I’m always a little amused whenever Crazy Harry is supposed to be a tech person, mostly because I don’t think someone who goes on a rant about iTunes suggesting music you might like can really call themselves “techy” at all. This also makes a full third of the wedding arc strips so far just being about “technology has changed since I was a kid”. I know writing isn’t as easy as it looks, but I would a wedding story would almost write itself and you wouldn’t need to pad it out with filler like “I forgot cell phones exist” or “why couldn’t we have stopped at e-mail?”. (If all of Batiuk’s “technology confuses and frightens me” strip were collected and published, how big of a book do you think it would be? Lilian from Crankshaft would need multiple chapters).
I know Crazy Harry is crazy and all, but would anyone go to a wedding as a guest and then wander over to the guy being paid to do the music and sound and offer to help? It’s his job, Crazy, what do you really think you’re going to be able to contribute? Other than playing the theme to the Adam West Batman series and Superman: The Movie on repeat.
Forgetful Harry
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Son of Stuck Funky 
Poor Crazy, still obsolete after all these years. Even the one thing he’s good at is totally useless now. Why he needed to drive that point home now, in the middle of a totally unrelated story, is beyond me. But here we are.
“And no offense, Gramps, but my business depends on my equipment and I’m not going to risk having some random, cracked-brain old fart break everything. Oh, and I was kidding about the ‘no offense’ part.”
Poor ol’ Harry is just tryin’ to be helpful, like in the old days (1990s), when folks were always ready to lend a helpin’ hand to th’ youngin’s who were just learnin’ the ropes of their new trades.
But nowadays? These zoomer millennials or whatever and their “smart-ass phones” think they know everything!
Well…maybe they don’t. And when they get confused, they can smirk all they want. And, um. Yeah.
via the Twitter:
Oooh! We’re still famous for something!
I think the guy is going to be even more shocked that we’re still around. Blogging into the void…
He’s right that posting every daily strip probably exceeds fair use. But there’s no hard-and-fast rule about “10%” or anything else.
I say “probably” because a key principle of fair use is “use as little of the source material as necessary.” In the case of a blog that provides daily commentary on a comic strip, you could argue that posting the entire strip each day is “as little as necessary.” I wouldn’t care to defend that position in court, though.
Me neither! That letter from Batiuk’s lawyers had me shittin’ bricks.
Now I realize that things just don’t work that way, but he could have just asked us to refrain from posting the daily strips instead of siccing Dewey, Cheatum and Howe on us like that. It would have been really disarming and maybe even guilted us into taking it easier on his dumb comic strips. Instead, though, it sort of galvanized the group somewhat. Oh well, water under the bridge now.
I always wonder if my archive deep dives are gonna get us in hot water again…but then again I’m basically giving people free samples and promising that the entire story is in the delicious Comics Kingdom buffet…all you can eat for one price.
What do you want Batiuk, attention you can’t control, or no attention at all? Do you want people to know that Funky’s AA crowd has been around for 20 years, and for people to be reminded that the Jefferson Jacks arc wasn’t that bad? Then leave us be to do what we do.
This is largely how Dysfunctional Family Circus ended. The site owner had developed a good relationship with Bil Keane, and came to see his point of view about it. Keane didn’t really mind the parody, but it had gotten very scatological. They agreed that DFC would end after installment #500. Only after that did the cease and desist letter come.
Extrapolating today’s strip to what could be tomorrow’s entry, then – Les “Fuckface” Moore lurches in over Funky and Holly as they’re moving chairs around, with eyebrows raised and a smirk as wide as his neck.
L: “Hey hey! So I hear there’s gonna be a newlywed couple here! Want me to ghost write a book about it? I’ll even sign it for you!”.
P2 Funky: “She’s not dead yet.”
PS Les: “Right… I keep forgetting that.”
So, this was a planning session, and now it’s a wedding? Not that it matters, actually — in fact anything to get through this faster. Just wanting to make sure that I’m keeping up with Batiuk’s diminished-capacity dream logic.
What is the framework in the background? A marquee? Why does it have a giant hole in it? A sunroof? That’s useful…
Maybe it’s to hang fun colored lights and speakers from? idk.
Crazy’s thinking here makes perfect sense to me. Naturally, he assumes everyone is as good at their job as he is at his (even though that is, fortunately, not true)… so why wouldn’t this DJ desperately need his help?
