Art Kumbalek - Halloween Mummy
I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So listen, the other day, let’s call it September 30, I was wont to flip the page of my monthly kitchen-wall calendar, Strumpets of the South Seas, ’cause that’s the kind of guy I am—bravely organized, punctual, a seeker of useful information like which is the correct goddamn month of the year currently underfoot.
I was informed that here we be already in October, 2025, for christ sakes.
I got to tell you’s, seems just the other load of years ago when I was a katzenjammer and forced to study what-not over there by Our Lady In Pain That You Kids Are Going Straight To Hell But Not Soon Enough, this crisp time of year informed me that “Braves” meant Milwaukee stomped the baseball world, and “I Like Ike” was the bee’s knee’s when it came to a snazzy presidential hotcha-chotcha campaign slogan-ad broadcast on the 10-inch screen Stewart Warner black-and-white TV where’s you almost needed binoculars to focus in on “Uncle Miltie” Milton Berle parading ’round a national TV broadcast whilst wearing a lady’s dress, lipstick-make-up and beauty-parlor hair. Those were the days. Remember?
But we’ve still got a Columbus Day? I thought a tribute to that jagwagon had gone the way like the statue on the village green of Gen. Robert E. Jefferson Stonewall Beauregard Johnny Reb Davis Lee. Isn’t it supposed to be known totally as Indigenous Peoples’ Day, or at least Discovery Day by now?
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Yeah yeah, Cristoforo Colombo “discovered” the New World whilst sailing the ocean blue, but personally, I wish he’d discovered a cure for the common cold, what the fock.
And yet, by mid-October I expect to be laid low with the old-school Columbus Day post-traumatic stress disorder. Happens every year—you wait for weeks in anticipation of the big day, it finally comes, you blessedly receive no medical bills in the mail on that Monday and then it’s over. It’s enough to blow any guy off course, I kid you not.
(Hold on a second. It’s the focking phone; got to pick up, could be a doctor with test results sure to be scary… OK, it’s my buddy Little Jimmy Iodine. Relax, smoke ’em if you got ’em, I’ll be right back.)
“Yeah, so Artie, don’t forget to come over Trick-or-Treat morning to help me make the mashed potatoes, gravy and scrambled eggs for the kids when they come by later to ring my bell with their costumes.”
“Thanks for the heads-up, Jimmy. Yeah yeah, I remember last year, this little kid who’s got one of those what-you-call speech predicaments knocks on my door. “Bick or beet,” he says. I say, “And what are you supposed to be for Halloween?” Kid says, “A birate.” I say, “So where are your buccaneers?” And the kid says, “On the side of my buckin’ head, fockstick.”
“I’ll tell you’s, Artie, this Halloween time can be spooky ’cause it underlines that you never know what’s coming to burn your butt-ski but good in a minute, an hour, a day, next week, month or year. We’re all like that boat The Titanic. Each and every one of us has some kind of big-ass personalized iceberg out there somewheres just waiting to tear us a new one sideways in a sec, something the farthest thing from your mind, I don’t care who you are.”
“Really, Jimmy?”
“You betcha, Artie: Goliath had his David. Adam had his apple. Jesus had his Judas. The Persians had their Marathon. Mama Cass had her chicken bone. Rome had its Visigoths. Europe had its Plague. Garfield had his Guiteau. Dewey had his Truman. The U.S. had its Ho Chi-Minh. Mary Scot had her Elizabeth Virgin. Jimmy Hoffa had the trunk of a mid-’70s GM product. The Archduke had his Sarajevo. William Holden had his pointy cornered end table. Custer had his Big Horn. Frank Zappa had his prostate. Nixon had his 5 o’clock shadow. Nixon had his plumbers. McKinley had his Czolgosz. Socrates had his hemlock. Fonzie had his shark. Impressionists had their Expressionists. John Gilbert had his Talkies. Bobby Rydell had his Beatles. Trotsky had that ax in the skull, o-u-c-h, ain’a? Focking Nazis had their Russian winter. Abbott & Costello had their IRS. God had his Big Bang. Stevie Ray had his helicopter. Nellie Rockefeller had his secretary. Lincoln had his “American Cousin.” Raskolnikov had his old lady. Davy Crockett had his Alamo. James Dean had his Porsche Spyder. Galileo had his Inquisition. Liston had his Clay. Johnny U’s Colts had Broadway Joe’s Jets. Oscar Wilde had his Marquess of Queensbury. Hauptmann had his Lindbergh baby. Kobe had his whirlybird. Carter had his Ayatollah. The Big Bands had their Les Paul guitar. Marie Antoinette had her cake. Caesar had his Brutus. The Wicked Witch of the East had Dorothy’s slippers. And Artie Kumbalek will have his…”
“What the fock, Jimmy. Hey! I get the picture.”
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“Okey-doke, Artie. See you for the Trick-or-Treat. Later.”
Good lord, October, time to lock the doors, lower the windows and have a nice cocktail and say “Go Pack!” ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.
