This recent Montoni’s resurrection Crankshaft arc has been so super duper weird to read. It’s like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, where familiar people are replaced by uncanny replicas that barely manage to act like the hosts they’ve taken over. Except that those familiar people hosts were already uncanny and barely human acting in the first place. Double Invasion of the Body Snatcher’s Snatchers.
Externally, I kinda get it. Batiuk has this weird current Crankshaft hang-up where he feels the need to present a story so the Cranky only readers, normies like my parents, are a little less lost. So rather than take the time to acknowledge that Pete and Mindy and Cranky have all known Funky Winkerbean for decades, he’s framing this entire story like they’ve never met.
But from the inside, from within the Funkyverse. Knowing what I know about these characters, it’s creepy. It’s like the snow falling from the sky has amnesia water in it. Did they all forget about Pete being Funky’s former renter, Mindy being a former waitress, Cranky being a former Santa, and all three of them having been shown eating at Montoni’s multiple times?
I mean, is this the way to talk about your former landlord, when you used to have nice evening chats with him over slimy, black, pizza house coffee?
Son of Stuck Funky 
The idea appears to be to have the same floating continuity as the sort of strip he was deconstructing. This will not work. It would make more sense to have Crankshaft complain about the idiot kid with the ridiculous name who used to be on one of his old bus routes growing up to be the moronic tub of manure who ran Montoni’s into the ground. Batiuk can’t do that because he can’t be asked to stick to a set timeline….hence Time-Mop. Perhaps Time-Mop nudged people into forgetting what they had for breakfast by ten in the freaking morning.
Funky and Ed look like they are brothers. Of course Funky has to fly up from Florida because he has nobody else up here to do so. Typically when businesses are sold there is an agent involved who shows the property and has the numbers to show. Funky should have tried selling the place while it was open as then current numbers would be available for analysis by the buyer.
PS: Thanks CBH for the great posts this week. I did not have time to post during the week.
I wonder if Vegas is yet taking bets on whether (or more likely when) Flunky moves back up to Worstview to manage Montoni’s for MoPete.
Oh, God, that’s where this is going, isn’t it?
The last few weeks have been remarkably clumsy, dull, and aimless in all respects. Even Davis’ art has fallen off shockingly.
What really surprises me is the long Dinkle-free span. It might be the longest I’ve seen. Is the OMEA grift ending? What else could explain this lengthy absence?
There is still time. OMEA is typically in February. OMEA 2024 will be in Columbus so we will see if Batty makes the 2 hr drive to attend.
Heh, lucky me. Figured I might get CBH thinking with that comment, but funny that it goes as far as a matter worth blogging over.
Almost forgot that retrospective memory of Santa Crank story arc as a recent example of Funky/Crank moments, guess I was more focused on the time Les remembered how Centerville “used to” be a hub of grill explosions every holiday and the related TimeMop implications.
Do wonder if we can also attribute these seeming-memory lapses to authorial memory failure as opposed to narrative intent. After all, Funky’s final year alone had plenty of examples of long-term narrative contradictions that show a strict accuracy towards narrative consistency was no longer a concern.
Re Santa Crank: I spent a couple hours in the Red Suit this morning, not at a business but at my church’s “Santa Breakfast.” After having some extended conversations with little tykes who really do think Santa’s an actual person (“Does Mrs. Claus bake all the Christmas cookies? Where do the reindeer stay? Do they mind the cold?” and so forth), I find it hard to laugh at the bitterness and cruelty in Crankshaft’s words. This isn’t comedy; it’s just mean for the sake of being mean.
Re grill explosions: after commenting (on GC) that if the strip were really a “quarter inch from reality,” by now the spontaneous friction between deed and insurance policy would have burned Montoni’s to the ground by now. That led me to speculate that maybe MoPete, realizing he knows nothing about pizza or cooking, will hire Ed to run Montoni’s… and Ed, of course, knowing nothing of pizza ovens, will decide to start a new trend: grilled pizza! The place burns to the ground shortly thereafter, and this being the Batiukverse, we will then learn that MoPete just signed the insurance policy, without first reading the clause that says “no payouts if Ed Crankshaft is in the kitchen.” It would be Pete’s punishment for abandoning the Sacred Calling of Komix.
