Stupid question, Harriet. It’s never about having “a good time with your friends.” In the Funkiverse, every happy occasion only serves to remind us of our mortality and human frailty. It’s that “undercurrent of melancholy” that permeates every aspect of life in Westview, the place where people hide their happiness lest they tempt cruel fate. Those of us here in the real world can freely express our joy over the fact that the Dinkles appear to be exiting the convention at last, but not before Harry squeezes out one last tortured musical metaphor.
34 thoughts on “Symphony for the Dinkle”
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Son of Stuck Funky 
Maybe that’s because more and more of you are realizing there’s a difference between a convention and a reunion, and have quit making fools of themselves.
FU, Batom, you’re not fooling anyone with this bullshit. All Dinkle did was crack himself up with moronic jokes and gloat about what a jerk he is. I didn’t see him even pretend to fake interest in anything more than himself. So spare us all the “every day is one tick closer to the end” routine (and the awful music-related gags too) and quit trying to give Dinkle “depth”. No one’s buying it.
A pure “Deceptive Cadence”, very “Dissonance” & “Drone”.
Tom your story archs are “Ostinato” and a pure “Requiem”.
It’s time for the a final “Coda”.
Those of us here in the real world can freely express our joy over the fact that the Dinkles appear to be exiting the convention at last
Ah ha ha ha, that’s a good one, TFH. Of course you know that Sunday’s strip and those of the next week will lovingly detail the Dinkle’s long journey to the exit.
As Dinkle gets older, it takes him longer and longer to squeeze out each new movement.
Good lord.
I can only hope that this was some sort of constipation joke.
With that in mind, TFH, I can only assume that’s what you meant by “squeezes out”.
It is pretty amazing what a killjoy TB is. Harry has just left after seeing two longtime friends and having a fun conversation featuring lots of jokes and humorous observations (such as they are, I know). And immediately after he leaves the conversation to rejoin his wife, a frown comes over his face and he starts talking about dead people. Seriously, what the hell…
And of course, there’s no way that Harriet, even in the number of years she’s been coming to these things, could have possibly made any friends to talk to herself. Nope, she just stands there silently waiting for her husband to finish talking to his friends. She obviously had nothing to contribute to a conversation with people she’s may have known for decades.
Also, where’s Becky? Is she just now scrambling around to pick up stuff because she realizes that the convention is over and, as the actual person employed as a band director in this dumb group, all she’s done up until now is stand around watching her predecessor make stupid jokes?
Wait, those guys were actually supposed to be Harry’s friends? Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha!! Good one, Batiuk!
Ah yes, Dinks, that would be the Magic Bowl Movement from the Symphony in C Minus by Johann Amadeus Matetsky.
“Good time?” “Friends?” Harriet obviously never grew up in Westview.
Not worried… we’re all born to suffer and die, right TB? I’m sure Lisa didn’t like Dinkle much so she won’t call him to tell him not to get on the plane. Then next year Dinkle, Harriet and lefty will be the honorary (but deceased) attendees. Then everyone at the convention will talk about how the creator took them in the prime of their lives and that Dinkle was so great, he had two female escorts – his mother and a roadie. This stuff practically writes itself.
Still waiting for TB to off Natalie Mancuso…I’m pretty sure Lisa didn’t like her much either.
Who?
“Still waiting for TB to off Natalie Mancuso…I’m pretty sure Lisa didn’t like her much either.”
Somehow, I think a bunch of us will be on the “new character and delete” list first………………………
Dinkle acts like this collection of old music farts is a WWII reunion of flyboys.
@TFHackett – Natalie Mancuso (she sits to the left of Fred Fairgood in the group photo (http://www.funkywinkerbean.com/). She is the choir director and I’m sure TB forgot she even existed.
Man, I hate Act III Dinkle and Act III Becky so much because they’re nothing like the real versions of the characters. The only way this could be improved is by…
a) Revealing the real Dinkle has been locked in a basement for some time
b) Gunning down Act III Dinkle as he steps outside.
@ Bill A: Of course he forgot Natalie. He forgot Dinkle retired cause he’s deaf. And he forgot that Wally Jr. should be ten and not five and that Harry had kids other than Maddie.
People like to rip on Lynn Johnson (and I count myself in their number) but at least should keep her characters and time-line straight. Right now Batuik’s strips combine the worst of the soap strips with the worst of the gag-day legacy strips.
Here’s why the Funkyverse is littered with the carcasses of dozens of forgotten and/or ignored characters. Back in Act II, when he was pouring on the heavy “real-life” melodrama at full throttle, he needed to invent these characters because there was only so much he could subject Les n’ Lisa to before it became utterly absurd (OK, even more utterly absurd). So he dreamed up more characters to poulate his little universe and created little pieces of drama for each of them. Then, when he decided to go “quieter” for Act III, they were pushed aside and forgotten, only re-appearing occasionally to remind us of the fraility of this human coil and etc. Thus the dozens of “who???” characters and their rare-if-ever appearances other than as background figures in crowd scenes (like the Moore wedding) or whatever.
“People like to rip on Lynn Johnson (and I count myself in their number) but at least should keep her characters and time-line straight”
…not really. Remember that a seven year old boy Liz taught mysteriously became a hulking eighteen year old after two years (while Liz remained the exact same age), Anthony’s two year old daughter mysteriously became an extremely articulate nine year old within months, Elly’s deceased mother’s appearance and history was retconned a thousandfold, and let’s not even touch the continuity nightmare caused by her attempts to “fix” old arcs like Connie’s dating life and the childhood of Deanna.
