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Art Kumbalek in spacesuit with alien
I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So listen, just so you’s know, I dropped in this very week on this ferkakta planet three-quarters of a century ago from who the fock knows where. Smack-dab in the middle of what Earthlings refer to as the 20th century, I kid you not.
Korean War, Mao Tse-tung, Harry Truman, Josef Stalin, India/Pakistan, twilight time for the Big Bands, Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard on the silver screen, Milton Berle on your dinky TV black-and-white Stewart-Warner, streetcars, Yankees win another World Series, Frankie (“Rawhide”) Laine crooning from the Top 40 radio perched atop the kitchen refrigerator. Remember?
And now, in the year 2025 another Halloween hullabaloo and daylight saving time has come and gone, which always reminds me that another wintertime is right around the corner down the block. And this season, what with the climate change schmutz, I plan to practice what-you-call your “safe winter.” You can bet your bottom’s dollar that no focking way am I leaving the house without my rubbers ’cause you never ever really know when Ol’ Man Winter will rear his frosty head and administer one of his patented massive snowjobs, and that sure as hell is no time to be caught with your pants down, as they say.
And come to think of it, I’m still not sold on this “safe sex” ba-focking-loney. Everybody says you ought to “practice” it. OK, I’m practicing, I’m practicing, but heyyy, when the hell’s the actual ballgame supposed to start, I’d like to know?
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What the fock, maybe I’m better off riding the bench after all ’cause “safe sex”?—talk about your oxymoron. “Safe sex” is like saying “protected skydiving with no chute.” One way or another, it’ll kill you but good for sure.
“Safe”? No way such a thing in a million years. Seems to me now, that the sisters back at Our Lady In Pain That You Kids Are Going Straight To Hell But Not Soon Enough were right. Sex is stupid. It’s nothing but some kind of bad drug that people with no esteem take. It’s some kind of weird-ass plug-in tool for knobs of either sex who are into power manipulation, I kid you not.
And who in the gosh darn heck ever decided that sex is some basic human need of life, like eating and drinking? You got to be jerking my beefaroni. If that were so true, how come married people aren’t dropping like flies right and left and right? Let’s put it to the test: Half of you’s don’t eat for six months and the other half of you’s forego the conjugular hoochie coochie of the consenting adult. Be a wiener-free winner: Celebrate the celibate.
In the olden days, they didn’t have sex. They had fornication. It was a nobly necessary thing, like for your barnyard animals. But then your Greco-Renaissance artists dreamed up this somewhat naked countess lady sex stuff to sell their art. Then centuries later advertising shysters came up with even more sex illusions so you’d watch stupid TV shows and buy stupid crap.
But today with the sex, you’ll either die from it, or possibly even worse, have kids from it and you know what that’ll cost on a yearly basis? Now you can’t afford food or drink, so you’re still going to die, what the fock.
Oh yeah, and speaking of the coupling in marriage:
A wife goes to see a therapist and says, “I’ve got a big problem, doctor. Every time we’re in bed and my husband has the climax, he lets out this ear-splitting yell.” Therapist says, “My dear, that’s completely natural. I don’t see what the problem is.” The wife says, “The problem is this, doctor: It wakes me up!”
So, where am I?
Planet Earth, I hear, but soon to enter another dimension, “a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition.”
Sign me up.
Whilst I wait for my personal rapture, here’s a tune I’ll be whistling past the graveyard, you betcha. What could that be? Thanks for asking.
Why, it’s a tune by George Gershwin and his lovely wife, Ira, (yes sir, some jokes never get old, but some do, like this one) called “Bidin’ My Time” (I remember that the John Schneider Orchestra always did a nice rendition of it), written for the 1930 musical Girl Crazy, which also featured American Songbook classics “Embraceable You,” “I Got Rhythm” and “But Not For Me,” what the fock.
Since “Bidin’ My Time” is not a song you’re going to hear on the radio every day or even once in a while, here’s the lyrics, just so you know:
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(Verse)
Some fellows love to tiptoe through the tulips
Some fellows go on singing in the rain
Some fellows keep on painting skies with sunshine
Some fellows must go swinging down the lane
(Chorus)
But I’m bidin’ my time
’Cause that’s the kind of guy I’m
While other folks grow dizzy
I keep busy
Bidin’ my time
Next year, next year
Somethin’s bound to happen
This year, this year
I’ll just keep on mappin’
And bidin’ my time
‘Cause that’s the kind of guy I’m
There’s no regrettin’
When I’m settin’
Bidin’ my time
I’m bidin’ my time
’Cause that’s the kind of guy I’m
Beginnin’ on a Monday
Right through Sunday
Bidin’ my time
Give me, give me
Glass that’s bright and twinkles
Let me, let me
Dream like Rip Van Winkle
He’s bided his time
Like that Winkle guy
I’m chasin’ ’way flies
How the day flies
Bidin’ my time
Good lord, it just occurred to me that some of you’s may not be all that familiar with the melody, so this is what you do: Go to that YouTube on your internet, then look for the following:
Sarah Vaughan:
Ella Fitzgerald:
Judy Garland (clip from the movie version of Girl Crazy)
So, there you go. Hope things are ’S Wonderful by you’s. Keep your candles lit as will I, ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.
