Triply Looped Klutz

I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So I hear another Winter Olympics has come and gone and all I got to say is that if they don’t add competitive ice fishing for the next Games, forget about it. They could stand to add an extra event or two ’cause, cripes, it seemed every time I thought to tune in, it was the goddamn curling they were showing, what the fock. Could watching an Olympian angler pull up a nice 13-ounce crappie through the ice be any less interesting? I think not.

But I got bigger fish to fry this week, which is to say that in these piss-poor economic times, I got an inkling that the American investor with an extra buck two-eighty burning a hole in his or her pocket or pockette is on the hunt for a ring-a-ding-ding sure thing, something focking-A guaranteed like putting it all on heavyweight Mike Tyson in the ring versus, say, the crafty yet wheelchair-bound physicist Stephen Hawking.

If you got the taste for a hundred-fold return on an investment, do I ever have the opportunity for youone of my million-dollar ideas from the past that came back to me the other night when I misjudged my landing and mistook the corner of an end table for a bed pillow. It’s the Art Kumbalek Home Drinking

Helmeta protective device to promote safe drinking. And who couldn’t use one of these? Yeah, that’s what I figured.

You know, it’s true they say that people who’ve been drinking should not get behind the wheel. Hey, they shouldn’t get in front of the goddamn wheel either, or under one, for that matter. That’s all well and good and fine and dandy safety advice for when the drinker is out and about, but listen: What’s to protect the drinker when he’s partaking in the slamming of the cocktails in the privacy of his own abode? You tell me. And then I’ll tell you that it’s the Drinking Helmet that’ll protect him, that’s what.

And what a focking helmet it will be, I kid you not. First, I’d make sure that it was made from the same stuff they make the black-box on airplanes from ’cause that’s some pretty gosh darn strong material, ain’a? If those black boxes can survive these airplane crashes, then the Drinking Helmet certainly should be able to withstand the goofy, nutty, and implausible accidental accidents that the drinker seems to attract to the vicinity of his noggin: the plummeting 10-ton safe, the grand piano surrendering to gravity, the wife’s rolling pin gone awry, a simple flight of stairs.

Unfortunately, our research scientists have yet to be able to make this black-box material float, so don’t be taking a bath when you’re three-sheets-to-the-wind crocked up the jock ’cause the Drinking Helmet can’t help if you conk out and slide below the surface and then somebody finds you submerged after an hour or three.

Come to think of it, maybe I ought to install some dinky high-tech miniature tape recorder thing into the helmet, ’cause let’s say you remembered to avoid the tub but somehow still managed to drown your head in the toilet. With the Drinking Helmet’s recording device, proper authorities could recover the tape and perhaps piece together just how the hell you could’ve done something that focking stupid. That knowledge could prevent other drinkers with the helmet from also drowning their drunk ass in the toilet; although I personally doubt it. Destiny is a harsh mistress.

Hey, if I attached a pint-sized videocam to the helmet, I could collect Drinking-Helmet tapes from around the world and peddle the most spectacular ones to some kind of Focks network reality show, who ought to jump out of their drawers for the chance to pay me for the rights to “The World’s Deadliest Self-Inflicted Drunken Boo- Boos and Oopsies!” And if they didn’t want it, I’m sure the History Channel or Discovery Channel would bite, ain’a?

And you’re right, the Drinking Helmet ought to come with an infrared bubble visor that you could try to snap on, you betcha. It’d be for some kind of night vision in case you’re too focking hammered to reconnoiter a light switch. A semblance of night vision just may save you from stepping barefoot smack-dab into the middle of the overflowing litter box or on top of the broken glass all over the kitchen floor from the cocktails you keep knocking off the table.

And yes, it would have one of those back-up horns to warn other animate objects to gangway ’cause this guy’s loaded again.

So how ’bout you focking forget about the stock market, junk bonds, Powerball tickets, gold bullion or artists nobody ever heard of. At the risk of coming across like a cheap piece of whore shill instead of the respected and responsible journalist that I am, I say it’s the Art Kumbalek Home Drinking Helmet you want to sink all your dough into.

Now, the sooner you bundle your monetary resources and send it to me, the sooner I get the Drinking Helmet into development and the sooner we can drink a toast to our new address: Easy Street, USA, ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.