Contrary to popular legend, there is no evidence that Benjamin Franklin ever publicly supported the wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo), rather than the bald eagle, as a symbol of the United States.
You know who else suggested that the wild turkey, not the bald eagle, should be the national bird of the United States? Not Ben Franklin, according to Auntie Wikipedia. Perhaps Dinkle knows this, and he’s delivering the “national bird” remark satirically. This is supported by the fact that he’s smirking so hard when he says it that his mouth threatens to escape his face. But wait, here comes the punchline and…it’s…Butterbald? Hell no, I’ve never heard of a Butterbald Eagle. Or a “Butterbald” anything! Did Batty feel that the good people at Butterball® LLC wouldn’t be OK with a free mention in 400 newspapers right before Thanksgiving? Batiuk’s propensity for coming up with jokey, soundalike “brand names” once again tramples what would have been a borderline decent gag.
Son of Stuck Funky 
At first I couldn’t understand why he’d be having nightmares about one of his greatest passions, but then I remembered that this is the Funkyverse, where one’s greatest passions are nothing but another burdensome cross to bear. I mean he LIKES band fund raising…doesn’t he?
I suppose the nightmarish aspect might be that no one is buying anything he’s selling, which would at least make sense, but that’s way too much character development for this strip. So I have to assume it’s just a really dumb contrivance designed to cram some old band turkey gags in there.
So true. But I have to ask. Who lives like this, and why?
Most people get some sort of satisfaction out of the things that they love, but not here.
“They cursed us. Dinkle they called us. They cursed us, and drove us away. And we wept, we wept to be so unsuccessful at fund raising. And we only wished to sell band turkeys so juicy sweet. And we forgot the taste of band chocolate… the sound of drums… the softness of the woodwinds. We even forgot the name of that guy we’ve been writing a book about.”
There is no joy in Funkytown.
My Lisssssssa…..
Once again the comments are far superior to anything TomBa is offering.
Lady, make Dinkle feel like he’s on a football field! Grab that turkey from him, run, then toss it to him when he chases you! Put a spin on it so you can say you flipped him the bird.
You know, I kinda got the idea from Sunday’s knee-slapper that Becky was prepping for the Westview band’s annual Thanksgiving turkey sale. As such, I kinda got the idea that this week’s strips might spotlight her and the current WHS students’ travails trying to get locals to purchase their bird carcasses (I guess we’ll have to wait until at least next year to see how a pandemic affects the goings-on). And I kinda got the idea that Battyuk would attempt to flesh out the barely seen current crop of high schoolers’ personalities and maybe give Becky a role she could wrap her arms around…oops, sorry.
But no, why bother to feature the characters directly involved in the poultry-packed proceedings, when instead we can spend that time focusing on an old man in music note PJs–an old man who, if you recall, was the centerpiece of a week-long music lessons laughfest not two weeks ago–as he dreams reruns of unfunny interactions from decades ago?
Once again, Battyuk tosses anything new or potentially interesting out the window to give us more DInkleberg. This is the comic strip equivalent of skipping the freshly-roasted Butterball tom you just pulled out of the oven in order to dine on a microwaved plate of leftover turkey hash.
Nah, nobody cares about Becky. She is just a prop that Batty thought would bring awards.
If Dinkle lived within 300 miles of me, I sure wouldn’t leave out a “welcome” mat.
“Our national holiday”? Does TB ever say this stuff out loud when he’s writing it?
TFH, I think Dinkle would tell a little old lady anything if he thought it would put a Sam’N’Ella’s Turkey in her wrinkly old hands.
I’ll say it again. He hates Dinkle. Dinkle – a one-dimensional smirking asshole of a band teacher – is not who he wants to be known for, but he is, above all else.
He hates gag-a-day material. He perpetually strives to distance himself from it. He hates that comic strips and comic books are not universally regarded as being at the level of high art which he believes that it should be and that he believes he delivers.
Earlier this week, we were reminded that he had Dinkle say that he hated doing turkey sale fundraising.
So it appears that this week’s material will feature a character he hates, reminiscing about doing a thing that the character hates, while making dialogue that the author hates to make and the character hates to deliver, and yet, inexorably, the character and the author keep doing it.
Let go. You don’t have to keep doing this anymore. You will earn more from royalties than most of us will earn from a lifetime of honest work. You have no obligation to keep doing this, particularly if it gives you so much anguish. Let go.
The fact that he won’t break his routine and perhaps update some of the arcs for covid is proof that he would rather kick back and read comic books rather than do any real work.
He says he likes to tell stories, but only those that require minimal effort.
Probably the greatest sign of Funky Winkerbean‘s cultural irrelevance is that nobody, even us, is asking Tom Batiuk when he’s going to do a COVID arc.
Dinkle is not who he wants to be known for, but he is, above all else.
He wants to be known for Lisa. He wants to be known as the visionary who dared bring such a deep, loving, emotional story to the comics page. And yet if you asked 100 people the saddest thing they’ve even seen there, at least 60 of them would say “Calvin’s baby raccoon.”
Are we going to see this dipshit try to sell a turkey to asshole Les Moore?
That would be promoting cannibalism.
Though Dinkle likely wouldn’t have a problem with that. I can imagine a twist on the ‘band bus stuck in snowdrifts’ arc where Dinkle tries to decide which section (woodwinds? drums?) should be first to be eaten by their fellow band members.
Now, now, that wouldn’t be a quarter inch from reality, now, would it? We can’t have that in Funky Winkerbean! Because that would actually be funny.
They could have a smirking contest! I’d laugh at that! Actually, I wonder – in the decades long history of this strip have Les and Dinkle ever interacted?
I’m kind of amazed by these strips. They perfectly encapsulate the tension between FW’s wacky-shenanigans past and its life-is-suffering present. I couldn’t come up with something this on-the-nose if I tried.
Just noticed the banner title. That’s pretty great.
The title of the post made me think of some “Eric Andre absurdity.
Seems not to be a whole lot of audience overlap between Funky Winkerbean and The Eric Andre Show.
Batiuk’s propensity for coming up with jokey, soundalike “brand names” once again tramples what would have been a borderline decent gag.
That’s another one of Tom Batiuk’s strange rules for Funky Winkerbean. He fastidiously avoids even the most innocuous brand names, like eBay and McDonalds. But anything from Cleveland is his to use as he sees fit. And he’s lot more disrespectful to the latter. Kent State was the only school Mindy could get into, and Chez Francoise was a place for Harry and Donna to go be culinary philistines.