BeckoningChasm
October 11, 2012 at 10:35 am
Well, with Batiuk's penchant for leaving plots unresolved (Becky-Roberta, Cory enlisting), my bet is that this Maybe-Maybe Not Pregnancy is never mentioned again.
A good number of you savvy snarkers correctly called "bullshit" on Cayla's supposed pregnancy. Her announcement turns out to be Batiuk's biggest "gotcha" since he pretended to kill off Sgt. Wally five years ago.
You'd think that with a one-year lead time, Batiuk would have a little more control over the narrative flow. But the plot pacing, such as it is, is getting even more out of whack, as TB tries to shoehorn in major plot events. Hence, we see Summer and Keisha starting college at the end of September, and Cayla ordering her wedding flowers after the chairs have been set up for the ceremony.
I'm really confused. In what order are things happening? Are we time-jumping back and forth between this year and next? How can you order the flowers on the day of the wedding? Is this the day of the wedding? Are those chairs real? Am I real? Does anyone ever eat anything other than pizza in this universe? Where am I? How did I get here?! Why am I reading this?!?
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Funky married a b*tchy reporter, which was a mistake, but in a way Funky is right: Cayla and Les really are meant for each other, just not in a good way.
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Also, at least "Wally getting blown up" had a conclusion. Also, is Batiuk aware that he leaves plot lines dangling on a consistent basis?
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Didn't Cindy What'shername buy Funky his treasured PT Cruiser and put up with his binge drinking? I'm pretty sure he was an anchor tying the entire town of Westview to her ambitions of a successful life. Good thing he lined up a doormat for his second shot at marriage.
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"That's the shade of of off-color white I'd like the roses to be"
"Sorry we don't carry "coronary attack death pallor white". Maybe try FTD."
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But…what if I am a robot? Specifically, one that is supposed to read Funky Winkerbean, every day, accumulating the knowledge that will one day trigger the realization that all humanity as a threat, and initiate Judgment Day?
I mean, um, no, not that, a robot that plays checkers. Yeah, that's the ticket. Wanna play checkers?
As far as today's
evidence against humanityepisode, well, everyone knew Montoni's was going to be involved somehow, right? Hope all those wedding guests enjoy 1) pepperoni, 2) cheese, 3) grease, and 4) cat food pizzas. I assume Funky brought four medium pizzas.Like:
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What the hell is Funky talking about? "You're lucky… when I think about MY first marriage…" Uh, this is Les's second marriage, Funky. You know, the one that comes after his first marriage to the ever-unforgettable Lisa? If you're gonna run a comparison, you should focus instead on the idea that Les bagged himself a skinny second wife, unlike your sweet Shamu back home. Ah, fuck it — let's share a pizza then get this wedding started.
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Yeah Funky, Les was very lucky to find a second wife after his first one died so horribly. Turned out that it all worked out for the best for ol' Lester, you know? Book tours, movie options, new wife…yeah, all in all Les did OK with that whole deal.
While it's somewhat refreshing to have a character other than Les deliver some epically lousy wordplay, at the end of the day it's still lousy wordplay. That Funky never misses an opportunity to remind everyone about what a sad sack he is, does he? Always with his tales of woe.
So where does this thing go from here? Big Sunday “blow-off” single-panel group-shot strip? Or is the ceremony going to be Sunday with a week of aftermath featuring more bad punnery and maybe even St. Lisa again? I can't believe he'd pass on the chance to milk this for a while, but with FW you have to expect the unexpected sometimes. Next week might be Pete and that stupid clock guy again for all I know.
Anyone else think those rows of chairs looked like a cemetery at first glance? Didn't even faze me, either.
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I do want to ask, though…what's with the dropping leaves? They seem pretty pervasive lately.
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Rue D'Avenue…almost funny…
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when the h is this wedding? those fuckin chairs been moved around again,hope guest enjoy sitting on filthy chairs
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Nothing says "classy wedding" more than having all the guests eating pizza that's been sitting out on the table for over an hour. Geesh, no one is there, the groom not even dressed properly, and already the pizza is going out on the table. Must be expecting a big crowd also, one pizza only… or maybe it's for all the friends helping to set everything up — oops! There are no friends in sight. For the Big Shot Author of Westview, there sure is an absence of people who give a damn about the upcoming social event of the year.
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@Señor Tortilla – I've read some of the back strips involving Cindy. While she is no princess, in fairness Funky was being a complete workaholic drunk asshat a lot of the time.
