From the Corner

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Art Kumbalek

I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So listen, again I’m suffering from what they call post-NCAA Men’s College Basketball Tournament letdown syndrome, also known as PNCAAMCBTLS. Heard of it? Yeah, there’s no TV ads with drugs for it either.

And in my depressive state, I was sitting around with nothing better to do than to think I ought to decide pretty damn soon to decide about from which side of the presidential candidacy pot I ought to pee—in it, or on it.

And whenever I got an important decision to pull off, I first seek counsel with my personal brain trust, already ensconced within the friendly confines of The Uptowner tavern/charm school, majestically crammed onto the wistfully historic corner of Humboldt and Center. Come along if you’d like, but you buy the first round. Let’s get going.

Ernie: What the fock, where’d the bartender go?

Little Jimmy Iodine: Hey, Artie! Over here. Put a load on your keister.

Art: Mornin’ gents, what do you know, what do you hear.

Herbie: I heard the reason all the trees in Kentucky lean to the south is because Tennessee sucks and Ohio blows.

Julius: Hey Ray, what does a Kentucky Wildcat do on Halloween?

Ray: Pump kin, ain’a?

Art: Listen fellas, I need to tap your smarts on an important decision I got to be mulling over on soon.

Emil: What the hell is “mulling”?

Herbie: “Mulling” is one of those words you only ever find in a newspaper headline. I think it means same thing as “bullshit.”

Ernie: Artie, you want to “tap” something important? How ’bout you get behind the goddamn bar and tap me a focking Leinie.

Julius: Artie, if what you’re “mulling” is about paying back that ten bucks you owe me, I say yea before I mull to kick your butt ’round the block and back but good.

Art: Hey! One for Julius over here. Yeah, put it on Ray’s tab.

Little Jimmy Iodine: So what you trying to decide, Artie?

Art: To run for president or not.

Herbie: Oh christ, not this again. How many times you run now, five, six?

Ray: Yeah, about the same number as votes he’s gotten all put together, ain’a?

Little Jimmy: Isn’t it a little too early to decide, Artie?

Art: Might be. But in 2016, I didn’t officially declare ’til dang near middle of October, and I learned that two weeks to raise some dough and get my platform together for the people to stand on just wasn’t enough time.

Ernie: Hold on, Artie. I thought you’s were going to run for the county sheriff.

Ray: Did you say “for” or “from”?

Art: I might bail on that race, whenever it is. I’d probably need a driver’s license to be sheriff, and I don’t have the dough to get one. For christ sakes, how would that look, the county sheriff trying to pull over a speeder from the back seat of a focking freeway flyer?

Little Jimmy: I don’t think you should be president, Artie. It’s too dangerous. We haven’t had an assassination for a while, but you’re just the kind of guy some crackpot would hanker to take a pot shot at, I kid you not.

Herbie: You know, with civil wars all around the globe everywhere, I wonder what Abe Lincoln would say if he came back today.

Ray: First thing he’d say: “Hey, how did that show turn out anyways?”

Emil: What the fock are you talking about?

Ray: Listen numbnuts, Abe got shot watching a play, I think it was Damn Yankees. Never saw the end of the goddamn thing. For christ sakes, didn’t you ever have any history?

Julius: He got shot by one of the actors, ain’a? Probably Abe was a little hepped up from the winning the Civil War and he was heckling or something.

Ernie: Or maybe he was trying to open a candy wrapper and it was really loud. Actors hate that kind of crap when they’re trying to act.

Little Jimmy: You’s guys, he got shot from the back by the actor John Wilkes Booth, who was not cast in the production Abe was watching 154 years ago this April. He sure was a great president, even if he was Republican.

Herbie: You don’t hear Republicans talk much about Honest Abe these days, ain’a? They’re always jerking their beefaroni about Ronald Reagan this, Reagan that, but you sure don’t hear them talk about the Ol’ Railsplitter.

Art: I’m guessing that’s ’cause he was for a government of the people, by the people and for the people. That means all the people—not just the rich focks.

(Hey, it’s getting late and I know you got to go, but thanks for letting us bend your ear, ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.)