I’m pretty sure that Crazy doesn’t get the nesting urge; if he did, it would mean he was pregnant. Crazy’s just saying he “gets” it. I didn’t: I had to look up “nesting urge”. Anyway, what’s not to get about the desire to “reno the nest” (and hoo boy, there’s another turn of phrase that you will hear nowhere in real life)?
none
February 21, 2021 at 11:00 pm
Every time a strip features Funky being nervously anxious about the cost of something I will be motivated to write here to say, yet again, as I did yesterday and before, that FUNKY LIVES IN A GOD DAMNED MANSION OF A HOUSE THAT WOULD HAVE A VALUE OF AT LEAST ONE FUCKING MILLION DOLLARS IF IT EXISTED IN THE REAL WORLD…
Exactly. The Winkerbeans live in a spacious home (that I suspect closely resembles Batiuk’s “Cartoon Castle). Funky clearly should have the wherewithal to spruce it up just a bit. He’s just bent out of shape because Holly’s taken charge of things. But she spends at least as much time running the family business as does Funky. Doesn’t Holly deserve the kitchen (and bathroom) of her dreams?
Son of Stuck Funky 
LOL silly housewife, sitting around eating bonbons all day with her TV-inspired pie-in-the-sky home reno dreams. Meanwhile the poor Funkman is behind the counter, winning that bread and bemoaning his frivolous spendthrift wife who, God bless her, just won’t stop spending his money. Forget the time-jump, it’s still 1962 up in here.
It was funnier when Funky was the straight man and Crazy got all the gags. There’s a weird cynicism going on her that leads me to believe that someone recently had some home renos of his own, if you get my drift. Write what you know, as they say. I just hope he didn’t battle any constipation during January of 2020, as that’s an arc with the potential to go on indefinitely.
The sad thing is, I’ve actually seen this happen. That show “Trading Spaces” led to a cancelled engagement in my family. The fiancee’ always wanted to do projects on the man’s house, with his money, get bored with them, and leave the place a wreck. It was a genuine factor in the rift between them. This was 20 years ago, by the way.
So today’s punchline actually landed on something very real to me. But it had no emotional impact because there’s no story here. It’s just generic “women amirite” jokes about events we don’t even get to see happen.
As if wanting to renovate your house is something only women want. Come on Harry, what about all these guys who want to turn their basements or dens into man caves?
HGTV has been on the air since 1994
Wow, these last two weeks have been a real slog. And why does TomBa think that anyone would want to adopt the term “Renos” (any more than we’d want Sportos, Vendos, and “SIngle Car Date” added to the vocabulary)? It appears that, in addition to renovations, he had some recent negative experience with his iPhone and with HGTV.
Kudos to our intrepid bloggers, CBH and now TFH, for their endurance in chronicling this mess. The way FW is trending, it’s beginning to make the end of “Apartment 3G” look like Shakespeare in comparison.
Unfortunately, Batty isn’t the only one who abbreviates words to try to sound hip. Bonus points to those who uptalk while saying abbreviated words, it makes it so much more annoying.
Solo Car Date. I hate that I wasted the brainspace on remembering that.
I assume Batiuk woke up one night and scribbled “renal failure” on his notepad only to find himself unable to read it the following morning.
I’m truly flattered.
Meanwhile, it looks like he’s going to push that ratio of using the word “reno” greater than 1.0 per strip at this rate. It really wouldn’t be worthy of note if he didn’t just keep repeating the word every day.
I had more to say about panel 3 but whatever. Just another entry in a long, long list of strips where all of the implied conflict and interesting action occurs elsewhere, and we bear witness to a pair of clods who smirk about it.
I kind of missed it because I was too distracted by all the “renos” in the word balloons, but what in the f*ck is Harry talking about here? He appears to be saying that although he understand why someone would want a home to live in, he can’t wrap his head around the thought of improving it, which is a really, really dumb sentiment, even by FW standards. I mean that IS what he’s saying here, isn’t it?
And relatively speaking Funky is usually the regular FW character I despise the least, but this week he’s really pushing it. I don’t want all this hostility and cynicism with my sad-sackery, I just want the sad-sackery, straight from the tap. He has this whole snide thing going on this week and it’s way too Les-like for my tastes.
Yeah this bit would have worked much better with Les and Cayla.
Plus we would all be happy to see Les suffer.
In panel one, Crazy appears to be morphing into Cameron Mitchell’s character from “Space Mutiny.”
If only this strip was as enjoyable as that movie.
So, then, that must make Funky either Slab Bulkhead, Butch Deadlift, Splint Chesthair, or Bolt Vanderhuge…maybe Bob Johnson?
Some of our favorite comic strip’s character names kinda fit into that list:
Brick HardMeat! Rip Slagcheek! Big McLargeHuge! Flint Ironstag! Funky Winkerbean! Bull Bushka! Jack Stropp! Buff Drinklots! Blast Hardcheese! Smoke Manmuscle! Harry Dinkle! Touch Rustrod! Fist Rockbone!
Mary Worth has surpassed FW in dumb stories this year. Heck, just today, one of the main characters in this arc got fed up and made a run for it.
Max, you are an inspiration comic strip characters everywhere.
At least it’s nicer to look at.
Meanwhile over on Crankshaft, Batty shows us the Medina Ice Festival that happens every year in his hometown.
A friend of mine went and took some neat photos. At least Batty depicted the snowfall accurately for despite his protests that “climate damage” has resulted in not much snowfall, Cleveland has had above average snowfall this winter. https://howmuchwillitsnow.com/in/cleveland/oh
I’m sure that will soon be blamed on climate damage too.
It just seems to me that Batiuk is dreaming of publicity. “The term ‘reno,’ popularized by award-nominated cartoonist Tom Batiuk,” and so on.
Just repeating a word over and over is much easier than writing an interesting story.
Batiuk always has an agenda. He’s always promoting himself for an award, a word he wants people to use, one of his Ohio-area sponsors, or one of his dumb opinions. Regarding that less one, you’ll notice that Funky has blamed technology two days in a row.
Funny, he always has enough space to write out “My Dad, John Darling”, but he doesn’t have enough space to just fucking write out the word “renovation”. I don’t know why it bothers me so much, but every time I see “reno” in a speech bubble, I feel like I’ve just heard fingernails dragging across a chalkboard.
Okay, I know I said that ‘reno’ was a legit usage (at least where I live) but I usually only hear it used as a noun (and often plural): “We’re getting an estimate on some renos”, “A major reno at our place, if the painters ever get here,” etc. Reno as a verb sounds really off to me. That may be the authentic TB touch.
Verbing weirds language, as Calvin said to Hobbs.
Ooh, thanks for adding the link to a much better strip!