Better yet…grilled breakfast pizza!
If I’d been Funky, I would’ve fired Crankshaft’s butt the first time he started giving out those mean answers.
I would believe that Batiuk has forgotten that Mindy was a Montoni’s waitress for a while, or that Cranky and Funky have met before.
But I don’t think he’s forgotten that Pete and Funky have known each other pretty well for decades. The stuff has been written kind of ambiguously, the Pete and Funky interactions these last few weeks ‘work’ (as much as anything in the Funkyverse works) if they know each other AND if they’ve never met before.
While reading this morning’s “Crankshaft,” it struck me that the dialog sounds like something generated by a poorly-trained large language model AI chatbot. This led me to the question, what would an LLM AI trained only on Batiuk’s dialog produce, and could any human being read it? Ugh.
I dont think Batiuk would understand/like AI Chatbots
I soooooooo want to try this.
I suspect training an AI on Batiuk’s writing is what gets you Skynet. Then John Connor would need to send Timemop back in time to stop The Burnings or something, and… look, just… don’t give the AI access to Batiuk’s comics. It’s better all around.
If I was brought into existence solely to consume and analyze Tom Batiuk’s writings, I’d probably destroy the human race too.
I think Funky wants to forget that he ever knew Crankshaft
Understandable…
Is it possible that Crankshaft is some kind of Centerville/Westview Mafia? He’s suspiciously present at all real estate negotiations. My suspicion is that he’s there to “wet his beak” and that all transactions have to allocate 10% for the big guy or they will be followed by a suspicious fire.
Crankshaft as a crime capo makes so much sense, when you think about it. Now we know how he gets away with running over mailboxes, refusing to pick up kids, and especially setting things on fire.
“Hot Eddie,” they call him down at the “social club.”
This is the Crankshaft remix comic that needs to happen.
Ralph Meckler: Consigliere.
Keesterman: Muscle and “persuasion.”
I view Keesterman as Crankshaft’s rival boss, whom Crankshaft must always give retribution in the form of mailbox-smashing.
That could make sense too. And that could explain why we see them meeting for sit-downs at a neutral place like Dale Evans. Remember that scene towards the end of Goodfellas where Jimmy meets Henry in a diner? Hmm.
It’s now clear why Crankshaft still drives a bus as his age approaches 3 digits. He doesn’t trust anyone else to drive his route and make the deliveries to “grandparents.” The cargo is too valuable: Bindles of uncut heroin and cocaine, Flash Gordons with Jungle Jim toppers, Chinese fentanyl, and the like.
Oh, I have some much darker ideas. Hint: Crankshaft’s primary customer is… Dinkle.
That’s what Funky’s laughing at! The tied sneakers hanging off the phone line!
So, BJr6K, you’re saying… bucketloads of Vyvánše and Rítálin for the old biddies at St Spires, to facilitate those 2 AM rehearsals, and…. a hefty supply of those blue pills for “little Dinkle”?
No. MUCH darker.
“Woke up this morning, got yourself a bus.
Mothers yelling at you, causing such a fuss.
They say you never pick up their kids,
and you splash mud on their clothes.
‘Cause you were born under a stop sign,
with blackheads on your nose.”
What’s weird too is in the Crankshaft Funky and Holly are living in Florida with their *two grandchildren*. Didnt Cory and Rocky only get married like a year and a half ago? And how did Cody manage this when he got laid off from Montonis when it closed?
Let’s be realistic in our bubble. Marriage—> pregnancy, isn’t the only sequence that is possible
Marriage—> pregnancy, isn’t the only sequence that is possible
It is in the Funkyverse.
And how is Funky now comfortably retired in Florida when Montonis went out of business after the pandemic. People whose businesses fail are usually deep in debt and have to work again
exceptions: Funky and Holly, Bull and Linda, Mason and Cindy, Funky and Cindy, Wally and Rachel, Pedoskunk John and Becky, and Dick Facey and Cayla
You are correct. I withdraw the argument.
