Well…uh…say, isn’t it funny how you can go to the hospital, and spend so much time looking for a parking spot that you start singing about it?
No?
Most hospitals have a circular driveway that goes right up to the front door, so that (for example) a person with a leg injury can be helped into a wheelchair. Then, the person driving can go and find a parking spot so that the patient can be tended to.
But if we did that, we wouldn’t get today’s example of ultra-hilarious wit. (I’m guessing that is what we’ve been given.) I’m not sure what Batiuk is aiming for by revisiting this particular story, but I guess he feels he has something to add. I’m anticipating being underwhelmed.
Son of Stuck Funky 
That Batiukmobile looks small enough to chain to a bike rack, so you might try that, Funky.
Then somebody cuts the chain and steals the bike rack.
Or you leave the chain undone only to come back and find three more Batiukmobiles attached to it…
I like how the guy who draws this thing felt he needed to use little puffs of smoke to indicate that the car was running, as otherwise we’d just have to assume it was, which could cause confusion. Other readers might be confused as to why a new arc is beginning on a Tuesday, which is quite unusual, but any such readers most likely stopped caring by panel two.
I’d like to think this means Batiuk realized he had run out of PBM ideas and had to try something different, but I’ve stopped trying to fool myself here. It’s just as likely he and Folly will see the PBM in the ER and fail to catch him. It will be Holly’s fault for having injured her foot yesterday when she went up those stairs to the roof.
There you are, Mr. Thompson. I’ve been meaning to ask you a question.
Did you put up your Les Moore Halloween decorations to terrorize your neighborhood again this year? 😱
Yes, and once again I was surprised that people didn’t line up to empty their bladders on Les’s grave.
The average person is blissfully unaware of the horror that is Les Moore.
Do you really want people lining up to pittle on your lawn?
It’s just as likely he and Folly will see the PBM in the ER and fail to catch him.
That would actually be funny.
I want to see a re-creation of the October 6 strip, except with Pizza Box Monster on the examining table. One of the pizza boxes that make up his foot is hinged open, and the doctor is examining it. The x-ray in the background is of something perfectly square. The third nurse is gone, Funky has a sadistic look on his face, and his right hand is ominously holding up… a pizza cutter.
I prefer another song from that musical:
“Dear cartoonist Batiuk,
Ya Gotta Understand,
Your jokes all make us say ‘Yuck!’
They stink to beat the band!
Your puns are bad and labored,
You punchlines are all lame,
You give comic strip writers
such a bad name!
Gosh, cartoonist Batiuk, we’re very upset,
That’s the major reason we snark and comment!
You think you’re a genius,
That you’re just misunderstood,
Deep down you know this storyline’s no good!
Gee, cartoonist Batiuk,
What are we to do?
Gee, cartoonist Batiuk –
Batiuk you!”
It’s not I’m anti-pizza
I’m only anti Lisa
Funky, remember mozzarella cheesa!
“I’m anticipating being underwhelmed.”
I feel like this could be the pull-quote for any given volume of Funky Winkerbean presented by KSU.
I Anticipate Being Underwhelmed! should be the title of a Funky Winkerbean book volume.
Which got me thinking: if the books had individual titles, instead of just being called Volume whatever, what would they be called?
I Have To Protect Lisa!
Solo Car Date!
It’s The Ohio Music Educators’ Association Convention!
<i<The Pizza Box Monster Strikes Back!
Book Signing!
Atomic Comics! (meant as a common noun, and a play on “Atomic Komix”)
The World’s Greatest Band Director!
Les Goes To Hollywood!
I imagine them all having the over-excited exclamation point at the end.
Act II prestige arcs alone are full of rich title material.
