FALLING DOWN

49 thoughts on “FALLING DOWN”

1. ComicBookHarriet
   Nothing like the smell in the air of dust and corn 🌽 right after dark. Were driving the tractor or the combine? My father-in-law had me sit in the parked grain truck and wait for his signal as he combined soybeans. Then he would signal to unload, and pray I didn’t crash the truck into the combine. Good times! Good times!
   I loved the combo of George RR Martin and pro football. Well done. Growing up in KC, we were staunch AFL fans, and hated the NFL. So we routed for any AFL team even the NYJets over the Giants. Even Marvel comics loved the Jets. I think it is Spider-Man #6, where Parker routes for the Jets. Sports Illustrated and then Avalon Hill made a board game of the NFL called Paydirt. My brother and I played seasons with the winner getting a free dinner for winning the Supper Bowl. I won 2 seasons with the 1978 Broncos and the 1980 Bengals. He won once. He played one of the powerful Cowboy teams from the 1990’s. We even had a trophy.
   💎I need help finding a movie. I don’t know the name or the actors. I think it was made in the 1980’s or 1990’s. (I am such a big help!) it does have a plot. The Brits place an official in an Asian country, which assigns a woman to stay with him for a year to teach him the language. He learns the language from different angles, including intimacy. The Brit falls in love with the woman, but to his dismay, she was only teaching him the language in all of its uses.💎 I would appreciate any assistance.
   Happy Thanksgiving to everyone at SOSF!
   [Today, I am old. My daughter turned 45 today. The funny thing, she always seems 19 or 20 in my mind!]

   1. Is the move “The Sleeping Dictionary”?

      1. Rube E. Tewesday,
         Yes! Yes, it is “The Sleeping Dictionary”. Thank you. The SOSF crew comes through again. Blessings to you and yours this holiday season.

   2. Hugh Dancy will always be Will Graham (TV show ‘Hannibal’) to me. Another great show ended too soon by the morons at NBC.

      ———————-

      My son is 35, but my niece turning 40 at the end of this past October bothers me more. If she’s 40, I must be old. If anybody is looking for me, I’ll be in my rocker knitting a scarf.

      Me: What?! {REDACTED} is 40?! There’s no way! She’s not even married yet!

      That’s me. The nosy aunt.
      Me: So {REDACTED}, are you seeing anyone?
      Niece: (eye roll with a heaping side of heavy sigh)

      1. My son turned 40 this year.

         Tourette-like, I often exclaim, “But… but… I was 40 — in this century!”

         Per Casey Stengel: “You could look it up.” (I’m 63.)

   3. Hi SP! Late reply I know! I was on the tractor, with my daddy on the combine. He doesn’t trust me with THAT level of precision farming yet. And you’re spot on with being careful with the tractor driving. The number of times my dad’s called my cell from his seat in the combine to tell me, “You’re too close!”

      I hope your daughter had a wonderful birthday. If she’s anything like me she’s happy knowing that she’s always just a young lady in your mind.

      You’re a gem!

      1. As I have said, I married into a farm family. One side effect was our two ways of handling Thanksgiving. On my side of the family, the holiday was the biggest, so it became my favorite. No gifts, just good food and great company. It had the only occasion where my dad’s Pa, and my mom’s Ma ever joined us at the same time. But on my wife’s side, Thanksgiving was unimportant. Like you, it was harvest time. Something had to be harvested. Usually, it was tobacco. Very labor intensive. If they saw family, it was because they were there to strip tobacco. So my wife has no good memories of the holiday.
         Unrelated note: When I grew up, most Thanksgivings were fairly warm. I know I remember T-shirt weather. But WAY before your time, check with your folks, the temperature back in 1980 Thanksgiving was (-24°). That year for Christmas, all the womenfolk received flannel nightgowns as gifts. 😎
         You are loved! But you already knew that.
         ♥️💖❤️🫂✝️🌺💐🌹

2. The real world is a lot more interesting than whatever’s inside Batiuk’s head. A smarter person would probably anticipate that at some point, a trend would snowball and make the people of Westview look like rabid traditionalists when they put up their lame ornaments of being cheesy looking.

3. Also, we are seeing another example this week with the holiday rum ball thing. Tom takes an ordinary thing like someone convinced everyone wants a thing because they’re not going to tell her they don’t eat it and runs it clear into the ground.

