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Art Kumbalek Mount Rushmore

I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So listen, hate to say that I’m not up to whipping out a fully blown essay for you’s this week. I’m still recovering from the annual Presidents’ Day costume gala me and the fellas have over by the Uptowner tavern/charm school. The presidential scavenger hunt never gets any easier—and if you don’t believe me, some night around 11 p.m., go out and try to find some wooden teeth somewheres; then you’ll know what I’m talking about, what the fock. 

Anyways, I had a thought the other day, you’s may have as well, about a Gary Larson-like “The Far Side” panel. And here’s the deal: Two married dinosaurs after spending another long day slowly foraging the flora and fauna available in their thereabouts, are resting comfortably wherever it was they rested comfortably back then 66-focking million years ago (research continues), I kid you not. 

As Mom dinosaur prepares an hors d’oeuvres of itsy-bitsy soon-to-be what would be mammals (We Rule!) in a couple, three million years, Pop dinosaur is reading the daily paper, and suddenly looks up and asks Mom: “Hey tons-of-hon, did you just hear a loud bang?” Ba-ding! 

And now in the modern age from those multi-millions of years later, I sit at my kitchen table within my dinky apartment as I rifle though a boatload of medical bills and seek answers to what-the-fock and who-the-fock, I say to the remembrance of ghosts passed, “Hey, anybody smell something burning?”  

Me and the ghosts came to a bi-partisan meeting at the crossroad named quandary, or something like that. One side maintained that the burning smell was on account of a poorly extinguished Pall Mall 100 I tossed into a trash bag near my back door, the other side maintained that it’s a mighty whiff of the burning of the Constitution wafting all the way from D.C. 

Yeah yeah, like our firefighters don’t already have enough on their platter, what the fock. 

So where was I? 

Hey, here’s a newsy bit for you’s, by way of msn.com:

Headline:

Alien life breakthrough as astronomers detect 'coherent' radio signal from distant planet 

Swell, focking radio signals. But I’ll tell you’s, if I hear one more ad spot about a guy’s piss-ass testosterone level, how my windows suck and need to be replaced, where to go to buy a new focking truck, which ambulance chaser can screw me the least, who puts the proof in a new roof; I’m changing the station and I don’t care what planet they’re coming from.  

Read the story here: 

Alien life breakthrough as astronomers detect 'coherent' radio signal from distant planet 

Anyways, financial wolves are at my door, but let me put a bow onto me and the guys’ annual Presidents’ Day costume gala. 

Presidents’ Day is the highlight of our year ’cause that’s the day that coincides with our social event of the year—our gala costume confab in which we get masqueraded up as a U.S. president and then convene over at the Uptowner tavern/charm school where a bartender is usually kind enough to award a shot of bourbon on-the-White-House for whichever of us looks the most like the president he’s supposed to look like. And I tell you, things can get pretty testy ’cause we’re all competitors, and this year was no exception.  

There was quite a brouhaha when Little Jimmy Iodine got really upset ’cause he would’ve won but got disqualified on a technicality. What happened is Little Jimmy came as William Henry Harrison, our ninth president who croaked one month after he got inaugurated. Not only was it the best goddamn William Henry Harrison you could ever hope to see, but it was creative to boot, ’cause Jimmy came as ol’ “Tippecanoe” a month and a day after the inauguration—he even smelled like a guy who’d been dead for 24 hours, I kid you not. 

But when the bartender wanted to know what the hell it was stinking up the place so bad, Jimmy said, “It’s Benjamin Harrison from the Old Dominion state of Virginia, sir!” Little Jimmy had William Henry mixed up with his grandson-president, which is understandable, what with all the excitement and hard cider we were logging onto the focking bar tab.  

But in our group, getting mixed up on your presidents is grounds for disqualification from the costume contest. And to make it doubly hard on Little Jimmy, the bartender then had him impeached from the premises ’cause he smelled worse than the election of 1888. 

The bartender ended up giving the shot to my buddy Ernie who came as Thomas A. Edison. Some of the scholars in our group questioned the historical accuracy of Ernie’s outfit, not quite recalling ever seeing a photo of Edison wearing knickers not to mention any accomplishments of the Edison administration. I’ll tell you’s, if Ernie looked like a president at all, it was Ben Franklin. But what the fock, we were all sick of the contest by then and we agreed that it was time to stop arguing and to start drinking like Warren G. Harding. 

I went as James Polk this year. I chose Polk, our only president to die from diarrhea as far as I know, ’cause he’s been getting good marks from historians of late, plus I wouldn’t have to wear a fake beard all night; so what the fock. And as the distinguished former president from North Carolina, I felt rather privileged to field a host of questions from assorted patrons who wandered in and out through the evening, like, “Hey, did the looney bin let out early tonight?” and “Hey asshole, buy me a focking drink.” 

And so, we closed the evening with a toast to our proud state’s public school teachers and to Derek Bok, former Harvard president, who said, “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” Focking-straight-A. 

Yes sir, seems to me we got a political party in this country trying “ignorance” on for size these days and gosh darn if they don’t like the way they look. I’d like to think it’s a passing fancy and in time may go, as did the hoop skirt, powdered wig, Nehru jacket, purple Mohawk, white hood, arm band. But they say there’s no accounting for fashion so what the fock, ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.