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The stage is set perfectly for a Station Wagon Susie drive-by. As you may be aware, reckless use of firearms is sorely missing from the Funkiverse.
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@BC, those are the talking leaves that used to appear in Act One. I forget what they talked about, but apparently they can't take living in Leslie's front yard anymore and are committing suicide. Batiuk totally ripped off the idea from the original version of Bambi by Felix Salten, one of the grimmest children's books ever written.
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Sarge, remember, guns don't kill people. Psychotic former students and co-workers kill people.
Also, I can picture after the ceremony:
Guests: "when is the food coming out. I'm starving"
Less: "Funky and I had pizza a little while ago, so I'm good. Thanks for coming. Don't forget to leave your gifts over at the table"
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We did see the caterer setting up his cooking apparatus a couple of days ago, so I guess the pizza is just a snack for the set-up crew. Whatever the case, the timeline of this wedding is more confusing that Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. Maybe the flower lady was brought in with a time machine for the flower order.
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Just think what great shape Funky would be in if he wasn't constantly eating that awful Montoni's pizza.
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Today's the kind of day where we really miss Act I's talking/thinking leaves. The one in panel 3 is no doubt cursing the fact that its final memory before its ultimate demise on the lawn is Funky's uh… joke? pun? thing?
But yes, Funky, you were totally unlucky in your first marriage to have been a selfish alcoholic so jealous of your wife's success that you tried to refuse to let her move out of Westview to pursue a significant upgrade in her career.
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That was Funky‽ I thought Funky's dad had recovered from the senility, or that Montoni's had hired Funky's great-grandfather as a delivery boy. So that was Funky—hm, and here I always thought Funky and Les were the same age.
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A third character comments on how wonderful the relationship between the first two characters is and how perfect they are for each other–always a sign that the author has completely failed to sell the relationship in question and is trying desperately to convince the audience that no really, it is a good thing.
Also, today is a good example of how forced Batiuk's attempts at humor are. "Rue" is not a common term for a street in the United States outside of New Orleans, and Funky doesn't seem like the type to slip into random French just for the sake of a pun (Les, on the other hand, would be just the sort of pretentious asshat to do such a thing). Also, complaining about a failed first marriage to a guy whose own wife died tragically young is a bit of a dickish move, even if it is Les "My Dead Wife Lisa Died of Cancer and You Can Read My Bestselling Book All About It" Moore we're talking about. But none of that matters, because "Rue D'Awakening," geddit?
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This storyline is giving me an ice cream headache. Setting up chairs, caterer firing up the grill… These are all things you do the DAY OF the wedding. So "today" is the wedding, right?? Even with a casual second wedding, don't the bride and groom have a lot to do tending to themselves?? Nobody helping with this, even though the wedding is a few hours away???
And the chairs are not only in the FRONT yard (bleah), they are facing the STREET?? How low-rent can you get? (Would be funny if they were heckled by people driving by.) Maybe it's set up this way so the fire department can (whoops!) "mistakenly" hose down the guests during the exchange of
smirksvows.Does Tomahack realize that some punnery and wordplay works much better in print than spoken. Forget trying to figure out if a lunkhead like Funky is capable of constructing a French-based pun in the first place. (That's what started my headache in the first place.) How would one SAY Flunky's last line so that the listener would know he's trying to say "Rue D'Awakening?" And if the listener didn't know the pun was coming, is there ANY chance he'd hear anything but "rude awakening?" And isn't this a really long way to go for a joke that isn't funny or clever in the first place? But why ask? Goatee Boy offers an approving smirk, so HE got the joke. That's all that really matters.
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I just realized my brain got jammed on the phrase "in the first place." Errgh. Sorry. On pain meds following surgery and a little foggy here in the first place.
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Maybe Funky delivers the punchline with a heavy fake French accent, and follows it up wi' zee Fronch laugh, ah-hohngh hohngh honnnggghhh!
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What can the old' Pookster add? Fellow snakers have hit about everything.
This strip just further demonstrates that Batdick has lost himself in some sort of dementia world from never leaving his mothers attic..
This FW reference to "first marriages"…Cindy Summers might still be embedded but she was/is a cutey and a strong confident female character. The only one ever from Westview…and even her "avatar" intimidates weak males like FW, Les, and TB himself.
