Oh goodie! Dinkle has snuck back into the high school band room to make sure his replacement is doing her job correctly. Didn’t want another repeat of the Band Mattresses door to door fiasco. Nosiree! It’s a frozen avian holocaust year after year from now on, just as our founding fathers intended.
You think Batiuk remembers that he taught Dinkle all about the joys of Indigogo back when he was taking the Bedside Manorisms to Memphis? Of course this is BANDiegogo, some kind of MLM nonsense which probably takes a nice slice out of the gross income from the fundraiser.
Also, has the band room always been teal? Such a weird color for the walls of a school. Blues and greens are typically calming colors, low energy, and the last thing Becky needs from her slack-jawed horn jockeys is less energy.
What is written on the dry erase board in the background? Some kind of manifesto? Probably it was supposed to be the lines from music staff, less the clefs and braces. But the way it’s drawn makes it look like someone’s been transcribing the Declaration of Independence long-hand.
A weird mix of detail and sloppiness in the art today, all over. We have Becky’s omnipresent folded and pinned sleeve, and the tiny music note on the coffee cup of the piano. Then we have a computer’s keyboard in panel three just drenched in teal, and the terrifying scribble of Becky in panel one looking like a meerkat in a wig.
Who is down for a week of Dinkle on autopilot?
Son of Stuck Funky 
The Band Room sign is always on the inside of the door. It’s like Batiuk is afraid his audience won’t know it’s the band room unless he literally has a sign saying that, but doesn’t want to do an external shot for some reason.
Because it’s easier than having the characters explain it in each strip ala “John Darling was murdered……”
These kinds of things irritate me to no end. Like we really need that tidbit.
We don’t need Dinkle either, but here is is. He never goes away. Go bother and complain to someone else for change. And Lefty, get a modern haircut already.
I approve of making the sales totally on-line. It’s a lot easier to ignore a website and its e-mail bulletins than it is to ignore a couple of toads knocking at your door to sell you a decaying turkey. The strip needs more of this brilliance instead of the next five Dinkle Days.
Dinkle used to keep frozen turkeys in the band room? What, did he get kickbacks from the local hospital or a stomach pump manufacturer or something?
“Oh, my new New York Times readers are going to love Dinkle! He’s a hilarious old coot, but he has a lot of insight into life, and things like that. And they can learn from him, mostly about how awesome I am! Thank goodness I told them it was a nine-week story!
“OH! OH! Do I still have time to do a Crankshaft crossover? Because I know those New York Times people would just love that! It would show how rich my universe is, and (blush) coincidentally might get me some of those awards! Not that I care about that, of course!
“Oh, and now I’m wondering if I can slip in a Rip Tide Scuba Cop cover? Because that would cement my reputation with these New Yorkers! I’m pretty sure scuba cops are all the rage with the intelligentsia!”
“By now Batiuk’s brain was aching for air.”
Band director being bossed around by predecessor who retired decades ago: “Most band fund raising is done online these days.”
Former band director who’s spent the last fifty years hanging around a high school: “Whaaaaaaa?”
Sometimes the abrupt way FW suddenly shifts gears is pretty jarring. Just yesterday Les and Linda agreed to conspire to hide a suicide, now today we’re cracking wry about band turkeys, a concept BatYam has found consistently amusing for a long, long time. It’s all so surreal and strange.
Anyhow, Dinkle still sucks and Becky is as armless as ever, so there you go. She must be so sick of Dinkle’s constant hand-holding. He may indeed be her left-hand man but surely she can juggle her responsibilities without Dinkle shouldering any of her load.
Can’t Becky buy some jackets or tops that can be tailored to do away with the rolled up arm? Or does she need that constant reminder every day? Isn’t greeting the morning by looking at her husband enough hell on earth? Lisa should have given her an arm.
She used to. She used to actually wear a prosthetic. Then Creepy John told her she didn’t need to do that for him (even though she did it before they started dating) and she never wore it again.
He’ll be buried in his formal Batman T-shirt. His opinion is mostly worthless.
No, that would be too easy. She, er, I mean Batty, wants to make a statement.
It’s like those people on social media who do something blatantly stupid, and then when called on it, rephrase it by saying: I proudly do (insert stupid act).
Also, I notice that although Westview, like many schools, requires everyone to have a visible ID (even Les and Linda had them when shown in a school setting), somehow Dinkle, even though he’s a permanent fixture in the band room, is exempt.
But at least the piano and the music stands are lovingly rendered.
I think Dinkle’s head IS a frozen turkey!
It bothers me that Batiuk thinks that it’s funny that no one in his universe knows how to fund-raise. People already probably have a turkey by now so would probably appreciate something else but Dinkle is a simpleton so we get this. It’s like a Crankshaft that has a church decide between a spaghetti dinner and a pancake breakfast by having a spaghetti breakfast.
“spaghetti breakfast??”
Yes, yes, go on… You just might have stumbled onto something HUGE here…!
Act I Dinkle was the best character in the strip, by which I mean he was a realistic, humorously exaggerated, total asshole.
If you were in a school band, your band director was just like him: an obsessive, self-centered megalomaniac making unrealistic demands of average schoolchidren to feed his own ego.
I’m amazed that schools can even field a marching band anymore. It’s expensive, time-consuming, and you’re expected to do every lame-brained fundraising idea your director gets. All to be part of a honking collective that sings the greatness of Westview High School to bored football fans. Ugh.
At my old high school there was a painting of Dinkle on the band director’s office door.
Becky should get a jacket with pockets so she tuck the left sleeve in it al a Spencer Tracy in “Bad Day at Black Rock.”
GREAT fuckin’ movie!
Actually today’s strip is a rare instance where Dinkle’s presence makes sense. The joke wouldn’t work if Becky wasn’t explaining the new fundraising method to someone who is caught up in the methods of the past. Of course this joke is only good for one day. I doubt he’ll be able to drag this out for five more days without totally bolloxing it up.
Oh for fuck’s sake… Either the Dink needs to grow enough stones to just un-retire and beg for his old job back, OR Rebecca needs to grow enough of a spine to tell him to go to hell and never set foot on campus again…
Really. There’s something sexist about Dinkle’s constant hovering and unsolicited advising of someone who’s had the job for several years now. And clearly has a better grasp on the fundraising aspect.
What? Sexism in “Funky Winkerbean?” Perish forbid!