I neither understand nor care what Les is droning on about in today’s strip, though I do find it hard to believe any student would invite him to a graduation party… including this one. Les was invited to Montoni’s alcohol-free graduation party in ’98 (not by a student), it was about as well-attended as you would expect.
If the party is alcohol-free, then why are they switching from present to past tense mid-sentence?
Cayla, for her part, is a strange combination of scandalized by a swimsuit style that has been fairly common and quite popular for half a century and nonchalant about seeing her younger self galavanting merrily beside the (time?) pool.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Oooooh, BTS, was that strip a lead in to Wally Winkerbean’s famous OWI crash?
It was indeed. If only Wally had gone to the party at Montoni’s instead… and now he must pay penance by working there for the rest of his life.
Yep and it is all the fault of a football player, as always. Those guys are always big jerks right?
What kind of football player wears a button down collared shirt to a drinking party? Seriously? Even in the 90’s?
It’s Westview. Everyone in this town is soul-crushingly lame. I’m surprised the graduation pool party doesn’t revolve around reading comic books.
Uh yeah, what kind of sad-sack kid would invite that bearded fountain of woe to their freaking graduation party? Just a few weeks ago, Dick Facey killed the mood at a f*cking funeral, for crying out loud. I mean, why not just plop the urn full of Grandma’s ashes on the table? It’d kill the vibe just as effectively, plus you wouldn’t have to listen to it talk.
And why is Cayla gawking at the graduates’ genitalia? It’s a pool party, what’d she think they’d be wearing, KSU hoodies? Cayla has just been so out of touch with these kids today ever since her daughter mysteriously vanished.
What kind of sad-sack kid invites ANY teacher to their graduation party? After the final bell rang we wanted nothing to do with our teachers, and they wanted even less to do with us. Maybe if it’s a formal party at a fancy school where you bond with your teachers over 12 years, and you’re planning to join the Omegas at Faber College in three months. But Westview isn’t that! And again, Les has barely been seen in school over this kid’s careers, why would any of them have a bond with him?
But especially HIM, a smug, bearded, cynical, perpetually downbeat know-it-all who’s clearly disinterested and unimpressed by his students. Surely they all despise him.
If Les doesn’t end up getting thrown into the pool I’ll be disappointed.
I know, I know, prepare to be disappointed. It would be one of the most popular strips of the year though.
I can see inviting Les if the party re-enacts the final scene of “The Wicker Man.”
Dick Facey regrets not going to a student’s graduation party when he was a new teacher? But now he goes and consorts with jailbait every chance he gets? That’s putting the “Creepy” in “Creepy Les!”
I like Les’s grey scalp.
Leave the Indian-stereotype jokes to Batiuk, okay?
That’s his brain trying to flee.
Oh, fuck you, Les. Not going to that girl’s graduation party is the best thing you’ve ever done in your life. I’ve seen what happens when you try to get personally involved with people. I bet Susan Smith wishes you’d stayed home and left her the hell alone. You remember Susan, the only student you’ve ever shown a shred of interest in? Drove her to a suicide attempt because you wouldn’t deal with her feelings, put her life in danger because you insisted on driving her to the hospital instead of waiting for the ambulance, and caused a big scandal at the school? You’re just going to act like this didn’t happen? That there’s nothing at all questionable about your hanging around a swimming pool with a bunch of 18-year-olds? Who invited you, anyway? These girls would rather have Harvey Weinstein at their pool party than you.
Also: fuck you, Cayla. You want to marry the prick and live off his Dead Lisa money, fine, but you don’t have to enable him so much. You were right in the middle of that shitshow, but now you’re offended by bathing suits at a pool party? By the way, that’s not what a gender reveal party is.
These kids today and their gender-revealing swimwear! Scandalous!
Is that the joke?
For a certain given value of the word “joke”, yes.
Matt Miller was “the new star quarterback?” And he was throwing a graduation party? Was he actually a senior, or just someone who liked to party? If he was a senior, was he made quarterback retroactively just before he graduated and months after the football season ended?
Matt Miller wasn’t a senior, he stuck around for another year or two and bullied Pete and Durwood. He was throwing a graduation party for valedictorian Susan Smith (who, as a senior, had traded the glasses and knee-high socks for a bob haircut and a wardrobe from Express), who he was dating, in a rather controlling and abusive manner of course (oh, Act II). He gave Susan a black eye the week of the graduation ceremony.
Thanks for the history lesson. Sounds like Matt was, at least to Batty’s mind, a typical sporto. Honestly, I can’t recall ever reading FW during Act II. Oh, the “fun” I missed.
Oh and hey, if you ever need to reflect on how your life could have been worse? In the late 90s I had a friend named Matt Miller, and he happened to live in Ohio. You know what it’s like sharing the name of a Troubled Teen In Funky Winkerbean?
… Well, it didn’t really mess up his life any because, like, c’mon. But still, of all the indignities of life, this was one of them.
“So now…I go to every graduation party I’m invited to”? Well, then, I’ll just assume this is the first one, and that there was a graduating senior named Wes Moore who’s sitting at home right now wondering what happened to his party invitation.
Faculty at a high school graduation party? OH, HELL NO!!!
Maybe I say that because the graduation parties I remember happened on the nights BEFORE the graduation ceremony. There was more than one party and they were engulfed in secrecy. There was plenty of beer at these parties. In those days it was legal for 18-year-olds to buy 3.2% ABV beer.
It’s possible one of the popular kids threw a pool party after the ceremony. If they did I never heard about it. After the graduation ceremony, I just went out to dinner with my family.
