First off, those are the blackest “Santa hats” I’ve ever seen. I guess the band is going to play at Santa’s wake.
But really, in what way is this a “long story”? Funky appears to be able to tell the entire thing in a single sentence. But they had to make coffee and settle in a booth so he could do this?
This makes me think Funky’s “That’s a long story” is his way of saying “Stop bothering me.” So Adeela went off and made coffee and came back and said “I made coffee” and Funky responded “Oh okay.”
And then he got bored and told the story in the dullest way possible, rather than trying to make it interesting. Hey, if his creator can’t do it, what chance does Funky have?
Son of Stuck Funky 
Holy shit, it’s the band box! I really like the Kenny Powers Christmas hats…
That link is NSFW, by the way. I could point out that the band box was supposedly “restored” a few million strips ago but hey, who really cares, right? This isn’t just a garbage dump arc, it’s more like a landfill.
So it’s been “decorate until dawn night” all this time? That would have been a nice thing to say on Monday! It would have explained so much. Instead we got “Montoni’s isn’t going to decorate itself”! Yeah, thanks for that meaningful exposition.
What’s with Adeela’s smile in the second panel? Should Pulitzer-award bait make light of her past by smiling? Or is she smiling because there’s no reason to smile?
It goes perfectly with panel 1, where she’s delivering a huge word balloon despite her mouth being completely closed.
Looks to me like Funky’s stupid story is pretty much completely told in a single panel… but he’s not lying when he calls it a “long story”.
This is Funky Winkerbean, where the contents of a single panel’s word zeppelin are often tremendously wearying.
“Yean…that’s a long story.” “It is? Well, in that case, skip it. I’ve been stuck here long enough to know that the climaxes to your ‘long stories’ are rarely worth sitting through them!”
Also…”Decorate ‘Til Dawn Night”? I’d always imagined nights are when most pizzerias do the bulk of their business, but since so far this week we’ve yet to see a customer or even a delivery call, but the Montoni’s crew has had enough time to hang wreaths, string lights, and herd reindeer artificial and real, you’d think they’d be done well before dawn.
At Montoni’s, most of their business seems to be at their coffee counter during the day. What a weird pizzeria. My local Montoni’s has a beer keg, but no coffee pot or coffee counter.
This looks like three disconnected panels.
Funky’s story actually describes the band box at Luigi’s Restaurant in Akron, including the Superman figure.
https://www.akronlife.com/food-and-dining/slice-in-time/
Yeah, cute gag. Why readers from outside of NE Ohio would care is beyond me.
Ol’ Devil-strip Batiuk has long written this strip as if it were only carried in the Akron Beacon-Journal. Preparing for the future, he calls it.
I wonder if Luigi’s wishes Tom Batiuk never walked through their front door.
Batiuk’s pathological need to lionize this place in Funky Winkerbean has got to be an annoyance for them. I wonder how many phone calls Luigi’s has gotten from 75-year-old shut-ins where they have to say “Yes, Montoni’s from Funky Winkerbean is based on us. Yes, we know Tom Batiuk. Yes, we saw today’s comic strip. Yes, we have an actual band box.” What a waste of their time that must be.
And, like Kent State, “Montoni’s” is depicted rather shabbily. It’s been pointed out many times that we never see any customers in the place. Funky is an incompetent manager who has problems with simple tasks. They hire anybody who walks in the front door with a sob story. Who use the place as a temporary job while they work towards something better, which rarely arrives. Nobody in this strip even seems like a restaurant worker, like Roz in Shoe or Irma in Garfield do. We never even see them making pizzas!
As with the Akron Life story, Batiuk has to inject himself into every Luigi’s story that exists. They must think “LeBron James, Devo, and The Black Keys are from this town, and this is the coolest celebrity that’ll namedrop us? Ugh.”
And it’s the same things over and over. Pizza! Band box! Pizza! Band box! Pizza! Band box! The annual pizza box monster! He drags Montoni’s into every plot, talks about it like it’s the greatest place that has ever existed in all of human history, but yet has nothing to say about it.
What struck me was the uncanny resemblance of Funky’s dialogue with this line from the Akron Life story – “After discovering that Ken dolls and GI Joes didn’t work in the bandbox, Mickey settled on some 8-inch action figure Superman dolls. They were just the right size, and their arms were flexible enough to be posed with the musical instruments.”
Yeah not surprised he just lifted that idea from them. His laziness is legendary. For someone who boasts of being a creative type he sure isn’t that creative. Maybe he is hoping for more free pizza?