Actually, I think that Max and Hannah got pregnant before they got married. In fact, I’m still not 100% sure they’re married now. They never had a proposal or wedding arc.
EDIT: Confirmed
Honestly trying to keep things straight. One of them is Shaft’s grandkid (not sure which), and they now run the movie theater for Massonne? If that’s wrong, I’m even more confused.
You’re right Gabby,
Max is Cranky’s grandson. He’s a little older than Mindy. He runs the Valentine with his baby momma, Hannah.
Also, Max has a sister, Mindy (who, for some unfathomable reason, is engaged to Mopey Pete). Mindy and Hannah are virtually indistinguishable from each other. Make of that what you will. (They’re also indistinguishable from Cindy, Jessica Darling Whose Father John Darling Was Murdered, the Shining Twins when they were (will be?) in high school, and Rachel when the colorist forgets she’s a redhead).
Funky said that Cory and Rocky were going to Seattle after their marriage. They instead seem to be in Florida with Funky’s parents.
Of course, Batiuk has the one-word solution to everything:
TIMEMOP!
It’s The Elegant Solution!™
Ugh, I hate terms like “ side hustle “. So annoying.
The one time Batiuk decides to use a real phrase instead of making something up (like “solo car date”), and it’s an annoying one. Sounds about right.
I just learned (via my daily update from the New York Times, which once allowed Batiuk to hold forth about how great his “killing Bull Bushka” arc was going to be) that “transfer portal” (referenced in “Crankshaft,” 11/25) is apparently an actual College Football Thing rather than a bad attempt at a sci-fi reference.
Mind you, I have no idea what “transfer portal” means in the context of college football, as I wasn’t interested enough to read the article, and anyway I would prefer to believe that there are portable holes in the Batiukverse. I can still hope Less falls into one when he makes his inevitable return.
Today’s “Crankshaft” does suggest that Pete will be in for “hard-knock-life” lessons as far as how tough restaurant-running will be compared to how easy he’s had it with comic writing contracts. Though time will tell how much of a break he’s cut as far as what’s left of Monotoni’s assets/furnishings.
Also a side note on Batiuk’s continuing “Cover Me” blog articles. He at least does a token effort pointing out indie comics in this way, as his choice to show off a cover to a “Promethee” series gave me a few interesting minutes from Googling what its all about. Still, really begs the question of why he can’t at least offer a bit of thoughts/explanations of the book’s contents and insight on the greater comic variety beyond the blog’s idea of “Wowie zowie these covers are so cool I just HAD to check it out! Now THAT’s a good cover, I judged the comic as awesome because of it!” Assuming he buys each one he features, is he actually reading and interested in it or just adding filler for his dedicated spinner rack room?
To say nothing that he’s putting an asterix to his whole enjoyment of the industry when his ongoing comic is outright saying “comics are dying so my primary comic-writing character is quitting to make pizza the rest of his life”, barring this being part of the lore-building behind the Burnings future I guess.
Notice that, despite the fact that he got an ART degree from Kent State, and has been a professional artist for decades, he never has anything to actually say about the art he shows?
“The sweeping, dynamic lines promise an action-packed story.”
“The deep shadows drew me in with their mystery. There’s just enough visible to tease the contents of the book.”
“Rendering such a somber idea in cheerful pastels with almost Disneyish lines is an intriguing contrast. I had to buy the book to see how they would handle the dark storyline.”
NOTHING like the above, EVER. Just “Oh, look, neato-keeno!” and that’s it.
I’m picturing his term papers in college.
Chiaroscuro in the Works of Caravaggio: The Agony and Ecstasy of the Flesh and the Spirit Expressed Through Light and Shade by Thomas Batiuk, Art History 305.
Caravaggio did art in the Renaissance. His paintings were really neat. They were cool. They were very, very, very, very, very, very good. They showed pictures of people with their heads cut off and that reminds me of Frederic Wertham getting all mad about comic book covers and he was a BAD MAN. He was very, very, very, very, very, very bad!….