Sheesh, could this be any more disjointed? They “planned” the wedding a week before it occurred, which mainly consisted of Funky’s naked ass, and now we’ve gone from wearing the dress to setting up the sound equipment. Coming up next, Funky corrects a spelling on the invitations. Thursday, Les criticizes the reception.
And how does he “got it all right here” when we can see him lugging around large speakers and microphones? He probably could use some help setting up. But that’s not what Harry’s offering to do, is it? He only wants to help with the overly specific task of “setting up mixing boards.” He’s playing a wedding, not remixing a Daft Punk album. Like everyone else in Westview, Crazy insists on making himself a media star, and ignores every other aspect of the job. Would you like to be interviewed first, Harry?
And frankly, he’s being rude. He presumes that this man doesn’t know how to do his job. The wedding DJ’s answer is actually a pretty good middle finger, but of course we’re supposed to sympathize with Harry. And if that’s the case, then there’s a missed opportunity for a callback to Harry’s feeling “unhip.”
A couple of simple edits last week could have clarified this. Take the word “Planning” off of the sign on Cory’s parents door & just have Rocky check the already established domain/site for last minute RSVP’s or cancellations instead of signing up for it. Then it doesn’t seem like they planned the wedding one week and then had it the next, and Funky and Holly can be just as confused over the technology.
I wonder if we are going to see anyone else in the wedding party. Do Rocky and Cory have friends?
It had to be wedding planning weekend. This is because Batiuk needed everyone to sleep over, to set up that side-splitting walked-in-on-the-shower gag. Hell, it’s probably the only reason Cory and Rocky are getting married after all these years. Batiuk builds his world around his jokes, not vice versa. And his jokes are so terrible they should be dropped even if they did fit into the world.
Do Rocky and Cory have friends?
Crazy Harry’s presence in today’s strip is your answer. We’ll see Jim Kablichnik and Ruby Lith in the crowd before we see anyone who looks military or in their 20s.
Come to think of it, why are they even getting married in Westview? They don’t know anyone there. Cory doesn’t even have any high school buddies, and Rocky’s from somewhere else. Obviously they have to get married somewhere, but the large traditional wedding seems pointless.
And the narrative is even more pointless. If these fifth-tier characters need to get married for some world-building reason, this can be done off-camera. Yes, sometimes you do a story just for the story itself, but that’s not happening either. All we’ve seen is Funky’s ass, incoherent remarks about domain names, and now Crazy Harry. Who was the focus of 6 of the past 12 weeks.
This needs a simple edit, all right. All these problems can be solved easily by dropping Funky Winkerbean from the comics page.
1. “Hey, asshole… I’m the professional here, I’m on the clock and I don’t need some volunteer amateur assistance. Go have another drink, leer at some bridesmaids or talk sportsball with the father of the groom… I don’t mean any disrespect but please — kindly FUCK OFF!”
2. It’s funny because Harold doesn’t know about about smartphones yet he’s got a geeky daughter aged somewhere between 19-24 years old…
3. I’m really hoping an 88-year-old Harold zaps in from the future with his infamous time travel helmet and spews out a bunch of random meaningless information about
the future and the yet-to-be-born Cory Vinkerbeane Jr (naturally he’ll let it slip that 1. Cory Jr. was conceived just last night, and 2. Cory isn’t his biological father)… Then without warning he pulls out a shotgun loaded with uranium buckshot and blasts Roxy’s mom in the face, and her headless body reveals her to be one of those Terminator androids… Future Harold then says some jibberish about protecting the integrity of the time-space continuum and kills himself with that same shotgun…
Then while everyone is still staring in shocked silence, Professor Funkenburger says “Shoot! I wanted to ask him how many years we were gonna hafta wait for ‘Top Gun 3’ to come out! You all saw ‘Maverick’, right? Great fuckin’ movie!!” as all the stunned horrified faces at the wedding turn into those familiar trademark smirks we know so well…
I cannot think of anything that would more disturb or disrupt the work of a paid professional than this. Goddamn this strip sucks.
But can you play a frozen pizza on your smartphone?
Checkmate, atheists!
That would have been a great punchline! He gives the snotty, passive-aggressive “kid” (who’s probably 35) his comeuppance with a snotty, passive-aggressive retort that references his unique character history, and illustrates the folly of relying on technology to do things.
I mean to say, it WAS a great punchline, but it’s the kind of thing a Pulitzer Prize nominee should have thought up and employed himself.