I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So listen, too busy to whip out an essay for you’s this week. I’m on my way now to meet up with my gang over by the Uptowner tavern/charm school situated at the Hysteric Corner of Center Street & Humboldt.
We always like to get together around Columbus Day so’s to honor a guy who eventually discovered that he landed in a place that wasn’t the place he thought he was supposed to be going to land in, or something like that.
Come along if you’d like but you buy the first round. Let’s get going.
Emil: So the wife made me watch that “Dancing With the Stars” TV show the other night. Any you’s guys seen that yet?
Herbie: You got to be jerking my beefaroni. That show tells me just how much this country has lost its direction. Hey, it’s not 19-focking-55 anymore. Fock this “Dancing With the Stars” and their fox trots. When I turn on my free prime-time TV in this day of age, I ought to be able to watch “Doggie-Style With the Porn Stars” goddamn it, ain’a?
Little Jimmy Iodine: I watched the night that the Sarah Palin daughter what’s-her-name was doing the dance. If she wins the contest, I hope one of her prizes is something she could really use, like a Thigh Master thingamajig. Or maybe a World Atlas that she could give to her mother.
Julius: You betcha.
Ray: Any you’s guys remember that time awhile back when some gal with hairy armpits came in here wearing a tank top, and she raises her arm and shouts, “What man here will buy a lady a drink?” And this drunk guy at the end of the bar says, “Give the ballerina a drink.” So the bartenderI forget who was working that nightpours the drink, the gal slams it, raises her arm and shouts again, “What man here will buy a lady a drink?” And the drunk guy says, “Give the ballerina a drink.” After a couple, three more times of this give-and-take, the bartender says to the guy, “Hey buddy, it's your business if you want to buy the lady a drink, but why do you keep calling her a ballerina?" And this knobshine says, “Any gal who can lift her leg that high has got to be a ballerina, I kid you not."
Stay on top of the news of the day
Subscribe to our free, daily e-newsletter to get Milwaukee's latest local news, restaurants, music, arts and entertainment and events delivered right to your inbox every weekday, plus a bonus Week in Review email on Saturdays.
Ernie: Oh yeah, I kind of remember that. But she wasn’t really a ballerina, ain’a? She was a professional wrestler known as “Ilsa the Nutcracker” and by the end of the night, didn’t we have to call 911 for this guy ’cause he ran out of dough for a cab? Jeez louise, anybody remember who that was?
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: Little Jimmy says that Sarah Palin’s bastard daughter has fat thighs and can’t dance for shit from shinola.
Art: Yeah yeah, few people can. Dance is the one art form everybody and his brother think they’re good at. Just play some music in a public place and all of a sudden every Joe and Jill Blow in creation thinks they’re a regular Fred focking Astaire. It is to laugh.
Herbie: Artie’s got a point. Dancing is one of these human baggage things we Homo sapiens still lug around from prehistoric times, like appendicitis.
Emil: Wasn’t “dancing” invented way before music by the caveman who often stepped on sharp objects ’cause they had yet to evolve the focking brainpower to discover shoes for christ sakes? What a bunch of morons.
Julius: I’ll bet you a buck two-eighty the cavemen had a big-time religious controversy about shoes. Some probably thought that since the Lord created the man without shoes on his feet, to then wear shoes would be to tread the path of Satan. Others probably thought, “Fock the Lord. My dogs are killing me. I’m getting me a nice pair of sandals. And some boots for winter, screw it.”
Ernie: So then what about our U.S. Constitution in the modern day now? We got some nutbags say our country can only be about what’s mentioned in it. There’s nothing in the constitution about how focking drunk I can, or cannot be, to drive a car. They don’t even mention cars at all in the goddamn document; so tell me how shortsighted was that?
Ray: Yeah, and they call them the “founding” fathers, and yet what did they know about space travel, TV, or computer stuff? Fock the Constitution. This is America. We ought to be able to do whatever we want and when we want as long as all the super-rich guys keep getting tax cuts. I figure that the more money the rich guys have, maybe the more likely some of us poor peons might get a mention in their will. Yeah, call it a dream, but it’s American, you bet.
(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.)