I suspect that rather than carry them over into the new year, Batiuk is obligated to burn off every shitty pun that he’s scrawled on a Luigi’s napkin over the last twelve months. Even the puns in French, which are harder for people who are not Les Moore to “get”. Polishing this turd of a gag into a strip requires Les to deliver the jeu de mots, since he’s the only one intellectual enough to coin (and appreciate) such a clever jest.
29 thoughts on “La Douche”
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Son of Stuck Funky 
Ugh, wry wordplay-based banter, featuring Dickface, on a Monday no less. That’s just cruel. I don’t want to even begin to speculate on what this might end up being.
What a crude and unpleasant fellow!
I think Les’ face in panel two just cries out for a coffee carafe to be smashed into it.
It’s funny that apparently both Harry and Holly are fluent enough in French to get this pun. Or maybe they aren’t and Les just doesn’t give a damn.
Also, I would bet good money that Batiuk has a long, long list of “tear”-based puns.
I hope TV and movie studio execs who read the Variety® puff piece on Batom® have actually bothered to read the strip. Because since it was published, Batom® has done nothing but put out arguably some of his worst work ever (and that’s somewhat of an achievement, as it were).
You know, whenever Stephen Pastis does a terrible pun in Pearls Before Swine, he always concludes with one of his characters threatening to do violence to him. I propose the same thing happen to Les, minus the “threatening” part.
Christ, I never took a French class, so Les told a joke I can’t understand. I’m assuming it’s some “Apple of your eye” nonsense. Les is far too precious to be haunting a third rate pizza joint in Buttfuck, Ohio.
The internet tells me that it’s Apple of the Earth. So he didn’t tell a joke. Just some tortured dirt in your eye wordplay? I guess? Batiuk should send us all a personal apology, this is nonsensical in any language.
Aha! I finally get it! This must be the start of Batom®’s long-awaited series on bullying!
Oh wait… it’s
St. Les the Righteous SmirkerBatom® himself that’s doing the actual bullying.Never mind.
“Pomme de terre” is the French term for a potato. I’d assume that everyone in Westview is familiar enough with potatoes to know their names in all languages, since their nose and body shapes all cry out “potato.”
You say potato…
If Batiuk had written a pun about a potato, it would have spuddered.
This reminds me of a joke my 11th grade English teacher made, where another teacher accidentally spills coffee and says, “I guess I shouldn’t have tried to drink with my left hand,” and my teacher says, “How gauche of you.”
I thought it was funny. This potato/apple thing, not so much. I don’t see any potatoes here.
UGH! It’s LES again. More punchable than ever before. How is it even possible to have *such* a punchable face?
…How do you rub a pastry into your eye? There’s a fork there. Was it even used? And unless the crumbs flew into his eye on it’s own or something, wouldn’t you use a napkin to wipe your fingers–BEFORE you rubbed your own EYES?
Westview: Where even your own food tries to kill you because you have zero common sense.
The key here is obviously Harry going out of his way to mention Funky, who isn’t there. I doubt it’s an accident, as it seems really unlikely that anyone would suddenly start thinking about Funky unless they were prompted somehow. Thus it seems likely that there’s some reason Funky is absent, which TomBat will no doubt get to in the span of the next eleven months or so. Or maybe not at all, with TB you just don’t know. Damn it, I couldn’t stop myself from speculating about it after all.
Just look at that cackling asshole. God I detest him so much. And where did Funky’s whiz-bang Xmas display go? All I see today is one shitty wreath.
Great. A forced pun that only Les thinks is funny leading towards a reminder that Funky is off wallowing in different misery elsewhere. Is he with his father or is he trying to get zombie Ed Crankshaft to be wonderful? Who knows? All I know is that we lose either way.
“Is he with his father or is he trying to get zombie Ed Crankshaft to be wonderful?”
Isn’t it time for the up on the roof putting up the reindeer crap?
@Saturnino: That’s probably exactly what’s happening: a week about his battle to put up the stupid ornament. Perhaps we’ll get a whinge about activist bureaucrats who want to wage war on Christmas.
From now on…every time I read FW, I’m also going to read “Nancy” and compare the two for creativity, character development, originality. So far it’s Nancy 1-0.
