The Art Kumbalek Experience

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Art Kumbalek

I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So any of you’s been out to Miller Park to visitate this new Bud Selig Experience attraction-exhibit yet? Yeah, me neither. Don’t know much about it, but I think I heard on the radio—must’ve been the “Bob & Brian” show—that one of the interactive things you can do is sit in a barber chair and get a bad haircut. Ba-ding!

Got me to thinking about an Art Kumbalek Experience exhibit here at the Shepherd. I guess there’d have to be a desk, and next to it could be my souvenir barstool autographed by Mike and Andy from the late, lamented National Liquor Bar. On the desk? Probably an empty gallon jug of Old Crow, half a pack of Pall Malls, a pen and maybe some paper. I guess there could be a photo of me at some kind of furshlugginer event but I don’t think I have any. The only interactive idea I’ve come up with so far is that the visitor could park his or hers butt on the sacred barstool, glaze-eye into the distance and then practically piss their pantaloons with doom and gloom whilst trying to figure how to come by an Uncle Scrooge-size fortune to satisfy a boatload of unpaid focking medical bills, I kid you not.

Yeah yeah, not much of an exhibit and not much of an experience. I certainly wouldn’t expect many visitors; so I’d charge $500 grand to get through the door. At that price, I’d only need one sucker to come by. Somewhere in the wide, wide world there’s just go to be one rich-guy foreign tourist who visits Our Town and after taking a selfie with the Fonzie statue, would choose to drop by the Kumbalek Experience and see what all the hullabaloo was about, what the fock.

In the meantime, I really could use a commencement-speaker gig, like I mentioned last week—$50 bucks and a case of ice-cold bottled beer is my charge. I’ve always believed that an effective address ought to kick-off with a humorous anecdote that underscores the theme of the speechifying. If my theme were to be competition in the real-world workplace after graduation, my snappy opener would be this:

An executive had a very tough decision to make. He had to get rid of one of his staff. He had narrowed it down to one of two people, Debra or Jack. And it would be a difficult decision to make, since they were both equally qualified and both did excellent work. He finally decided that in the morning whichever one used the water cooler first would have to go.

Debra came in the next morning, hung over like a focking banshee after partying all night. She went to the cooler to get some water so’s to take an aspirin and the executive approached her and said: “Debra, I’ve never done this before, but I have to lay you or Jack off.” Debra replied, “Could you jack off? I’ve got a terrible headache.” Ba-ding!

OK, full disclosure: I’ve got experience in the racket that you can take to the bank, you bet. Take for example my lone commencing gig from a couple, three years back over by the eunuch-owned-and-operated Wee-Wee Park Your Tot Lot, Institution of Lower Learning (Bedwetters Welcome) Institute.

It was a memorable oratorical experience. I was interrupted mid-speech several times, once even with applause when they mistakenly thought my remarks were concluded, plus numerous other times when young scholars were forced to visit the Poo-Poo room following the dropping of a full-load drawers-side.

There was a milk-and-cookie pause, which I found unacceptable. What the fock is a “health” cookie? Cripes, back when I was a tadpole if they’d a’foisted some kind of health cookie or piece of fruit on us kids, we would’ve had Miss Whoever-the-Fock buried neck-deep in the sandbox so fast it’d make the speed of light look like a Piggly Wiggly check-out lane on Senior Citizen Double Coupon Day. Besides, any kind of cookie break for these katzenjammers was a total waste of time since they’d been seriously snot-snacking during my address from the get-go.

It was ’round about the time that I quoted Eugene Debs (a guy who should’ve been elected president at least once out of the five times he ran)—“Years ago, I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on Earth... While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free”—that most of the kids started bawling and I was asked to hit the focking road.

My calendar’s wide open. I’ll be by the phone so give me a jingle ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.