I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? OK, a couple, three things here but first: Holy focking schnikes, how ’bout the frigidity of this weather for christ sakes. Hey, for those of you’s who got caught with your winter pants down and now got the heebie-jeebies, wondering how the heck you will ever persevere as if you just sucked down a warmed-over mug of gluten-full Ebola? I simply advise you to do what me and my crowd do to get through the winter weather. Two things: Crank up the thermostat and mix another hot focking toddy. Survival guaranteed.
For me, I have only perennially fond regards for our winter seasons—November through maybe the first half of May—and you should too. To wit: No goddamn insects to bug the bejesus out of you just because you stepped outdoors, and no jagamuffins driving around town with the windows rolled down so as to blare and share their particularly poor taste in music with me, the pedestrian. If only we could make it be winter each and every day of the year, ain’a?
And about this new arena facility for in the Downtown, listen, I got a better idea. How about Beer Town thinks really, really big for a change? To make Milwaukee winters more enjoyable if not tolerable for the whiners, I propose a grand project whose completion would make the Great Wall of China, the Great Pyramid of Giza and the Mausoleum of Mausolus at Halicarnassus look like beanbags. I propose the construction and erection of a nice climate-controlled dome to envelope the City of Milwaukee proper. It would put a lot of people to work, be a destination point for tourists and retirees and attract a lot of favorable press. With a climate-controlled dome, no need for a $500 million basketball arena. They could play on an outdoor court that ought to cost about a buck two-eighty. And the suburbs can build their own domes, screw ’em.
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And how ’bout those uber-depressing election results from the first Tuesday of this month where now those greasy goofball Badgerland Republicans got supreme control of every gosh darn thing with the possible exception of my leaky colon.
OK, enough’s enough. I am now thinking of starting a support group for those sick to death of trying to look on the bright side of things, who are tired of hoping for good things to happen. You see, I, Art Kumbalek, am a recovering blue-sky high-octane sunshine on your lolli-focking-pop kind of kitten-up-a-tree optimist. How ’bout that? And I have to live each day the rest of my life knowing that at any time I could slip and have a cheery thought powerful enough to send me back through that door of insanity and unreality, making my life unmanageable.
(Hey, speaking of “kitten,” I’m reminded of a little story: A teacher is explaining biology to her fourth-grade students. “Human beings are the only animals that stutter,” she says.
A little girl raises her hand. “I had a kitty-cat who stuttered,” she volunteered. The teacher, knowing how precious some of these stories could become, asked the girl to describe the incident.
“Well,” she began, “I was in the back yard with my kitty and the rottweiler who lives next door got a running start and before we knew it, he jumped over the fence into our yard!”
“That must’ve been scary,” the teacher said.
“It sure was,” the little girl said. “My kitty went ‘Fffff, Fffff, Fffff’... And before he could say ‘Fock,’ the Rottweiler bit his head off!” Ba-ding!)
So back to my support group, I’ll tell you’s the road of my recovery has been long. It was 1959, I was a lad when our Braves lost a one-game playoff to the L.A. Dodgers for the opportunity to go on to the World Series. It was then, simultaneous with the final out, that I made a searching and fearless inventory of myself and the real world I live in and realized that maybe life does suck after all. A little more than a year later, when the Packers, charging down the field, lost 17-13 to the Eagles in Philadelphia ’cause time ran out, there was no “maybe.” Life sucked.
And my support group is not just some kind of men’s thing ’cause really, how far can you really get sitting around complaining about how there’s no topless hardware stores and how they keep jacking up the fine for parking in handicap zones? You tell me.
And then I’ll tell you that Art’s Doom of Actual Reality Group is for everybody of a sex—there’s plenty of snuggling room under my big top. Come one, come all, and repeat after me: “Expect to lose, expect the worst, and you can never be disappointed.” And if that doesn’t make you feel better, then the hell with you’s ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.
