Normally, a Funky Winkerbean reader would see today’s episode as one of those typical Sunday “filler” strips that has nothing to do with anything, but is just supposed to be lighthearted and fun.
But Tom Batiuk can’t resist tipping his heavy hand when he’s about to get serious. I guess it’s his way of saying “Polish off those awards, boys, the Batiuk shelf is ready for ’em!”
So we see Adeela all happy and carefree, just before the mean ol’ USA comes crashing down on her, for no reason at all (I’m guessing; there could be a reason that will turn out to be incredibly stupid). Maybe she has a brother who’s bombed here and there, and she’s guilty by association. Or it might be something we’ve never guessed (because it has never been shown.) As I mentioned yesterday, whatever it is will be so inaccurate and poorly thought-out that it should win awards–just not the good kind. The point is that Batiuk will make her life living hell, for no other reason than that’s the only kind of life available in this strip…and, for that, he should win an award. A good award, too. He thinks.
Seems odd that we had to go through nine years two weeks of talking about driver’s licenses to get here, but there you go in Batiukland.
And that’s all from me for now. Thank you for your indulgence; I appreciate your comments and your insights, and I also appreciate those who read but do not comment. And now, please welcome back reigning champion Epicus Doomus, who returns tomorrow.
Son of Stuck Funky 
So today he’s making a point of showing us how Adeela has ingratiated herself into Montoni’s culture, like she’s just another one of the gang and all. Yet the arc is about how she’s a Muslim, which is apparently her sole defining trait. So is she just like the rest of them or is she still “different”? I don’t know and neither does BatFraud.
And speaking of sole defining traits, what is going on with Wally’s head? I remember when Wally was one of the less annoying FW characters, but that’s in the past now. Geez.
That pose in panel 3… like she’s mid-Cha-cha.
Sashaying. (Batiuk loves words like this)
Our she tried a pizza with heathenous toppings and needs to quickly make it to the can without raising suspicions.
At least there’s a customer at Montoni’s this time.
Good Lord, nobody in this strip can be happy for more than like 5 minutes. At least the Sunday-only readers will just think this is a cheerful strip about a Muslim immigrant woman becoming one of the gang.
I have to admit, though, that like Funky, I enjoy playing the perfect song for the occasion.
Ironically, there’s also a slice of orange pizza to demonstrate why Montoni’s rarely has customers.
Which goes so well with some piping hot coffee!
I’m not sure Crazy really counts as a customer, he’s been hanging at that counter drinking coffee and avoiding his job since Act II began and I’m not sure we’ve even once seen him shell out a single cent.
The half-eaten slice of pizza is new, though. Also, coffee and pizza? Together? Good grief, man.
Yeah, I love both coffee and pizza, but not together. Get your act together, Funky!
Hey, it’s Crazy Harry’s breakfast of champions.
Uh huh. The song choice:
——-
If the rain comes they run and hide their heads.
They might as well be dead.
If the rain comes, if the rain comes.
When the sun shines they slip into the shade
——-
Lay it on just a little thicker, Batiuk.
“Rain”? I know it wasn’t released as a single, but if the jukebox at Montoni’s was going to feature any early Beatles song, I would have assumed it was “I’m a Loser.”
It was the b side of Paperback Writer so for once Tom is accurate but what the juke box is doing with a 50 plus year old 45 is beyond me – it would be bound to be beat up. Of course Juke boxes that play 45’s have gone the way of all flesh in most places – and if memory serves this is the first time a jukebox has ever been mentioned in the strip. There was what seemed like a month long arc on the stupid band box but not a whisper of a Juke box until now.
And I would argue that as one might expect Tom missed the point of the song which is in the last verse
“Can you hear me, that when it rains and shines,
(When the sun shines down.)
It’s just a state of mind
Can you hear me, can you hear me?”
Still rather surprised he’s name checked someone like the Beatles – One would expect “Pennies from Heaven” given the Author’s taste for things popular before he was born.
My cousin’s pizza shop has a digital jukebox and so it can play nearly anything that can be downloaded. But Batty will have none of that.
I hope Adeela makes a sudden move and they unload their weapons on her and accidentally take out Les in the process. They can show Funky smirking as he surveys the carnage.
Sheesh, Tom, just draw an arrow pointing at Cory in Panel 4 that says “IRONY!!!! FORESHADOWING!!!!!!!!!!! GIVE ME AN AWARD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Why not CCR and “Have You Ever Seen The Rain”? Or was that playing the night “Batman” shattered Batmanic’s childhood innocence? (Which with his memory for details might be what’s going on in his head.)
