Art Kumbalek
I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So listen, with another presidential “debate” come and gone, I offer a newsy bit to start your day/mid-week/whatever (with all due respect to the late, great Sentinelcolumnist Alex Thien) that I came upon over by that Milwaukee Journal Sentinel outfit the other day:
(Cripes, that blue-ass link looks perhaps a tad unwieldy for you’s readers in this day of age so copy and paste, but what the fock do you expect from a guy who grew up in the TV days of three B&W channels and the Milwaukee Braves playing nine over by the County Stadium.)
In the event that my hyped-up link is ferkakta, here’s the headline:
Ron Johnson speculates without evidence U.S. government could have been involved in Trump assassination attempt
(Ron Johnson, U.S. senator, sounds like a member of this government thing to me, ain’a?”)
Spoiler alert:
He [“Duh! Doo Dumb Ron] said there is a “grotesque level of corruption” in the federal government and referenced Richard Nixon and the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
“When you don’t know the federal government involvement in the JFK assassination, when you really don’t know what happened with Nixon [what the fock, we don’t?]… that might’ve been the second coup,” Johnson said. “The first coup is you take out Kennedy, the second coup you take out Nixon, and then you take out Trump.”
And how ’bout this other coup, which is the election of idiot multi-millionaires to the U.S. Senate who never took an American civics class they could pass to become a natural citizen?
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Anyways, let’s take a break from the politics as I offer you a dive into the life and a time of Art Kumbalek, perennial candidate for whatever elective office you got coming up like a bad burrito from the night before.
And so it goes something like this, I kid you not:
Yeah yeah, I hear it’s near mid-September, summertime gasping for breath, and for our young scholars the curtain has decidedly come down on another sunny season of shoplifting, burning bugs with a magnifying glass and getting their focking bike stolen.
Yes sir, it’s “back to school.” The three most dreaded words in the English language for those of a certain age, like the one I used to be back when I served hard time at Our Lady In Pain ‘Cause You Kids Are Going Straight To Hell But Not Soon Enough. Which reminds me of a story: Kid comes home from his first day at school. His Ma asks, "What did you learn today?” Kid says, “Not enough. I got to go back tomorrow.” Ba-ding!
So I ask myself, what magic power might I muster from my meaty pen that could balm the dread carried by these kids, these kids who can’t read for crap these days I’ve heard? Beats me, but a remembrance flows through me now, like crap through a goose. (Cue the harp glissando.)
It was some years back that I was sitting ’round the Uptowner tavern/charm school waiting to order a nice cocktail. I prayed the bartender would let me run a tab I could pay at a way later date, ’cause I had just come from a brief appearance at my annual charity event—Art Kumbalek’s Cookout for Orphans Who Happen to be Shut-ins to Boot—and I got to tell you, donations really sucked that year and on top of that, a few kids actually showed up. “What the fock are these orphan kids doing at a cookout?” I wondered. “They’re supposed to be shut-ins for christ sakes.”
This unexpected turnout forced my volunteer gal to have to dash out and purchase a couple of buns and wieners, which further ate into the proceeds. While waiting for her to get back so I could take off, I wondered why I bothered to lend my name to this event ’cause year after year my cut of the take was less and less, not to mention the fact that some kids were now actually showing up. In fact, you could say I was ready to pull out of the whole deal and you’d be right, right that is until I felt an irritating yank on my trousers and met little Joshua I-forget-his-last-name in the process of investigating who or what the fock was yanking on my pant-leg like it was some kind of cow’s teat for crying out loud.
“Excuse me, sir? Are you Mr. Kumbalek?” asked this kid with a face that never met a washcloth. “Because if you are, I’d like to thank you for putting on this picnic. My mom used to see your articles in a newspaper and says there aren’t many role models like you around anymore. Someday I’d like to read and write, too. Do you ever write anything for kids?”
We chatted awhile. I asked him about his mom, what she looked like and if she was married or single, stuff like that. I was starting to get a little antsy so I told him I had to get going ’cause I had some other fish to fry. He looked up at me with eyes that were open like a kid’s eyes look when they’re open, and then upped the ante by raising that pair of open eyes with an open mouth. I’ll never forget the last thing he said to me: “But do you know, sir, when the focking wieners are going to be here?”
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“Yeah kid,” I thought as I choked something warm and rubbery back down my throat, “one of them’s already here.” And so I hightailed it out of there before I got a case of sunstroke, hightailed it without ever learning what it was that’d been yanking on my trousers.
So as I’m sitting there waiting to order my cocktail, some guy at the bar asks, “Hey, you’re Art Kumbalek from that Shepherd.” After making sure this dickweed wasn’t some kind of cop, I owned up to the accusation. He said he was a media consultant and that some of his crew were fooling around the other day and figured that I “skewed old” when it came to anybody who’d read one of my essays. I said I’d rather “skew old” than “screw old,” or maybe it was “skew old” rather than “screw his wife—again,” fock if I can remember. The guy got a big kick out of that one and bought me a tall and frosty and said I really ought to think about appealing to an audience, especially a younger one.
As I sat there long after the knob left, spending the bar-change of his I copped whenever he got up to go to the can, I remembered my meeting little Joshua what’s-his-name earlier that day and when he asked if I ever wrote anything for kids. What the fock could I write for kids? Something about the new school year? Something like: “Kids, don’t listen to these assholes in suits arguing about what’s better, a public school or a private one. Only you know what’s best and what’s best is no school—focking-A!”
Somehow that didn’t seem good enough so I thought some more and finally came up with something better I’d like to write from the heart for the kids:
School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of dull, unintelligible tasks, new and unpleasant ordinances, brutal violations of common sense and common decency.
Too bad it had already been written, ages ago by this guy named Mencken, newspaperman, editor, critic out of Baltimore. And you’re right, he’s also the guy who wrote: Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
Yet, something for the kids to chew on? Advice, that’s all I can think of, something one day they’ll come to appreciate: “Never, ever, mix good booze with soda if you know what’s good for you,” ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.
