“When I had to close my business, business really picked up!”. The dialogue in this strip is so often very very awkward. It’s funny, just three days ago he was talking about the financial stresses he was under, and now he’s talking about how much business they had. It’s almost like whoever writes this doesn’t care much about continuity.
It’s funny, the last line is surely meant to be very dramatic, but given the context and history of this strip it’s way more likely that Batiuk is just talking about how Funky likes to cosplay.
One Long Boring Day at a Time
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Son of Stuck Funky 
With that face, he should have had a mask welded in place at birth.
Sit down, Funky. Your four minutes is up, you’re not even talking about alcohol anymore, that joke was in The Mask, and why should anybody listen to you after you admitted to being a big fat phony?
“And being banished to the leper colony didn’t bother me at all, as I’ve been hiding behind contagions for my entire life”. Poor, poor sad-sack Funky, always hiding his misery behind his facade of poor health, obesity and incessant complaining. The world sees a fat sad-sack, but behind the mask he’s actually a SORRY sad-sack who can’t even wallow in sad-sackery as he’s just too much of a sad-sack to make the worst of it. There’s a real coherent sentiment.
I was almost not especially hating Funky there for a minute. Now, however, the urge to belt him in the face with a shovel is overwhelming. As usual BatYam wrapped his hammy little hands around a “contemporary issue” and made it all about how miserable his characters are, just like he always does.
Why can’t Batiuk make the misery and despair and gloom happen to someone we care about? I for one would love to see Les Moore deal with endless angst and regret!
You might take that last sentence back after a few Les and Le Chat Bleu strips…
I like that cat. Not only does it hate Les Moore, but it talks less than he does,
Is Funky about to out himself?
Livinia saw through Funky’s mask way back in ’72… that’s why she had to be “written out” of the strip.
So long story short, Dr. Funkenstein didn’t lose anybody close to him, faced no financial hardship whatsoever, no strain on his marriage, wasn’t forced to lay off any of his little nepotism hires, business actually *increased* since he’s the only pizza joint in town, but he was tempted to drink only because Twitter is a cesspool and the daily news is depressing but he magically learned all he had to do was avoid them…
So all week long, Funkmeister has really been celebrity-style low-key boasting about how blessed he’s been during the pandemic but he’s disguised it as misery and existential strife buried under a layer of complaints to appear “relatable” to the normals… Masone Jarre couldn’t have pulled it off better.
I suppose that we shouldn’t be surprised that Montoni’s business increased. The place never seems to have customers other than Crazy Harry, who seems only to drink coffee.
I guess removing a negative has the effect of an increase.
Hey, it works in the government……………….
And does Harry ever clear his tab? I doubt it.
I truly believe Batiuk invented the humblebrag.
And speaking of Masone+Cindye, just wait until they fly into Cleveland on their private Gulfstream G6 with their post-wildfire update, which will be them droning on about how their luxury condo burnt down and they were forced to move back to their Malibu mansion on the beach but the commute to the city takes forever because the traffic sucks and L.A. is a cool place to live when you’re millionaires but the place is SO shallow and vapid and devoid of culture and they still have to drive a loaner from the dealership because the customized his-and-hers Porsches they ordered from Stuttgart won’t arrive for six more weeks and since the fire cancelled Lisa’s Movie Project ver. 2.0 Masone won’t get his long-deserved guaranteed Academy award(s) and Cindye tells us for the infinite time how hard it is for a woman her age to stay sexy for her world famous superstar husband but once again the readers will be utterly confused as she sunbathes in her trademark black string bikini showing the world her wrinkle-and-cellulite free body that would make any teenager jealous…
“While I had to close Montoni’s sit-down restuarant during the pandemic, our delivery business really picked up.” There, was that so hard?
I so wish there had been a storyline last Fall when Funky was out making deliveries and his masked visage matched an ICE surveillance photo of a terrorist suspect, leading to his arrest, detainment, and eventual deportation to Damascus. After all, no one else back home apparently would have thought to call ex-President Clinton for a last-minute rescue.
Is this speech he’s giving going to stretch into the coming week? At some point will ANYONE else in the AA group be given a chance to talk about the problems they’ve been struggling with? Frankly, I’m not optimistic.
Man what week for this strip, just dumb at all levels.
First he complains he has no business—but he still needs to go in to work by himself for some reason— and now he has too much work. But he can’t handle either situation due to PBS.
Great writing again from Batty.
B-but, people were denied the presence of the band box!
It appears Funky was wearing a series of masks in this strip- he looks different in every panel…
And Adeela had a run-in with INS and there was some date-night drama, and, uh, I’m losing track of the timeline…
Let’s all savor that image of a character wearing a mask, because it’s the only one we’re ever going to get. And it’s a flashback in a throwaway panel.
Man, FW is weird, isn’t it?
You want another throwaway panel? Check out today’s Crankshaft.
I never understood why Crankshaft was turning around in Kiesterman’s driveway to begin with. Do school buses with kids inside do this on their routes in Ohio? I’ve never seen buses here in Southeastern PA have to do it as part of their route.
No, they only use public roads. But hey, Batty’s got a bad joke he needs to stretch even further.
Never mind the fact that, even though kids in Ohio are back in school, many districts have cut or restricted bus service for the rest of the school year.
I don’t follow Crankshaft. Are the Sunday strips always that paltry?
Wait, so your restaurant was busier than ever? Sounds like you were actually both “well” and “to do”.
“Well Funky, my pandemic drinking drove my husband away and now I live on my sister’s couch… But your story about how nobody sits in the dining room part of your restaurant anymore sounds really sad too. Are there any more donuts, or did Happy Donut Guy grab the box and make a run for it?”
BattyHam knows as much about how AA meetings function as he does about humor.