Or any of the thousands of other popular songs about rain or storms. Hell, I can name another one by Peter Gabriel: https://youtu.be/FkLTwX0duY4
And I love how Batiuk pays attention to detail while getting the obvious wrong. He correctly names “Rain” as the B-side of “Paperback Writer” in 1966, but somehow thinks that either would be in a jukebox in 2020. And that jukeboxes in 2020 would be limited to the contents of 45 RPM records as they were originally pressed. And that Johnny Dowd, whoever that is, would have a 45 record in the jukebox right next to it. We can’t see the third record, but it’s probably by Gene Autry or The Flash.
Let’s save “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” for an appearance of the Chinese Water Torture.
I was so bored I looked it up. Johnny Dowd is a 70-something alt country/neo-bluegrass musician from Ithica, New York (which may well be that state’s Westview). His debut album, “Wrong Side of Memphis,” came out in 1997 and features the song “Papa, Oh, Papa,” while the B-side in the strip appears to read “Cemetery Shoes,” which was the name of a 2004 Dowd album, not a single.
I don’t think that Ithaca, home of both Cornell University, where Carl Sagan taught, and Ithaca College, with its strong performing arts program, is likely to resemble Westview.
Yeah, I’m so bored too I found “Papa” on youtube. Like Batiuk can’t write this guy can’t sing. Probably why he likes him. He sings like he’s drunk, is that the point? If it was amateur night he’d be hooted off the stage. I placed Dowd with “The Shags” under the file ‘??artist??’.
I’m glad you brought it up. I was going to just ignore it but your comment compelled me to look up that song and I’m astonished as to how thoroughly awful that song is. The instrumental ending to the single phrase the song has contains a dissonant high pitched chord, so that’s already aggravating. His “singing” is atonal and tramples over the established meter of the instrumental accompaniment.
Online discussions about “the worst song of all the time” typically get responses with “this currently popular song I don’t like” and rarely has anyone mention genuinely awful songs. I’ll need to recall this in the future should I want to volunteer a choice. This is something that would have been featured on Jim Nayder’s “The Annoying Music Show”.
For the life of me, I cannot imagine why he would think that anyone would want this song heard in a restaurant. Just picture it – you’re at a restaurant with friends or family, you’re having a good time, the food is served, then this song comes on. Could you even manage to ignore it? I would be stopped mid-bite and wonder what the hell is coming out of the speakers.
Let it be observed that this song features the phrase “kill you with this song” repeated over and over again within it. Indeed, “kill you with this strip” does seem like its mission statement.
Sorry for spelling. It’s “The Shaggs”.
Wow, what a terrible song. It reminds me of something The Residents would have rejected for their “Third Reich N Roll” album.
For the life of me, I cannot imagine why he would think that anyone would want this song heard in a restaurant.
To clear the place out at closing time. Seriously: I heard of a restaurant owner who did this. He didn’t play bad music, just music that clientele wouldn’t want to hear. It was surprisingly effective.
Oh, man, I don’t want to hear the rest of Hell’s playlist!
Looking at the depressing lyrics of “Papa, Oh, Papa” I can definitely see why it would be on TomBa’s radar.
Well, to be fair, I think that’s how Funky’s jukebox would work. Dude doesn’t even have a proper soda machine.
This is going to be a long slog through bathos and melodrama, isn’t it? I shudder to think of what a hash he’s going to make of this. Given what we saw in Saturday’s strip, I half expect him to have ICE retrieve Adeela with the giant balloons that the authorities of the Village used to send after Number 6 in The Prisoner TV series from the ‘60s.
With her newly acquired drivers license, she could drive one of those golf cart taxis!
Yeah, Wally, it’s great that a woman with a degree in architecture is learning what songs the owner of her dead-end job likes to play. Could you all stop patronizing her? She’s not a special needs child!
I thought Adeela was going to be the daytime manager since Wally, after getting his essential degree, was shifted to the nighttime manager. Thus, they wouldn’t be working at the same time.
This is such a great illustration of what’s wrong with this strip. Here you have a woman whose only established feature is that she’s foreign. We know nothing about her except that she’s an immigrant who came from a culture markedly different from Westview’s. And yet here she is, revealing that she has the exact same sense of humor and musical taste of literally everyone else in the strip, and those tastes, oddly enough, undoubtedly align with those of the author. And it’s also a great illustration of this strip’s shortcomings that its definition of “making a home” and “quick study” involve doing these irrelevant and unnecessary acts precisely as everyone else does them. She doesn’t riff on it. She doesn’t add her own flavor to it. No, she’s making herself at home by becoming exactly like Funky. She has no use for her own personality.