I think Batiuk’s too in love with his core characters to focus on any “new generation” like he promised. There were a ton of new and reintroduced Act III characters, but I doubt with a few Summer cameos, we’re not going to see much. Maddie has been MIA for months, Cory might as well be written off the strip, and I doubt we’ll even see much more of Owen & Cody again.
‘Every Year There are Fewer and Fewer People Around Who Knew You back when your symphony was still in it’s first movement”
That quote could be an epitome to the fading readership of Funky Winkerbean.
Señor Tortilla (among others) points out how Batiuk writes Dinkle and others as if they are entirely different characters from earlier incarnations. I couldn’t agree more. I contrast it with Garry Trudeau. His Mike Doonesbury, BD, and Megaphone Mark Slackmeyer, for example, have all aged during the past three decades, but the changes in them seem natural and organic.
I’ve been a public school art teacher for over thirty years, and I’ve attended a number of local and state art education conferences. I’ve even presented at a few. My wife sometimes attended with me BECAUSE SHE IS ALSO AN ART TEACHER. Otherwise nobody’s spouse attends. These conferences are expensive and, for anyone not in the field, boring. That boredom factor is why I wouldn’t consider an education conference to be a good subject for a two week comic strip story arc. For one thing, the conferences themselves only last two or three days. For another, teachers tend to not wander aimlessly around the convention hall sharing “war stories” with colleagues. Instead we go to workshops and look for new ideas for our classrooms.
@ Rick Brooks: you’re a teacher? May we call you “Our Mr. Brooks”?
No? Oh, ok. Sorry! 🙂
Also, Rick, do you see a lot of retirees at these things? I’d kinda think not, but not sure. I would think conventions like these would be high on the list of things they’d get away from after retirement.
One of the things I hate about today’s episode, in addition to everything, is the idea that music people go around speaking in musical puns and metaphors. We don’t. We just don’t. To us, a symphony, for example, IS a symphony. We wouldn’t say our life is, or is like, a symphony.
On the other hand, it’s useless to blast TommyHack for tone-deaf (ha ha) portrayals of musicians, since he also fails miserably to accurately portray teenagers, athletes, women, minorities, and heterosexual men.
But count him to be spot-on portraying comic book dorks (Pete, Skunk Head, Crazy Harry) and aimless loiterers (again, Crazy Harry). If he stuck to only those characters, this comic would of course be unreadable (which it ALREADY is anyway), but accurate in more ways.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I must go allegro con moto to the comodo to work on my next movement. I’ll ritornello later and see what other people have written about Tommeh the ritardando.
Cory is at boot camp, Summer and Keisha are in college, Crayola is beating the shit out of Les…nope, let’s spend 3 f’n weeks on a band director convention.
Ahhh, masthead change!!! The evil one approaches!!
Oh thank Jesus, Les is going to be sneering at someone next week. I sincerely can’t wait.
One day
each and every one of us will
in some way
become Natalie Mancuso
forgotten & forsaken by the Creator
until—oh yes!
until the shoe
and then the other shoe
drops
in Westview.
I assume that the smug & disdainful disembodied Les head that’s marring the SoSF logo above indicates we’re in for a visit from the single most despised and loathed character in the history of fiction. Pretty much every (I don’t have anything specific against Tony or that dog) character in FW gets on my nerves in a huge way, but the Moores, especially HIM…that’s a whole different thing. Les is more like an hated adversary, a nemesis, a blood enemy whose very existence is an affront against all you believe in and hold dear. The other two (Lisa and Summer) are nearly as detestable in their own ways but they lack that disdainful, cocksure, condescendingly grating smugness that Les just oozes from every pixel. Can’t wait to see what wacky adventure TheAuthor has in store for him.
Beanie-
I have not seen a lot of retired teachers at education conferences. It’s one thing to attend when your school district is footing the bill for registration, transportation, and room, but to lay out that kind of cash so you can attend a bunch of lectures about classroom activities when you are not longer in a classroom? Seems like there are more enjoyable ways to spend your time as a retiree. But maybe that’s just me.
Hi Rick – Thanks for the info. I suspected something like that. I’m a pro woodwindist (saxophones are my primary horns) but not an educator, as such. But many of my colleagues are or were. As much as they might love the job and love the kids, it’s like any other job — When you retire, it’s over and you move on. Dinkle is hard to figure — He hangs out at the school a LOT more than he should, and now we see he schlepps to the conventions every year. Why does TomBat think this is normal behavior – for anyone?
On the other hand, when does Tombat ever portray “normal” behavior?
Sometimes the “Like” button is not enough. Loved Epicus’s accurate description of Goatee Boy. In fact, I think Comics Kingdumb should copy it and put in in the introductory blurb on their Funky Winkerbean page.
Weird, the FW cast page mouse-over text for Anne Fairgood has that same “She and Fred met on the picket line during a teacher’s strike and were later married” story she was bringing up the second he hit the fan. At the time i thought that was probably some sort of retcon, but those text pieces must be very early Act III–they also say that Crazy has three children, and that there’s a woman named “Chien” that exists. Although the last time i checked that cast page it was for Act II–so how long has that Act III cast page been there?