Fall for Me

I'm Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain'a? So here we are, September, what the fock. I've been trying to cool my heels for this month since April, and now finally I hear my favorite season coming up the stairs to knock on my door, I kid you not.

And speaking of fall, I'd be remiss not to acknowledge the swell time I had last weekend when The Mighty Brewhaus Polka Kings came by to haul me out to Colgate, Wis., where together we had the pleasure to entertain a masterfully gracious group of folks at their Oktoberfest jubilee. Now, as a guy who rarely travels west of the Milwaukee River or north of Hampton Avenue, I couldn't begin to tell you's how to find Colgate on a map, but I do know that I fell head-over-heels for the place, I kid you not.

So yeah, got a big election coming up Tuesday and all I need to know who to vote for is this quote I read somewheres the other day: “In the late 1970s, the richest 1% of American families took in about 9% of the nation's total income; by 2007, the top 1% took in 23.5% of total income.” O-U-C-H! And anybody talking about more tax cuts for the wealthy can kiss my bruised ass right before I tell them to go straight to hell where they belong.

I don't know how this election's going to turn out nor if I'll need to up my blood pressure meds; after all, it's the primary and not the final solution slated for the first week of November. But still, I was thinking about getting a nice haircut for the occasion, since I've always heard that when you look good, you feel good.

But screw it, I'll keep my hat on 24/7 and save the buck two-eighty I'd have been fleeced of at the barber's and instead visit my local tavern-keeper and invest my hard-earned dough in support of an even more foolproof notion: When you drink good, you feel good.

Besides, haircuts are stupid. After you get one, there is no way not to look like an absolute dickif not the second you climb out of the chair, then 10-15 years down the road when some kid sees a photo of you with that haircut and says, “Jeez, this guy actually wanted his haircut to look like that? What a dick.”

And that's why I always wear the orange hat, so that no one can see what kind of haircut I've got on, 'cause the one thing a guy who's big in the public eye like me can least afford is to look like a dick. Sure, an Adolf Hitler was able to pull off looking like a dick and yet maintain some kind of credibility, but that was 70-80 years ago for christ sakes, back when people were more accepting of the “dick look” worn by members of their families or race than they are in today's hopped-up fashion-crammed times.

Back then, seems to me most regular people maintained a quaintly cavalier attitude toward the importance of fashionit was what was underneath the bad haircut and crappy taste in wardrobe that was cause for concern, that got one's dander up to grab for the lickin' stick.

But today, ignoring your own appearance seems to be the very first surefire way to get a taste of whup-ass from the can labeled “Public Weal.” Come to think of it, “when you look good, you feel good” is an old-school notion. The new school says, “When you look good, I feel good. When you look bad, I feel like kicking your ass.”

Maybe this attitude comes from the same place that the “road rage” comes fromthe notion that your business just happens to be also the business of any Tom, Dick and Dickless who feels like making it their business 'cause they think they can do it better. And the reason people think they can do your own business better than you can goes back to all this claptrap about positive self-image and “feeling good about yourself” that those godless hippies began brainwashing our young people with in the early '70s 'round about the time this Earth Day hoopla started up, ain'a?

So now we got a society in which each individual member has such a robust and positive self-image that they believe they are in-focking-fallible and any bonehead blunder by somebody else is received as a sarcastic spit-in-the-eye to the beholder's sense of self-perfection. But rather than turn the other cheek, they would prefer to run the offending bastard off the road and into a tree, or at least punch his daylights out.

Cripes, I should've run for office this time out, now that we've got bona fide American candidates claiming to the electorate that they answer to a “higher power,” 'cause I answer to one too, what the fock.

Mine says we'd have a much more civil society we could all enjoy if only we would tread more carefully whilst carting a heavy load of guilt for every goddamn thing under the sun, past, present and future, and to acknowledge that we each die too soon on this inevitably doomed planet, to be forgotten, forever; but not that there's plenty of gemütlichkeit to be had while we're here, 'cause I'm Art Kumbalek and I told you so.