Focken Spiel

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Art Kumbalek

I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So listen, they don’t call Our Town the City of Festivals for nothing, so don’t forget to grab your lederhosen and get over by the German “She’s Too Fat for Me” Fest Mach schnell down there by the Summerfest grounds this weekend. And I also know that some of you’s won’t forget that I’ve long lobbied for our Festa Italiana to combine with the German shebang and form the Axis Powers Fest—The Festival to Last 1,000 Years! That’s a lot of gemütlichkeit, what the fock.

So besides wondering how long before the Russian national anthem is also played at our American sporting events, I read somewheres that some kind of Harry Potter Dumbledore movie spin-off is in the works to hit the motion-picture theaters come November, and I flashbacked to the turn-of-the-century when those Potter door-stoppers were the bee’s knees in cat’s pajamas.

I remembered how all kinds of educational experts and other assorted dorky adults were practically having a bird over the Potter power to turn their fantasy into reality, which was that kids keep their nose clean best by sticking their pubescent proboscis in a book instead of picking their noses in front of a TV all day with the exception of the occasional trip to the store to shoplift some candy, you betcha.

Listen, I for one have never been sold on the notion that a kid all the time reading some book or another is such a hotshot modus operandi for the good life. According to my own studies, all too often these juvenile bookworms metamorphose into adult book-dweebs whose life skills can be summarized in one word: un-focking-employable.

No responsible parent in their right mind ought to let Junior spend his golden formative years sitting in a chair reading books. For christ sakes, the dull predictability of process involved in book-reading—read a page, turn it, read the next page, turn it, over and over until there’s no more pages, get another book, do the same damn thing—can only turn a kid’s survival skills to mush, what the fock.

Pshaw, you say. Acquiring a facility for turning pages is a rigorous regimen that if followed religiously leads to one heck of a buffed imagination, you say. Focking swell. Imagination. Fine. While Mr. Imagination buries himself in book after book, I hope you’re prepared to vacuum his room and remove half-finished, half-curdled bowls of Cheerios from beneath the unmade bed for the next 35, 40 years until the day they bury you ’cause the chances of him one day affording his own place fall between nil and none, and the only finger he’ll raise to help you ’round the house is the middle one each and every time you ask him to lift a finger to help you around the house.

No sir, Junior is better served—and so will be you—by getting out on the street and mixing it up with the other kids where he’ll be forced to think on his feet instead of his fat dupa and stands a chance to cop a very valuable lesson from the book the judge in juvenile court will throw at him. You just can’t buy book learning like that from a bookstore, I kid you not.

And what were the Potter books about? A kid going to school. Kids in school were going crazy to read a book about a kid going to school. Maybe it’s just me, but something didn’t seem healthy there. Especially when you consider what they taught at the English school Harry Potter went to: witchcraft and wizardry. What the fock, no wonder the British pissed away an empire if that’s the kind of malarkey that passes for a curriculum over there.

I realize the long-term effect of books may not be easy for a parent to discuss with a child all hopped up on Harry or what-have-you, but you owe it to their future to at least remind them of the seductive power of peer pressure and not to listen to what the other kids may say. Look them straight in the eye and make sure they understand that it’s all right to be an unimaginative non-bookreader for someday you may become president of these United States.

Cripes, damn these flashbacks. Where the heck was I? German Fest, right? Listen, if you’re new to lederhosen, let me warn you that the material is decidedly not washing-machine friendly, which reminds me of a little story:

So this guy from Bavaria goes to the doctor for a checkup. Doctor examines him and says that he needs a blood sample, a semen sample, urine and stool sample, so further tests can be run. The Bavarian nods, removes his lederhosen and hands them to the nurse.

Ba-ding! ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.