Oh, yay, Backwards Cap Young Alcoholic gets another line today. Today’s strip is really funny, because apparently Holly had no idea that Funky still had a Discman, despite the fact that they’re husband and wife. Had he never used it before, despite the fact that he somehow still has two? Or did she just not pay any attention to him, ever. Which is understandable.
The worst thing about these strips, to me, at least, is the smugness. In the third panel, Funky is acting like having a Discman still in the package is the greatest accomplishment of his life. Which, it might be.
I Wish Funky Was Stashed Away
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Son of Stuck Funky 
I do know that in the action figure collecting world there’s a premium for “Not Out Of Box” items (also part of the plot of Toy Story 2). I have a hard time believing that a similar community exists in the tech community, but I suppose anything’s possible.
How any of this relates to Monday’s “dangers of exercise” lead in is a mystery to me. Chalk it up to TomBa’s “free association” habit of storytelling. A path made by a drunken cow is more linear.
Also, judging from her expression in Panel One, I think “Pseudo Summer” heavily spiked her coffee.
A cursory ebay search shows that a particular model of Discman, the D-555, seems to fetch a pretty penny and appears to be of a make which arguably justifies the price.
The same search also currently shows 2098 listings for “discman” with the brand of Sony as a specific filter. The last two, you say? No, you don’t. Shut up. Just shut the fuck up.
A quick eBay search also shows that new non-Sony players are readily available for a range between $15 and $50.
Yet again, TomBa’s lack of even a minimal search displays itself.
I can think of a few ways to bring it back around…
– One of the dongles shorted out and gave Funky an electric shock.
– Funky was so absorbed in his music that he didn’t notice the massive wildfire approaching his house.
– Holly divorced Funky for being hopelessly square.
– Funky suffered a heart attack while exercising and had to be hospitalized.
He contracted COVID while in the hospital and very nearly died. He still hasn’t fully recovered. He may never fully recover.
– One of the dongles came loose and Funky almost tripped over it.
Forget the cow. The path little Billy takes to get home when his mother calls for him in “The Family Circus” is more linear than this arc–an arc which, in case anyone has forgotten, started out detailing a REGULARLY HELD, apparently post-Pandemic AA meeting wherein the attendees (ALL of them, not just Funky) would presumably talk about how they’re coping with staying sober, not what sort of outdated music formats they listen to while exercising.
Earlier this year an episode of the Disney animated series “Amphibia” featured a scene where heroine Ann found an old “Skip-Man” CD player in the title frog-populated world she was transported to. It was shorter, funnier, and more interesting than this nonsense.
I come from the trading card collecting world. It doesn’t matter how “mint condition” something is if there are zillions of them available. Supply is way ahead of demand, which means prices go down. To be collectible, things not only have to be in good condition, but also rare. Don’t get me started on Chester Hagglemore’s infinite collection of “gem mint” comic books.
Unopened electronics do seem to go for more, but that’s because they’re more trustworthy and more likely to work. I don’t think there’s any collectible premium, except for things that are genuinely rare, like “none” says about the D-555.
For some reason some people like to brag that they don’t use current technology. I know people who love playing albums on old hifi systems, others who will only read real books and abhor e-readers.
To that I say, do what you want, one choice isn’t better than the others.
But it sure makes for a boring comic strip.
Funky’s retroaudiophilia would be fine if it was a consistent character trait. It’s not. We’ve seen him use MP3 players, and we’ve never seen him use a home treadmill. It’s just another random personality trait thrown into a random story to make some random crappy punchline work.
If Batiuk really wanted to make Funky a retro-audiophile, he’d have him own a portable DAT player. But Batiuk doesn’t actually know about any of that stuff, so instead he has Funky using something that literally millions upon millions of people used and think he’s clever because he never moved on.
It’s a given that at some point this year BatScam will do a puff interview with a reporter from some Ohio newspaper’s Sunday supplement and he’ll low-key gloat about the “pandemic themed” arc he did where Funky “faced his inner demons” during the lockdown, but as usual he’ll leave THIS part out of that fanciful re-telling. Did BatYam just forget that this is supposed to be an AA meeting or what?
Oh, I think it’s pretty clear that Tombat has forgotten about the whole AA thing. Now he’s off on some…thing…about…hell, I don’t even know. Curating outdated music delivery systems, because that’s cool or something?
“Funky is so old, decrepit and obsolete…”
“How old, decrepit and obsolete is he?”
“Funky is so old, decrepit and obsolete that he still uses compact discs!”
“HIIII-OOOOOOOOO!!!!!!”
“Funky is so old, decrepit and obsolete . . . ”
“How old, decrepit and obsolete is he?”
“Funky is so old, decrepit and obsolete he thinks kids these days call a meet-and-greet ‘the punch line!'”
“Well, in his case . . . “
Somebody get the hook. This is the kind of rambling nonsense a drunk person might say…
Also:
“Your wife Holly? Do you have other spouses? Is there wife Frankincense and a wife Myrrh, in keeping with a possible Christmas theme?” Yes, there is! And Holly is the one between them! You might say she’s the midwife here!”
