If their mutual friend is now “selling band candy full time” then he’s not really retired, is he? But to Dinkle, this sounds like “living the dream.” Maybe John Thompson will be flown out to Belgium, or get a candy bar named after him, too. Someone who’s not living the dream is Adeela. When H-1B issues prevented her from leveraging her architecture degree, her fellow grad Wally installed her as Montoni’s day manager. This, of course, was merely a ploy to get the services of an architect at slightly above minimum wage. Only a matter of time before Adeels, like Khan before her, decides that life in war-torn Iraquistan beats being a Westview lifer.
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Son of Stuck Funky · The web's premiere source for Funky Winkerbean snark
Son of Stuck Funky 
There must be something special in those pizza fumes, to make Adeela smile in the presence of those two nattering nuisances.
According to the Yezidi, God condemned Lucifer to Hell because Lucifer refused to obey God’s command to worship the newly-created human race. “Lord,” said the Angel, “to worship anyone but You would be blasphemous!” Had the Almighty looked ahead and seen Harry Dinkle, She would have understood, apologized and started over.
No Harry, the “dream” is an arc where you’re crushed to death beneath a few pallets of band candy, culminating in a Sunday strip where this other band director guy tries to hit on Harriet after they drop off the rest of the band candy at the WHS band candy hall of fame. BatCan’t has tackled some pretty f*cking obscure topics in his day but “band directors on the cusp of retirement” is as niche as niche gets.
At least Adeela is back, helpfully waiting on the men folk as Westviewian tradition dictates. Poor Adeela. After leaving a horribly repressive society in Afghanistan she ends up in Westview, the most regressive and backwards outpost in the entire greater mid-central Ohio valley. In Westview a woman telling a man to get up and get something himself is punishable by either a public flogging or revocation of all comic book privileges for up to three weeks. Most native Westviewians take the flogging, as the alternative is just too horrible to contemplate.
Could this conversation be any more random? “Retire from what?” :Long days, short years.” “I can read a book in the morning!” “Living the dream!” It’s like a bot tried to write a story from all the forced conversations in Dilbert. Tomorrow’s punchline: “This chair is springy. Do you think they’re all springy?”
It’s sort of amazing in it’s own dumb way. It’s totally pointless and it’s “about” nothing at all, yet you need to possess all kinds of arcane Dinkle knowledge to understand it. And even then you have no idea who Dinkle’s talking to and no idea who John Thompson is, thus your Dinkle knowledge is even more useless than it ordinarily is. It’s paradoxes within paradoxes and he just sort of stumbled into them, like it’s some sort of tedious sorcery.
And I really do hate band candy gags and I especially hate that dumb cackle on Dinkle’s face when he cracks wise about band candy, like he’s in on the joke, which he never is because there rarely ever is a joke to be in on much less one worth cackling over. I’ve really grown to hate how those two words look and sound together…”band candy”…ugh.
Yeesh-selling band candy full time is “living the dream.” I get that it’s supposed to be funny, but as someone who has peddled band candy/pizzas/coupon books/cookie dough etc. both as a band kid and band parent I think ole Dinkle needs to taken to the nearest asylum immediately.
That last panel is actually kind of terrifying.
“So, old John’s living the dream, huh? And you? How much candy have you sold this year? You know, they made one for me with raisins in it. How many of those have you sold? Now, don’t be modest, just let me know. I mean, I’m clearly itching to tear your face off with my teeth, but I can be mollified with a good sales report. So tell me your numbers.”
Dinkle leans forward.
“I hope they’re good numbers, Nameless, because I’m feeling a bit peckish.”
“First you get the band candy, then you get the wisecracks, then you get the power. In the band room. And lots of unsold candy in your garage.”
What is terrifying is their chins. I think they both have chin cancer.
I confess I was never in a school band, but I always assumed it was the responsibility of the students themselves to go door to door with candy/turkeys/mattresses/autobiographies/whatever to try to raise funds for their scholastic musical ambitions. If “our mutual friend” (How dare Battyuk conflate this drivel with Dickens!) was retired, there’d be no need for him to continue shilling sugary snacks…unless Dinkelberg thinks that’s more important than teaching music to students.
