June Buggy Ride

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Photo by demaerre - Getty Images

Art Kumbalek

I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So listen, about this summer solstice on the June 20, it’s a bad news/good news deal for me. Bad news: June 20 is the first—not the last, unfortunately—focking day of summer with way too many to follow, chock-packed with heat, stupidity, racket and bugs. Good news: Our scientists have discovered that days become shorter post-solstice, so a couple, three more spins of the moon around the Earth and glorious fall, with its more civilized seasonal sanity, will be upon us. And it can’t come soon enough, I kid you not.

And because it’s this time of year, I’m reminded that the only thing people want to read are the directions on a can of bug spray. So I’m declaring my independence from delivering a full-blown essay this week, what the fock.

But before I go, it’s true that we are wading into the festival season here in the City That Always Sweeps. You betcha, a guy or gal can’t even blow his/her nose without somebody putting up a tent on an asphalt parking lot somewheres, hire a cover band, have a raffle and cook up some brats to celebrate. 

Which reminds me, I hear another Summerfest is here, the 56th of these shebangs, good lord. And I’ve pored over if not rifled through all the guides and lists and recommendations. And it occurs to me that the people who run that joint have gotten deaf from all that loud music hellabaloo they got all the time there, and for the few of you’s who don’t know why I think that way, I’ll tell you’s.

They have gone to deaf because for years-in and years-out, as a professional courtesy, I have begged, over and over, for the inclusion of three simple obvious money-makers to their big-gig grounds: The bourbon tent, the topless tent for gentlemen, and the big-time wrestling ring-stage—like it would really kill the hippies that run that fest to offer a little something for which the aging common man to enjoy himself by? It may come as an unexpected thunderclap to the marketeers, but we’ve been known to judiciously drop a couple, three bucks here and there, now and then, once in a-while, for entertainment purposes, I kid you not.

But no, everything’s got to be for the young people all the time today—a world-and-a-half away from when me and my crowd were members of that kind of entourage.

What the fock, in the three-TV-channel days of our black & white youth, ’tis a rare-ass occasion it ’twas when there was a good goddamn something to do on those excruciatingly long summer days besides getting yelled at. For christ sakes, I haven’t even been able to look at a neighbor’s lawn since 1962, how ’bout that?

Many a long, beautiful, summer day was spent standing around in some kid’s dinky backyard locked in the passionate debates of our day—like whose older sister had the biggest jugs. Or, we made plans for the future—like how the hell to come by20-focking-cents for the latest Fantastic Four pulp page-turner and an ice-cold bottle of Squirt to go with it. And we’d speak of the mysteries of the opposite sex. Our source material was the bra ads in the occasional Sears catalog that popped up in the outdoor mailbox as opposed to today’s educational indoor internet search for “car-washing bimbos.” No focking fair!

Were those the days? You tell me.

And then I’ll tell you’s to please not forget about Greek Fest out at State Fair Park this weekend. Geia sou! Yeah yeah, the Greeks have been having a hard time of it lately I hear, but I’ll tell you one thing: When it comes to trend setting, the ancient Greeks from the olden times had it down stone cold. Every single one of their top artists and celebrities were known by one name only, as some of ours have been today in the modern times—your Cher, Madonna, Beyonce and what-not.

Cripes, those Greeks, they had their Aristotle, Sophocles, Plato, Anonymous, Euripides, Yanni. Anybody remember an attached surname, like Aristotle “Costas,” or Plato “Smith”? Me neither.

But I got to give a shout-out for Mr. Euripides, one of their hot-shot playwrighter guys from the theater, sort of the David Mamet-type of his day but without all the dirty focking language. And why I think of him as we round that middle-corner of June with this year’s Father’s Day recently past, is that ol’ ’Rip once wrote something I can’t get out of my head:

The gods visit the sins of the fathers upon the children.

Yeah, focking swell. Hey, there’s a sentiment bound to make a guy or gal rush right out on any given Father’s Day to go buy a goddamn necktie or gift-wrapped box of pipe cleaners for the old gent who wears the pants in the family, ain’a? And to think Eurip’ wrote that before the trouser was even discovered. What a world.

Although it is true what they say—that you can pick your friends but not your family (which, by the way, blows big-time)—I truly hope that what Euripides wrote more than 2,400 years back ain’t necessarily so. Let us not forget that a lot of the science findings those methuselah Greeks invented were later to be proved as nothing but a steaming pile of so much bull-shish kebab.

But if the alter-kaker Greek’s words still ring true, then you got to do your best to think that maybe it’s not your old man’s fault you are as unwittingly screwed up as he is—so blame it instead on the gods for the world going to hell in a handbasket but good, generation after generation after generation after eon after eon. After all, chances are pretty damn good pop’s a heck of a wreck through good intentions only, what the fock.

And so in conclusion, a little bon mot heads-up for you’s new June grooms:

A little boy asks his father, “Daddy, how much does it cost to get married?'” The father sighs, “Don’t know son, I’m still paying.” Ba-ding!

Forward, as we must go, ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.