Uh yeah, sure, Tom. The internet killed Christmas caroling, just like it killed comic book collecting and band directing and stinky old movie houses and band boxes and the virtual anonymity of comic strip authors. And “binge watching” is somehow involved too. It’s just so sad and so typical of these troubled times to see a woman in her late fifties remind her badly aging and increasingly decrepit husband to refrain from walking door to door in a raging blizzard and stay inside and be entertained instead. What IS this world coming to?
It’d have been funnier if he did a Xmas week arc where Funky calls his old pals, only to be greeted with different variations of “what are you, nuts?”. But it was “funnier” it just wouldn’t be FW, now would it?
Son of Stuck Funky 
You know what else the internet killed? Lawn darts! Come on, they stopped being a thing while the internet was in existence, so there you have it. And what about pogo sticks? Sure they vanished before the rise of the Internet, but don’t all those sites about time-travel make you suspicious? AND WHO KILLED CANDY CIGARETTES? Have you ever seen a kid play a computer game while chewing on a candy cigarette? IT’S A PLOT BY BIG BINARY!
Neither organizing a group of people to go out caroling nor truly binge watching a television program or movie series are things you generally decide to do on the night of… after the sun has set.
Yeah, it drives me nuts when people (often newspaper comic creators desperately striving for topicality! weird!) say “binge(-watch)” when what they mean is “watch, but on, like, Netflix”.
Yeah I hate those abbreviated ways of speaking that are so prevalent on social media and the like.
But Batty’s usage is even more annoying and forced.
“Hey, it’s nighttime and it’s snowing outside! Let’s see who wants to go out and sing carols!” Sorry, Hunky and Folly, but I don’t think the Internet killed caroling. Nor did TV. Seriously, that whole wassailing thing was outdated by the time Eisenhower was in office.
Similarly, does Battyuk get the concept of “binge-watching”? Even a limited series will run at least 6 to 8 hours, maybe 12 to 18 or more just for one season. Again, it’s not something you decide to do spontaneously when it’s already nighttime. TB’s attempts to work contemporary lifestyles into his mawkish melodramas are, as with his attempts at comedy, egregiously bad…and he can’t be that on the Internet.
Oh, and do you guys really need to have the lights on in every room in the house? No wonder Montoni’s can’t afford new plastic reindeer.
That house is huge by Westviewian standards. Then again, he is the town’s pizza kingpin AND he’s the landlord for the only comic book store in town, which makes him a Pablo Escobar-type figure in Westview. Buying exotic pre-owned Eastern Bloc cars, leaving the lights on in unoccupied rooms…you can scarcely imagine the sheer decadence going on in there.
It’s dark out, so it could be as late as 5 o’clock. Maybe 4:30 is the cloud cover is thick enough.
I actually have done caroling with groups of people during the (checks) … okay, the LAST presidential administration. But that’s because I know a lot of professional and good amateur musicians and we were just gonna sing anyway. We definitely didn’t decide the day of the thing, it was planned like the mobile outdoor party it basically was.
And we didn’t go to random people’s doors. If we went to somebody’s door, it was somebody we knew. Mostly we just congregated in public spaces. Like the subway. Good acoustics in the subway.
Does Westview have a subway? If so, I can only imagine it’s a series of dead end lines and the stations are full of Montoni’s pizza rats.
I imagine the Westview subway has six stops, all of which are different Lisa monuments. It’s like some kind of Soviet mausoleum tour.
If Westview had a Subway, who would eat at Montoni’s?
TomBa does know that “On Demand” binge watching is possible on cable as well as the internet, doesn’t he?
I guess that he’s not fond of any technology that didn’t exist in the 1950s and 60s.
It’s ebil! ebil
Yeah, Funky, getting “the gang” together to sing Christmas carols will be a real treat. Right after you just spent “decorate until dawn night” with them. There’s nothing people love at the holidays more than extra forced socialization with the boss!
Caroling seems like something that would fit in well in Westview. Showing up at someone’s door without calling and wasting their time with nonsense is a common activity anyways so not sure what Holly is complaining about.
Ain’t no party
Like a Funky party
‘Cause a Funky party
Is MANDATORY!
Also: where are they? That’s not Funky’s house in Panel 2. Are they at Bedside Manor, or was Holly’s word balloon so big they had to buy a bigger place?
If you want to complain about technology, Funky, why don’t you talk about how the ubiquity of cell phones has led many people to treat all social plans as provisional and spur-of-the-moment, ignoring the fact that some activities need to be planned out and committed to ahead of time. Oh wait.