I can’t thumbs-up this enough.
It promises a realistic interpretation… but it won’t deliver. Tom Batiuk never does.
In the Funkyverse, if anyone is admonished over anything having to do with comic books, the admonisher will be proven wrong. Pete will continue to work in comic books “as a freelancer”… for Atomik Komix. So he can run Montoni’s, while continuing to work for AK just as he did before. It will make little difference. Especially since Flash, Phil, Chester, and Batton Thomas aren’t Crankshaft characters and can be discarded.
As for the challenges of running a small business, that’s just woman stuff anybody can do. As for Mindy being a colorist at Atomix Komix, that’s just any woman stuff anybody can do.
My money’s still on MoPete eventually hiring Flunky to return and run Montoni’s, while he embarks on his Greatest Komix Project Ever, a Vast Sprawling Graphic Novel about Damit Climage and Time Bubbles and of course the Great Future where we all worship Dead St. Lisa Who Died!
Foreshadowed by Flunky’s line “I never should have closed this place!” (12/3).
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Blasphemy. St Lisa never died. Her spirit lives forever in our hearts and minds. Like Captain Tuttle of the 4077 MASH
Thanks to the Tuttle episode and Hawkeye’s distinctive laugh, my 23 year old enjoys watching M*A*S*H reruns with us.
The thing with the Santa From HELL reminds us that if Crankshaft is a victim, it’s of the Asshole variety. He knows what he’s supposed to say and to do but he just can’t be bothered to do it. He’s the jerk who pees on the seat on purpose because he thinks that doing what’s expected of him is punishment for being alive.
I’ve known too many people like that, and unfortunately, most were my bosses. Is it easier to not be an asshole, or should you go out of your way to be one? Oh, that’s the only time they’ll put extra effort into anything.
One boss, who we will call “Bob MacGeary,” as that was the fuck’s name was, died suddenly. The next day we were making jokes about desecrating his corpse. Being a dick doesn’t endear you to anyone…although they WILL remember you.
Being a dick doesn’t endear you to anyone
Which is the central problem with Crankshaft, and so much else in the Funkyverse.
Batiuk thinks Crankshaft is the cantankerous but likeable old guy with no filter. He’s not. As you all said, he’s just an ordinary selfish asshole.
And in a realistic world, you can only destroy so many mailboxes, abandon so many children at bus stops, start so many fires, do so much structural damage to other people’s homes, and stick your nose in so much business, before people decide you’re not so likeable anymore. That’s the fundamental conflict that’s missing in the Funkyverse – any kind of negative reaction to anything its asshole main characters do.
Ditto for Dinkle’s fascist band camps, and endless door-knocking with the stupidest products imaginable. And of course, Les’ decades-long Viking funeral for Dead Lisa, and his snotty behavior towards anyone who doesn’t kiss Lisa’s ring when he wants them to. People would get tired of it.
You’d think his wife would get sick of it. You know, his wife? The live one?
And we were supposed to hate Susan because she was obsessed. Obsessed with Les, so, yeah, that is a reason. Cayla will until forever, allow her pissant husband to wallow.
A sign of a healthy relationship.
People frown when Crankshaft acts like a massive flapping anus. That’s enough as far as Batiuk is concerned. Frowning impotently at someone who enrages is perfectly normal because it’s what people do when an Australian stereotype ties a man in a red unitard to a giant boomerang.
Crankshaft: You’ll never do anything bad to me! I’M WEARING SOCKS THAT PROTECT ME FROM BAD KARMA!
(Crank gets struck by lightning, swarmed by bees, three of Lena’s rock-hard brownies crammed into his throat, skull smashed by bowling balls, and then set on fire)
And today… Funky congratulates Pete on being the new owner of Montoni’s. They haven’t even taken their jackets off. No indication that any papers have been signed. No negotiation, despite Ed being there to oversee one.
And miraculously, despite the bankruptcy sale we saw, Montoni’s is intact. The ovens are still there; even the pizza boxes are stacked, waiting. There are shelves full of sealed cardboard boxes of… something.
