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Art Kumbalek

I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So listen, first off are the congrats and kudos I’m sending off to over by the mighty WMSE – 91.7FM radio station (best in the nation) for their 40 years of free-falling guerilla broadcast joy available to listeners young and old. And what a four-decade run it’s been, I kid you not. Cripes, I still remember those very early days when you had to wrap your head in tinfoil and then grab a fork and stick it into an electrical wall socket in hopes of picking up the signal sent from our newly formed Downtown radio paradise, what the fock.

But times have changed, so here’s what to do: I know that, lo, these days many of us have nary a pot to pee in, but I recommend that you search the pockets of an out-of-season jacket/coat and rummage the crevices beneath your couch cushions to find some kind of dough to donate so that we don’t lose one of Our Town’s true treasures. Here’s one of those internet links (I hope) that will set you forward onto a righteous path. Hey, “become a sound citizen,” indeed.

Anyways, how you doing with the loss of a precious and valuable hour due to the Daylight Saving Time foisted upon us once again this past weekend, what the fock?

Me? Not so well. As now a four-month member of the Septuagenarian Society, a guy like me can’t afford to lose a focking hour pinched from out of my life’s dwindling calendar of days. Cripes, I’m figuring and feeling that there’s not a boatload of those hours left for me to survey the horizon from above ground, and yet one of those hours is stolen from me every March just so that our farmers get some extra daylight so’s to bitch about the government and Big Farm—even if rightfully so.

I’ll tell you’s what I lost due to that apprehended hour last Sunday: I had planned to plow through the Tolstoy War and Peace, finally; I had planned to locate my old Buffet B-flat clarinet stuck somewheres here in my dinky apartment, blow the dust off that licorice stick, dig out some kind of reed, and reacquaint my embouchure and fingers with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A major, K.622 (just so you know, as a much younger person, I could make the angels sing with my rendition of that number, not to mention the family dog, Spike, may his farting soul rest in aural peace); and I thought that maybe I’d flip a couple, three minutes into a thought about this week’s essay.

An hour lost, and I don’t know what to say—except, I read the news the other day, oh boy, and noticed this headline on nbc.news.com: “Dead Sea Scrolls discoveries are first ancient Bible texts to be found in 60 years.” Goddamn swell.

Yeah, just what some of us need, like me, a near-matriculator from Our Lady In Pain That You Kids Are Going Straight To Hell But Not Soon Enough—more focking Bible? Jeez louise.

So, of course, I had to read the article, and here’s a quote:

“Among the recovered texts, which are all in Greek, is Nahum 1:5–6, which says: The mountains quake because of Him, And the hills melt. The earth heaves before Him, The world and all that dwell therein. Who can stand before His wrath? Who can resist His fury? His anger pours out like fire, and rocks are shattered because of Him.

Okey-dokey, so God’s having a bad day, big focking deal, I’ve had some of those, especially on a day when I lose an hour for no apparent reason. But HEYYY!! How long you think before the QAnon crackpot confederacy of dunces stumbles upon this news and is bamboozled that this ancient text is proof that their beloved Trumpel-thinskin will rule the flat-planet Earth come the year 2024, with the exception of his golf courses and various other properties that will be in receivership and such, not to mention that the hoosegow will be his home with the key tossed to the wayside for a goodly long while, lord a’ willing?

But within the article, they had photos of these Scrolls, and how any scholars were able to translate text from these, well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. For lord’s sake, the remnants of these “recent Dead Sea Scrolls” look to me like carelessly sliced pieces of a pepperoni pizza, certainly rather rancid after 2,000 years, wouldn’t you think?

Here’s what-they-call a link to see for yourself, hope it works, to connect I’m hoping it shouldn’t require an email address, “password” that demands every-which-way as well as a safety back-up that you remember the first name of your younger sister’s best friend (Janice? Sharon? Ardella?), and the street address in a working-class neighborhood where she most likely had a less than idyllic childhood.

So here we go, I recommend this, you Hobby Lobby crowd beware.

And here, just a tease from the article hopefully linked above: The treasures were found in what the Antiquities Authority called the “Cave of Horror.” “Cave of Horror”? Could that be Trump’s skull? If I were into the conspiracy theories, I’d probably say it’s all starting to make sense.

So, I’ve got to go and continue the search for my clarinet so’s come the fall when we regain an hour—I should live so long—I’ve got something with which to while away the extra time. Artie Shaw, eat your heart out.

One last thing, what with the reappearance of college basketball’s March Madness after a year’s hiatus, I thought you’s may be fiduciarilly intrigued by my Final Four choices for the tournament. (You may recall that I was the junior sports-savant reporter for the beloved and dearly missed several-years running Shepherd sports column, “Fairly Disinterested Observers,” the esteemed Frank Clines being the senior and more knowledgeable writer, I kid you not.)

OK, my Final Four: Coming out of the South Region, I got the Colgate Raiders; from the Midwest, I had to go with the Drexel Dragons; from the East, the NC-Greensboro Spartans; and out of the West, obviously, it’s the Grand Canyon Antelopes.

So there you go. Contact your bookie pronto, and enjoy your perch on Easy Street, ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.