Art Kumbalek
I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So listen, here we are in the month of June, that favorite time of year for young ladies to become new brides; and their boyfriends to become new grooms whether they like it or not. And so June, as the years pass, does become the month for anniversaries, the remembrance pleasant, or bittersweet.
So this guy visits a wizard to ask him if he can remove a curse he has been living with for the past 40 years. The wizard says, “Perhaps, but you will have to tell me the exact words that you believe were used to put the curse on you.” And without hesitation the man says, “I now pronounce you man and wife.” Ba-ding!
And around Our Town, the festival season-and-a-half now wields its ungodly power—cripes, blow your nose on the street and some clown will throw a three-day fest to celebrate it, I kid you not. Next week the Summerfest commences (and I’ll bet you a buck two-eighty that still, after all these years, no Bourbon Tent nor Topless Tent). And this coming weekend there’s the Greek Fest out at State Fair Park. Geia sou!
Those Greeks have been having a hard time of it of late, but I’ll tell you one thing: When it comes to trend setting, those ancient Greeks from the fossil age had it down stone cold. Every single one of their top celebrities were known by one name only, as some of ours are today in the modern times—take Euripides for example, one of their hot-shot playwrighter guys from the theater, sort of the David Mamet-type of his day but without all the dirty focking language.
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But why I think of him as we round that middle-corner of June is ’cause we got the Father’s Day dead ahead and ol’ ’Rip once wrote something I can’t get out of my head:
The gods visit the sins of the fathers upon the children.
Yeah, focking swell. Hey, there’s a sentiment bound to make a guy or gal rush right out to go buy a goddamn necktie or gift-wrapped box of pipe cleaners for the old gent who wears the pants in the family, ain’a? And to think Eurip’ wrote that before the trouser was even discovered. What a world.
Although it is true what they say—that you can pick your friends but not your family (which by the way, blows big-time)—I truly hope that what Euripides wrote more than 2,400 years back ain’t necessarily so. Let us not forget that a lot of the science findings those methuselah Greeks invented were later to be proved as nothing but a steaming pile of so much bull-shish kebab.
But if the old Greek’s words are true, then you got to do your best to think that maybe it’s not your old man’s fault you are as unwittingly screwed up as he is—so blame it instead on the gods for the world going to hell in a handbasket but good, generation after generation after generation. After all, chances are pretty damn good pop’s a heck of a wreck through good intentions only. Anything’s possible.
Hey, you know what you ought to do come Father’s Day? If you’re too focking cheap to spring for a gift for the old fart, how ’bout at least make a nice homemade card. I even got a nice sentiment you can write down in it. It’s a quote from no finer writer there ever be again than dear Mr. Yeats from near Dublin, who just celebrated his 150th birthday June 13:
I have certainly known more men destroyed by the desire to have a wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots.
A-focking-men. Happy Father’s Day. And if that doesn’t cheer dad up, then relate to him the following little story on the phone when you call him up to tell him you can’t stop by Sunday ’cause you got more important things to do:
So this dad goes to pick up his fifth-grader son from the school and the kid comes running all kinds of excited. “Dad, dad! Guess what? I got a part in the class play!” Dad says, “That’s wonderful, son. What’s the part?” Kid says, “I get to play a guy who’s been married for like 20 years!” Dad says, “Well, son. Keep up the good work and maybe someday they’ll give you a speaking role.”
Ba-ding! ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.
