I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So yeah, another 130th Uptowner tavern/charm school anniversary shebang has come and gone and this one was fan-focking-tastic, I kid you not. But listen, no essay this week. I somehow lost my right shoe and I got a hunch it may be over by the Home of the Beautiful People there at the legendary corner of Center & Humboldt. Tag along if you like, but you cover the first round. Let’s get going.
Julius: So the wife tells me she wants to sign us up for such a thing, this dancercise class. You get to dance with the exercise to boot, what the fock.
Little Jimmy Iodine: You got to be jerking my beefaroni. Dance and exercise? How can dancing possibly be good for you? You ever see these ballerinas? How can possessing the physical stature of a prisoner-of-war possibly be healthy for you’s? Those gals need to eat more, and I don’t mean “dining,” I mean “chowing.” Skip the tutu; put on the feedbag instead.
Herbie: Dancing’s one of those human baggage things we Homo sapiens still lug around from prehistoric times, like appendicitis. Dancing was discovered by the cavemen, who often stepped on sharp objects ’cause they had yet to evolve the necessary brainpower to invent shoes or the flashlight.
Ernie: Exercise can kill a guy, what the fock. Look at these knobshines keeling over left and right from this jogging malarkey. All exercising does is to put the unnecessary wear and tear on your muscles, your bones and your what-not.
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Emil: Whenever I’m on my way to the tavern and I see some nutbag jogging and it’s like 90-focking-degrees, I say there’s a guy who doesn’t know from an honest day’s work for an honest day’s buck two-eighty. Probably yaks on the phone all morning, then goes out for a nice sandwich, comes back and yaks on the phone some more, and then calls it a day. I’ll bet you’s the Neanderthal man never came back home from a day-and-a-focking-half of hardcore hunting and gathering and told the wife to hold supper for a bit ’cause he wanted to put on his shorts and go focking jog, ain’a?
Little Jimmy Iodine: Hey, Artie! Over here. Put a load on your keister.
Art: Hey gents. What do you hear, what do you know.
Ray: I hear you got to take a drug test now before you can vote these days.
Art: And if Gov. Snidely focking Whiplash gets re-elected, a lot of us will load up on the drugs and antidepressants after we vote these days.
Ernie: In Scotland, they let 16-year-olds in on the vote for independence the other day. A lot of these foreign-country kids are pretty smart, I hear.
Julius: Not like here. You guys read in the papers where about 110% of American school kids can’t find the United States on a map, what the fock?
Herbie: Hey, who looks on a map to find where you already are? These kids know they’re in the United States. Cripes, they only got the American flag in every goddamn classroom across the land to remind them. You look on a map for when you’re lost and you don’t know where you are, so what’s the big focking deal?
Ray: Where the fock is Scotland, anyways?
Art: It’s up over by, you know. Let’s get a map, and we’ll find it for christ sakes.
Emil: Yeah, and while you’re looking, maybe you can find my bar change that one of you assholes swiped.
Little Jimmy: It’s bad, the education the kids get today that they can’t find the U.S. on a map. Not like it used to be, no sir. I remember eighth grade, Sister made us memorize the county seat of every county in all 50 states, and if you missed one on a test she’d put one of those torture holds on you she learned in Asia somewheres when she had a missionary gig. And remember reading Shakespeare?
Ray: Shakespeare? No. What’s it about?
Julius: The kids these days got the easy piece of cake in the schoolroom. They don’t read the Shakespeare anymore. They just show one of his movies in class like the Hamlet with Mel Gibson and call it done.
Herbie: And he wasn’t half-bad for a Hamlet, ain’a? Shows to go you that these action guys can really act up a storm when they get a chance. I’d sure as hell stand in line for a Jean-Claude Van focking Damme King Lear, you betcha.
Ernie: Hey, who wouldn’t? But the best would be a Clint Eastwood Midsummer Night’s Dream—“Go ahead, make my day, fairy.”
(Hey, I know you got to go, but thanks for letting us bend your ear. And for us Uptowners, we’ll have another 130 years please, ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.)
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