On Thursday TB made a joke at the expense of trombonists; today it’s the flautists’ turn. I suppose that only those who play flute, and not brass or percussion players or the rest of the woodwinds, are prone to “diva” -like behavior, and to such an extent that an entire session is devoted to their special “care and handling”? For the second day in a row I must Google for context, and, unlike “liquid sound”, the term “flute diva” does yield some results that might relate to school bands, and even some merch.
24 thoughts on “Diva-lution”
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Son of Stuck Funky 
Trumpet players have a reputation towards the high-and-mighty too, although being mostly male (at least in my high school) probably prevents them from being saddled with the “diva” label. So in addition to being sectionist, this is arguably sexist as well.
(Full disclosure, with a side of “today’s strip is uncomfortably close to home:” I actually did play flute in high school band. Still do, sometimes.)
Coming next week: The levity comes to a sad end as Dinkle takes a fall in his hotel shower, shattering his spine. Now paralyzed from the eyebrows down, he is helpless to intervene as Mrs. Dinkle constantly complains about his overrated-ness as a band director and his failings as a husband and a man while Becky silently smirks on all one-armed-ly. Then everyone is stunned as Dinkle’s long-lost one-legged daughter Merry abruptly pops up out of nowhere for no good reason. She immediately bonds with Becky and they make a dinner date. The week ends as Dinkle lies there in bed, hearing the sounds of marching band practice wafting through his window as he helplessly gazes at the shotgun in the corner, a single tear rolling down his cheek.
Flute divas. Hoo boy.
Flute divas. Yep.
Yes Sir. Flute divas.
Yep.
Flute divas.
Never seen Ol’ Lefty look more like a guy. Know the expression “grow a pair?” I think she has, this week. Loliterally. Won’t Dead Skunk Head be surprised and delighted!
Smirks and hatchet faces for everyone! We’re in Ahia!
I take a snooze during those weeks BatWrite tries to appeal to the two or three people in the world who give a crap about comic books. Now he’s doing band “jokes,” and I actually was a high school band member (and a grown-up band member now), and I still find his garbage unreadable. How long do you think it will take him to work in all the stale humor about everyone in a school band? Wake me when it’s over. Heard it all before. Next!
How the Hell did “literally” get autocorrected to “loterally?” Damn autocorrect.
hope Ian Anderson crams hes flute up bathacks diva ass
RE: Today’s post title:
Are we not men? We are divas!
The lecture will be delivered by Ron Burgundy on jazz flute.
Where did Dingleberry find the high school boy with the Rod Blagojevich ‘do…?
Nice carpet. What happened to Dingus’ wife?
“Character notes for Becky: Either draw Becky with a carefully rendered folded-up sleeve – or a Muppet Mouth and hatchet face. In all depictions, she should be drawn as if a monkey cut her hair after drinking a bottle of peppermint schnapps.”
“Handling?” Is this some sly reference to Kid Touching? Becky/Summer/Pete is smirking because he/she is married to a guy who enjoys fondling an underage boy now and then, especially when “batching it.” Creepy Tom strikes again!
Could it be that Lefty “looks the other way” with Skunk Head because she’s into the same kind of creepy behavior? By the way, did you know Becky invented the hand job? It’s true. If it were anyone else, it would have been called a “hands job.”
Ha ha ha, fuckin’ flautists, amirite? They’re the scum of the Earth. Always trying to undermine the fatherland with their decadent flautist ways. Yeah, you know what Batiuk’s talking about, folks.
Tom….. “You should know that getting help isn’t a sign of weakness”
btw, Brendon is waiting for another flute lesson.
The sleeve’s missing again. Batominc may repeat its corporate self, but I’ll merely incorporate yesterday’s snark by reference.
Has the sleeve been banished from the FW canon? Has Batominc’s War on Limbs now expanded to include the empty non-containers of missing limbs? These questions and more that nobody cares about will be unanswered in dull and inexplicable ways tomorrow, in another dreary episode of this not-to-be-taken-literally, ¼-inch-from-reality serial art form that all too often attracts the attention of beady-eyed nitpickers.
Nice pubic carpet in that hotel.
One week of this mundane arc down, three more to go. YIPPEE!!!!!!!
Oh, band jokes… boring… interest… fading…
You know, I have to say that it’s a good thing Batiuk hates his characters. He obviously loves Dinkle to bits and look at how awful and dull the strips are where Dinkle’s featured. At least part of the character of Les is how he chafes against other awful people so there’s minimal conflict.
Oh, and Becky obviously loves Dinkle. We now know for certain that the reason why Gross John was complaining about his desolate (consensual, non-statutory) sex life is because Becky’s getting all her servicing by having Dinkle rail her constantly.
The saddest part about Epicus’ scenario is that Dinkle is paralyzed from the eyebrows down. A merciful Batboy would paralyze him from the smirk down.
Only Tom would think the antidote to weeks of grimdark character destruction would be the “fun” of watching two characters with no connection at all to their Act I/Act II selves meander about musical instruments.
Especially since when she’s ACTUALLY on the job, Becky radiates nothing but contempt and disdain for her students, her vocation, and everything to do with it.
The notion that she would find puttering around with Harry pleasurable is quite frankly baffling unless they truly are “involved”. In which case, EWWWWW.
Harry Dinkle. TB’s cash cow. While Jim Davis, Tom Wilson and the Great and Powerful Schulz were raking in the licensing dollars, TB’s ancillary income came from a character that could barely be described as “secondary” being embraced by a niche market within a niche market.
I sometimes wonder if the Crankshaft strip came out of him wanting to replace John Darling (which never recovered from losing Tom Armstrong after Marvin took off) with a Dinkle spin-off, only to be shot down by a wise syndicate agent who saw that Harry outside the band room would be a tough sell.
This whole week’s story should have just been done in ONE Sunday comic, not wasting a whole week.
I’ll admit this is actually an OK strip. One that a member of an actual band program or a music teacher might pin on a bulletin board. It’s not overtly depressing, stupid or pun-filled. It actually plays of it’s original subject of high school band hijinks. Even works as a inside joke to flute players. It’s not bad.
Hey, Batiuk!!!!. You listening???…This is strip is more along the lines of what you should be doing!!!!!!
Sean D.: In the entire 40+ year run of the strip Dinkle is the ONLY character that’s ever become anything close to being “iconic” in any way…and the author left the traits that actually MADE him a minor “icon” behind YEARS ago during his great rush to turn every single FW character into a geriatric, overweight, smirking, disease-incubating failure. Otherwise referred to as “Act III”.