The Ocean Blew

×

Expand

Art Kumbalek

I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh man manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So listen, no essay here. I’m off to see my gang over by the Uptowner tavern/charm school, majestically crammed at the corner of wistfully Hysteric Humboldt Boulevard and the fabled Center Street, for our annual Columbus Day get-together where we shall toast day and night to the notion of discovery. Come along if you’d like, but you cover the first round. Let’s get going.

Ernie: So did I hear the scientists think they discovered water on Mars?

Julius: Saltwater. Good luck mixing a nice cocktail with that schmutz.

Ray: Water—big focking deal. Discover bourbon on Mars, now you got some news.

Julius: Or an old, rusty can of Hamm’s.

Ray: Or a ’57 Chevy.

Ernie: Jimmy Hoffa.

Ray: Sharon Stone’s underpants.

Herbie: Listen Emil, I’m saying so what if Eric the focking Red discovered America instead of Columbus.

Little Jimmy Iodine: It wasn’t even called America in the olden days.

Herbie: Exactly my point, so, so focking what. Those Vikings sure didn’t stick around ’cause otherwise we’d all be speaking Norski now, ain’a? I don’t know if they ran into any so-called natives here of the time then. Maybe they did and maybe they got their butts kicked and that’s why they didn’t hang around. I don’t know and I don’t care.

Emil: Nobody kicked Viking butt. Ever. Where’d you hear they got their butts kicked?

Herbie: My focking point, dipstick, is maybe there wasn’t anybody here, anybody they could rape, pillage and plunder, so the Vikings landed here and it seemed a lot like Norway and they figured, hey, who needs this.

Ray: What do you mean nobody was here. What about all the Indians? You think all of a sudden one day they came from another planet? Came from Mars?

Ernie: It’s possible.

Herbie: And given what happened to them, I’m thinking for their own sake, they’d been better off if they’d stayed.

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

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

Emil: Ernie thinks the Native Americans might’ve come from Mars.

Little Jimmy: I heard some TV show that says the Indians might’ve come all the way to the Western Hemisphere from Asia somewheres, but some of the people in the South America say “No way, Jose,” the people in Asia came from South America.

Julius: That’s ridiculous. Who in the fock would rather be in Asia instead of on the beach in Rio, especially if you had to focking walk all the way.

Herbie: Again, my focking point is there’s no such goddamn thing as “natives,” ’cause everybody all the time has been moving around and slaughtering whoever didn’t like them all of a sudden being there. You just happen to hear about the focking Europeans the most because when they started taking over and slaughtering, the printing press had been discovered so there’s lots of public records and newspaper articles about it.

Emil: I don’t know, Herbie. I never heard of nothing like people from the Congo or somewhere traveling to take over Switzerland for their resources. How do you explain that?

Ernie: Hey, who’d want to? That’s how you explain it. Why would they need cuckoo clocks and tiny, varnished gingerbread houses in the Congo, you focking nitwit.

Julius: So why would anyone want to go all the way from, say, where Peru is, go north up Mexico, our west coast, cross the focking Bering Land Bridge and all the way into Asia? What, just so they could see the Taj Ma-focking-hal? Doesn’t add up.

Emil: That’s right. Don’t you think at some point, like when they hit Alaska they would’ve said, “What the fock, I’m freezing my nuts off. Let’s go home.”

Ray: No shit, Sherlock. And then how the hell would the first bunch that went all the way over to Asia get more of their people to come? They’d have to march all the way back to Peru and say, “Hey, you guys, you know if you walk a really long, long ways, like a couple, three years, you can end up in a place that’s a whole lot like where we are now. Want to see?”

Herbie: My focking point, exactly. And what was going through the minds of the ones that decided to just stay around the North Pole, so that years later they would become Eskimos? They decided to stay so they could corner the world market in igloos? Focking-A, even the focking Spaniards didn’t want to go that far focking north when they came a’conquering and slaughtering with the conquistadors.

Little Jimmy: So true. That’s why so very few Eskimos are named Jesus.

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