I’m Art Kumbalek and man ohmanischewitz what a world, ain’a? So listen, just so you’s know, I’m a big-time fan of professional prize-fighting, the sweet science, otherwise known as boxing for you’s dunderheads. And so it came to me as complete shock, surprise, chagrin that my favorite boxer of all time, the retired Canadian 37-year-old Arturo “Thunder” Gatti, became decisively and permanently knocked-out by way of being strangled by his 23-year-old wife via the strap on her handbag. What the fock.

That’s not a boxer’s way to go. A wrestler? Yes. Hulk Hogan choked to death by a foreign object— makes sense. But a boxing world champion, coauthor of the legendary triagic trilogy he fought with Irish Micky Ward to go down for the count by way of a lady’s purse? No sir. This world of ours, something wicked comes, just so you know. Anyways, no essay from me this week ’cause I got to go meet with mine own campaign brain trust over by the Uptowner tavern/charm school situated at the corner of Hysteric Center Street & Humboldt—where today is always at least a day before tomorrow, and yesterday may gosh darn well be today—and kick-start the 2010 Art Kumbalek Democracy Express for Governor of the Great Overtaxed State of Badgerlanders Who Rightfully Hate the Guts of Anybody Trespassing Our Borders From the Shit States of Illinois and Minnesota, I kid you not.

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

Ernie: Any you’s guys see that list of the Best 100 Places to Live, in America I’m guessing, where New focking Berlin clocked in at no. 34?

Little Jimmy Iodine: You betcha, this list for America’s best small towns. Must have some pretty fancy strip malls out that-aways, ain’a? Never been to New Berlin, but I hear some people call it the “new West Allis,” but without all the white trash.

Herbie: Sounds nice. Diversity’s overrated anyways, what the fock. Had a brother-in-law pass through there once on his way to Dodgeville Correctional. Told me that if a slice of your futureheaven was never-ever again having to sit next to a fat guy with bladder issues on the bus, New Berlin would be a final resting place for you. They don’t have buses. And on top of that, things are so spread out, you got to get into a car and drive just to go take a leak, I kid you not.

Julius: Fock ’em. It’s no Cudahy, and never will be. I can’t imagine being a kid and not being able to focking walk to the diamond of my Little League game and then afterward visit the liquor store on the way home for an ice-cold bottle of Squirt and a pack of baseball cards, with no adult supervision involved besides the asshole behind the counter.

Herbie: Yeah, that’s a nice youthful remembrance, Juley. What, all of a sudden you’re Ray focking Bradbury and next you’re going to tell us your ma and pa are carnival magicians from Mars? What the fock. So listen you guys, I was trying to reminisce about Michael Jackson the other day, and for the focking life of me I couldn’t remember that joke about his glove with baseball.

Ernie: Oh yeah, yeah. I remember it as back in the years and years when the Brewers really sucked-ass, something like “What do the Milwaukee Brewers and Michael Jackson have in common?”

Emil: Neither one knows how to get a hit anymore?

Herbie: You talk like a sausage, Emil. “Glove,” Emil. “Glove” is at the center of the axle that drives that joke, for christ sakes. The answer was, “They both wear a glove for no apparent reason.”

Emil: Yeah, real focking funny.

Ray: But who can forget why Michael Jackson popped into the Kmart?

Little Jimmy Iodine: I can.

Ray: ’Cause he heard boys’ trousers were half-off.

Herbie : “Trousers”? You got to be jerking my beefaroni. I haven’t seen or heard the word “trousers” since Ma dragged me to Robert Hall’s for back-to-focking-school-durable-lame-clothes shopping way back when Frankie focking Avalon was the then-king of the pop charts. I get the heebie-jeebies just thinking about it. Bartender?

Emil: I don’t think Michael Jackson’s really dead.

Little Jimmy Iodine: Hey, Artie! Over here. Put a load on your keister.

Art: Hey gents. What do you hear, what do you know.

Little Jimmy: I know that Emil thinks Michael Jackson isn’t actually dead.

Art: What, he’s some kind of zombie now, like he was in that MTV video from back when they showed music mini-movies before they turned to broadcasting show after bitch-show featuring young, white suburban women supremely full of prideful ignorance?

Herbie: You talk like a sausage, Artie.

Emil: Michael Jackson only pretended to be dead, so’s to set up his biggest comeback ever. Screw those so-called fifty-London concerts they talked about. What he’s going to do is tie-in the 40-year anniversary of the American man-on-themoon come this July 20 along with his resurrection from the so-called dead. You’ve heard about this space shuttle that keeps getting delayed from takeoff? Come Monday, TV programs will be interrupted by a special report that the space shuttle has actually landed on the moon, and out-come from the hatch is Michael Jackson and that monkey he used to have, what’s-his-name.

Julius: Bubbles, ain’a?

Emil: So Mr. Jackson performs his famous moon-walk dance on the moon anniversary, how ’bout that? Meanwhile, Bubbles his chimp reprises the opening sequence to that 2001: A Space Odyssey movie, the one where the monkeys shit their pants on account of the appearance of some kind of monolith they can neither eat nor fock. Show business. Nothing like it, don’t you think?

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