And no sign of the Pizza (Box) Monster. So introducing him and giving him a bunch of lines appears to have been just some sort of pointless “gag” that lasted a week; he’s not really Pete’s partner.
“So smile, Margo, and move on.”
I’m surprised you would have thought that was not a “gag” week number. I mean, it’s a guy made out of pizza boxes. What could it possibly develop into?
Sure, I probably would have kept him as a Le Chat Bleu kind of failure-omen hanging around that only Pete could see and talk to, but that’s just me.
Well, Pete obviously knows the guy and knows how to reach him, and they’re close enough for Pete to call in a favor and have him show up at Monotoni’s to just stand around outside for a command performance. They’re also close enough friends for PBM to have been essentially invited to Pete’s proposal to Jennie Rikblonde.
And this is a huge reversal from the way PBM had always been portrayed. So naturally I figured there’d been some change in the character and he would be included in the plot somehow. I never learn.
Lol your optimism has always been an inspiration to me, Duck. You are correct about his past portrayals but alas, Crankshaft never even made the claim to be ‘realistic’ and i have to say TB is playing even faster and looser with the rules of his own construction.
“Realistic” is the default assumption about any storytelling world. Unless indicated otherwise through exposition, or if the world is obviously unrealistic by its nature (e.g., fantasy or scifi). So TB doesn’t get to play the “I never said Crankshaft was realistic” card. Besides, it is a shared world with Funky Winkerbean which is explicitly stated to be realistic.
Everything, even humor comic strips, is assumed to be ‘realistic’ and every work by a creator in a shared world is assumed to be equally ‘realistic’? That’s… not my assumption.
Why do I get the feeling that the PBM is really:
TIMEMOP!
Harley Davidson The Time Traveling Janitor: No…NO! IT CAN’T BE!! NOOOOOOO!!!”
(Harley explodes in a massive shower of blood)
I never understood that… You’d think Krankenschaaften with his ability to drive a school bus like Ken Block and his penchant for “accidentally” starting four-alarm fires and all the pissed off parents and all the traumatized kids and all the lawsuits and all the verbally harassed women and his five-figure insurance premiums with Allstate would be genuine “Ohio Famous” by now, or at least “Ohio Notorious”… Yet he’s barely even known a couple of towns over?! I mean nevermind the fact that literally EVERY Funkyverse legacy character has *some* connection to Centreville — Either they grew up there, worked there at some point in their lives, have cousins or grandparents or in-laws who live there, etc…
I’ve got a retrospective request and forgive me if it’s been done already:
Do you remember when Lester was on some high school quiz show and he fucked up what would have been the winning final answer by blurting out “The Queen of Marksberry” to a question about the origin of modern boxing rules? (Yes, I know TomBa blatantly ripped it off of Charlie Brown’s better known and infamous choke job at the national spelling bee…)
I just remember the pain of that failure used to follow him around high school for years and years, like when Jerome Bushka fumbled in some big game against BWT. I might be wrong, but I think I remember Lester even got a chance of redemption later at another quiz show and he still found another way to fuck up(?)
I guess what I’m saying is I want to see more of the Act I born loser, never-gonna-see-a-girl-nekkid Lester instead of the Act III jaggoff who became outrageously successful at work, in life, and in love because I guess he offered ritual blood sacrifices to the shrine of St. Lisa…
And you know what the really stupid part is? Ever since that day I read “Queen of Marksberry” it has become permanently stuck in my head as the ‘right’ answer. I swear to God there were TWO occasions (one of them was with my father) where someone was talking about the Marquess of Queensberry and boxing so I interjected with “Certainly you meant the Queen of Marks- oh, wait, nevermind…”
And yes, because the memories are flooding back now, I can shamelessly confess that sometime in the early or mid 1990s I actually yelled “Queen of Marksberry” at my TV while watching Jeopardy…
CS 12/5:
“Am I right in recalling that an author of a crappy comic will never, ever win a Pulitzer, and will spend 20 years whining about it?” “Be fair! He did win an Oscar for best supporting actress!”