   1. “Oh no, I don’t have rum for my holiday rum balls! And it’s already November 20th!” It’s like Batiuk is flipping the bird at people who point out the lack of stakes in any Funkyverse story.

      1. And it’s not like it’s hard to add stakes to that story. Give Lillian a deadline: company coming over, a church bake sale, a big event at her ridiculous book shop, anything… ANYTHING that doesn’t make someone say “Just drive to the package store, ya yutz!” That could take as little as one panel!

         1. Or just give the story to Lena instead! She has fresh stakes: she just lost her job as a food columnist, and everyone hates her baking. That kind of criticism will motivate anyone to try and make a legendary and/or creative dessert. Or it would be if we’re supposed to care about any of these characters, or if they would even care about themselves.

            Or give the story to Funky, just by making about his need to avoid alcohol. That counts as “stakes.” Or give it to Dinkle during the “hosts the entire town for Thanksgiving” arc. He can’t just go out and buy rum because the stores are closed that day, creating an actual dilemma. Or pull out the often-used “I must make this dessert under pressure to impress the boss” trope.

            Batiuk writes all this backstory, and refuses to use it, even in the most obvious places. Then again, maybe that’s the problem. Batiuk is the kind of person who thinks giving a character an obstacle and having them try to overcome it is “cliche'”. So he comes up with… whatever this is. It’s called writing.

            1. I posted a comment over on GC about that strip, and mistakenly thought it WAS Lena, not Lillian, making the rum balls. I don’t know if that shows how little I still care about this comic, or how little distinction there is between the characters…

         2. As I’ve said in the past, he appears to me to perhaps derived not quite the right lesson from watching Flash going up against Captain Koala and Manure Master. The stakes are simple when he HAS to punch them to keep them from pulling off a bank job with evil science. Here, it’s “I must make the rum balls because I….must make the rum balls.” The plot thus disappears up a body orifice.

   2. Prediction: Ed will pig out on the rum balls and pass out in a chair. Most likely while dressed up as Santa.

      1. Oops. Wrong on the first day.

         While “dressed as Santa”? WTH was I thinking? Somebody was up too late last night. Oh, well, there’s still December for the prediction to come true.

4. I did not have the intersection of SOSF and The Draw Play on my bingo card. That Dave Rappoccio is a creative and talented guy and he does quite a good job mining humor out of professional football. And he does it without needless references to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers… Imagine that!

   1. The CFL Championship Game, a.k.a., the Grey Cup, was played on Sunday.

      Condolences to Mr. Batiuk. The Winnipeg Blue Bombers lost to the Montreal Allouettes 28–24.

      1. After a thirteen year playoff drought. Next up to claw their way out of the hole are the Edmonton Elks.

         1. It was a championship drought, not a playoff drought. Montreal had been to the playoffs most years; they just hadn’t won the whole thing (or the Eastern Division) since 2010.

            6 of 9 teams make the CFL playoffs, so 13 years without a playoff game would have been pretty grim. (SEE ALSO: Seattle Mariners, New York Jets, Charlotte Hornets, Buffalo Sabres.)

         2. Elks? I remember the Edmonton Eskimos. I guess the team got pressured to change the name similar to the Redskins and Indians. I get it. Eskimos are native Americans too.

            I guess it’s only a matter of time before my Kansas City Chiefs are renamed the Cyclones or something.

            1. In that part of the country it would have to be the Tornadoes, wouldn’t it?

            2. Sooner or later, there’s going to be a team called the Atlanta Flames again….but playing baseball.

            3. the Atlanta Flames again….but playing baseball.

               I’ve heard “Hammers” suggested for that. Which I think would be awesome. It honors franchise legend Hank Aaron, who was a mighty but very humble man. And, the team can keep their great jersey design, just by changing the tomahawk to a hammer.

            4. In that part of the country it would have to be the Tornadoes, wouldn’t it? – @Gabby

               I chose Cyclones because the name begins with a “C”, like Chiefs. Iowa State University, in Ames Iowa, has the nickname the Cyclones.

               In KC, there used to be an NBA team called the Kings, and an NHL team called the Scouts.

            5. In KC, there used to be an NBA team called the Kings

               They occasionally played games in Omaha at the time. I have an blue-and-red Kings NBA throwback jacket for this reason.

            6. @Banana Jr. 6000

               M’wah?! I did not know that. Omaha is like three hours away from Kansas City.

               The Kings franchise relocated to Sacramento two or three years prior to our move to KC. Only a two sport town while we were there.

