Art Kumbalek
I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? And gosh darn it, what another embarrassing couple, three days I had to suffer through last week, what the fock. You sports fans will remember that our National Football League executed their totally sexist yearly draft of eligible athletes and other assorted warm bodies. And once again in the eyes of the NFL, apparently I’m not seen to be included in either category. Thanks for nothing.
You see, me and my pals are into what-you-call this fantasy football, and our fantasy is to hear our names called on draft day. But every year it’s the same damn deal: I bivouac by the phone waiting for a jingle from somebody’s headquarters. I have a nice cocktail. I sit some more. My buddy Little Jimmy Iodine will call sometime Saturday afternoon, “Hey, you go yet Artie?” “Not yet,” I always got to tell him.
“What round they in?” he asks. “They’re in the fifth or sixth now and I’m on my seventh, Jimmy.” Somewheres about the 23rd round (mine, not theirs), even I get the picture that I’ve completely dropped off the board. Now when you fall this far in the draft, you can bet your buck two-eighty that you won’t even get a free-agent invite to a training camp, and that includes labor camps in Cam-focking-bodia. I must really have some kind of really bad rep, that’s all I can figure.
Seems to me, a lot, if not all, organizations and what-have-you have concerns with the “character issue” when it come to me, so fock ’em. I’ll tell you, I should’ve gotten hardcore into the music biz. That’s the one racket where character flaws are still counted as a plus. And when you’re in a band, the only drafts you have to put up with are the four or five you slam down between sets, besides the one you get when you sit in the back of the crappy van you got to ride in to get to your next big gig in Bumfock, gateway to Jerkwater.
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So let me wrap this up by asking you’s a little question: What does a stripper do with her asshole before going to work? Give up? Drop him off at band practice. Ba-ding!
And how ’bout this May monsoon we’ve been having around here, ain’a? Like all of a sudden we’re in Indochina for crying out loud. I tell you, if I wanted to live in Bangkok I’d get into the sweatshop business, but I don’t so I won’t.
But I tell you, when it comes to new ideas for the transportation of the public, forget about light rail and forget about a fancy-schmancy streetcar. If this daily drenching keeps keeping up, I got the notion to tell the mayor to start thinking about “light ferry,” you betcha.
It’d be a hell of a lot more fun for these commuters to float into work on a boat than it would be to suffer the claustrophobia of being crammed into a caboose like a bunch of sardines. If they do light ferry the right way, en route to your crappy job you’d be able to do a little fishing off the deck or maybe get in on some spirited shuffleboard action. Ahoy matey, even if you had the misfortune of having to sail all the way out to Honkeysha County (shiver me timbers), doesn’t light ferry sound loads more focking fun than a train or goddamn bus where all you can do is look out the window and pray some fat, smelly guy who likes to gab doesn’t park his butt next to yours? You bet your boots it does.
And blow me down if the light ferry wouldn’t be a hell of a lot cheaper to get rolling than the rail or streetcar, since you wouldn’t have to mess with laying all that track and everything else that goes with it. With light ferry, just dig out a bunch of trenches from here to there deep enough to float boats in it, let all this rain fill ’em up and you’re ready to say “bon voyage.”
Anyways, don’t hold your breath for the launching of light ferry. Just think of it as another one of my million-dollar ideas that’ll never set sail ’cause it’s just too goddamn practical not to mention utilitarian to boot. The focking Republicans never go for an idea like that.
Hey, what’s say we wrap this essay on a high note for a change. Lord Byron (would’ve been 226-years-old this year if he’d taken better care of himself), once wrote something that’s as true today as it must’ve been back in his day:
Man, being reasonable, must get drunk;
The best of life is but intoxication.
Amen. Let’s get roving, first round’s on you ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.
