I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh man manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So let me tell you about something that has tossed and turned me fitlessly when I should’ve been more than sound asleep within the friendly confines of my dinky apartment: It’s the nagging inkling that a lot of knuckleheads these days think of newspapers as nothing but a heaping steamy pile of negative bullshit.
If it were only the readers who thought like that, then big focking deal and I’d be sleeping like a baby ’cause as long as he’s either writing something at least half-truthful or writing the first damn thing off the top of his head, a good newspaperman never ever gives a rat’s ass for what readers think. And neither do I.
No sir, “nice, positive” belongs in the domain of your popes, high school guidance counselors, boutique clerks and mental therapists. “Positive” and “good” have no place in a newspaper. It’s a terrible misuse of precious space that should be religiously devoted to what the fock is wrong with everything so’s to motivate somebody to get going on how the hell to fix it, and if not, why not.
Take the Shepherd Express from the other week—filled up with the stuffing of nothing but positive gasbagging about all the best things in and about Beer Burg based on what the readers seem to think. Cripes, what’s a guy like me supposed to say about that? Hey, you tell me.
And then I’ll tell you’s that just ’cause people may think someone or something is the best doesn’t mean it couldn’t still be better. Take this very newspaper. I’ll bet a buck two-eighty that a bunch of these readers think the Shepherd is the best newspaper in town. So be it. But don’t think for a second that it couldn’t be better, and I’m just the guy to critically tell you how; so let me jump-chart a couple, three modulations in the key of progress I got in my head for this gazette, and it goes something like this:
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An Expense Account for Art K.: Let’s face it, I need to have my fingers on the pulse of this town or I can’t do my job, but this town has its fingers wrapped ’round my wallet but good, lo, these days. The whereabouts I need to inhabit in order to get the goods on what Shepherd readers abso-focking-lutely need to know are now biting me upwards $6-7 bucks for a glass of beer plus sidecar. Topnotch writing costs dough and if I can’t afford to hit the streets and roam the halls of power, how the hell else am I supposed to dig up stories like the following court case:
In a recent ruling the divorce court judge said, “Mr. Krockakowsky, I have reviewed this case very carefully, and I’ve decided to give your wife $275 a week.” The husband rose and said to the judge, “That’s very fair your honor. And every now and then, I’ll try to send a few bucks myself.” Ba-ding!
Some Cheesecake Snapshots Once in a While: I’ve been harping for years about the smartness of this suggestion. It works for some newspapers out of England and that’s where your Shakespeare’s from, so all I’m saying’s they know something we don’t, ain’a? Plus, it would certainly give a guy like me an extra bonus for cracking these pages.
OK, More Hard News Wouldn’t Be the Worse Thing: What you call your hard news doesn’t seem to help hawk newspapers these days, what with your Taylor Kardashian, weather and reality TV bullshit first in line for the media coverage. But then again, this is the Shepherd. We’re not in the business of selling a focking paper. We’re in the business of giving it away, and some people will pick up a free paper even if there’s news in it, I kid you not.
However, I suggest that if we must do news that it have a semblance sense of professional balance. So if we cover a story about how ill-informed our current crop of high-school freshmen seem to be as a study suggests, I’d like to see it stabilized by a story like how this tribe in Zimbabwe was pissed ’cause they’d hardly been getting any rain, so they decided to “set for an expedition into surrounding forest to destroy witches’ charms hung on trees to destroy lightning.”
Hey, just because you’re not embroiled in a U.S. public school system doesn’t mean you still can’t be a focking idiot. We need to report truth and fact and more of it, probably.
And before I forget, kudos to all the “Best of” winners I alluded to earlier, but I got some news for you’s: The Beatles’ original drummer had the last name of “Best,” and where is he now? Fock if I know, ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.
