ART FOR ART'S SAKE
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From The Ciły That Always Sweeps
I
’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? And good lord, pandemic-schmandemic, finally after too long of a year, it’s again that time of year to be able to make summertime plans, and so I tell you’s that I just got off the phone with my pal Little Jimmy Iodine and now I need to take off in a couple, three minutes to head up over by the Uptowner tavern/charm school where me and the fellas shall gather to make our plans for getting out to the greatest focking spectacle on Earth—the Wisconsin State Fair; so it looks like I’ll need to make muy breve of this month’s essay, I kid you not. I love the Fair, as we all do. And after a year of absence, I look forward to healthfully chowing down on all kind of fried matter served on a stick, and then me and the guys to commence our gravitation to the Midway, where the amusement rides are guaranteed to be well-maintained and operated by the finest staff of tattooed, toothless safety experts this side of a halfway house for Nazi bikers from hell. And you just can’t beat those games of skill the Midway offers, can you—where the 120-pound guy of short stature wearing the frayed, used-to-be-green tanktop blows 50 focking bucks in the attempt to topple the tripod of bottom-weighted faux milk jugs, so’s to win the buck twoeighty stuffed Garfield for his 400-pound lady friend. Of course, there’s always the sharpster who tries to guess your age and weight for a small stipend, your reward for his failure being a cracked Whiffle ball or listless goldfish. Me and my gang like to play our own game of skill, which is to try to guess which carny/associate/ technician looks to be the responsible party for the most bodies buried in shallow graves to be found in remote locations above and
66 | SHEPHERD EXPRESS
BY ART KUMBALEK
below the Mason-Dixon Line, east to west. Don’t forget, nearly all these crackerjacks spend the off-season in Florida, which just happens to be Spanish for “serial killer” by-the-by, so what the fock, ain’a? And Little Jimmy said he’s really looking forward to the Fair big-time this year, on account of him feeling a little blue lately. Seems this lady he’s been seeing heard a show on the National Public Radio about diversity so she gave him the heave-ho ’cause she said that their relationship had to be ferkakta, since it skewed too heavily white-European male with 50% representation. What the fock? I tried to cheer Little Jimmy up and suggested that a guy in a situation like his just can’t win. I said that when I think back to each and every of the nearly less-than-several relationships I’ve sustained over the due course of a lifetime, I remember always being sensitive to gender issues and strongly maintaining the notion that more females get involved. Heck, when it comes to a glass ceiling, I don’t mind being on the bottom as long as
I can look up. And the only thing this belief ever got me was a pink slip—and not in a good way. No sir, seems to me that the trials and travails of relationship maintenance is no bed of roses. And come ’tis to think of it, did you ever wonder how good a night’s sleep a guy or gal would actually get if spent on a bed of focking roses, anyways? I’m guessing none too swell. Besides the obvious thorn situation, you’d have a firmness issue to boot. Yeah, it sounds like a great thing but I’ll bet you a buck twoeighty that one night on a bed like that and you’re going to have an aching back for at least a good goddamn week, and who needs that kind of aggravation? Hey, you tell me. And then I’ll tell you in case you didn’t know, that it was the English dramatist and poet Christopher Marlowe (who some suspect was the true author of the Shakespeare oeuvre—Chris wrote the plays while Bill the Bard took the tickets at the door) who first dreamt the notion of a “bed of roses”—And I will make thee beds of roses—(yeah, thanks for nothing, pal) in The Passionate Shepherd to His Love, his poem all about how badly he’d like to nail an unidentified Brit bimbo back in the days of yore some four-focking-hundred years ago. And I’ll also tell you that it wasn’t exactly “merry olde” England nor a bed of roses for this Marlowe character, no sir. He got his ass kicked bloody dead before the age of 30 back in 1593 during an argument over a tavern bill. (Shocked, shocked I am—a focking poet not being able to hold his liquor.) But before I go, let me ask you’s if you got any idea what’s better than roses on your piano? Hey, how ’bout those tulips on your organ, oh yeah. Ba-ding! ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.
