Oh, dear God, he’s still on a Dinkle kick. Sigh. And here come the band turkey gags. I guess that this is probably one of FW’s longest-running gags, especially considering how he’s retconned and/or ignored pretty much everything else from that long-ago gag-a-day era. Too bad he never followed suit with this one.
Coming tomorrow: Dinkle explains to his wife, who he’s been married to for well over fifty years, that his frozen band turkey, from the freezer, was left over from one of his long-ago band turkey fundraising efforts. Harriet nods and grins in agreement, knowing as she does that the downstairs freezer is full of frozen band turkeys. I begin using BT as an abbreviation for “band turkeys”, as I just can’t take it anymore.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Hey, remember last Thanksgiving, when the Dinkle family had “our usual, meatloaf?”
Clearly the Dinkles eat turkey every day of the year except Thanksgiving. And every time Harry retrieves another turkey from the walk-in freezer that is his basement, he explains what he has done to Harriet in exactly the same way.
A frozen band turkey from the’90s? We can only hope that Dinkle develops food poisoning (not going to happen though).
Going down into the basement, opening up a vault of sorts, and then preparing to thaw out a frozen turkey from the ’90s? Is it at all possible that Battyuk fails to see how this serves as a perfect metaphor for what he’s been doing with FW since the early days of Act III?
Also, is it just me, or is Harriet Dinkle starting to resemble Hop Pop from “Amphibia”?
Maybe it’s a homage to Ray Bradbury’s “Long Years,” in which Dr. Hathaway goes into his basement and comes forth like Lazarus,with a cold chicken, for the astronauts?
Lazarus Laughed for Eugene O’Neill. Would that we could do that here.
Westview is no more heaven than Mars.
“It was a pleasure to burn…Act III volumes of ‘The Complete Funky Winkerbean.'”
Or, if you prefer, “Someone Unfunny This Way Comes.”
We’re going to get full-on Dinkle until his Rose Bowl appearance. In which, I predict, he’ll be tasked with directing the entire parade. Not just the “Salute to Band Directors” thing, but the entire Rose Bowl Parade.
Because as I’ve said before, Dinkle will always be assumed to be completely in charge of any event he finds himself in.
Oh, I don”t think there’s any question of it. Tom Batiuk is a massive narcissist, desperate for mainstream validation. And this dumb band director’s group made the mistake of giving him a perceived route to it. A route that mostly exists in his imagination, because televised parades are not exactly a bastion of hipness or relevance in 2022.
I think the Rose Parade is smart enough to know that nobody on earth wants to see a Funky Winkerbean stunt, like they pulled in 1987 or whatever year that was. They saw that Simpsons episode 15 years ago. So it’ll be a big nothing burger anyway. But Batiuk thinks it’s his big break, so it”s all we’re going to hear about the rest of the year. Merry Dinklemas.
I’m looking forward to watching the parade on TV this year. With any luck, they’ll cut to a loooooong commercial break just as the “Salute to Tom’s Ego”—I mean, “Salute to America’s Band Directors”—goes by.
It’s what I’d do if I ran the network…
I seriously doubt he’s getting any special attention. They’ll mention his name, and some amateur actor in a Dinkle costume will get his mug on TV for five seconds. But then it’s on to the Monsanto float.
I’ve been seeing his blog posts showing photos of the skeleton of the float in progress. The tone is weird in that typically Batiukian way. And I don’t understand exactly what’s going on; are the float builders sending him regular updates at his request? Why is he involved in any way with the physical construction of the thing?
All I can imagine is Les-level nitpicking driving the carpenters to drink. “Thanks for the photos. The drum is about 2% too large in relation to the size of the trombone. Please send me pictures of the reconstructed float once you’ve corrected this fault.”
Ah, Monsanto and Tom Batiuk. One is a notorious polluter who’s been spreading toxic debris across America for decades, and the other is Monsanto.
@Duck The float pictures look like Batiuk took them himself, for the usual reason: they’re horrible.
The photos are poorly composed, taken from strange angles, and don’t capture anything interesting. They don’t give a sense of what the float will be, or show any real progress in building it. There’s no people in them. The photos just bombard you with banal details, like the pictures he took in Hollywood of the stucco office buildings. Look at this mess:
At least with Hollywood, he was making reference photos to draw from later, so I can understand his focus might have been different. But these pictures wouldn’t even be useful for that purpose. Unless Dinkle gets wedged in a 10-foot trombonist’s papier-mache ass.
>Unless Dinkle gets wedged in a 10-foot trombonist’s
>papier-mache ass.
From your mouth to God’s ears.
The man who received Belgium’s highest civilian honor for selling so much band candy still has unsold band turkeys from the Clinton administration?
TB is nothing if not consistent…
Harriett’s flashing that nonsensical “1/4th inch from reality” gang symbol in panel 3, while at the same time sporting the “my skull is being crushed by a vice” look.
Meanwhile, Harry has apparently lost his right thumb to frostbite
In panel 3, Harriet looks like she is nearly ready for the memory care unit at Bedside Manor.
Not sure what a 22-25 year old turkey becomes in Dinkle’s freezer, but “unfit for human consumption” comes to mind.
Wait, based on the so-called “time jump” wouldn’t they be even older than that?
Harriet is as useless as the seventh exclamation point in this sentence!!!!!!!
All she does is stand and show delight at whatever Harry does, sometimes interjecting “That’s why you’re the World’s Greatest Band Director!” while slowly morphing into a bullfrog in an Andy Warhol fright wig.
Don’t forget giving Harry sex as a reward for being TWGBD. And letting him use her as a tool to practice his “emboucher.” Barf.
I can’t remember — is there a hashtag for “pinching hand gesture”?
You know, the one used by human beings to indicate something very small, and used by Ayers for any and all occasions, for reasons unknown?
Harriet’s at it in P3.
There is now!
👌👌👌‼️
1) It’s canon that Harry D is no longer involved with the ordering/purchasing of band turkeys (Becky does it online or otherwise).
2) This strip establishes that the Dinkles have freezers full of decades-old band turkeys.
3) Harry was recently shown going door to door selling turkeys to finance his Rose Bowl trip.
Conclusion left as an exercise for the reader.
I know this has already been referenced recently, but with today’s strip my mind went immediately to Roald Dahl’s “Lamb to the Slaughter”. Part of me would really like to see Harriet bash him over the head with the darn thing for expecting her to eat a 20 year old turkey.
Given how the cops covered up Bull’s suicide, they would probably jump at the chance to do Mrs. Dinkle a good turn. (“Football fields are not and never were for band practice, ma’am. May we take you to dinner at Chez Francoise? No, you don’t have to bring the salad dressing…”)
You guys, I hate to break it to you, but it isn’t turkey meat that Dinkle has in his basement freezer, the one that Harriet isn’t allowed in and has a big old padlock on it. Muscle it is, the flesh of a warm-blooded creature. It’s just not turkey.
I question whether there are any warm-blooded creatures in Westview or Centreville.