Jooney Tune

I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? I don’t know what it is about this time of year, but it seems every time I turn around these days it’s that time of year again. Getting old bites the big one, big-time. Cripes, and now it’s that Summerfest time of year, and listen: After all these years, when it comes to this time of year, year-in year-out, if you even begin to think that I couldn’t possibly have any gas left to pass through another essay on that annual musical racket down there by the lakefront, forget about it and get ready to take a heady whiff. The gas may be a tad little overripe, but what the fock, who sits around on their dupa to read a newspaper essay this time of year anyways? The hell with you’s.

Besides, check out the cover-page of this paper, and then I’ll tell you that every once in a blue moon I fancy my essay to hover thematically in orbit around the central lump of that week’s issue—and never more so than when I can’t think of anything better to write about for a bunch of knobshines who aren’t going to read it anyhow.

So yeah, about this year’s Summerfest. I’ve pored over if not rifled through all these guides and lists and brochures, pamphlets, recommendations, and I’m reminded of a little riddle:

What does a stripper do with her asshole before going to work? Drop him off at band practice.

And it occurs to me that the people who run that joint have gotten deaf from all that loud guitar music hellabaloo they got all the time there, and for the few of you’s who don’t know why I think that way, I’ll tell you.

They have gone to deaf because for years-in and years-out, as a professional courtesy, I have asked a’loudly over and over for the inclusion of three simple items to their big-gig grounds: the bourbon tent, the topless tent for gentlemen, and the big-time wrestling ring-stage—like it would really kill the hippies that run that fest to offer a little something for which the aging common man to enjoy himself by? It may come as an unexpected thunderclap to the marketeers, but we’ve been known to drop a couple, three bucks here and there, now and then, once in awhile, for entertainment purposes, I kid you not.

And every year, my humble plea seems to pass unheard, as if the plea-ed upon were deaf. No bourbon tent, topless tent for gentlemen, big-time wrestling ring-stage. No, everything’s got to be for the young people all the time today—a worldand-a-half away from when me and my crowd were members of that gang.

No sir, in the three-TV-channel days of our black & white youth, ’tis a rare-ass occasion it ’twas when there was a good goddamn something to do on those excruciatingly long summer days, besides getting yelled at. There was nothing for the young people. Seemed the sole reason there were kids on our part of the planet was for adults to have somebody, something, to yell at. For christ sakes, I haven’t even been able to look at a lawn since 1962, how ’bout that? And so we would huddle in one of my buddy’s dinky back yard, day after day, making plans for the future ’cause there was no present, plans like how the hell to come by twenty-focking-five cents so’s we could traipse up the street for a comic book and an ice-cold bottle of Squirt.

Yes, we were subjected to family values back then, you bet. You could hardly even take a focking leak without having to have the whole family along, for crying out loud. Sucked. That was my world and you’re welcome to it.

So yeah, flummoxed I am to imagine what-a-world for a 14, 15-year-old kid now today it is, what with all the places to go and things to do. And talk about the mysteries of the opposite sex? We had the bra ads in the occasional Sears catalog as opposed to an Internet search for “car-washing bimbos.” No fair.

(Hey, know what? I completely forgot whatever point I was trying to make. Well, fock it. I’ll just quit now. Except to say I wish I were one of the young people today instead of then when I was. I’ll bet you a buck two-eighty I’d even try to sneak into the Summerfest, bourbon tent or not, ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.)

Jooney Tune

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