I was going to comment about a Pizza Parlor serving German strudel, then I remember the Noble Roman’s Pizza parlor where I worked served breadsticks with nacho cheese sauce.
This strip becomes a little more interesting if Holly’s “no it’s not” is really coming from Funky in disguise, which is very believable when Holly is drawn to look like Funky in a blonde wig.
Not interesting in a “ha ha cross-dressing” kind of way, but interesting in that it implies that Funky disguises himself as Holly in order to see if his “friends” act any differently when he’s not around. He seems pleased to learn that they don’t; Crazy still struggles with his motor skills and Les is still the biggest schmuck north, south, east, or west of East Washington Street.
No matter how hard I try, I can’t get this pun to make sense. The pronunciation of “pomme de terre”, pronounces the word “tear” like “tear Les’s throat out”, but that doesn’t make any sense in the context of Crazy getting strudel in his eye, unless it resulted in him tearing his retina or something. I’m guessing he means to pronounce “tear” like “tears of a clown”, which sort of makes sense in the context of Crazy’s eye possibly tearing up from getting scalding hot apple goo in it, but not really. At any rate, it’s an enormously tedious set up for an enormously terrible joke.
And I’m totally in love with Aunt Fritzi. Please never mention Nancy and Funky Winkerbean in the same sentence again.
You can always count on Less More to lord his dime store pseudo-intellectualism over the lesser mortals of Westview.
Stop it, Tom Batiuk! You’re hurting comedy.
The worst thing about the “bad pun” episodes is not the hopeless banality of Les’ puns, but the horrible, clichéd reactions. At least the puns change each time; the groaning reaction the same each time, is what gets me angry.
In order to set up this stupid French apple/ potato pun, Battic has to make his character do something as stupid as rub his dessert in his eye. You might get a squirting of lemon juice, or grapefruit juice, but you gotta be a special kind of person to accidentally rub your dessert in your eye. Kudos on such an organic setup to make this pun possible!
This is truly pomme de terribile. Is that what Batsuck writes when he doesn’t get enough sleep? How far will he go to force some dumb pun he thought of into a comic strip? I think we’re finding out.
Anyway, here’s what REALLY happened:
Les (smirking his smirkiest smirk): “That would be a pomme de tear!”
[Dead silence]
Crazy (still in pain): “It’s a pummda what?
Les: “A pomme de TEAR!”
Crazy (getting annoyed): “How do you mean?”
Les (impatiently): “You have apple strudel in your eye! ‘Pomme’ is French for ‘apple’…
Crazy (still in pain, getting even more annoyed): “Goddam it, Les. Why are you telling your dumb jokes in French? If they’re not funny in English, they’re not gonna be funny in French. What a pansy.”
Les: “It’s funny because ‘pomme’ means ‘apple,’ and ‘pomme de terre’ means potato!’
[Dead silence]
Crazy: “Holly, will you gimme a wet towel? My goddam eye is burning like hell from this strudel, and I think I poked it with my fork.”
Holly: “I’m not Holly. I’m Funky in a blonde wig.”
Les (exasperated): “And ‘terre’ sounds EXACTLY like ‘tear’ if you say it a certain way. Apple…? Potato…? TEAR…??”
Crazy: “Shut the f**k up, Les! Gijmme a goddam towel!!”
Les: “Humph. I guess some children WERE left behind.”
Hey, keep “Nancy” out of this. Ernie Bushmiller, RIP, was a graphic genius. Tom Batiuk isn’t fit to polish his shoes.
If you guys want to see some high quality cartoon art, check out Frank Cho’s ApesAndBabes.com. Last week he posted the first few pages of the new Guardians of the Galaxy Annual #1 that he illustrated. It includes 16 consecutive panels of Capt. Marvel, and her facial expressions are amazingly life-like. I’d be willing to bet Batty looks at work like that just repeatedly mutters to himself, “Dammit, I am that good, too. Dammit, I am that good, too.”
Not only was Ernie Bushmiller a graphical genius, but he literally perfected the “gag-a-day” formula to a T. Something that Act I Funky couldn’t even come close to matching by any means whatsoever.
Comparing “Funky Winkerbean” to “Nancy” is like comparing a piece of used lawn furniture to an apple.