Get it? The bowling ball “crossed-over” into Rachel’s lane! “Cross-over”! Har-dee-har-har! Oh man, BanTom was on a real “roll” here, “bowling” us over with one of his patented side-“split”-ters. He’s the comic strip author you just can’t “pin” down! I may have to order a copy of this one so I can “frame” it as soon as I have some cash to “spare”. This kind of humor is right up my “alley”.
Anyhow, Ed’s band of boring morons have apparently just handed Funky’s band of boring idiots the coveted Holiday Tournament trophy via their sheer ineptitude. Quite a story and well worth the five days he spent telling it. Hopefully Jessica learned her lesson here and never inquires about those greasy old Montoni’s photos again. That girl is in dire need of a hobby. Might I suggest documentary film-making….oh, yeah, that’s right. Never mind.
Notice how CS characters are front and center in FW but not the other way around. Also notice what a piece of crap “Crankshaft” is, although you already knew that. I wonder which one draws more readers? I mean sure, we’re talking about maybe forty people here, give or take, but still. Everyone who filled me in regarding CS was right on the money, what a nasty piece of business that whole mess is.
But isn’t it pretty funny how badly he botched his comic strip titles? “Funky Winkerbean” and “Crankshaft”…oh man, when you think about it those are two really bad unmarketable titles right there. One is just stupid and the other couldn’t possibly be more innuendo-laden. I personally can’t wait to stop having to type the word “crankshaft”, even initializing it is annoying at this point.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Meanwhile, across the Funkiverse…
I’ll go ahead and give Batiuk and Ayers a little bit of credit here…even if the results aren’t exactly rollicking, at least they’ve put in some effort with this crossover. It’s way more cohesive than the much-touted Dick Tracy mashup.
Oh, the Dick Tracy thing was awful, just unbelievably lazy. You have the opportunity to have some fun with an iconic comic character and you have him lug boxes of comic books around…it boggles the mind. This is nowhere near as bad as that thing was, I just really dislike Crankshaft (the character and the strip) is all.
I have a strong feeling that if Batiuk somehow got to do a crossover with the Flash, who he really loves, he’d just sit in Cory’s old bedroom with Mason Jarr to read back issues of Starbuck Jones. And it’d be one panel of him speed-reading, and then he’d be done.
Several year ago, one of my local television stations aired a series of promos for their news broadcasts featuring their anchors and reporters telling a brief story about their life in the area. The long-time lead evening news anchor spun a tale about growing up in the city and playing pee-wee football. In one game, he claimed, he recovered a fumble and returned it 70 yards the wrong way, into the end zone his team was defending. “I scored every touchdown in that game,” he smirked, “even the one for the other team.”
NO YOU MORON, YOU CAN’T SCORE A TOUCHDOWN FOR THE OTHER TEAM! YOU SCORED A SAFETY, IF ANYTHING!
(Yes, I really yelled this at the television on at least three occasions.)
This strip is like that, perhaps even worse. It’s one thing to bend plausibility for a comedic effect (see Fred Flintstone picking up a 7-10 split by making his ball split in two, or even mascot Owen’s touchdown), it is another thing to wholly ignore the fundamental rules of the sport. Don’t depict Calvinball and call it bowling.
I haven’t bowled in years and my average never made it to triple digits, and even I know that PLAYERS DON’T BOWL IN ADJACENT LANES AT THE SAME TIME. It’s considered bad etiquette. And I’m pretty sure you can’t score for the other team no matter where your ball lands-but hey, why let reality get in the way of a tired, mean-spirited running gag?
So the FW team’s victory will always be tainted by “that lady’s” sad bowling ineptitude and the CS team will always resent Lena for costing them a championship through her incompetence, which is apparently a long-running CS gag. Hilarious!
So if they “just need a strike here” and it’s the deciding roll of the game, why is Lena taking a turn at all? Like with every other FW arc ever, he removes everything that’s even close to plausible from these stories in a way that defies belief. He consistently gets it all wrong right down to the tiniest detail. It’s uncanny and by far the most consistent thing about FW over the years.
And always and ever do we get the same excuse for taking a huge, steaming dump over plausibility, common decency and the actual facts in the service of his tired, cheerful misanthropy: he’s a writer writing so he can call women idiots and hindrances all he wants. It’s as if his idea of the Lord’s Prayer is the opening theme to Clarence: “I don’t care WHAT you say! I’m gonna do what I want all day! I’m the King of the World! I’m The King Of The World! I’M THE KING OF THE WORLD!!!!”
Another Batty masterpiece.
Roses in December.
So they basically use the same joke two days in a row (Lena’s unbelievable incompetence as a bowler causes her ball to jump into the next lane somehow). It was a terrible joke the first time, as it depends on us believing that a woman who is ON A BOWLING TEAM with a MONOGRAMMED BOWLING SHIRT and a CUSTOM BOWLING BALL does not possess a level of competency above that of a five-year-old.
Anyway, I’m reminded of a quote from the Alan Alda character in Crimes and Misdemeanors – “If it bends, it’s funny. If it breaks, it’s not funny”. Crankshaft’s attempts at humor (and to somewhat of a lesser extent FW), constantly push credibility past the bending level into the breaking level, thus rendering the “joke” as evoking more of a head-scratch than a chuckle.
@bobanero:
I think a head-scratch would be an improvement, at this point.
@spiff – Yes, probably more of a face-palm than a head-scratch.
@bobanero: “Portrait of a failure: Jerk from Ohio who hates plausibility.”
From CK (I have memorized this phrase since I see it every day): “A reality based comic strip”… So wrong in so many ways I won’t even begin, regarding this week, unless the crossover with what appears to be a NON reality based strip means default to the latter reality. (Plus, I mean, cmon, what fuggin year are we in? Is Crankshaft, a strip that is published in 2015 alongside FW which is also published in 2015, taking place during FW Act 2, or… I remain flummoxed by the panel corners adorning the FW strips… This is like that Web conspiracy theory holding that the Dark Knight film trilogy is actually the Joker aware along with the audience that it’s a movie while Batty, er, I mean Batman and the other characters remain oblivious and in-world… I am confusing myself now, so…)