Let's Have One More

I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? And because it’s that time of year, again I’m reminded that the only thing people want to read are the directions on a can of bug spray, and they do so with the attention span of a United States president who lost a popular vote by a boatload. So I’m declaring my independence from delivering a full-blown essay this week, what the fock.

Besides, you’re probably too busy keeping up with the World Cup soccer to bother with anything I’ve got to say. Me? No way, José. Now, if they could use more balls than just one, like maybe four or five; then maybe they’d have a focking score you could write home about and I might warm up to the game.

I’ve always maintained that if they want the American viewer to watch the TV soccer, they ought to add a little mystery and danger, say, before every match they plant a landmine somewheres on the field. Now maybe somebody’d step on it, and maybe not. But they’d sure have my attention, yes sir.

And gosh darn and damn it, just last week as I was handing out kudos to a couple, three readers for sending my way encouraging words, I plum forgot a nice note from reader David S. who enjoyed a quote I used by way of the great Groucho Marx—a quote the reader had once used in a song he had written, I kid you not.

So David, here’s a pair of Groucho quotes perhaps for future songs you got percolating:

“I’m not crazy about reality, but it’s still the only place to get a decent meal.” Ba-ding!

And here’s one where Groucho, who left us in 1977, whips out his crystal ball and assays the 2016 presidential election result: “He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot, but don’t let that fool you. He really is an idiot.”

Oh Julius, how I miss you.

OK, one more: “I intend to live forever, or die trying.” Yes sir, that’s the spirit. Ba-ding-ding-ding.

And about this immigration brouhaha hullabaloo here in the Amber Waves of Grain, it surely appears to me that God must be clean out of grace for the shedding on thee, what the fock. Allow me to quote an old proverb from sunny Spain: “A man who prides himself on his ancestry is like the potato plant, the best part of which is under ground.”

And this: Who better to quote than my favorite ancient Greek philosopher, Anonymous? “More important than where you are from is where you are going”—which, for the politically fanaticized ass-hat kingpin white-collar criminals in this presidential “administration” I pray would be straight to hell and not soon enough, you betcha.

Hey, and speaking of Greece, don’t 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, but I’ll tell you one thing: When it comes to trend setting, those ancient Greeks from the fossil age had it down stone cold. Every single one of their top celebrities were known by one name only, as some of ours are today in the modern times—take Euripides for example, 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.

But 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 old Greek’s words are 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 all, chances are pretty damn good pop’s a heck of a wreck through good intentions only, what the fock.

Anything’s possible, ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.