Oh look. Like so many of you guessed, adding a cat video will instantly lead to millions of dollars.
Sigh. I mean. I guess things are moving quickly. I wouldn’t have put it past Tom to subject us to a full week of Dinkle and Lillian sitting as they were on Monday, brainstorming ideas they won’t use back and forth, complete with bad wordplay.
But the writing today. Was he getting paid by the word? The letter?
It reminded me of an old ‘Between Friends‘ strip I used to have pasted to my door. (Between Friends is by Sandra Bell-Lundy. The art is simplistic, but the writing is great.) In the comic one woman spouts an unwieldly word-zeppelin. The other woman looks up at it, pulls out a pencil, and erases most of the words, simplifying the sentence.
The first woman looks at it and comments, “That’s what I said.”
The other woman replies, “No, that’s what you MEANT.”
A little something like this.
Or maybe something like this.
But, really, I think today’s strip is best with a little New Yorker magazine flair.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Of course. Cat videos + internet = money. Shoulda seen that coming. Interesting how he felt he needed to clarify who Bingo was…turns out he’s the CHURCH CHOIR CAT in case you either missed or forgot about the events of LAST F*CKING WEEK. I really hate how he assumes everyone else has an attention span as limited as his own. Then again, that’s probably part of having a low attention span, right? Sigh.
Despite his overweening pride in his writing ability, Tom Batiuk actually possesses none of it. Now THAT would make an interesting strip–someone convinced of his genius being brought up short when confronted by lack of same.
Never happen in this strip, though.
And this week’s Funkyblog has an absolutely sterling example of Mr. Batiuk’s lack of any worthwhile skill. It’s so bad, I’m not even going to show it or comment on it here. Just go to the link:
https://funkywinkerbean.com/wpblog/john-darling-take-266/
Do as you will, Internet.
You might think that was terrible. But I actually think that is some of the best work I’ve ever seen in the Funkyverse. I didn’t see the punchline coming, and the long lead-in set up the joke without me realizing it was the set up. Having Mr Rodgers be all in character then suddenly say something snarky is also funny to me.
Then again, I did post a Red Letter Media reference yesterday. They’re the kings of really really bad jokes. Maybe I have a dumb sense of humor.
Well, the art is good. I can’t criticize that. But it fails writing-wise. The real Mr. Rogers doesn’t call people idiots, and he doesn’t complain about petty local politics. It contradicts his defining traits. Of course, you can satirize a public figure by having them act way out of character… but as usual, Batiuk doesn’t go far enough in either direction. It’s not even clear what point this is supposed to make.
Things like “Ultimate Showdown Of Ultimate Destiny” and this Family Guy parody work, because they’re so over the top you know you’re not supposed to take them seriously. And because they don’t really criticize the man, they’re just goofy scenarios where his character can be a Memetic Badass. This comic strip makes Rogers look like an actual jerk.
But mostly, I’m appalled at Batiuk’s continuing ignorance about how the Internet works. Because one of its fundamental principles is You Do Not Mess With Mr. Rogers. Wouldn’t you love to see Tom Batiuk get in 4chan’s crosshairs? He thinks WE’RE bad.
At the risk of sounding sincere: good lord, no. He doesn’t deserve that.
I disagree – I believe he absolutely deserves to be in everyone’s crosshairs, much in the same way that Nickelback, Michael Bay, and Stephenie Meyer are. He should be right there among that company as names dropped for people who are famous for making absolutely irredeemably terrible content, and yet are inexplicably successful. Then, invariably, when the reactionary sycophants would come around, those of us here could finally have someone to engage with to try to figure out why this strip enjoys any kind of success.
But it won’t happen anyway, not with the typical kind of work he does and the topics he covers, and the pace at which he does everything. He’d need to roll out more complete inept tone deafness about gender and sexuality at a pace roughly ten times what he does now to change that. Imagine if he put out something as terrible as the gay prom attendants arc every two weeks instead of every two months, only it would be about transgender people and such. That’s the only way you’ll get 4chan’s attention.
Fellow poster Gleeb called it yesterday. I stand in line, Gleeb!
Well just take a number, sit, and relax. I’ll call you. Now, who’s 47? The half-pound of olive loaf?
Wait…if Sunday’s strip wasn’t about Dinkle coming up with the idea to use Bingo for fundraisers, then what was it about? And if it was about that, why did it take so long for us to get here, and why is Dinkle so shocked that his own idea worked? I’m baffled.
Moving on: who filmed Bingo singing with the choir, and when? And why didn’t we get to see it? Imagine Dinkle, camcorder in hand, trying to coax a cat into singing while it completely ignores him. At the very least, it would be more interesting to look at than five people standing in a circle around a laptop.
It’s not even clear to me that “the cat sings with the choir” was actually a thing that happened. When Dinkle said it at the end of last week, I thought it was just another dull, wry, space-filling wisecrack. This strip spent all of last week telling us that cats are fluffy and catch mice, but made no other reference to this novel behavior. The story spent more time telling us there haven’t been men in the choir loft, which Tom Batiuk thinks is a galactically important plot point for some reason.
