Freezin’ Greetings

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Photo illustration: Dave Zylstra

Art Kumbalek

I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So listen, for those of you’s readers eagerly anticipating to peruse my annual much-ballyhooed Look Back/Watch Out Ahead gala essay, you’ll need to keep your snowpants on until my once-a-month gasbag entitled “From the City That Always Sweeps” soon shines up on the webpage you’re eyeballing right now.

And don’t forget about the fabulous monthly Shepherd Express hand-held printed publication available for easy pickup at markets and such here-and-there all around the town. You will not be disappointed. Look for it!

Anyways, how ’bout we start here with a little clean-up in aisle 2025?

I very much hope you had a nice Christmastime and whatever. Me? I don’t know. A guy like me can feel a little left out of things—especially when it comes to Santa. Hey, I like Santa just as much as the next knobshine, but he’s always tied up doing stuff with kids—he’s got no time for me.

The Fat Man’s calendar is booked solid but good the holiday time of year. It’s Breakfast with Santa, Brunch with Santa, Storytime with Santa, Face-Painting with Santa, Barnyard Balloon Animals with Santa. For christ sakes, I wish one of these years he’d carve out a little time for guys like me and make himself available for a couple, three adult activities for a change.

Like how ’bout Poker with Santa, Packer Game with Santa, Shots and Beers with Santa, Boys Night Out at the Gentlemen’s Club with Santa. I’m sure the jolly tub of lard would enjoy any one of those activities a heck of a lot more than having a bowl of focking oatmeal at the crack of dawn with a crowd of kids who still have a difficult time negotiating the nuances between a pair of training pants and a diaper.

So how ’bout we traverse these years in our lap with a little free-formish poem I recently penned, like a regular Longfellow Wadsworth; although, I prefer to be clean-shaven so as to prevent the days-old residue of dined mince pie creating a biological hazard within the uncared for nest of facial hair, or something like that.

A Kumbalek Beertown Winter

1. Lo, what me and my crowd do to survive the months named with too many syllables is very simple. Of two things: Crank up the thermostat and mix another couple, three hot focking toddies, as we travel down a road always taken. Survival, you tell me.

2. I haveth only perennially fond regards for our winter seasons, lord, this Upper Midwest—late October through early May—past, present and future. No 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, walking his lonely street. If only we could make it be winter each and every day of the year.

3. To think large, or to think dinky? It is to quander. Allow us to make Milwaukee winters more enjoyable if not tolerable. I propose an Ozymandian project whose completion would make the Great Wall of China, the Great Pyramid of Giza and the Mausoleum of Maussollus at Halicarnassus look like beanbag. I proposeth 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. The suburbs can build their own domes, screw ’em, to Hades and back.

So happy focking New Year. And, of course, tradition forces me to remind you’s that I pray that you have not been a fool’s fool and made a declaration of any of those ferkakta New Year’s resolutions. As I am obligated to mention each and every year: Resolutions are for quitters, and quitters never win. So don’t be a loser. Screw all those New Year’s resolutions and be a winner, capiche?

But before I go, I should mention that for Christmas, I received a nice little story from my buddy Little Jimmy Iodine, but I already had it so I thought I’d re-gift it to you, ’cause what the fock. Here, try it on:

So on Christmas morning this cop on horseback is sitting at a traffic light, and next to him is a kid on a shiny new Schwinn. Cop says to the kid, “That’s a very nice bicycle you’ve got there. Did Santa bring that for you?”

The kid replies, “You bet, officer.” And the cop says, “Well, next year tell Santa to put a taillight on that bike.”

The cop decides to give the kid a lesson for Christmas and proceeds to issue a $20 bicycle-safety violation ticket. The kid takes the ticket, wishes the cop a merry Christmas but before he rides off says, “By the way, officer, that’s a nice horse you’ve got there. Did Santa bring that to you?” Upholding the spirit of the season, the cop says, “Yes son, he sure did.”

And the kid says, “Well, next year tell Santa to put the focking asshole at the back-end of the horse instead of on top, would you?”

Ba-ding! ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.