I'm Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain'a? So listen, maybe it's the year of time, and maybe it's the man of time, but I find myself not to be all OMG that the movie High School Musical 3: Senior Year is now available On Demand, courtesy of your pay-perview cable TV beneficence, so sue me. I'm sure it's a nice thing for the young people, and what the fock, 40 years hence it'll make for a nice remembrance. But for a guy like me, a musical remembrance 40 years thence would be your Woodstock hippie fest back then in your upstate New York; you know, the one where bomber death planes riding shotgun in the sky turned into butterflies above our nation? Yeah, that one. The Woodstock was a RBFD (really big focking deal) at the time, I seem to recall.
And yet you'd think a 40th-anniversary would spurn some kind of celebratory reunion recreation of which I've not yet heard. Could be that there's not enough survivors to mount such a thing-don't forget, at Yasgur's farm in 1969 we were half-a-million strong, not to mention billionyear-old carbon to boot-and of survivors, among them whom remains game to get naked and gambol in the mud? You tell me. And then I'll tell you, that if there is to be a 40-year reunion gathered at the garden this August, and there were to be a documentary film composed of the happening, I hear this: "Attention people! There's some bad Metamucil going around, so be cool, people. The box lunches are on their way. I repeat: The box lunches on their way. Also, Crosby, Stills and… what's-his-name will be right here on our stage as soon as the 'copter carrying their dentures and walkers lands; so be groovy, people, be groovy."
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Yeah yeah, 1969. That year had it all: the hippies and Woodstock; a Kennedy dipping more than just his wick at Chappa-fockingquiddick; the Chicago focking Cubs taking it all the way 'til September until flushing themselves down the toilet (a shocking surprise then, history had proven they'd be flushed by the end of April); me, figuring that Richard Nixon as president rather than the unobtainable Bobby Kennedy (RFK) would swing this nation deep into the rough with no practical shot to the green until decades later; AND some astronauts shooting golf on the focking moon. That was a BFD back then, apparently-a guy on the moon, who didn't find anything while there, you know, like a cure for cancer or something. No, he was just there, in space, like the last time I was in Kenosha.
But come this July, there will be a bunch of TV knobs asking you this: "Do you remember where you were when those guys got out on the moon forty-focking-years ago?" And I'll say, "You betcha knobshine, I remember. I was in front of the TV watching a guy go on the moon 'cause back then there was nothing else to watch on TV 'cause there were only three focking channels and they were all showing the same damn thing, what the fock, are you kidding me?" So yeah, 1969, I was boobtude-side as the "one small step for man" happen to occur, but I got to tell you, the thing I really remember from the broadcast is all those mission-control geeks sitting around in the Houston central headquarters and that I'd never seen so many bad haircuts in one focking room before.
And speaking of haircuts, I just heard that Broadway put up a revival of the 1960s so-called tribe-rock musical Hair. Focking swell. The '60s: Culture commandeered by a bunch of overeducated white kids from the suburbs with too much disposable allowance and way too little of something called a sense of humor, whilst all the time that disposable dough they had was snatched by the white guys in suits of a different stripe.
And then later, in a stunning turnaround, the flower-power people did commandeer the suits so's as to become themselves the big-cheese at the banks and insurance companies and country to boot. Easy to be hard. And 40 years later the country still sucks. Let the sunshine in. Go figure.
So fock the '60s, give me the '50s anytime- Milton Berle, Little focking Richard, bullet bras, Cadillac fins, Polynesian rec rooms, bourbon Manhattans, Chesterfields and porterhouses 'round the clock and back. Class, baby. Some say the '50s were boring.
Well, guess again, dickweed. The Fifties had Marilyn Monroe. The Sixties had Joan Baez. Oh yeah, and the '00s have those who "twit" (twit, a noun, British slang for idiot). Do I need to say more? I think not, 'cause I'm Art Kumbalek and I told you so.
