Art for Art's Sake

I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So listen, I hear America’s Dairyland despairing, the varied requiems to Super Bowl dreams I hear. To have parked one’s fat butt on the davenport in front of the TV, week after week after week, girded to reap the spoils of ultimate Green & Gold glory, the true Packer patriot must now retreat and suffer a relentless way-off season of household chores, bingier drinking, wife-nagging, kid shit, economic assshafting, political candidate balder-focking-dash plus other malarkeythrough the winter, the spring, the summeruntil the fall, when once again the possibility of validating one’s sense of self-worth through the achievement of well-compensated others looms large upon the field of Lambeau in the Emerald City by some kind of bay. Sucks, don’t it?

You bet I feel your pain. And so rather than whip out a full-blown blathering essay about how Republicans are so abso-focking-lutely full of crap, or to wonder in amazement at how Mrs. Clinton, at her age, could be pre-menstrual forty days a month, I turn rather toward my performance of good works directed at healing the fearof-the-future and recent hurtful past of the Packer nationwe shall always remember 1/20, but get over it what the fock. And I can’t think of a better place to start than over by the Uptowner tavern/charm school situated at the Hysteric Corner of Center & Humboldt, where I’m sure the grieving process is deep in the bucket. Tag along if you like, but you cover the first round. Let’s get going.

Julius: I kid you not, it was in all the papers. In Austria they had a court case that ruled a chimpanzee cannot be declared a person.

Emil: I’m glad that’s settled. Cripes, maybe this evolution is getting out of hand. First, we’re supposed to be descended from the monkeys, now you got people who want to say the chimps are equals. Next thing you know, we’re going to be their slaves or something. I might vote for that Christian anti-evolution Huckabee guy after all, ’cause come to think of it, I don’t remember once in the Bible that Jesus sent a monkey a Fathers Day card.

Little Jimmy Iodine: I’ll bet that Austrian judge in that case thought about the Pinocchio when he made his ruling about the chimp. Sure, you want to be a real boy and yeah, you can smoke a cigar, roller skate and wear a hat, but you can’t be a real person unless you talk to a cricket and get swallowed by a whale, ain’a?

Ray: All I know about monkeys is what I see at the zoo and I tell you, no real person can jerk-off with the frequency and intensity like those monkeys do, with the exception of the occasional white, eighth-grade suburban male.

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

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

Ernie: That game last Sunday, Artie. We’re all depressed. We feel like we got ass-banged by New York, and not in a good way.

Emil: We could’ve won that game, Artie. Coach McCarthy’s biggest blunder was in the second half when he should’ve sent Favre to the showers and put in Bart Starr.

Herbie: You talk like a sausage. They couldn’t let Starr play. He’s been retired for thirty-fockingfive years, you fockstick.

Emil: Listen knobshine, they made Bart Starr an honorary captain specifically for that game. Honorary captain. Why the hell would they do that if they didn’t think they could put him in the game if they had to? You can’t expect to win a goddamn football game if your captain’s not on the playing field. That would be like The Three Stooges going to a pie fight and telling Moe to stay home.

Julius: Focking-A. Bart Starr’s a quarterback who knows how to win in cold weather. And those nancy players who thought they were so tough ’cause they came to play with no sleeves and bare-armed. You want to be tough? Come out and play with no helmet on, you candyasses.

Art: Jeez louise, you guys. Pull yourself together. When the glum gloom of despair suddenly descends ’cause your team blew the big one, the only way you can help yourself is by taking it absolutely personal and to remember what Socrates once said: “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

Little Jimmy: That works for you, Artie?

Art: You betcha. And so I examine myself, and I ask myself: Hey, so the Green & Gold stunk up the joint? Big focking deal. I’ve stunk up plenty my share of joints, you better believe it. So the Packers are losers at home? Again, big focking deal. I’ve been a loser at home anyplace I’ve hung my hat called home. So the other guys scored more often in the red zone? Yeah, tell me about it.

Ernie: Sounds to me that Socrates only got it half-right, Artie. He should’ve said: “The unexamined life is not worth living, but hey, the examined live could just as easy turn out to be crap-through-a-goose-ina-bowl, to boot.”

Art: Now you’re catching on. Wear your disappointment like a badge, and lead through example. I will never ever get over the utter disappointment that I will never ever get to meet Marilyn focking Monroe. But listen guys, how many times do I have to tell you that “Life is a crap casserole and all you can do is strap on the old’ feedbag and say ‘GO PACKERS.” Are you with me? And if that’s not enough, let me ask you this: What does a stolen car and the Minnesota Vikings have in common?

Ray: Beats me, Artie.

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