Also, can we talk about how Funky’s nose completely changes shape between the first and third panels?
Well melodramatic, awards-chasing cartoonists killed the traditional comics page so there you go.
Hey Batiuk, you know what they internet didn’t kill? Funky Winkerbean. You did that yourself with your own bare hands.
Batiuk didn’t kill Funky Winkerbean so much as keep it alive to torture it. Like a cat playing with a near-dead mouse.
The sad thing is, he really should have killed it. Funky Winkerbean‘s legacy would be so much better if he ended the strip right after Act II. “She’s gone” on Thursday, Les tears his shirt at Lisa’s funeral on Sunday, fade to black. Especially if he’s going to skip over the next ten years! FW could have gone out on a high note. And he still had Crankshaft to indulge all his petty fandoms and hatreds.
Agreed. Note that Scott Adams was one of the first to publish his email address in the margins of Dilbert. I recall an interview where he discussed doing this because he was happy the internet could connect him to his readers, and, more importantly, they could connect with him.
But Batty will have none of that, he is a product of the old push media where content gets pushed just one way. He wants his readers to praise him, but woe be it to those who refuse to provide him the awards he thinks he deserves.
FW could form the basis of a class at KSU on how not to write a comic strip.
Or how not to do anything, really. Absolutely everything about this comic strip is a turnoff, from the characters to the subject matter to the writing to the creators’ attitude. The people who wrote “How Not To Write A Novel: 200 Mistakes And How To Avoid Them” could find an example in Funky Winkerbean of almost all 200 of them.
Caroling, shchmaroling. Nothing would say Christmas in Westview more than a reprise of Funky passed out on the frozen sidewalk in the aftermath of a bender.
Okay I’m sorry, Funky’s last line there is a complete non sequitur. For one thing Holly’s primary objection is that it’s snowing pretty hard and that trudging along in the dark and the snow would call to mind Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow rather than a heat warming holiday tradition (no she didn’t say that but it’s implied) The suggestion to watch some TV and then go to sleep is presented as an alterative to hypothermia, it’s not the internet it’s Funky being a idiot. And this of course begs the question as noted that would any of ‘the gang’ be willing to drag themselves out of their houses.
And just to nit pick a bit – I’ve been following the strip for years on this site (I started when St Lisa was dying or had just died) and not damn once do i remember a strip about Funky and the gang going caroling ‘like they used to’. Given the Artist’s tendency to flog things to death I’d suggest this strip was done because the Artist wanted to complain about the internet but wasn’t willing to actually invest any effort in doing so.
Seriously. It’s as if he’s saying “No one did things in their houses before the internet!” and “no one watched a lot of television before the internet!”
Also, binge watching didn’t start with the internet. It started when entertainment companies started producing box sets of TV shows and the like, which started back when VHS was still the dominant medium.
Yes, VHS tapes…you know, Batiuk, like the kind Les watches obsessively. But that’s the good type of binge-watching, isn’t it.
Yeah really. For as much as Batiuk whines about modern times, he sure doesn’t suggest any better alternatives.
Who pines for a world where you stay up all night decorating the pizza shop and the comic book store? Who dreams of buying their dead wife a book about a dead wife for Christmas? Who wants to live in a world where the holiday concert from the high school band is the event of the year? Seriously, look at this crowd:
Who are they, the goddam Beatles?
Or when lazy-ass station managers filled a holiday schedule with “Twilight Zone” marathons.
Well that is a New Year’s Eve tradition in my family. Dazed and buzzed from the party, we stay up watching old Twilight Zones…it fits perfectly.
Of course I watch them via streaming (haven’t had cable for years) as there were too many commercials on TV.
Sure the FW gang used to go caroling. One of Battyuk’s most beloved Yuletide traditions was depicting Funky, Les, Bull, Holly, Lisa, et al singing “Deck Us All with Boston Charlie, Walla Walla, Wash., an’ Kalamazoo! Nora’s freezin’ on the trolley, Swaller dollar cauliflower, alley-garoo!”
Or am I thinking of some other strip?
I would only go caroling with Funky and Holly if it was the only way that I could hide from Wally and Rachel’s Xmas Eve Shift/Date Night at Post-Decoration Montoni’s.
Without any paying customers seen at Montonis. Funky seems to make enough “dough” to live in a mansion.
Ok. A one and a row and a three. “Joy to the world the Lord has come ….” Hey Adeela ! Cat got your tongue?