Old Yellers

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Art Kumbalek

I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So listen, here we are coming up on the middle of May and I’m too depressed to whip out an essay for you’s this week. I’m ready for fall. What with all the high heat and stupidity hovering just past the springtime horizon―not to mention the number of jagwagon Republican candidates looking to grab a political seat somewheres who fling their feces in disbelief of the evolution of species here in the year 2024, what the fock.

So’s it’s all I can do to get up over by The Uptowner tavern, where I can take a good gander at mine own political options and enjoy a nice cocktail with my campaign brain trust to boot. Come along if you’d like, but you buy the first round.

Little Jimmy Iodine: Hey, I don’t have insurance either, but a check-up at the doctor’s is a no-win situation. Say you’re feeling kind of OK but it’s time for your regular physical, so you go and the doctor gives you a gold-star clean bill of health. What have you accomplished?

Emil: Fock if I know.

Little Jimmy: You’ve kissed off a couple, three hours of your precious time, not to mention the big-ass bite your checkbook just took. It’s like putting on a pair of brown shoes in the morning and then asking the first guy you pass on the street to tell you what color your shoes are. He says, “Your shoes are brown, fockstick.” And you say, “Thank you. Here’s a check for a $250 bucks.” Well that’s just crazy, I don’t care who you are.

Ernie: You got a point there, Jimmy.

Little Jimmy: On the other hand, you go to the doctor’s for an exam, he checks your chart and says, “Uh-oh, golly. We got a situation here.” Well, now what the heck? I’ll tell you, now you’re going to be depressed ’cause you got bad news and that sure can’t be good for your health or your pocketbook, ain’a?

Ray: Hoping to get good news out of a doctor can be a crap-shoot. I knew this one guy, goes for a check-up. Doctor says, “Well sir, after examining your tests, I’m giving you a ‘ten’¾to live.” Guy says, “Ten? Ten what, doctor¾years? Months? Days?” Doctor says, “Nine… eight… seven… six…”

Herbie: And speaking of crap-shoot…

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

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

Emil: I heard that lady gun-ho governor from one of those Dakotas shot her dog ’cause it was untrainable and a pain in the ass.

Herbie: Yeah yeah, I was married once to someone I found to be untrainable and a royal pain in the ass. Did I load up the Remington so as to settle the connubial contretemps? No sir. Got a lawyer. Divorce. Life continued.

Julius: The wife is telling me she wants to sign us up for such a thing, some kind of dancer-cize class. You get to dance with the exercise to boot, she says.

Art: You got to be jerking my beefaroni. Dance and exercise? What the fock, how can dancing possibly be good for you. You ever see these ballerinas? How can possessing the physical stature of a prisoner-of-war possibly be healthy for you’s? Those gals need to eat more, and I don’t mean “dining,” I mean “chowing.” Skip the tutu; put on the feedbag.

Herbie: Dancing is one of those human baggage things we Homo sapiens still lug around from prehistoric times, like appendicitis. Dancing was discovered by the cavemen, who often stepped on sharp objects ’cause they had yet to evolve the necessary brainpower to invent shoes or the flashlight.

Ernie: Exercise can kill a guy, what the fock. Look at all these knobshines keeling over left and right from this jogging malarkey. All exercising does is to put the unnecessary wear and tear on your muscles, your bones, and your what-not.

Emil: And I’ll tell you’s guys, whenever I’m on my way to the tavern and I see some nutbag jogging and it’s like 90-focking-degrees, I say there’s a guy who doesn’t know from an honest day’s work for an honest day’s buck two-eighty, no sir. Probably yaks on the phone all morning, then goes out for a nice sandwich, comes back to the office and yaks on the phone some more, and then calls it a day, what the fock. I’ll bet you’s the Neanderthal man never came back home from a day-and-a-focking-half of hardcore hunting and gathering and told the wife to hold supper for a bit ’cause he wanted to put on his shorts and go focking jog, ain’a?

Art: Any you’s guys see in the papers that some kind of researchers with fossil records are saying the modern humans 40,000 years were porking the Neanderthals, who happened to be a different focking species?

Ray: A different species? Big focking deal. You ever been to a Tijuana gentlemen’s club?

Little Jimmy: You kind of got to feel sorry for those Neanderthals. I don’t know much about them but sees they were the trailer trash of the human line of evolution, then one day all of a sudden they’re scoring some booty from some hot piece of new species and the next thing they know, they’re extinct.

Ernie: I read somewheres the Neanderthals weren’t fully erect.

Ray: No shit Sherlock, you ever seen a Neanderthal gal, with or without makeup, you wouldn’t be either.

Art: I’d sure like to shake hands with the first ape-type guy who had the good sense to walk about on only two legs. Focking-A, at the time the rest of his gang probably considered it only a cheap parlor gag, but I wish I had a time machine so I could go back and give this genius some kind of reward for having the presence of mind to understand that a couple, three million years in the future, mankind couldn’t be running around on all fours when he would need two of them to pause the remote, light a cigarette, start the car, or point to someone in the audience at a political debate.

Little Jimmy: It’s really a shame. I just wish that the video camera would’ve been discovered before the cavemen found the wheel or invented fire so that we’d have an accurate record of this stuff and be able to give credit where credit’s due, ain’a?

(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.)