?

Emil: Cripes, like maybe if you were a guy and that was your wedding anniversary, it would be easier to remember it.

Herbie: I can buy that. Association. Whenever the anniversary of a disaster tragedy rolls around, like your Pearl Harbor, your Hiroshima, your Hurricane Katrina, the dark day I got focking married springs to my mind right off the bat.

Ray: The association—that’s how I remember things, too. Like whenever I see the bartender come down to this end of the bar, I remember it’s time to have another focking cocktail.

Ernie: There’s the disasters you can bring on by mistakes you don’t even know you’re making and there’s disasters that happen no matter what you do. Like these asteroids flying around outer space. I read in the papers that it wouldn’t matter what side of the bed you got out of in the morning, a space rock the size of about three football fields across would wipe out everything and everyone in a space the size of New focking Jersey. The Sopranos, Atlantic City, chemical dumps, Bruce Springsteen, on-the-take goombah politicians—bada bing! bada boom!—all gone in a New York second on account of Mother Nature got up on the wrong side of the bed that day.

Emil: Im-focking-possible ’cause Mother Nature’s got nothing to do with outer space stuff.

Julius: The hell. Listen Einstein, we the sapien Homo and the rest of the life on this planet all got its beginnings in outer space, so shut the fock up if you’re going to talk like a sausage out of your anus.

Ray: Speaking of “talking out of your anus...”

Little Jimmy Iodine: Hey, Artie! Over here. Put a load on your keister.

Art: Hey gents. What do you hear, what do you know.

Julius: I hear that the Republicans are champing at the bit for big-ass tax cuts except for the mom-and-pop regular Joes struggling to maintain a pot to pee in—tax cuts only for the fat-cat uber-rich assholes who bankroll the campaigns of congressional Tea Party types to destroy truth, justice and the American way.

Herbie: Remember when they had that idea of an “ownership society,” which means Congress Republicans and their donor pals own all the money and all the power, and the rest of us baboons own a one-way ticket to Palooka-focking-ville

Art: I got to tell you’s guys before I forget about this documentary I saw on TV called “Superheroes,” where everyday guys and gals who act like they’re Batman go out to fight crime.

Little Jimmy Iodine: I’ve been out of touch with that stuff, but I heard Superman and Lois Lane finally got married, didn’t they? I always wondered if they ever got around to having any kids. I mean, how the heck do you breast-feed a baby with the superhuman power of suck?

Emil: I’d like to know how the hell they ever got a marriage license in the first place. The guy was from another focking planet for crying out loud. Wouldn’t you think there’d be some kind of law or an amendment against that kind of thing? For christ sakes, an Earth woman having a connubial relationship of a conjugal nature with a creature from outer focking space—a creature prone to wearing colorful leotards and a cape in public?

Herbie: That’s a difficult question. I think it may be focking fair to consider anyone from outer space to be of another species. While to carry on a relationship of an intimate nature with a member of another species may be perfectly acceptable onstage at select entertainment venues just south of the Texas border, I don’t think an inter-species life-partnering union would play in Peoria, nor with the Christian right nutbags who helped put Trumpel-thinskin in the White House.

Ernie: No shit, ’cause I’ll bet you a buck two-eighty Superman was a Democrat.

Emil: How do you figure that?

Ernie: Because numbnuts, he was always helping and saving people no matter how much money they made.

(Hey, it’s getting late and I know you got to go, but thanks for letting us bend your ear, ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.)