My Head All Full of Stuffin’

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Art Kumbalek

I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So listen, as I launch into this week’s hullaboo of an essay as I while the hours, and my head I’d be a scratchin’, consulting with the rain, I stand but mostly sit jacketless as I got my shirt sleeves rolled up to just beneath my prancing elbows like a regular election prog-focking-nosticator, national weather-dick predictor of bad-ass weather or U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan ready to shovel another load of bullshit. Yes sir, I’m the apparent hard-working guy yearns to see. My bare forearms prove the pudding, what the fock. 

And you betcha, I hear America’s Dairyland despairing, the varied requiems to dashed Super Bowl dreams. To have parked one’s fat-ass butt on the davenport in front of the TV, week after week after week, girded to reap the spoils of ultimate Green & Gold glory, the true Packer patriot must now retreat and suffer a relentless way-off season of Sunday’s household chores; they being some of these: bingier drinking, wife-nagging, kid shit, economic ass-shafting, political candidate balder-focking-dash plus other malarkey—through the winter, the spring, the summer—until the fall, when once again the possibility of validating one’s sense of self-worth through the achievement of well-compensated others looms large upon the field of Lambeau in the Emerald City by some kind of bay. Sucks, don’t it?

You bet I feel your pain. And so rather than whip out a full-blown blathering essay about how Republicans are so abso-focking-lutely full of crap, or to wonder in amazement at how many screws are abso-focking-lutley akimbo within the so-called brain of one Trumpel-thinskin, I turn rather toward my performance of good works directed at healing the fear-of-the-future and recent hurtful past of the Packer nation.

And I can’t think of a better place to start than over by the Uptowner tavern/charm school situated at the Hysteric Corner of Center & Humboldt, where I’m sure the grieving process is deep in the bucket. It could be today, it could be yesterday, it could be tomorrow, perhaps even tomorrow’s tomorrow. But what the fock, tag along if you like, but you cover at least the first round, I kid you not. Let’s get going.

Julius: I kid you not, it was in all the papers. In Austria they had a court case some years ago that ruled a chimpanzee cannot be declared a person.

Emil: I’m glad that’s settled. Cripes, maybe this evolution-thing is getting out of hand. First, we’re supposed to be descended from the monkeys, now you got people who want to say the chimps are equals. Next thing you know, we’re going to be their slaves or something. I might actually vote for some Christian anti-evolution nut after all, ’cause come to think of it, I don’t remember once in the Bible that Jesus sent a monkey a Father’s Day card.

Little Jimmy Iodine: I’ll bet that Austrian judge must’ve thought about the Pinocchio when he made his ruling about the chimp. Sure, you want to be a real boy and yeah, you can smoke a cigar, roller skate and wear a hat, but you can’t be a real person unless you talk to a cricket and get swallowed by a whale, ain’a?

Ray: All I know about monkeys is what I see at the zoo and I tell you’s, no evolutionized person can jerk-off with the frequency and intensity like those monkeys do, with the exception of the occasional white, eighth-grade suburban male.

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

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

Ernie: That game last Saturday, Artie. We’re all depressed. We feel like we got last minute ass-banged by San-focking-Frisco wouldn’t you know, and not in a good way.

Emil: We could’ve won that game, Artie. Coach LaFleur’s biggest blunder was late in the game when he should’ve sent Love to the showers and put in Bart Starr.

Herbie: You talk like a sausage. They couldn’t let Starr play. He’s been sacked six-feet under for four-focking-years, you fockstick. Tough to throw a pass when you’ve passed.

Emil: Listen knobshine, I don’t care. You can’t expect to win a goddamn football game if a Hall-of-Famer’s not on the playing field, I don’t care how banged up he is. That would be like The Three Stooges going to a pie fight and telling Moe to stay home.

Julius: Focking-A. Bart Starr’s a quarterback who knew how to win in freezing cold Arctic weather like they get on Neptune. These sissy players today who think they’re so tough ’cause they come to play with no sleeves and bare-armed when the temperature is barely under the 32. You want to be tough? Come out and play with no helmet on, you candy-asses.

Art: Jeez louise, you guys. Pull yourselves together, please. When the glum gloom of despair suddenly descends ’cause your team lost a big one, the only way you can help yourself is by taking it absolutely personal and to remember what Socrates once said: “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

Little Jimmy: That works for you, Artie?

Art: You betcha. And so I examine myself, and I ask myself: Hey, so the Green & Gold stunk up the finale? Big focking deal. I’ve stunk up plenty my share of joints, you better believe it. So the Packers are losers in the playoffs? Again, big focking deal. I’ve been a loser at home, on the road, anyplace I’ve hung my hat. So the other guys scored more often in the red zone? Yeah, tell me about it.

Ernie: Sounds to me that Socrates only got it half-right, Artie. He should’ve said: “The unexamined life is not worth living, but hey, the examined live could just as easy turn out to be crap-through-a-goose-in-a-bowl, to boot.”

Art: Now you’re catching on. Wear your disappointment like a badge, and lead through example. I will never ever get over the utter disappointment that I will never ever get to meet Marilyn focking Monroe. But listen guys, how many times do I have to tell you that “Life is a crap casserole and all you can do is strap on the old’ feedbag and say ‘GO PACKERS.’” Are you with me? And if that’s not enough, let me ask you this: What does a stolen car and the Minnesota Vikings have in common?

Ray: Beats me, Artie.

Art: No focking title.

(It’s getting late and I know you got to go, but thanks for letting us bend you ear ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.)