This is plot seems familiar. Barring the possibility that Lillian is suggesting some kind of racy ‘OnlyFans’ account, ala Banana Jr. 6000 excellent porn parody of the St Spires Choir a few weeks ago. (In the comments of the April 3 post, ‘Septic Schlock’, if you haven’t read yet.)
Tell me today’s strip it isn’t a thematic copy of the strip below.
The whole story of the St Spires Choir is a hack job repeat of everything we’ve been through, years before, with the Bedside Manorisms. The only difference is the arcs are crammed closer together, and the Bedside Manorisms actually got to perform for people, (Concert, Christmas Concert, 4th of July Concert).
And now we have today’s strip. 5.) An elderly music group member has the idea to crowdfund online rather than try to sell more candy.
So where will this parallel storytelling lead us? If the past is prologue, then soon Dinkle is going to drag a busload of infirm people on a wacky road trip for a nonsensical adventure in another state all in service of Dinkle’s ego. And, indeed, Dinkle has already dreamed of the future we’re likely heading towards.
Son of Stuck Funky 
LOL oh that TomBan, always hating on the internet. Can’t say I blame him, as back in the old days SoSF’s reach was considerably smaller as the cost of printing and mailing a newsletter every day proved exorbitant. Our mailman really hated “Lisa’s Story” arcs and Sunday strips about climate change, as he’d have to lug dozens and dozens of postcards to our office, which was located above a rim shop in Perth Amboy at the time.
But of course now we can make fun of FW every day in mere seconds…and we do. Despite being seventy-five years older than Dinkle, Crankshaft’s neighbor knows all about crowdfunding, which of course makes one wonder why she didn’t just do that in the first place and eliminate the annoying Dinkle from the equation entirely. But hey, let’s not bring logic into this debacle now.
And special thanks to CBH for laying out BatYam’s weird self-plagiarism in such painstaking detail. The undercurrent of laziness within FW knows no bounds. Harry has spent the bulk of his adult life trying to come to terms with the shifting winds of band fund raising but he just can’t seem to grasp it, which is probably a metaphor for something else but I don’t want to start pulling on that thread too hard right now otherwise I could be here for a while.
Thanks to CBH as well for the Dire Straits reference.
I second that.
Great exposition on the depths of Batty’s laziness too!
Thanks!
This plot is so dumb.
Now that ain’t workin’, that’s the way he do it
Lemme tell ya Tom guy is dumb
We got to move these frozen turkeys
We got to move these choir candies
I get the reference!
The parallel Dinkle stories are like the recent “Rex Morgan” arc, where Sarah imagines Rex as different kinds of heroes, except the writing . . . well, it was equally bad in both strips . . . well, the art–no, it all sucked too . . . the plots were–yeah, they were equally contrived, confused and pathetic . . . okay, Sarah kept seeing the problems with her imaginary stories, which puts a fictional brain-damaged child ahead of Batiuk.
Wow… Thank God I don’t mess around with RMMD anymore… Some of my all-time famous rants on the other site were about that strip…
I prefer the spy nonsense of Judge Parker. I think it brings the best out in the Curmudgeon.
Plus you have the hope that some day one of these obnoxious JP characters will die horribly. Or, better, promptly.
I could repeat unfunny jokes for fifty years too. Where’s my god damned award? Where’s my bulletproof employment for constantly regurgitating garbage?
I don’t care how humble and contrite he presents himself to be when interviewed or speaking on his own behalf. It is a cruel cosmic joke that billions of people worldwide struggle to eat and live to thirty and find meaning in life while this man lives comfortably by repeatedly recreating trash year after year after year.
He’s also taking up syndicate space that would be better filled by one of the MANY young cartoonist/writers doing fantastic work! This “comic strip” is “written” and “drawn” by the elderly for the elderly.
To be fair, print newspapers are also for the elderly. So Crankshaft and Pickles seem like apt choices. Like how the cowboy channel has all the life insurance and Libery Medical Supplies ads.
Not just unfunny, but as CBH points out, repetitive as hell. “Unfunny” in the comic pages I can tolerate. Funky Winkerbean manages to combine unfunny with unrealistic, unlikeable, preachy, obnoxious, off-tone, petty, and self-indulgent.
Somehow this will end up with Dinkle getting praised for somebody else’s accomplishments. Like, the choir robes are ugly but the fashion critics love them, which leads to Dinkle going to Paris to receive the Cocoa Channel’s award for doing something awardable.
That’s exactly what happened with the Bedside Manor band’s CD when Morton gave Funky and Holly a copy for Christmas.
