Art Kumbalek
I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So listen, this old year 2021 is practically expired and I’m thinking the less said about it the better. Try as I might, I can’t think of one positive thing to say about it besides the Milwaukee Bucks’ championship, what the fock.
And as I prepare my annual award-winning Year-in-Review/Watch Out Ahead gala essay that ought to appear as my print-publication monthly essay under the title “From the City That Always Sweeps” (which shall also appear online here at shepherdexpress.com when the powers-that-be get around to posting it sometime in January, good lord)—two words keep ringing a bell in my head from this 2021: failure and disappointment, oy ve.
Which reminds me of a little seasonal story (and if you’ve heard it before, now you’re going to hear it again; a gift that keeps gifting):
A little kid sits on Santa’s lap (no mask, the beard does the trick), and Santa says, “What would you like for Christmas?” Kid says, “A focking swingset.”
Whoa! Santa says, “You’ll have to ask nicer than that if you want Santa to bring you presents. Let’s try again. What else would you like?”
Kid says, “A focking sandbox for the side yard.”
Santa says, “That’s no way to talk to Santa. One more time. What else would you like for Christmas?” The kid thinks for a minute, says, “I want a focking trampoline in the front yard.”
So Santa lifts the boy off his lap and goes to talk to the kid’s parents. He tells them what the kid said, and says, “Best that you don’t get him anything for Christmas except dog-doo. Put a pile of dog-doo in the backyard where he wants the swingset, put another pile in the side yard where he wants the sandbox, and another pile in the front yard where he wants the trampoline. That should make him change his tune.”
Stay on top of the news of the day
Subscribe to our free, daily e-newsletter to get Milwaukee's latest local news, restaurants, music, arts and entertainment and events delivered right to your inbox every weekday, plus a bonus Week in Review email on Saturdays.
Christmas morning the kid goes downstairs to open his presents, and there aren’t any. He runs out the back door, looks around, and comes back in. He runs out the side door, looks around, and comes back in. He runs out the front door, looks around, and comes back in, shaking his head.
His father says, “Anything wrong, son?”
The kid says, “Yeah. That fat bastard Santa brought me a focking dog, but I can’t find him anywheres.” Ba-ding!
So yeah, failure and disappointment for me with the year past—no Noble Prize (again), Pulitzer, Oscar, Emmy, Grammy, Man of the Year award for something or another, no more than 2-focking bucks on any goddamn lottery scratch card, and the inability to launch every single nutbag Republican member of Congress along with the James Webb Space Telescope a million miles into space to the second Lagrange point, also known as L2, what the fock.
Anyways, I’ve had it with this year, pretty much like any other, but I’ll tell you’s that as 2021 is about to be shoved into the trunk of a four-door sedan so’s to be buried in a country cornfield out yonder whilst we welcome the “bright prospect” of 2022 as a top earner, I wish you all “happy huchmus.”
(Huchmus, by the bye, is a Yiddish word for “baloney” I had to spell phonetically ’cause after all these millenniums, you/I still can’t rub two schlemiels together and come up with the same spelling for a Yiddish word, for christ sakes.)
And speaking of baloney, one more thing, again, this time of year, from me to you: Screw the New Year’s resolutions. Resolutions are for quitters, and quitters never win, you betcha.
So I got to go, but to the limit of my optimism, I wish you all a happy focking New Year (huchmus and all), and good luck with next year’s heaping load of what-the-fock, ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.
