Month: September 2014

C’est la Mort!

Well, after a week spent rehashing Funky’s failed fitness program, today’s strip is a change of pace indeed!

Six months after we learned of it, Funky finally gets around to telling Holly that his father has started smoking. As he’s telling her this, a nurse passes by pushing a wheelchair in which sits the crumpled, soulless husk of Ed Crankshaft! But that, that’s not the big news! Today we learn that Funky’s dad has a name!

No doubt his friends knew him as “Mort.” His daughter-in-law, however, in the first time we’ve seen her come to visit, stiffly addresses him: “Hello, Morton” (I imagine her intoning this the same way Seinfeld would say  “Hello, Newman“). Without imparting a hug or a kiss, she proceeds to lace into him about his recently acquired habit. Mort gives no fucks: he proceeds to smoothly light two cigs with his Zippo, proffering the second one to his lady friend.

Six months ago a doctor took Funky aside and raised the prospect of moving his father into “full-time nursing care.” But Mort seems happier and more engaged then we’ve ever seen him.

Nocturia. Who’s There?

Is Funky’s physician’s office right next door to the gym? As did the fitness arc back in May, this one winds up with a doctor visit. And like Fitness Girl, the doctor (not only nameless, but seemingly a different person every visit) serves merely as a foil, a sounding board for Funky’s perpetual woe.

Sort of off-topic, but not…here’s a really original way to get attention for your cause: Man Rolls Giant Testicle Across America to Raise Cancer Awareness

Doofus ex Machina

 

I’d been of the opinion that these “Funky and Fitness Girl” arcs are all about how Funky is made to suffer at the hands of his personal trainer. But the torture is reciprocal…how does she put up with his idiocy? She’s been working with him for nine months and he still doesn’t know how to use the pulldown machine? I wish Fitness Girl would “grab the bar” and beat Funky “overhead” with it!