Lisa Vs. Death Row! – Lisa fails to defend Danny Madison
Friend Zone Follies! – Lefty leads on creepy DSH
Take Lisa…! I’ll *cough* be right behind! – Les saves his precious John Darling manuscript as Montoni’s burns
Undercover Comic Store Cop! – Lisa defends DSH after he gets arrested for selling (implied) hentai to an undercover cop
Tae-Bo Kickboxing Classes At The Y! – Rachel and Lefty beat up a gang of would-be muggers
Montoni’s Thin Red Line! – Cindy runs a story on Montoni’s ineffective redlining practices
My Fiancée’s in there! of USA! – Post office goes BOOM
Moving Sidewalks! – Drunk Funky finds the sidewalk in front of Montoni’s where he through the parking spaces were
I can get her there faster MYSELF! – Susan ODs
Tell Wally I Said ‘Hi’, and that I don’t blame him! – Lefty gets her nickname
Forfeiting Forfeits – Coach Stropp is fired and has his one trophy confiscated by the state
Eric ‘Arson’ Myers! – Mooch “accidentally” burns down the high school
For Act III, it is hard not want to see the nonsensicality of Engagement Tiger! on a book cover.
The Talking Murder Chimp Did It!: A Tale Of The Silent Movie Era (Which Is Somehow The 1940s!)
I like it. Bull’s CTE death could be Laundry Day or No Bottom Road or Returning To The Scene Of The Crime. No exclamation point, because it’s a serious story.
We could also do books by character:
In The Main: Les and Cayla’s Special Moments
Ultima Thule! The Best of Kablichnik
My Father, John Darling, Who Was Murdered: A Jessica Darling Book
I Have ‘Me Too’ On Speed Dial! The Ruby Lith Collection
Phil Holt Lives!
A Color Only Yarn Comes In: Les Moore’s Most Passive-Aggressive Complaints
The Asses I’ve Seen: The Lisa Legacy Bench Story.
The Batiukmobile looks kind of normal-sized in panels 1 and 3, but in panel 2 it looks like a Matchbox car. So there’s my critique of the shitty artwork.
I remember in the peak years of MAD, they’d include an asterisk next to song parodies, with a “to the tune of” explanation. That really helped me, and enhanced my appreciation of the humor. I’m not getting any such help here. So, snarkmates, what song is getting the parody treatment here?
“Somewhere,” from “West Side Story.” Glad to help.
Am I the only one hoping that this ENDS like West Side Story? With Holly’s jealous ex shooting Funky in a dark street at night?
Based on J.J.’s post, I see that it’s from a musical. No wonder I don’t get it.
1992. I’m in seventh grade, at science class. The teacher is some middle aged man, and his speech is somewhat muffled and mush mouthed, so it took some effort to comprehend what he was saying.
I forget the context that he talked about it, but he mentioned that there was one time that he went to the theater on a date and that the movie was so bad that it moved him to tears, and his date found it incredible that he could be such an expressive and outwardly emotional man that he could do that in public. The movie was West Side Story.
I thought it was hilarious, but nobody else in the class understood what he was talking about if they were even paying attention at all.
I’m pretty sure anyone born after 1990 is similarly lost on this strip, assuming they’re even looking here to begin with.
Anyway, I just thought I’d share what I think of whenever that movie comes up.
Well, there’s a Spielberg-directed remake coming out next month, so maybe the youngsters of America will pick up on it. It’s a sure bet it will do better than “Lisa’s Story: There’s a Bench for Us.”
I remember hearing “Gee. Officer Krupke!” in France during my JYA. The son of the family I was staying with wasn’t sure what the Jets meant when they claimed to be “sick, sick, sick.”
My roommate Brian said it meant “malade.”
Krupke is actually a sergeant. I’m not sure why the song demotes him i in the title and after the first line (“Dear kindly Sergeant Krupke”).
Syllables? Shall we ask Pete Roberts/Reynolds?
Good. Batty is glad the stupid youth of today don’t know what is going on. It makes Batty feel superior to them.
Usually Batty goes for the ultra obscure, West Side Story is anything but.
So, did your 7th grade science teacher eventually marry the girl he went on that date with?