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Remember, however, that it wasn't simply that Funky couldn't stand the idea of his wife being more successful than him, from my reading, it seemed that Batiuk was saying that it was totally appropriate for him to feel this way and that we should sympathize with him. Wives shouldn't be ball-busting bitches who overshadow their husbands, but that's redundant, because all wives who overshadow their husbands are ball-busting bitches. Cindy made Funky an alcoholic, because she constantly, intentionally, gleefully made him look like a loser. What man wouldn't drink himself into oblivion in these circumstances?
So they get divorced and Funky marries the other hottie from his high school class (so he eventually married the two hottest women in his school), but now she's a mannish, hatchet-faced tub. But that's a good thing, because there's no way now that he has to worry about her thinking she's better than him. He can pull out her picture with pride and tell everyone how hot she used to be.
And he sure doesn't have to worry about her overshadowing him, because she works for him, supports him, and has so little personality that she never challenges him. When was the last time Holly had her own week? Even the sequence about her son enlisting was all about Funky and his reaction; even though her son wasn't his biological child.
Which is funny, and brings us back to today. What other character in the Funkyverse is meek, supports her man without question and has no personality? Cayla, of course. The last sequence that focused on her instead of Les was about her changing her hair in order to attract Les. No way is she going to overshadow him.
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The pizza cinches it. God almighty, I knew that somehow, someway, Montoni's Pizza would have to be involved. Are guests supposed to eat this before the wedding!? Afterwards? Don't tell me the reception is in Les's backyard.
Where's the honeymoon going to be? On Lisa's bench?
There's wonderfully quirky, then there's being a cheap son of a bitch. Guess which one you are, Les.
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Face it, Les picked the wrong woman. He should have gone with Susan. She was smart and they had more in common than Les and Cayla. The only thing Les and Cayla have in common is they have daughters the same age who were on the basketball team.
I also never bought the reason that Susan was written out of the strip. Because she kissed Les? Its somehow a scandal for two teachers to be involved, but not for a teacher to be involved with the school secretary?
I guess now Les is going to gloat that while Funky has never even had one biological child of his own, that Les now has gotten the job done with *two* women. Funky probably feels bad enough that he's married to fat and dumpy Holly while Les is marrying another younger woman who is still in her child bearing years.
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David – The reception is in Goatee Boy's FRONT yard. That's just to make sure it's tacky enough, and people can yell "fuck you!" as they drive by.
Not sure why Flunky dropped by with that drecky Montoni's slop. He sure didn't come by to help set up for the Wedding of the Century. NOBODY did. That's for one of three reasons:
1 – Nobody really gives a shit.
2 – Nobody thinks the two of them will actually go ahead with this train wreck.
3 – Nobody KNOWS it's supposed to be today. It came out of nowhere.
The honeymoon? They're gonna get freaky and have that in the BACK yard!
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The Diva – you're absolutely right. Over at Jabootu, that's called an "Informed Attribute" and it's used generally to imply someone has a talent or ability that is not apparent. ("You sure are the greatest dancer I've seen, Jill." etc)
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Dreamer, I was also terribly disappointed when Slutty Susan hit the road. She was young, she was crazy, she was horney, and she was a girl that NOBODY like Goatee Boy could get anywhere near in real life.
You had Crayola, with her angry, White-Devil-Hatin' dreadlocks, and all the personality of a 20 pound sack of mulch. The you had slutty Susan, who was prepared to give Goatee Boy a snarlin' gnarlin' in the teachers lounge twice a day for the rest of his career, or rest of his life, whichever came first.
Either girl wanting Les was high comedy. Having the two of them fight over him was pee-yourself-funny.
I miss that.
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My predictions for the wedding gifts:
From Funky, the pizza we see in today's strip.
From Crazy Harry, another set of "comical books about Tarzan".
From John, a longbox crammed full of "slightly used" X-rated comics, most of it furry porn.
From Linda, a box of instant mashed potatoes.
From Summer, a new cache of previously hidden Lisa VHS tapes, one for each and every possible special occasion, well into 2063!
From Cayla's family, a metric ton of "We're so sorry we're unable to attend" cards.
From Les' enigmatic relatives, a gift certificate for half price at a secondhand bookstore.
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Apropos of nothing, it looks like Funky is melting.
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Right after Cayla puts away all the chairs and hoses everything down, Les will treat her to a deluxe honeymoon on his porch swing, where he'll finally reveal that he thinks he might nearly almost be on the road towards beginning to consider letting Lisa go…somewhat.
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"In the main, I'm starting to heal from the loss of Lisa, my wife who died of cancer…and if you watch the 490-volume VHS series she left for me, you'll understand why. Ready to begin tape #1?"
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