            7. @EveHill Yeah, it’s true. I live in Omaha, and a surprising number of locals get the reference. Even though the most recent NBA home game was in 1978, and the Omaha Civic Auditorium was torn down in 2014. And the two most famous things that ever happened there were Lloyd Bentsen owning Dan Quayle and one of Elvis’ final performances.

      2. At least Montreal won something. Les Habs (hockey) have been a disaster for many years (my mom was born and raised in Montreal. I still have family there)

         1. Montreal is a great city. My grandfather was born there and I have a cousin who lives there.

5. CBH, I adore your photos of life on the farm. You have an amazing eye for composition and color. Your words speak of sweat, toil, and calluses, but your photos look so romantic I’m practically ready to leap on that tractor myself and belt a chorus of “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’.”

   1. I’m kind of curious what would actually happen if you substituted Mike’s Hard Lemonade for the rum in a rum balls recipe. Of course Batiuk takes the lamest path: they taste like lemon instead of rum. I wonder if they’d have any flavor at all, because alcopop has a far less intense flavor than rum. Also, would the carbonation alter the consistency of the dough?

      1. Sorry, replied to wrong comment

   2. I agree about your photos, CBH. In fact, I came back to see them again after looking at the latest Komix Thoughts, “More Akron Comicon Moments.” I should have known better, but… Anyhow, the photos there depressed me so much that ended up lying on the floor for an hour or so in a state I can only describe as alternating between ennui and existential despair. Thanks for helping me snap out of it.

   3. Thanks for the evocative compliments, Ducky dear, and Jeff! Like any basic b*tch photographer with an Iphone, I’m a sucker for a sunset. Almost every night, another sky so lavish and glowing you’d think it’d get cheap and tiresome, like a Vegas magic show, but somehow, it always has me reaching for my camera.

      And when I don’t have my camera, it’s like something prickly grabbing my heart because I know my memory isn’t enough to capture just how magical everything was for those fifteen minutes.

      More like, “Oh what a Beautiful Evenin’!”

6. Today, the STUNNING reveal: Rum Balls made with lemon flavoring taste of lemon, not rum.

   It’s so shocking that it’s turned Ed’s hair flesh-colored.

   But let’s not complain. At least we didn’t have Pmm taking up the first panel or two asking, “What are you doing, Dad?”

   1. It’s like Batiuk’s trying to prove a point, isn’t it? “I’m a storyteller, dammit, I don’t need your ‘plot’ or ‘conflict’ or ‘action’ or ‘motivation’ or any of that nonsense. See? This story’s fine, you beady-eyed nitpickers. Now if you’ll excuse me, The Flash #123 isn’t going to read itself.”

   2. Crankshaft: why am I not getting wasted when i eat Lillian’s rumballs? Oh well, I’m gonna drink Grimace’s shake (takes a sip), Man that tastes like crap- (Crankshaft then explodes in a shower of purple blood)

7. 

8. D’ya think that on Thanksgiving, the Funkyverse characters greet each other with “Oh, give me a hug!” or “Give me a smug!” and stand there with their arms folded and mildly annoyed smirks on their faces?

   Best of the most USA-ish holiday besides “I Blew 4 Fingers Off of July!” to any of you traveling away from posting about…this really stupid shit, I mean, it can be hard to explain the appeal of this site to your family over that gross Jello salad Grammy makes, with the shaved carrots and…are those sardines? AGAIN?

   1. There’s something kind of Nickelback about it. People venomously hate them for some reason, to the point that their name became synonymous with “crappy rock band.” I think there’s a lot of pretentious, overproduced, mediocre post-grunge butt rock out there, and Nickelback doesn’t seem any more worthy of scorn than anyone else.

      Which is probably how most people feel about the Funkyverse. If you can find anyone who cares about the comics page at all, the Funkyverse is mostly ignorable. Why does it inspire so much derision in us? Other than continuing to exist decades after it should have been ended. And being an affront to the notion of quality.

      1. If there’s an analog to Nickelback in the comic strip world I’d put it to either Garfield or Family Circus. Jon Davis explicitly made Garfield to have a marketable property as opposed to wanting to write a high quality comic strip, much like how Nickelback explicitly writes their songs to target the structure and tone of other top selling music as opposed to writing songs on the basis of the band’s own artistic inspiration. Otherwise, from my informal analysis, I see FC name dropped as “the worst” comic strip or the one that people hate on the most whenever that subject comes up.