I have no idea! And y’know what – unlike other people with whom we’re all familiar, I don’t have an atom of interest in finding out about the lives that continued after I left junior and high school some thirty years ago. I’ve never had a Facebook account so I can’t even accidentally stumble upon any of it. They’re all gone, and I don’t care.
I don’t get it and I don’t care enough to find out
“A Pizza Monster like that who’d kill your brother
Forget that Pizza Monster and find another.”
I’m beginning to wonder if TB has been reading the comments here and realized people didn’t sufficiently hate Funky. It seems his mission for 2021 has been to make him as loathsome as Les, and by heaven, he’s succeeding.
When lasagna comes so strong
There is no right or wrong
Your lasagna is your life
Does Montoni’s serve lasagna? Or is it just pizza, salad dressing and coffee, like Mildred Pierce’s restaurants confining themselves to chicken and waffles?
Luigi’s serves both baked homemade lasagna and baked homemade lasagna with meat sauce, according to the menu online.
I’d like to see ghost Bull come back and beat the crap out of Les while ghost Lisa and ghost Flash give a thumbs up.
I see that today we have some gag-a-day filler. I guess we can anticipate that Holly’s entire appointment with the orthopedist will be in this vein.
I guess this is better than Crankshaft, where all we see is Pam walking around asking Ed stupid questions. It’s like MAD’s snappy answers to stupid questions, but without any humor.
Now imagine this is Pam asking Ed this question…
But it doesn’t start with “So…”
Don’t you hate it when people start sentences with “So”?
Seems like that is commonplace now.
Is this behaviour gendered in the Funkyverse? My impression is that it’s overwhelmingly the male characters who do the ‘wordplay’ and the female characters who are stuck with the eyeroll / frown / “Not funny” response.
Female service workers sometimes get their own bad pun response in, and Unnamed Young Black Man got to say “That’s not humour” to Dinkle, but I’m not coming up with an example of a regular female character doing the vaguely annoying pun-adjacent schtick.
I guess it would make sense if it’s the Funkyverse version of ‘dad jokes’, but dad jokes generally have a setup-payoff structure, and these things just sit there unsupported.
My brother’s favourite dad joke is the one about how you get almond milk.
“Well, first you need a tiny milking stool….”
Batiuk doesn’t realize that everything he writes is dad jokes. Sometimes he has the listeners do the smirk-and-eyeroll bit, meaning that the characters recognize it as a dad joke. But other gags of the same quality are presented straightforwardly, as if Batiuk thinks they’re his “A” material.
And yes, this does seem gendered, like so much else in the deeply sexist world of Funky Winkerbean. I can’t even think of an example of two women smirk-and-eyerolling (smirkrolling?) at each other. Women only get to drop zingers from their assigned roles as housewives, surrogate moms, and service workers. And even then, pretty rarely.
It is the misogynistic will of Batty for the female characters in Funky Winkerbean to sit (or lay) there and take whatever the male characters give them.
Batiuk’s complete lack of writing discipline is on display this week. If he thinks something is funny, it’s going in the strip, no matter how little sense it makes. First “CSI Montoni’s”, now this. When both of these could have been put to some functional use.
Last week, someone should have sarcastically told Funky “this isn’t CSI Montoni’s” when he was running around like a jackass. That would have solved two problems: used the gag, and inserted the reaction that was sorely missing. And if today’s gag must be done at all, it would have made more sense when Holly was first going to the hospital from the site of the injury. If you’re going to make a Funky an obnoxious jackass, don’t hold back. Having him do this act when Holly’s riding the hospital with a freshly broken bone would have been a lot more over the top.
This isn’t a bad joke. (Disclosure: I like dad jokes.) If he’d reserved it for something other than a hospital, where as noted there are ample drop-off areas, it might have elicited a wry smirk.
