Teed Up

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Art Kumbalek

I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So yeah, I’m a little down in the dumps having been ix-nayed as Kamala’s second-in-command white guy from the Midwest. Didn’t get an interview, didn’t get not nothing, even though I’ve been a bona-fidish presidential candidate since 1986, I kid you not. You’d think my long-time campaign experience ought to count for at least a respectful phone call even if it’s a request for a donation (good luck with that), what the fock.

Anyways, I still got my fingers-crossed that once she is elected as (Ms., Mrs., Lady, Dame, Person) president, she may choose to stuff me into one of those executive cabinet positions that the regular public never heard of and where the responsibilities are slim but the salary is plump.

So I figure that maybe I ought to get up over by the Uptowner tavern/charm school majestically crammed at the corner of wistfully hysteric Humboldt Boulevard and the fabled Center Street, where today is always at least a day before tomorrow and yesterday may very well be today, so as to meet up with my Vote Art Kumbalek For Whatever You Got Needs Electing campaign brain-trust to discuss my cog in the wheel of the Harris administration for truth, justice and the American way.

Come along if you’d like, but you buy the first round, or three. Let’s get going.

Ernie: So I was watching some Olympic soccer the other…

Herbie: You mean “football.”

Ernie: If they want to call it “football,” how come they don’t wear helmets, smarty-pants?

Julius: It’s called football because they play the game only with their feet. One ball, two feet. Sometimes a head. That’s it.

Ray: Yeah yeah, the rest of the world can call it “football,” but in the USA, USA, USA, they really ought to change the pigskin-game name to “Too Many Focking Goddamn TV-timeout Commercials”-Ball, ain’a?

Little Jimmy Iodine: I liked the soccer way back in high school for the gym class. You had all the wannabe jocks on the football field running around like a pack of cocker spaniels chasing a ball, and I could just stand away from the action off in a corner doing nothing but sneaking a smoke. Phy-ed drill sergeant Mr. Dick Douchebag with the whistle ’round his neck never noticed, god bless him.

Julius: The only soccer I ever watched was the years ago when Poland got into that World Cup thing, when they took it on the chin-ski from Ecuador. I can only figure that the Pole squad got confused and thought the object was to have the lowest score, like golf; so they tried their damn-dest not to score.

Emil: Ecuador. That’s in Mexico, ain’a?

Ray: Incorrecto, señor. And if IQ was like a golf score, you’d have a gold medal.

Herbie: Ecuador’s down there by your Tierra del focking Fuego, you focking idiot. You’re like these high school Einsteins that the “National Geographic” took a survey on where half of them couldn’t identify the New York or Ohio states on a map—you don’t know your Assyria from a hole in the ground, I’m telling you.

Emil: Fock you, guys. Who cares where Ecuador is anyways? Soccer sucks. They ought to use more balls than just one, like maybe four or five; then maybe they’d have a focking final score you could write home about.

Ernie: You look at those soccer scores and you got to wonder if half the time there was even a ball on the field. It’s too goddamn boring. It’s like for the basketball if they made the basket be thirty-focking-feet tall—6-4 would be a scoring explosion.

Herbie: Soccer’s like golf. It’s a thing you do, not watch—like painting your goddamn garage.

Ray: Golf—the fishing of spectator sports.

Julius: If they want the American viewer to watch the soccer on TV, they got to spice it up. Add a little mystery and danger, like before every match, they plant a landmine somewheres on the field. Now maybe somebody’d step on it, and maybe not. But they’d sure have my attention, I kid you not.

Little Jimmy: Hey, Artie! Over here.

Art: Hey gents, what do you know, what do you hear. You’s guys figure out how to get Kamala to hand me some kind of presidential cabinet job like I asked you’s to?

Little Jimmy: I know we’re trying to figure out how to make soccer more exciting to watch on the TV, like maybe somewheres on the field have a concealed crocodile pit like in those African jungle movies we used to see when we were kids, ain’a?

Herbie: I don’t know if even that kind of razzmatazz could get the average American hopped-up to watch a game beloved by fascists the world over. It seems anti-patriotic.

Art: And golf—how the fock did that get into the Olympics? Who wants to watch that when you can see it on TV all the time anyways, not like your water polo, pole vault or judo? 

Herbie: You got a point there, Artie. If a few minor changes were made, it would make it more fun to watch for today’s thrill-seeking young people. I’m talking King Cobra snakes in all sand traps; although, it wouldn’t hurt if a couple, three were also quick-sand traps. Greens and tees combine at each end of a hole; so as one foursome tees off toward their destinated green, an opposite foursome tees off directly toward them. Then, midway on the fairway, golfers beaned by balls from the other direction slug it out like hockey players. And when they sink an ultra-long putt, they get to spike the dimpled sphere into the green and do a chicken-strut or what-the-fock.

Little Jimmy: Like the football players, when Randy Moss fake-mooned the Packer fans after a touchdown years ago, ain’a?

Art: Yeah, but there’d be no faking in this new golf. Each hole should be three-focking-thousand yards long at least with no rest stops, and with a bunch of landmines planted in the fairways and short rough. 

Julius: Artie, we were going to have landmines on the soccer field, but I think I’d rather see a golfer step on one. Just on account of what they wear.

Herbie: And the golfer can do whatever he wants when coming across a ball belonging to a fellow duffer: He may pocket it, knock it as focking far in any direction he chooses, bury it, etcetera. There will be a bunch of waterways traversing the course that the golfer must cross. There will be no bridges over these waterways for the golfer to use. The waterways will be full of piranha, water moccasin and snapping turtles. Score is less important to victory than survival. Just like the real world.

(Hey, I know you got to go, but thanks for letting us bend your ear ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.)