Sure looks like Dinkle is ALWAYS ENJOYING giving piano lessons here. In panel two his face looks like it’s about to melt right off from all the pleasure teaching this child has given him. He stares out at us, his droopy face limp from all the aching joy coursing through him.
Kids today, amirite? What with their lazy ability to access nearly the sum total of the world’s knowledge through advanced pocket sized electronics connected to an invisible network of radio signals wirelessly transmitting nearly instantaneously across the entire nation. How annoying, that they can use this vast storehouse of information to interpret things they encounter that they don’t completely understand.
Back in Dinkle’s day, if someone purporting to be an expert told you something, you believed him. If you didn’t know the answer to a question, and you weren’t within arms reach of 100 pounds worth of encyclopedias, you lived with your ignorance. You didn’t get to instantly know why the sky is blue, or why mules are sterile, or when The Pet Shop Boys released the single, “I’m in Love with a German Film Star.”
So no, you snot nosed brat, you can’t ‘google’ it! You don’t get to know about Mr. Piano’s Mr. Middle C key until Mr. Harry Dinkle, The World’s Greatest Band Director, tells you!
And don’t you dare ask where my potted piano plant went!
Son of Stuck Funky 
Isn’t it the piano teacher’s job to teach the pupil things like Middle C?
Do you notice that he uses this setup often? A teacher asks the class something, the class cannot answer or gives a stupid answer, and then the teacher smirks.
This is just another cheap and unfunny ripoff of Dave Berg’s Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions….but without the humor.
This week is so dull it’s barely worth talking about, but it’s such a prime example of how Funky Winkerbean operates. Kids are dumb. Kids can’t function without their phones. Their failure to learn is never the teacher’s fault. Make no effort to inspire anyone, or even set minimal standards for performance or behavior. Suffer in silence. Smirk and roll your eyes at the camera. Repeat ad nauseum.
” I hear babies cry,
I watch them grow.
They’ll learn so much more
Then I’ll ever know,
And I think to my self,
‘What a wonderful world.'”
I agree but wanted to give credit to Al Jaffee who wrote Mad’s “Snappy Answers.”
Thank you for the correction.
See what I mean about his weird disdain for children? They’re all worthless brats, ruined by “technology”, unlike HIS generation, which was molded and shaped by comic books. Sigh.
Tomorrow, Dinkle is exasperated when the kid doesn’t understand why piano keys are called “ivories.” Next, he wants to now why the “strings” are made out of metal instead of real string. On Sideways Sunday we see the upended piano atop Dinkle after the kid googles “What Wile E. Coyote would do with an upright piano.”
Can Dinkle tell me what the finger in the middle of my hand is?
Spotted a blooper! The youth refers to it as “googling” when everyone knows its “asking grandpa google”
Haikus of the Day
You want to Google?
You disappoint me, pupil.
It’s Bing, or nothing!
–
Kid can’t answer me
Pianists should know these things
Not that I’ll teach him
I’m not a music teacher nor do I play a musical instrument, but it seems to me that when teaching a beginning student, especially one who’s still in elementary school, it would make sense to label the white keys until the student has their position memorized.
“Gosh, I can’t, Mister Dwinkle, becauz this is our first wesson and you haven’t teached it to me yet!”
Merciful Claude Barlow, it looks like Dinkle’s jowls are about to slide off his cheeks and plop onto the keyboard. At least the look of pained resignation on his kisser matches those of most of the readers who have wasted four days reading this arc and know there are at least one or two more in their future.
“That’s a trick question, Herr Dinkle! There are an even number of keys on this piano, so the ‘middle’ comes between two keys!”
They don’t “google” in the Fungyverse. They “grandpa google.”
BWAWAHAHAWHAWHAW! It’s funny because Dinkle breaks the fourth wall with a Jonas Grumby look!
I might buy Alan Hale, Jr. as Dinkle only if he came with Bob Denver as Les (Maynard Krebs was rocking a goatee decades before Lester).
@comicbookharriet ICYMI: kudos!
Holy cow! I feel so famous.
Is that Harriet on the masthead? If she’s going to enter this story maybe it will get at least a little bit interesting.
Another thing that bothers me is the extreme level of the child’s failure. I never took piano lessons, but isn’t Middle C the first thing you have to learn, because it’s the reference point from which all your finger movements start? What have Dinkle and the child been doing all this time if he doesn’t know what Middle C is? And even if he did happen to forget the name, he’d at least remember, “oh, it’s that key you start from.”
And “Mr. Whole Note Takes A Walk” appears to be just a series of whole notes and whole rests. This seems more appropriate for wind instruments, where you have to learn complex hand and mouth techniques just to make a sound. And even then, it’s first-day or maybe first-week stuff. It’s way, way too simplistic for piano, where it takes no training or skill to push a key down. I remember piano tutorials starting with scales, or pieces like “Chopsticks” or “Greensleeves.”
This is the comedic uncanny valley Funky Winkerbean lives in. Characters are portrayed as being pathologically stupid or unlucky, but without any exaggeration that would make it funny. It just comes off as mean.
And Dinklepusses coffee remains piping hot.
It’s dry ice.
🤣👍🏻
Dammit Harriet! Stop making me think!