Same thing at my high school. All parties were drunken, debauched affairs with no adults invited. I don’t think there were any “respectable” parties involving adults, with hors d’oeuvres and whatnot. After college graduation, yes, but not high school.
I was kind of grounded after the second party. I came home with beer on my breath while a few weeks short of my 18th birthday. Too late, my older brother advised me Hall’s Mentholyptus was great at hiding beer breath.
There were no more high school graduation parties for me. Just the obligatory family photo in my cap and gown on the front porch and a trip down to the local town buffet. YaY!
I stayed away from the more infamous grad parties, because they were all trouble waiting to happen. They were too well-known to everyone, especially parents, and small-town police with DUI quotas to fill. My high school was filled with vile yuppie spawn who didn’t invite me in the first place. Which was fine, because I didn’t want to party with them anyway. I preferred smaller parties with people I knew. That attitude would serve me well in college.
We had five graduation parties on five consecutive nights, Thursday thru Monday. Somebody even passed out fliers with the dates and locations, i.e., “Smitty’s house” and “Tarbush Land” (no specific addresses). Thursday was a toga party. One was at a local swimming hole. I went to a couple. I saw a few parents but no faculty.
Only one party got broken up by the police because some genius decided to break out some weed.
A change of venue. We leave the graduation ceremony where Les made it all about himself to a graduation party where Les makes it all about himself.
Les: “Sorry, Cayla, you’ll have to sleep in the guest room tonight. There’s not enough room in my bed for both you and my ego. ♪Me me me me me ♫.”
“Sorry, Cayla, you’ll have to sleep in West Virginia tonight. There isn’t enough room in the state for you and my ego.”
While Les’s attendance at any graduation party is unbelievable, at least his remarks are totally in character. I have no idea what would prompt Cayla’s completely off the wall comment. I can’t figure out what point TomBa is trying to make here. Is it supposed to be a witty and disapproving put-down of what she (and TomBa, since his characters are invariably his mouthpieces) believes to be inappropriately revealing swimwear?
An Ode to Harriet by Sorial
At 3 this morn
I stepped outside
I loudly blew my horn
And then I shouted full of throat
That CBH can really quote
Sophocles with pride.
But my neighbors yelled right back at me
“That we already knew!”
Then they offered right to me
About something I could chew.
I closed my mouth and crept inside.
So thanks to CBH’s reading list
I nearly coulda died!
And to prove I read it last night:…Deeds of a man more sinned against than sinning…
Bravo, Sorial! I’m glad you liked it. It was one of the last plays Sophocles wrote, performed at the very end of his life. I feel like so much of that comes through in it.
“For I believe one heart can intercede
and atone in full for tens of thousands,
if that heart is pure.”
Lear ain’t got nothing on Oedipus for a king more sinned against than sinning. But at least Oedipus had better luck with getting his daughters to take care of him.
Why does every stilted conversation between Cayla and the author’s avatar make it seem like they’ve never met before?
Because not even Batiuk can imagine why those two would stay together.
Badum Ching!
I’d love to hear about Cayla’s graduation party memories, but that will never happen. Not with Cayla or any other woman featured in FW.
Host: Welcome to Funky Winkerbean Jeopardy! Let’s begin!
Tom Batiuk: I’ll take ‘Definitions’ for $100.
Host: The answer is, ‘Just a blank space. Nothing important.’
(Tom Batiuk hits his buzzer)
Host: Tom?
Tom Batiuk: What is a woman?
*Ding Ding*
Host: That is correct.
There was a large graduation party on the night of our graduation ceremony, hosted by one of the more affluent students, that did resemble the scene in today’s strip. There was a swimming pool, and copious amounts of alcohol and weed consumed, and a good time was had by all. No teachers were invited, though there were a couple who might have been welcome had they shown up. This was the same year that the movie Dazed and Confused took place in, and that movie brought back a lot of (fuzzy) memories from that night.
1. Kayla, it’s a fucking POOL PARTY, WHAT DID YOU EXPECT? She needs to venture over to the University of Toledo and see what modern college girls are wearing (or not wearing) if she’s this prudish…
1a. Of course in some cases prudishness is also a shield to hide behind when someone hasn’t been poked in awhile and she’s ashamed at the impure feelings in her head and body after watching overflowing hormonal nubile teenagers chase each other around a pool in springtime (which might as well be a modern-day fertility dance)…
2. Am I really supposed to believe that Lester gets invited to high school graduation parties period, much less *every year*?
3. Matt Miller, doing his best Smug Tom Brady impression… Has there EVER been a male athlete in the Funkyverse who ever got halfway decent treatment from Batiuk?? Because all I’ve ever seen are cliche stereotypes…
There was “Big Mac”, a WHS basketball player who was cool because he was a comic book fan but not cool enough to appear more than 4 times…
That giant mook was a *basketball* star?! He must have been able to jump out of the gym!
Les, the number of party invites that you should be accepting from your high school students is ZERO.
Cayla, be a good guest and drink your White Claw.
I am guessing that TB heard the term “gender reveal party”, asked himself “how else could gender be revealed?”, recoiled visibly at the idea of nakedness, went with “pool party!” and picked the “punchline” deliverer out of a hat.
I’m reminded of a joke I read long years ago: A rock star was having his stage costume tailored. He complained that the trousers were too loose.
”I want them tight enough that the audience knows my gender!”
The tailor replied, “Sir, any tighter and the audience would know your religion.”