Art Kumbalek
I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So listen, here we are near-mid-summertime the month of July and my head is a’spinning like a took a ticketed trip on a ferkakta Tilt-a-Whirl ride supposedly safely maintained by a guy with Nazi-tatooed biceps (not to mention smackin-doodled the forehead, god bless Jan. 6 America).
So allow me, in my patriotically partisan way, to offer a personal early howdy-do to the Republican/Maga crowd soon to swarm Our Town—The City That Always Sweeps—intent to nominate a douchebag by the name of Donald Trumpel-thinskin to be the leader of our land.
Willkommen.
And ’natch, I’ve heard and read that this red crowd of wannabe fascists are imagined to offer an economic boon to our fair city. Swell!
I reside in a Downtown dinky apartment east of the river, and so I expect to receive a check in the mail for my share of the “boon” no more than a couple, three weeks from the closure of the goondoggle known as the Republican National Convention. If not, I intend to reconnoiter a legal avenue to locate what’s coming to me, what the fock.
Anyways, time for me to light up a tasty Pall Mall filter and refurbish my cocktail glass—a strong pour of Old Grand-Dad with a cube or two and a nod toward a splash of the aqua, I kid you not.
In the meantime, I suggest you peruse the following from Melanie McFarland, award-winning senior culture critic, over there by https://www.salon.com/:
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"Stupid is as stupid does": The Gumpification of America, 30 years later
(Here’s an excerpt so as to wet your whistle):
Oklahoma’s Superintendent of Public Instruction issued a directive requiring all public schools to teach the Bible and the Ten Commandments—specifically, as he told PBS News Hour, “the role the Bible played in American history, dating back pre-Constitution… all the way up through Martin Luther King Jr. and civil rights movement.”
Good lord.
Okay, got my nicotine, got my bourbon, and I ain’t foolin’ around. Forward.
And speaking of Downtown, sacré bleu! It’s that time of year for the Bastille Days Drink Beer in the Street and Oui-Oui in Les Boulevard Fest.
And as in the past, this French fest coincides with the running-of-the-bulls shit they got going over in your Pamplona, Spain. And what explains this bull-running’s near religious appeal? A writer in The New York Times once said, “… the festival is one of the few occasions in the modern world where the average person can confront death in such a short, sharp and concentrated way.” So why not during the Bastille Days we periodically let loose a couple, three rampaging bulls at the swell corner of Jefferson & Wells so as to attract the wealthy international traveler bent on confronting death? You tell me.
And then I’ll tell you if that’s not exciting enough for the thrill-seeking travellers in this modern world, how ’bout we strip naked the adventurer to Our Town and then tape hundred-dollar bills to his forehead and bare-butt as he runs up Center Street, down National Avenue, traverses North Teutonia and then meanders quaint East Brady Street at 4 a.m. Olé!
And so I remind you’s that here we be mid-July so my monthly wall calendar, “Strumpets of the South Seas,” tells me. Seventh month of the year, the traditional time of year for the workingman to take a piss-ant seven days off from labor-hell and blow it away on a so-called vacation, vacances, pardon my French.
But as a guy my age I no longer “vacation” these days. My excursions currently are limited to, and do not exceed, a trip to the bathroom, kitchen sink, couch and a periodic trek to the food mart for a slab of baloney, a loaf of white bread and box of popsicles; although, there is the occasional bus/Uber ride journey to the doctor’s office for an unexpected case of what-the-fock.
Yeah yeah, even in the past, my vacations never turned out the way I’d prefer. You want to know what they were like? Akin to what happened to this guy I know:
One day this guy I know is on his way to lunch and walks right by a snazzy travel agency with a sign in the window that says, “Four-day cruise down the Murray River—$40 all inclusive!”
He can’t believe the price, and a nice relaxing river cruise was exactly what he had in mind for vacation that year. So he races into the agency, slaps two Jacksons down on the counter and tells the agent he wants to book a Murray cruise. Agent says, “Very good, sir,” whips out a baseball bat and knocks the guy stone-cold out.
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So he comes to and finds himself strapped to a floating log racing down a white-water river. A short ways down, he sees another guy strapped to a log rolling down the other side of the river.
“Forty-dollar Murray cruise?” he shouts out. “Hey, you betcha,” says his fellow cruiser on the other side.
“This blows. I’ll bet we don’t even get breakfast,” he yells. “I don’t know,” says the other guy, “we did last year.” Ba-ding!
Anyways, I got to go. But listen, as a perennial candidate to be your next office-holder for whatever office needs holding here in the United Grains of Amber, I’ve heard tell that our Badger State is one of these so-called “swing” states that could flip either way come the election of this-and-that. And so I remembered a years-ago campaign tour I undertook of outposts like your Ladysmith, Cadott, Cornell, Black River Falls, Solon Springs, Crandon, Town of Barnes, where I attempted to bamboozle the bumpkins with my glad-hand just like a regular P.T. focking Barnum.
But I’ll tell you from that past experience, “swing” is not the first word that comes to mind during a jaunt through these hinterland haunts, unless come late Saturday night you hang yourself from a beam in the basement, just for something to do.
And it’s a mystery to me that candidates for office believe that a quick stop here, a pop-in there, can do very much to jack-up the opinion of elected representatives held by the bucolic wing of the electorate. Cripes, I remember a story from ago that shows just how much work needs to be done to improve a would-be statesman’s standing with the cornfield crowd. I don’t know if this story’s true but here it is anyways, what the fock.
On Friday afternoon, the entire state legislature of a state located not-even-close to either coast was aboard the official state bus touring a remote rural area when the driver lost control and crashed the bus into a ditch. Sometime later, a local farmer sauntered by and upon finding the politicians lying in the road, buried them.
It was reported that county sheriffs then arrived on the scene just as the farmer finished tamping the dirt down over the last member of this state’s legislature. Upon questioning the farmer about the wreck, a sheriff asked, “So you buried ALL the politicians? Were they all dead?”
The farmer reportedly answered: “Well sir, some said they weren’t, but you know how them politicians lie.”
Ba-ding! ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.