The Akron Life version is funnier than Funky’s story, and could make a decent Sunday strip – Panel 1, Adeela mentions the Superman suit, and Funky says it’s a long story; panels 2 through 4 or 5, we do a flashback SHOWING Funky struggling to pose the Ken dolls and make the GI Joe dolls fit on the stage, then finally as a last shot he tries out good ol’ Superman, and Success! Super Success!
But that would be a coherent, entertaining, and genuinely long story. Can’t have that; this is Funky Winkerbean, after all.
Who the fuck “decorates until dawn” at their workplace?! I hope to God somebody explains to Adeela what “overtime” is…
And isn’t there supposed to be some dedication or even acknowledgement of the wildfire that killed tens of thousands and destroyed a third of Metro Los Angeles, displacing millions of residents who no longer had homes or jobs??
And wouldn’t some of those refugees have found their way to Westview by now? I’m just saying because my area got quite a few new residents from New Orleans after Katrina…
And I guess we’re just going to forget that Lisa’s Movie Project v2.0 ever existed after spending eight months on it? Or is it one of those “Les opens his mailbox next month and finds two tickets for Oscar night” setups?
FFS, if you escaped one disaster, why would you go to Westview, the mother lode of disasters?
“That’s because he is Superman, Adeela! You see, when Braniac reduced the Krypton city of Kandor to miniature size, his miniaturization ray quantum-infected Kal-El, who finds himself shrinking at probabilistically-determined moments until the Heisenberg uncertainty principle restores him to normal size. At these times Superman is vulnerable to destruction and must conceal himself as a musical-mannequin protected by the League of Indigents! Here, now that you have learned our secret let me present you with our Polonium-210 decoder ring, so you may scan the newspapers for our secret messages!”
Adeela blinks. “Mr Winkerbean . . . English isn’t your native language, either, is it?”
This is so riveting.
Yawwwwwwwwwwwn
If they were missing a band member, they should have just called Dinkle. He’s got an army of pint-sized musicians, and no qualms about enslaving them.
“One of the figures broke so we used a Superman doll as a replacement. Not sure why I said it was a long story, honestly. Maybe it’s to make my life sound more interesting, or interesting at all, really.”
When my dad says, “It’s a long story.” It means. “I don’t want to talk to you about it.” not, “I’m about to bore you to death with unnecessary details.
Compare the photo of the painstaking restoration of the “real” band box at Luigi’s in Akron, along with a more pristine specimen.
I count three separate Michael Landons in the Luigi’s version.
The ones in the Luigi version,,,I don’t think I’ve ever seen a group of people so hung over.
Yes, Funky, it’s amazing how you were able to find a superhero action figure when you live below a goddam comic book store. And right after you set out looking for exactly that! What a yarn.
Did Adeela make those Santa touques from her old hijabs?
I know colorists are independent from the comic strip artists, and sometimes make strange choices. But how do you get the color of a Santa hat wrong? They’re red! And panel 1 is screaming for a contrasting color to all the black and taupe. What a bizarre choice, and yet somehow perfect for this grim, cynical world. Black santa hats. Wow.
We tried G.I. Joe action figures but they kept rappelling down the wall and blowing shit up.
Adeela on Monday morning: “I don’t mind helping with the decorations because it’s my job and it’s a living.”
Adeela on Friday evening: “I regret everything.”
FWIW, here’s a company that specializes in refurbishing and repairing “Chicago Coin” brand band boxes, just like the one Luigi’s has: http://chicagocoinsbandbox.com/
They publish a list of 11 known installations, as of 2014. Amusingly, Luigi’s is listed at the end in a different font, as if it were recently added.
chicagocoinsbandbox.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Band-Box-Locations2.pdf
For not the first time, a conversation in this strip reminds me of this conversation from The Room:
Peter: Speaking of which, how did you meet Lisa? You never told us.
Johnny: Oh, that’s very interesting story, when I moved to San Francisco with two suitcases and I didn’t know anyone, and I have, I hit YMCA with a $2000 check that I couldn’t cash.
Mark: Why not?
Johnny: Well, because it was an out of state bank. Anyway, I was working as a busboy in hotel, and uh, um, she was sitting, drinking her coffee, and she was so beautiful, and I say hi to her, and that’s how we met.
Mark: So, I mean, what’s the interesting part?
Johnny: Well, the interesting part is that on our first date, she paid for dinner.
The other time I was reminded of this abominable conversation was when Mason and Les were pitching Lisa’s Story to Cassidy and indicated that the “big hook/twist” was that she met Darin before she died.
Montoni’s Coffee Bar where the only thing consumed is coffee, excepting the ridiculous ICE agent and his double jointed wrist.