This is exactly what I mean re: Adeela. She’s “one of the gang” now, just like everyone else. However her entire character is based solely on being a Muslim and the struggles she has to endure because of it, so essentially she’s just a gimmick character, just a one-note caricature created specifically for dumb prestige arcs. She has no personality at all aside from “I’m just happy to be here”.
Don’t worry, Batty will no doubt turn her into an Opera (gag) just like he thinks he did with the one note “I have unrequited love for Les” Susan.
Look for Adeela’s personality to grow from “I am a Muslim and happy to be here” to “I am a Muslim and I would like to be happy to still be here, but I’ve been deported in the hopes Batty can get some award or something.”
1. Damn, an old-fashioned jukebox?? Why haven’t the hipsters been flocking this Palace of Kitsch?
2. I’m not going anywhere near this dumbass storyline, maybe I’ll try again next week
Hipsters don’t go cause it’s a real dive, not just a dive in an ironic way.
“So how is Adeela doing?”
Why don’t you ask her? She was six feet away.
I nominate Garbage’s song “Only Happy When it Rains” for the theme song of Funkyville, it says everything about these people:
I’m only happy when it rains
I’m only happy when it’s complicated
And though I know you can’t appreciate it
I’m only happy when it rains
You know I love it when the news is bad
Why it feels so good to feel so sad?
I’m only happy when it rains
Pour your misery down
Pour your misery down on me
Pour your misery down
Pour your misery down on me
I’m only happy when it rains
I feel good when things are goin’ wrong
I only listen to the sad, sad songs
I’m only happy when it rains
I only smile in the dark
My only comfort is the night gone black
I didn’t accidentally tell you that
I’m only happy when it rains
You’ll get the message by the time I’m through
When I complain about me and you
I’m only happy when it rains
Pour your misery down (Pour your misery down)
Pour your misery down on me
Pour your misery down (Pour your misery down)
Pour your misery down on me
Pour your misery down (Pour your misery down)
Pour your misery down on me
Pour your misery down
You can keep me company
As long as you don’t care
I’m only happy when it rains
You wanna hear about my new obsession?
I’m riding high upon a deep depression
I’m only happy when it rains
Pour some misery down on me
I’m only happy when it rains
Pour some misery down on me
I’m only happy when it rains
Pour some misery down on me
I’m only happy when it rains
Pour some misery down on me
I’m only happy when it rains
Pour some misery down on me
Pour some misery down on me
Pour some misery down on me
Pour some misery down on me
Pour some misery down on me
Pour some misery down on me
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Douglas Elwin Erickson / Shirley Ann Manson / Steve W. Marker / Bryan David Vig
Only Happy When It Rains lyrics © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd., Universal Music Publishing Group
Shirley Manson is a sex machine!
Check out CK where reader Hannibal’s Lectern took time to rewrite the lyrics of “Paperback Writer” to reflect the Fungyverse.
I bet Lisa would like that.
She has ignored the Band Box. Whatever comes her way will be because of that.
For the record, the jukebox at Luigis is a CD one, where you can flip through the covers with track listings.
Grudgingly giving Batty some credit here, he put up a song by Michael Stanley(actually the Michael Stanley Band), “Spanish Nights”.
For the unaware, Michael Stanley has been a fixture on the Northeast Ohio music scene since the mid 70’s and had a modicum of national attention in the early 80’s. While his salad days are behind him, he continues to put out good, solid, heartfelt music. I encourage everyone to look him up on YouTube and give a listen.
Call me biased(no, don’t call me, I definitely am. His music is the soundtrack to my youth) but your money cheerfully refunded if not completely satisfied.
MSB! Yeah that was the sound of my youth too. I agree, Michael Stanley has held up pretty well and obviously is very talented. I was in a restaurant one night in Cleveland and his entourage came in. Everyone was calling out and saying hello and he flashed a big smile and waved to everyone. Seems like a nice guy.
Chrissie Hynde on the other hand, has a reputation for being very nasty to her fans. I have friends who had the unfortunate task to wait on her.
I Do Not Like This Content
Where did Adeela’s apron go? She’s not wearing it in panel 4.
Please, “It’s called drawing’.
Adeela is usually drawn as a portly age non-descript woman. In panel one she looks like she took off 50 pounds. In panel three she seems to be boogying in front of the classic Montoni’s jukebox.
Yeah, that Johnny Dowd song “Papa Oh Papa” is really bad. But you have GOT to see the music video for “Betty”. If Funky Winkerbean was a music video, this would be it: