The Jiggers and the Clowns

I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? Listen, it’s been suggested I slap together the Positive-Cheerful-Vivacious-Enthusiastic Feel-Good-and-Thankful Essay of the Year. I’d like to tell you’s that the loser now will be later to win, that the slow one now will later be fast, and the first one now will later be last. Yes, a rosy forecast I wish I had, but you don’t need a weather man to know which way the wind blows—from any direction, it just simply blows big time, what the fock.

So, that’s it. No essay this week. Instead, you’ll find my booze heels to be wandering over up by the Uptowner tavern/charm school where I pray the fellas are full of glad tidings I can maybe use for next week. Come along if you like, but you buy the first round. Let’s get going.

Julius: Yeah, Thanksgiving. The wife’s nephew and his kids are coming over by us, and I got to keep an eye on these kids ’cause they’ve got sticky vandal fingers. Last time they visit, the snotnoses took my entire beer can collection over to the Miller Compressing and spent the dough on action figures.

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

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

Emil: So how ’bout those Packers. Do they suck or what?

Art: No. I’ll tell you what sucks. What sucks are the knobs who piss and moan about how the Packers suck.

Ernie: Up yours, Artie. The fans got rights to complain if they focking feel like it.

Art: Fock the fan and his rights.

Ernie: Yeah but Artie, did you watch the TV newscasts at night when the news people talked to all those fans in the taverns about how the Packers and their defense look so suck-butt?

Art: No, I did not watch the newscasts talk to any fans; but I did see them talk to a bunch of nitwit assholes whose biggest challenge in life is to get up out of bed at the same time five days a week in order to go to a crappy job of which chances are good a circus animal could perform just as satis-focking-factorily. But then somehow on football Sunday, nitwit fan asshole squeezes into a green item of outerwear with a “G” on it and miraculously transforms into some kind of strategic Knute Rockne rocket pigskin scientist? Give me a break. Hey, these football players are trained professionals with varying degrees of college attendance.

Herbie: Speaking of nitwit assholes, quaintly focking odd that only the show business seems to have trained professionals, isn’t it? Take your quantum mechanics racket, for example. You never hear someone say that only a “trained professional” is able to deal with a probalistic description of nature through the application of a system of mechanics at distances of atomic dimensions, power of 10 to the little-10m or less, blah-blah, do you? I can only figure that must mean they let any ol’ Joe Blow Mr. Jones handle that shit.

Art: Let me tell you this: To get shit-faced in the tavern and bitch about stuff you don’t know a damn thing about is easy; but to explode your knee seven days a week on the gridiron is hard. When those Packers put on the pads, their objective is to give approximately 110% from top to bottom. Of course, the precise properties of objects are, in principle, not entirely calculable; or like they say: That’s show biz.

Little Jimmy Iodine: I don’t know what you guys are talking about but I’ll tell you’s, I watched the Packers-Vikings game and I actually got a ray of brightness to be encouraged.

Ray: You got to be jerking my beefaroni.

Little Jimmy: I kid you not. I really think they can still win six, seven games this year—eight is a little optimistic for my blood—but I do think they’re a lock for third place in their division, what the heck.

Julius: All I know is that up there by Green Bay, the times they are a’changing, ain’a?

Ernie: Didn’t somebody write a song about that once?

Herbie: Yeah, this Bob Dylan character. I saw this TV show, and somebody called him a visionary.

Emil: What the fock’s a visionary supposed to be?

Little Jimmy: That means somebody special who sees things that aren’t there.

Ray: Hey, after 15, 16 cocktails I see things that aren’t there too, so big focking deal.

Emil: I don’t remember that Bob Dylan ever wrote a song about the Packers. The knob was from Minne-focking-sota, ain’a? He’s probably a Vikings fan, so fock ’im.

(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.)