         The equivalent to FW/CS in the music world might be someone like … I don’t even know. Something like if Insane Clown Posse, only it would be as if all their content and storylines contradicted itself constantly, and Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope literally thought themselves to be musical geniuses as opposed to entertainers, and media pieces treated their work as if it was some kind of profoundly touching and insightful material which elevated their albums to a level of High Art.

         To reiterate my personal stance in this all – why does Tom Batiuk’s work inspire so much derision in me personally? I’ll try to summarize it.

         1) The body of his work doesn’t reflect what he states that his work is.
         2) The body of his work doesn’t reflect what the media pieces state that his work is.
         3) Tom Batiuk is consistently ungrateful for the accolades and recognition that his work receives.
         4) The people who praise his work seem to only do so on a completely superficial basis and any discussion about the praise or any criticism of the work immediately resorts to strawmans as the only counterargument. The more you analyze Tom Batiuk’s work, the worse it gets.
         5) Tom Batiuk has been able to be gainfully employed in this capacity for an entire lifetime, and if anyone else approached their life and career in the manner that Tom Batiuk has approached his writing of comic strips, we would be fired, if not blacklisted, if not imprisoned.

         I’m glad I have this place to make these thoughts known among other people who even know what the hell I’m talking about.

      2. Why does it inspire so much derision in us? Other than continuing to exist decades after it should have been ended. And being an affront to the notion of quality.

         I’ve attributed it to the fact that the distance between the comic strip Batiuk thinks he’s writing and the comic strip he’s actually writing is far greater than anything else on the page. With Garfield or Family Circus, those guys don’t have any pretensions. They know exactly what they’re doing. They don’t even feel the need to defend it. Batiuk shits this out and believes everyone will think it’s genius. And when everyone doesn’t think it’s genius, he claims it’s because they’re idiots, people without taste, people with no appreciation for high art or just hate things that aspire to be better than the medium it is.

         1. I’ll tell you the truth: I probably would have moved on from the Funkyverse by now, if Tom Batiuk wasn’t such an arrogant jackass about it. He’s so convinced he’s the big fish in the small pond, when he isn’t even the small fish in the small pond. And he manipulates all his media appearances so he can act like a big deal when he isn’t one. Not even within the very small world of post-Dilbert newspaper comics. As others have noted, Comics Curmudgeon doesn’t even bother with him anymore.

            I wonder when newspaper comic strips are going to die completely. They’re already at the point where newspapers could just print Peanuts, Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes reruns and not bother with anything else. Any good modern comic strips could survive in the webcomic world.

            I think the second half of this decade will be about culling boomer-era cultural items that don’t make sense anymore. And newspaper comics are high on that list.

9. Crankshaft has acquired almost total irrelevancing status on The Comics Curmudgeon. Uncle Lumpy last featured Crankshaft for a few days in August. Josh hasn’t featured the strip since February. There were a whopping two Crankshaftcomments in today’s comment section.

   Batiuk is making the strip so dull it’s almost snarkproof.

   1. Luckily, “almost snarkproof” is still snarkable.

   2. I was hoping that there would have been some comment on the CS strip where Ed admits to committing third degree murder upon Pop Clutch, and that day’s heading for Josh’s entry was something like “mostly crime Friday” or whatever it was, something to do with crime, and there wasn’t a peep.

      I think part of the reason is because of the ultimate Tonelessness of the strip and how eventually there are no concrete truths in the strip beyond Dead Saint Lisa being dead. Given how amorphous everything is in Batiuk’s world, it’s progressively difficult to look at any given strip and shrug it off while saying “huh, ok, whatever”.

      In this particular case, I think the other main reason is that Josh only has a few topics that he still will be willing to pursue, and when you look at it, they’re mostly the strips that he personally likes and still follow their world’s rules to an appreciable extent. They’re also generally the strips where the snark to be made today isn’t identical to what could have been said 10 or 20 or more years ago. Most any day will be Mary Worth and maybe something from Dennis The Menace, Pluggers, Judge Parker, The Phantom, Gil Thorp, or Rex Morgan. Beyond that, it’s a rare mention at best. He could do more, but if the ad revenue is the same either way, to hell with it – just comment on today’s MW and maybe two other things and call it a day.

      1. I think Josh’s disinterest in Crankshaft is a damning blow. Snark value is about the only value newspaper comics have anymore, and the Funkyverse isn’t even worthy of that. (SEE ALSO: Mark Trail.)

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