Asea, Can You Say?

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Art Kumbalek

I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? And because it’s that time of year, seems to me that the only thing people want to read are the directions on a can of bug spray, and they do so with the attention span of a United States president who lost a popular vote by a boatload. So I’m declaring my independence from delivering a full-blown essay this week, what the fock.

Anyways, I don’t know what it is about this time of year, but it seems every time I turn around these days it’s that time of year again, I kid you not. Cripes, and now it’s that Summerfest time, again, and listen (and don’t stop me if you’ve heard this one before ’cause we don’t have time): After all these years when it comes to this time of year, year-in, year-out, if you even begin to think I could possibly have any gas left to pass through another essay on that annual musical racket down there by our lakefront—then you are abso-focking-lutely correct. Of course I do.

The gas might be a tad overripe, but it smells like this: I’ve pored over and indeed rifled through all the big gig guides and lists and brochures and pamphlets and…HEY! Know what? I think the people in charge of that shebang have gone deaf from all that LOUD ROCK GUITAR MUSIC HELLABALOO they got all the time down there, I kid you not.

I think those people have gone to deaf because each and every year, simply as a professional courtesy, I keep asking aloudly over and over for two simple things at the grounds in the Summerfest: A TOPLESS TENT and a BOURBON TENT—like it would really kill the hippies who run that fest-joint to have a little something for which the common man to enjoy himself by. It may come as an unexpected thunderclap to some, but we’ve been known to drop a couple, three bucks here and there, now and then, for entertainment purposes, what the fock.

But no, everything’s got to be for the young people all the time today. It’s like nothing at all from when me and my gang were members of the young people, lo, those years ago. No sir, in the three-channel TV days of our black & white youth, ’tis a rare-ass occasion it was when there was a good goddamn something to do. Many a long, beautiful, and long some more, summer day was spent standing around in some kid’s dinky back yard locked in the passionate debates of our day—like whose older sister had the biggest jugs. Or we made plans for the future—like how the hell to come by 20-focking-cents for a comic book and ice-cold bottle of Squirt. 

So naturally, you can see how flummoxed I can be to imagine how different for a 14-, 15-year-old kid now today it is, what with all the places to go and things to do for them, not to mention the computers and super-phones they can dick around on for hours, with learning where to send the pictures of their pubescent junk.

That’s probably why we didn’t shoot up the schools back then like they’ve been known to do today. We were too bored. Why spend all that time and energy on blowing up the school? Just quit—fock it. That’s what we did.

And the old-school family values. You could hardly take a leak without having to have the whole family along, for crying out loud. Sometimes you could go to some store by yourself, sure, but after five minutes inside with some dickhead clerk on your butt for the entire 300 seconds, you’d be told to scram. There was no telling what a kid by himself might try to get away with.

Cripes, it’s a heck of a thing how a half-a-focking-century can fly by when you lose track sometimes, ain’a? Seems like just the other day I was listening to Pat Boone try to croon “Tutti Frutti” through the AM transistor, and today I can enjoy hardcore pornography on my TV, if I were so inclined.

I wish I was a kid today instead of then when I was, you betcha. Heck, I’d probably even go to the Summerfest and hope adults weren’t around to screw things up since what adults seem best at is to screw things up, same as it ever was, what the fock, ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.