Holly went on and on about Dinkle for a whole week even though Dinkle did almost nothing to make the CD happen. The band members raised money over the internet to fund it, a band member had a contact at Sun Studios in Memphis and got them studio time there, and it was another band member who arranged for use of the Bedside Manor bus to transport everyone to and from Memphis.
Jesus, Sun Studios? I’m late to this but that is the most Boomerawful thing ever.
Oh, that’s not even the half of it. Back in early Act III Funky’s father Morton developed advanced Alzheimer’s and Funky was forced to place him in Bedside Manor. On the way home he nearly fell off the wagon, but he didn’t. They he got in a near-fatal car wreck anyway and was transported back in time where he birthed the “Starbuck Jones” phenomenon before waking up and learning how to walk and crack wise again.
Morton popped up on Father’s Day or whatever, where Funky would prop him up and let him babble. Then one day Funky visited his dad who’d suddenly taken up smoking, which apparently cured his Alzheimer’s and turned him into a daffy lovable old coot with a real way with the ladies, at which point he helped found the Bedside Manorisms, a rocking lite-jazz/swing sort of combo. They hijacked a school bus and went to Memphis where they recorded an album before anyone knew they were gone. And now you’re up to speed.
Look on the bright side…it could have been EMI Abbey Road. Thank the gods that did not happen.
It’s like he just can’t decide whether Dinkle is a hero and a local legend or if he’s just a hopelessly inept boob, so he does both. If Harry isn’t at St. Spires to save the day, why have him there at all? I remember the Bedside Manorisms arc and same thing there, he was only involved because “music” and added nothing to the story at all. He’s one of BatHorn’s most beloved and long-running characters yet he has no idea what to do with him. He’s just kind of there, cackling and making references about the same three or four tiresome tropes from back in the day. It’s extremely strange.
I hate the way they always call him Harry L Dinkle with that shaky, pulsating L-script.
I think the author is trying to make some kind of connection with “George S. Patton”…
I’m surprised he doesn’t have three full names, the way John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Bishara Sirhan and James Early Ray did.
Someone who’s done the quality of work that Batiuk has for the past decade (or more) should not be so caught up on what he sees as people having money handed to them.
Yeah, Moneyfornothing seems mean-spirited. Sure, GoFundMe type sites are sometimes used for frivolous reasons, but they’re also used for very worthwhile causes.
I know that Ohio is just across the river from Kentucky, but why is Harry talking to Mitch McConnell in drag?
Also…we’re just never going to see Dinkleberg and his Choir Chippies interact with the other members of St. Spires or its spiritual leader about anything they do, are we?
It’s a coven. Bingo is their familiar, Lillian is the matriarch, and if this arc runs until the Summer Solstice, Dinkle will discover what happens to men who enter the choir loft!
(Well, it would explain why nobody actually cares that he tries to conduct the choir instead of play the organ.)
You seen the end of the Suspiria remake?
Cause I’m picturing that. With Dinkle serving the role of Tilda Swinton in old man makeup.
The “choir” is an autonomous collective that moved into this abandoned church a few years back. Bingo is their spiritual leader, which explains why there doesn’t seem to be a budget. Cats don’t care about budgets.
First, I’ll second Epicus Doomus’ praise of CBH for assembling the evidence of TomBa’s rehash, who’s apparently spending all of his time rereading Flash comics and the literary oeuvre of Isaac Asimov.
This inattention does produce some unintentionally funny results. If we just stick to the actual FW canon, it appears that not only are the residents of Bedside Manor more tech-savy than Dinkle (and Westview in general) but Dinkle also seems to be showing signs of memory loss since he seems totally unaware of internet funding.
(I gather that TomBa is also exhibiting his disdain of GoFundMe and Kickstarter by his naming the fictional version “moneyfornothing”. No wonder everyone in Westview is a morose killjoy.)
I’m curious as to why Batiuk used a real website (Indiegogo) in the old arc, versus a fake website (Moneyfornothing) in this arc.
In my perfect world, Lillian made up this website as part of some scheme to grift Dinkle (“As the choir director, we need you to link your bank account information. Just type it in here…”), and the plot arc will end with the entire choir draining Dinkle’s life savings and fleeing for the tropics.
“moneyfornothing” is probably Batiuk taking a potshot at internet phenomenon like YouTube celebrities, Kickstarter, gofundme, Patreon, and the like. This is his idea of “satire.” And as usual, he’s unable to see that he himself is the worst example of the behavior he claims to be against.
Or, he’s jealous. He’s on the internet so why isn’t he famous?
“Oh, that” will be my heavy-lidded, go-to response every time a new Dinkle arc starts.