Mute with horror, BCYA began to back toward the exit, never daring to take his eyes off the deranged older man. He had laughed when his friends told him he would pay one day for going to AA meetings to pick up women with low self-esteem. He never dreamed how high that price would be.
Today’s strip is potentially humorous if one imagines that he speaks only panels one and three to the crowd, which is what appears to have happened, based on its depiction.
These strip has two Funky Winkerbean tropes that I absolutely hate: first, the idea that mass-produced shit from the 1980s and 90s is extremely rare and valuable now. Usually it’s common comic books. But type “Sony Discman” into eBay and see how not rare they are.
The second is that obnoxious closed-eyed finger-wagging I’m-so-clever smirk. That’s the face of an idiot who knows he’s in Funky Winkerbean, and any idiocy that upholds Tom Batiuk’s worldview will be rewarded. Funky looks like he just spent Holly’s entire life savings on Beanie Babies, and is just waiting for Kitsch Swoon to knock on the door with a check for $2.8 million.
Let’s be sure to mention that this topic also draws heavily from the “Old thing good! New thing bad!” well from which he will never miss a chance from using.
Even his recent Flash wank-a-thon had a day dedicated for it. “Old Flash good! New Flash don’t sell as much! Must mean New Flash bad!”
Yes, we get it, everyone younger than you is dumb. Thanks.
BFD.
I still have a Stromberg-Carlson gramophone in its original crate, delivered from Rochester, NY via the DL&W RR.
Up your ass, Funky.
Heck, I have my grandmother’s treadle sewing machine that she bought from her pay working in the pajama factory as a teenager. (Yeah, they had teenagers in the olden days too.)
Don’t sneer – once upon a time that no-motor foot powered treadle machine was high tech, compared to a needle and thimble.
1. I’m sorry… Funky boasting about his Discman instead of having the Walkman we’d all suspected is messing with my head…
2. I’m still waiting to hear about those “dangers” of staying in shape he teased on Monday… And don’t modern treadmills have all that touchscreen smart technology now? At my local rec center I’ve been able to listen to music or watch live cable tv on all the cardio machines, and they’re all at least five years old…
3. Um… Yeah… This AA discussion has gone WAY off the radar screen… Am I the only one who finds it strange Funky is having a longer more meaningful conversation with a bunch of strangers than he’s had with his wife, friends and family for years??
4. Poor Funky… So desperate to be unique and ironically hip with his yesteryear tech… But no, he isn’t the only one… Far from it:
https://gizmodo.com/cd-players-are-back-from-the-dead-and-now-work-with-air-1845091060
5. Is anyone going to ask this guy why the fuck he needs a portable CD player with earbuds for a home workout?
6. I’d have a lot more respect for Funkyverse characters if their love for old tech was consistent across the board — Funky’s car or truck should be from the 1980s at the latest (along with his wardrobe), he should have a rotary phone at home and a pager when he’s out, (and when he gets paged he’d better find a payphone), his ‘google’ should be ‘checking the damned yellow pages’ or dialing 4-1-1, his home computer should be an IBM PS/1 with a dot matrix printer and a loud ass clickey clack keyboard, his TV should only get basic channels in standard definition and he’ll need a fuckin’ antenna with tin foil to tune it, and literally everything else in his house should be analog… Oh, and get rid of the digital cash register at Montoni’s… Did I miss anything?
6. I really hope
I’d really hope Funky bought a couple of cheapie knockoff discmans at $15 a pop, but he seems to be bragging about having some original shit still in the original package like it’s a commodity appreciating value or something?? So that means 30-odd years ago, Funky walked into Sears or Radio Shack or whatever when discmans were the hot thing and expensive as hell AND HE BOUGHT *TWO* OF THEM??! Did he buy two Nokia flip phones back in the day, too? Two top of the line JVC home sound systems with all the extras? Two Nintendos? Two Betamax VCRs? Now I’m really starting to wonder how there isn’t a city law in Westview to buy two issues of every comic book…
He had to get two cd players so he could have stereo!
The last time we saw an old dude not named Dinkle this smug and self-satisfied over some meaningless bullshit, he was holding up some Starbuck Jones kiddie decoder ring like he was the goddamn Green Lantern… Then some magic imaginary underground people somehow kept him from choking and burning to death in a wildfire…
If this were a real AA meeting, the chairperson would have shut Funky down the minute he went off topic. Funky is engaging in what AAers refer to as “disruptive sharing” and “cross talk”.
You think Funky would attend an AA meeting where he was not the chair? Young Funky maybe, but not old, fat, bald Funky.
Quarter-inch from reality, my ass. Shouldn’t the other AA meeting participants be lining up to flatten Funky’s goddamn dongles with baseball bats by now?
I’d say something, but I probably own the last portable MiniDisc recorder on the planet (I bought it around 1997 for my car after wearing out the cassette player heads one too many times – this was before CD players in cars were fairly standard things)
He has this dumb thing to run with? Doesn’t it skip all to hell?
Unseen final panel: Holly examines the CD player. “Funky, why is ‘Sony’ spelled with a zero? And why does it say this is a ‘Disckman’ on its lid?”