Back in the day the gag was that Dinkle was the megalomaniacal dictator-type who took all the fund raising credit while his long-suffering band members suffered some more. He was way more of a genuine dick back then as opposed to the bland cackling nostalgia-wallowing jerk-off he is today. The gag used to be that Dinkle would resort to anything to sell the most band candy, but now the gag is “boy, I sure sold a lot of band candy!” which isn’t even a joke at all. It’s merely a remark about a joke, an old joke at that.
I was in band. The band boosters handled the fund raising campaigns. We typically sold geraniums and fruitcakes. Both were popular and easy to sell.
I’d like to think that ‘band candy’ is actually word code for ‘drugs’ which would make this arc at least a bit more interesting but no that’ll never happen. Actually the only way that this makes any sense is that the dialogue was assembled random cut up style in a dada style experiment in confronting the reader with their expectations of a narrative.
And as so many others have noted what’s with the coffee and pizza? Who in god’s name drinks coffee when having pizza?
That always bothered me. At our local pizza shop you see people drinking Coke or beer.
John Thompson sold band candy after he retired from coaching basketball at Georgetown?!
Like every character in this strip, Batiukverse John Thompson is still stuck in high school… in this case, taking a job that has him literally doing what poor high school band kids have to endure.
If he’s a friend of Harry Dinkle, this could be a sign that the Funkyverse answers to a just and vengeful–and perhaps even humorous–deity.
And now he uses his ever-present towel to try and wipe away the bitter taste of band candy and a humiliating second career.
How is selling band candy “Living the dream?” Who still wants to be hawking candy bars door-to-door when they’re 72 years old? Unless “band candy” is some codeword for “crystal meth” or “100% untraceable guns”….
I wonder if there’s corn on that pizza? Because there’s corn everywhere else in this strip.
I fucking hate that Batiuk’s wasting our time with this to-retire-or-not-to-retire bullshit, especially when one of the people talking is Dinkle, the pompous blowhard who’s supposed to be retired but still keeps going to school to harass his replacement and waste her time with unfunny jokes and anecdotes.
He’s supposed to be retired AND deaf.
And the worst of it is that we still don’t know this other man’s name. Nothing makes a pointless conversation more irritating than not knowing who everyone is, right?
L’bwah l’haw, l’haw! Eet eez foony becooz zee ‘Arry Dinkle chocolate eez zee dream!
USA! USA!
If she’s waiting tables, Adeela’s probably counting on tips for a lot of her income. She’s really going to appreciate it when these two leave a couple of candy bars.
I don’t know how to take this at all. How am I supposed to react to hearing that a retired band director sells band candy door to door? It sounds like a story of severe economic desperation, but No-Name says this plainly, as if John Thompson were working part-time at a store in his retirement.
And Dinkle’s reaction makes even less sense. Is he being sarcastic? It doesn’t seem like it, because in panel 2 he’s already grinning in anticipation of the devastating zinger he’s about to unleash. Are they lamenting the sad future that awaits them as retired band directors? Does Dinkle actually WANT to sell band candy for a living? What’s stopping him? Hasn’t he long since moved on to band turkeys, band mattresses, band autobiographies, and bandigogo dot com?
The base premise makes no sense. What does John Thompson do, buy band candy and resell it at a markup? Can you even do that? The companies that make the product generally deal with organizations only. What does John Thompson tell people who answer the door, that it’s for a senior citizen band? Is it the band from Bedside Manor? Is he committing charity fraud?
Why can’t this stupid comic strip even get its own subject matter right?
Dammit! Now you’ve made me think! That’s not what why I come here. That’s not why anybody reads FW.
Today’s artist draws Hairy Dinklage as three different people. Panel 1 portrays a rather affable looking elderly gentlemen. Panel 2 has bucket mouth sharing a table with a centenarian woman. Panel 3 shows us FW’s second most reviled character.