Again, it sure seems to me that someone who has come to “check out” Bull would be listening to Bull talk about his, um, er *cough* “successes” rather than go on and on and on and on about some play. It makes me think that this DUI guy stepped on a few too many toes, so they sent him to Westview to see what his future could look like if he doesn’t start shaping up.
Look at Dolt’s expression in panel two, and contrast it with his expression in panel two of Tuesday’s strip. The sunny helpful face has been replaced by one creased with worry. The penny is beginning to drop. You know, those guys who said, “Good luck, and don’t come back!” weren’t really smiling.
Maybe I can grab one of these tackling dummies and bring it back to DUI, and say, Guys, meet Bull Bushka! and everyone will laugh and I’ll be okay. He glances between the two. The tackling dummy certainly is smarter and has a better personality…
I have to say, for a strip that specializes in being unbelievably boring, Tom Batiuk has really outdone himself this week…and we’re not over yet, not for the week and I’m sure not for the arc. After all, nothing resembling a “point” has reared its ugly head. All of which I’m sure will lead to Bull being tempted to go to the big city, but deciding to stay in Westview because of a poorly-worded platitude he smirks out to someone. Les, probably.
Oh…I forgot today’s word-play. How could I have forgotten that? It’s…certainly there, isn’t it. It reminds me of a dumb joke whose punchline makes up today’s title. Other than that, it’s another Crankshaft reject.
Son of Stuck Funky 
This was my 100th post. Good thing I have the bullets locked up.
Honestly, I don’t think that “Bull is recruited by a college team” thing will ever be mentioned again, much less “go” anywhere. It was just an excuse to use that DUI gag, nothing more. It’s the level this strip works on.
“Reckful”??? FW: re-defining “the bottom” each and every day. It’s difficult to believe a man in his sixties writes this stuff and it’s even more difficult to believe he gets paid to do it. I wish he’d “hurry up” and cram all these horrendous puns into one very wordy panel so he could get to whatever’s next…or then again, maybe not.
Bull’s expression in Panel 3 looks like he has no idea what this guy has been nattering on about all week. That makes all of us.
Maybe DUI means “Drawing Under the Influence,” which would ecplain the motivation behind this week’s strips.
I don’t even really mind the annual “boy, the Scapegoats sure do suck again this year” arc, it’s usually just relatively harmless and mostly Les-free “fun”, relatively speaking, of course. The problem this year, though, is that instead of centering the gags around how dumb Bull is or how shitty the team is, he’s focusing on just the gags themselves, which really exposes just how pitiful and sad they are. Normally you’d be thinking “man, that Bull sure is a complete and total moron” but now it’s like “man, these jokes read like a five year old wrote them”. And all because he HAD to use that DUI joke. This nameless gray man is even more boring and annoying than Bull Bushka…ponder that for a moment if you will.
What the hell was DUI for? So frustrating! They never mentioned Diversity. They never made a DUI joke. They never discussed MOOCs (Diversity U is apparently an online diploma factory). They never did anything!
My current theory is that TB saw Indiana University of Pennsylvania in a mirror and thought that it was a worthy of a recurring sight-gag. Wow, sneaking it into the corner of a strip focussed on wordplay. What an Easter egg for the beady eyed nitpickers!
Look, I love puns. Puns are great, because sometimes they make you think about the double meanings within our dumb English words. (My 12th-grade Government teacher convinced me of this.) But, like… I hear there are other forms of comedy. Irony’s an okay one… a little over-done lately… but… like… how about… anything else? Possibly?? Situation comedy? Satire? No, not satire…
@Slager, I to love puns. Maybe we can start a support group? In any case the person I b̶l̶a̶m̶e̶ credit is Jay Ward, “Rocky and Bullwinkle”, “George of the Jungle”, and “Fractured Flickers” among others. A well crafted and delivered pun is a joy and delight. A poorly thought out and forced pun is like a dog turd you just stepped in. TB you couldn’t scrap off Jay Ward’s shoes.
The problem is that forty years ago, this would have been a single throw-away strip that was less painful to read. As Batiuk gets older, his sense of comic timing has deteriorated and his ability to identify with people become as one with Nineveh and Tyre.
“When it comes to the quality of the humor, reck nought!”—Batom, Inc. corporate motto (probably)
@Slager: You gotta admit, this comic is pretty much a masterpiece of self-satire. Commerce centering around pizza, comic books being the fulcrum of culture and the threads of interconnectedness, Les Moore being persecuted by shallow Hollywood for being too good…
Beckoning, congrats on 100 posts! Also for turning me on to a useful expression I’d never heard before: “The penny is beginning to drop…”
I learned more about the hurry-up offense from Goldie Hawn during the credits of Wildcats than I did from this whole week of strips ostensibly explaining it.
I begin to wonder if perhaps this nameless fellow isn’t simply a hallucination that Bull has al la Le Chat Blu – who shows up from time to time and spouts sports gibberish at him then vanishes.
“I begin to wonder if perhaps this nameless fellow isn’t simply a hallucination that Bull has al la Le Chat Blu”
You mean his entraîner blanc?