Green Bay Bozo

×

Expand

Art Kumbalek

I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So listen, I hear America’s Dairyland despairing, the varied requiems to Super Bowl dreams I hear. To have parked one’s fat dupa on the davenport in front of the TV, week after week after week, girded to reap the spoils of ultimate Green & Gold glory, the true Packer patriot must now retreat and suffer a relentless way-off season of household chores, bingier drinking, wife-nagging, kid shit, economic ass-shafting, political candidate balder-focking-dash plus other malarkey—through the remaining winter, the spring, the summer—’til the fall, when once again the possibility of validating one’s sense of self-worth through the achievement of well-compensated others looms large upon the field of Lambeau in the Emerald City by some kind of bay. Sucks, don’t it?

You bet I feel your pain, and so I turn toward my performance of good works directed at healing the fear-of-the-future and recent hurtful past of the Packer nation. And where else to start than over by the Uptowner tavern/charm school situated at the Hysteric Corner of Center & Humboldt, where I’m sure the grieving process is deep in the bucket. Tag along if you like, but you cover the first round. Let’s get going.

Julius: Fock the Supreme Court. I remember a couple, three years before their “people” decision, in Austria they had a court case that ruled a chimpanzee cannot be declared a person.

Emil: I’m glad that’s settled. Cripes, maybe this evolution is getting out of hand. First, we’re supposed to be descended from the monkeys, now you got people who want to say the chimps are equals. Next thing you know, we’re going to be their slaves or something. I just might vote for that Christian anti-evolution Huckabee guy after all if he runs, ’cause come to think of it, I don’t remember any mention once in the Bible that Jesus sent a monkey a Father’s Day card.

 Little Jimmy Iodine: I’ll bet that Austrian judge in that case thought about Pinocchio when he made his ruling about the chimp. Sure, you want to be a real boy and yeah, you can smoke a cigar, roller skate and wear a hat, but you can’t be a real person unless you talk to a cricket and get swallowed by a whale, ain’a?

Ray: All I know about monkeys is what I see at the zoo and I tell you, no real person can jerk-off with the frequency and intensity like those monkeys do, with the exception of the occasional white, eighth-grade suburban male.

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

Art: Hey gents. What do you hear, what do you know.

Ernie: That Packer game, Artie. We’re all depressed. We feel like we got ass-banged by Seattle, and not in a good way.

Herbie: Sorry fellas, my wife’s the reason why we lost the game. I’ve told her at least a hundred times that when the Packers are ahead in a fourth quarter and she brings me a brewski, to not pop the top. I have to pop the top. Sunday, five minutes left to play, she brings me a beer and pops the top. What the fock?

Art: Jeez louise, you guys. Pull yourself together. When the glum gloom of despair descends ’cause your team blew the big one, the only way you can help yourself is by taking it absolutely personal and to remember what Socrates once said: “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

Little Jimmy: That works for you, Artie?

Art: You betcha. And so I examine myself, and I ask myself: Hey, so the Green & Gold stunk up the joint? Big focking deal. I’ve stunk up plenty my share of joints, you better believe it. So the Packers are losers at home sometimes? Again, big focking deal. I’ve been a loser at home anyplace I’ve hung my hat called home. So the other guys scored more often in the red zone? Yeah, tell me about it.

Ernie: Sounds to me that Socrates only got it half-right, Artie. He should’ve said: “The unexamined life is not worth living, but hey, the examined live could just as easy turn out to be crap-through-a-goose-in-a-bowl, to boot.”

Art: Now you’re catching on. Wear your disappointment like a badge, and lead through example. I will never ever get over the utter disappointment that I will never ever get to meet Marilyn focking Monroe. But listen guys, how many times do I have to tell you that “Life is a crap casserole and all you can do is strap on the ol’ feedbag and say ‘GO PACKERS.’” Are you with me? And if that’s not enough, let me ask you this: What does a stolen car and the Minnesota Vikings have in common?

Ray: Beats me, Artie.

Art: No focking title.

(Hey, this is going 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.)