It being the hospital also suggests that Holly is in some degree of pain or discomfort, and is going to have to walk to the entrance from wherever Funky finally parks. Adding the tincture of cruelty that makes it less a dad joke and more passive aggression.
Yeah, really. Especially after Funky has made Holly return to work, force-fed her hotdogs and peas, and brought her a bunch of random junk instead of her prescriptions.
Holly should be fed up with Funky’s unfunny bullshit by now. Broken bones take a serious toll on your patience. When I had my most recent broken arm, I was so impatient and short-tempered I had to ask my boss to keep me on low-stress assignments for awhile. I was my normal self again after 3-4 weeks, but for awhile I just couldn’t do it.
1) The hospital I visit occasionally for old-man tests and appointments with specialists has a circle drive up front, where you get out of your car and let the free valet park it for you. This seems pretty common where I live (Chicago area); I guess it hasn’t spread to Batiukburg, Ahia.
2) This is one of the most generic comic strips I’ve ever seen–a reusable IP assette* that could be used over and over again in an almost infinite universe of situations. Just change the sign from “hospital” to “mall” or “airport” or even “DMV office,” and just like that, another day’s work done, well before that early tee time (does Batty play golf? Beats me).
3) At least the exhaust from the two-stroke, pre-mix engine in Flunky’s Cold War-vintage East German Trabant is rendered properly. Points to Ayers for that. He must have fished one out of a dumpster.
Oh, the asterisk: back when I was in the software business, the management was big into the “reusable asset” fad, where the same code was (supposedly) able to be reused for multiple systems. Never really worked very well, and we quickly changed the spelling to “assette,” as in the diminutive form of “ass.” Seems to fit Batty’s reusable comic assettes.
No matter how underwhelmed you anticipate being, the genius of Batiuk is that you will find yourself underwhelmed in a way you couldn’t possibly have foreseen. Yes, you can prepare to be underwhelmed … yet all your preparations will still not fortify you to withstand the specific Funky Underwhelm you will experience.
The Specific Funky Underwhelm is a good name for a college band. Their “tribute” band would of course be The Specific Funky Underwhelm Experience.
Are we going to have to endure another week of Funky attempting to be witty and funny?
Holly, I totally agree. Stop it!
Me throttling Funky: YOU ARE NOT FUNNY! YOU ARE NOT FUNNY!!!
We’re assuming the couple is visiting the hospital for Holly.
Maybe Funky is receiving a ‘sense of humor’ transplant. Or shock treatment. Or a lobotomy.
No wheelchair for Holly. Funky insists they get their money’s worth out of that knee scooter.
Chocks away!
Full confession: I frequently burst into song, usually with parody words, whenever the mood strikes me. I blame my constant reading of MAD during my formative years.
As already mentioned, this is terrible writing: Creating a one-off situation just for a gag, and not even a funny gag.
I live in a neighborhood where it is common to drive around for literally an hour or more looking for a parking spot. I have actually sung “Somewhere” while looking for a parking space. Lord knows you could sing the entire libretto of “West Side Story” and have time left over before you find a space.
So I have the expertise to say: You look for a parking SPOT or a parking SPACE, not a parking place. Thus: “There’s a space for us… a parking space for us. On the corner or over there, there’s a space, somewhere….”
Oh, good. I’m not the only one who bursts into modified showtunes!
Now the question is, does that mean we’re sane, or just the same flavor of crazy?
I’m not qualified to answer that, on the grounds that I may or may not be sane. I also burst into pop and disco tunes. Today it was, “Oh yes, it’s garbage night, and the feelin’s right. Oh yes, it’s garbage night, oh what a night! (Oh, what a night!)”
I lean towards us both being sane, though. Whatever makes life more fun is good. And my spouse (and hopefully yours) is used to it and doesn’t snap at me to stop it.
A day late (possibly a dollar short) but I do this too. Not usually showtunes, since I only know My Fair Lady and various Gilbert & Sullivan, but popsongs and randomness.