Replying to myself…In hindsight, I think Epicus Doomus was right, and Sunday Dinkle was simply bingo-ing the woman in the preceding panel for agreeing with him. Ugggh. Batiuk, if you run a week-long arc about a cat named Bingo, and then the next strip includes the word ”BINGO!” in big bold letters, you can’t reasonably expect that your audience won’t make the obvious connection. So confusing.
The whole Bingo thing is confusing, and so is the fact that Tombat has taken tell-don’t-show to superhuman levels this week.
I think Batiuk has invented a new paradigm: talk about, don’t tell. We had what, nine days plus a Sunday leading up to this, and out of nowhere the cat can sing. The story telling us beforehand this would actually have been an improvement!
Yes, I know Dinkle said it last Saturday, but it was buried in so many other pointless throwaway comments that there was no way to know it was relevant.
Could Bingo be related to Zanzibar the Talking Murder Chimp? How much money would come in if both sang with the choir?
“Okay, I redid our choir robe fundraising video and added clips of Bingo the church cat singing along with us.” Does Battyuk honestly think anyone who still reads his daily morass unironically would be unable to figure things out from a simple, straightforward sentence similar to this? Was “Moneyfornothing” such a gut-buster that he had to trot it out again? And, to sum up, all of this is supposed to be FUNNY?
I need to reexamine my entire understanding of the universe…after I put myself in a food coma by eating an entire Crave Case of White Castle cheeseburgers in one sitting.
This awkward wording raises another question: what does she mean she “redid” the video to “add” the cat? It sounds like she manipulated the video through special effects, rather than adding footage of the cat doing something authentic. Which wouldn’t impress the Internet in any way. Especially now that apps like TikTok make it easy to add filters and other effects. In fact, sometimes it’s hard to turn them off:
Just for the hell of it, I did a little searching to see what typical Ohio churches are doing fundraising/donation drives for… In no particular order, I found these causes:
1. Food pantry
2. Winter clothing
3. Schools
4. College scholarships
5. Volunteer gardening and building new bookshelves for the women’s rehab home
6. Essential goods for those affected by the blackouts in Texas
7. Essential items for poor families and children in the Philippines…
You know what I really love about this storyline? The fact that this is a church choir and Dinkle is a showboating egomaniac and it never, ever occurred to ANYONE to give a free performance at a suitable public venue, which would raise awareness of how good they supposedly are… But hey — Why work for your donations and prove your worthiness when you can just beg online using cliched overused gimmicks like silly kitty tricks?
Oh, and I hope for Dinkle’s sake he finds a proper and non-offensive way to work the cat into his performance, because now that Bingo is “internet famous”, people are going to come in droves on Sunday expecting to see him in a starring role…
I can has choir robes?
I can has crowdfunding?
I can has cancer?
Word!
Dinkle, like Batty, is way past his prime, they both need to get off the stage already.
And as for having cats as part of the plot, see last week’s Family Guy as an example of how to do it.
And look what’s happened once again in Funky Winkerbean: some ordinary people have become an overnight media success without doing anything at all, or even having any talent. I guess next week’s arc will be the usual round of interviews, awards, contract signings and praise for Bingo the friggin’ cat. Or Dinkle, even though he did absolutely nothing to bring this about.
“We’ve already raised everything we needed and enough left over to build a new church.” In three minutes, no less.
Does TomBa know that it costs millions of dollars to build a church? To fully complete a church building one builder estimates a cost of $275 per square foot. So a 10,000 sq. ft. building would cost almost $3 million.
And where is the pastor, the vestry, board of elders, or any kind of management or financial oversight of this church?
Does TomBa actually interact with the real world? I find it increasingly hard to believe that he does.
https://kworb.net/youtube/ has a list of the 500 most viewed music videos of the last 24 hours. The number of views in 24 hours ranges from 338,000 to 7,000,000. A common estimate for YouTube video monetization is $3-5 per 1000 views. At that rate, a Top 500 video would earn between $1,900 and $35,000 a day. These people claim to have earned millions in 3 minutes.
Remember, a couple of years ago Holly bought over $50,000 worth of comic books, essentially as a “Thank you” to Worthless John and Imbecilic Harry. For a lot of his characters, money seems to be no object.
That was particularly egregious, since there was never an explanation of where Holly got the money – though it fits right in with the randomness of the Winkerbean financial status.
For a more credible treatment of “raising everything we needed and enough left over to build a new church,” listen to an episode of radio’s “Six Shooter” called “Crisis at Easter Creek” in which Britt Ponset (James Stewart) gets a new organ (honest), I’m not just Dinkle-ing around here) and a whole lot more for the town of Easter Creek by appealing to the outlaws just outside the town limits.
Crisis at Easter Creek – The Six Shooter – Jimmy … – YouTube
So this… went viral… somehow? You can’t just plunk a video on the internet and sit back and wait for the cash to roll in, you have to get people to WATCH it.
Damn…they made enough that way. I was holding out for an OnlyFans account being made.
Maybe moneyfornothing IS an OnlyFans type site, and everyone on it was really confused by a choir video.
Adding the cat drew in the furry audience, who will throw money at anything.
Want a video of a real church cat that comforts people at funerals? https://youtu.be/F8V6UaoQ1L0
I
That is touching and adorable. Two things Batiuk usually fails at.
Though he keeps attempting both.
Touching and adoring himself? Will he ever stop?
Lisa would be proud.