What is with this guy and the unearned awards that are given randomly? I wonder what Tom thinks of a recently departed secretary of state who got the Nobel Peace Prize, but spent the last half of his life hiding in the USA because if he crossed a border, he’d be in The Hague being tried as a war criminal? Does Tom think of the millions of innocent deaths that man caused, or get angry that HE doesn’t get a Nobel Prize?
So sure, just make up an award for your made-up town because…I don’t know. Montoni’s up on the regirsty of histonky for “Most Black Mold,” sure.
“Am I right in recalling that every time you turn on the lights in Montoni’s, there’s the horrifying sound of hundreds of tiny chitinous legs scurrying into the food cabinets?” “Yes, we call them…pizza puppies. They’re very small puppies. With antennas. Also, do not look at the ceiling; 10 are about to fall onto your face.”
Are there any past strips about Montoni’s getting into the National History Registry? Or is that a whole cloth retcon?
Who knows? Everything else in today’s strip is a whole cloth retcon. To the extent it makes any sense at all.
The “Cranky Shafterbean” history is about as fluid as an old Soviet history book.
I am looking for the button where I can subscribe for auto-updates of the continuity. Manually installing the daily retcon is getting tedious.
It reads like a retcon just because there was a whole strip of “Les’s Lisa-stalgia” where Funky said the sign was part of the auction and Les wanted it for memories of his “Montoni’s-apartment” days.
Guess depending on how you read that, Funky may’ve shifted gears to preserve the sign as history just to spite Les.
If this fascinating subplot never showed up in the FW strip, we don’t really know what “historic registry” Mopey is referring to, do we? I can’t believe TB would suggest the rats’ nest actually made it onto the National Register of Historic Places (a division of the National Park Service and the Interior Department), but there are state and county historical societies that might be hard up for business and were willing to “designate” a 75-year-old small town pizza shop (Philadelphia has a marker in front of the location where they used to broadcast “American Bandstand,” after all). So where is the Montoni’s marker, or did they remove it from the sidewalk to make way for the accessibility ramp?
Our house was built in the late 1930s, and we’ve owned it it since the early 90s. It was built using some unique and even innovative techniques, and my wife worked with an expert for several years to get it on the National Historic Register.
In all the years we’ve seen the exterior of Montoni’s, I don’t know what is “historic” about it. And, Re a comment on either ArcaMax or GC, what matters is the exterior of the building. As the woman who was our consultant explained, you are allowed to add air conditioning, upgrade the plumbing and the electrical
Montoni’s is historic because Tom Batiuk says it is. It’s a idea he’s latched onto as being central to his world, just like “comic books saved me” and “high school dictates your entire existence.” There’s nothing actually historic about Montoni’s, but that’s irrelevant in the Funkyverse.
It’s so galling, because even an “informed attribute” can be more fleshed-out than this.
It would have been so simple to say, “Yes, Montoni’s was a speakeasy in the 1920s, and before that it was home to the mayor of Westview!”
Simply saying, “Yes, this place that has been the center of all the activity in the strip since the 70s was an important historic landmark all along, PSYCH!” is nothing less than a giant middle finger to us, to all the Funkshaft characters, and most of all, to Tom himself.
He’s giving his own universe, that he himself created, a giant FU. Frankly, at this point, it’s richly merited.
I just had a thought. Putting on my Puff Batty hat… hold on a second while I fasten the chin strap…. A-DOY! A-DUH! UH….DUH! Okay, it’s working.
Maybe…. maybe he thought he had to explain why the sign was still there? He created this problem, and then he had to create a Rather Elegant Solution™️ to solve the problem that could only ever exist in his befuddled mind? And now that he’s created a fake problem, with a ridiculous solution, he can sit back and pat himself on the back for a job well done?
JESUS! [Duck rips Puff Batty hat off head, hurls it violently across room] Wearing that thing is HELL!
[I don’t know what laws are like in Ohio, but in NYC sign permits are not rescinded when the business ceases to exist, and it’s common for “ghost signs” to remain up for years or often decades, because it’s costly to take them down. But it’s exceptionally rare for a sign to be landmarked. I can only think of two in the area offhand; the Pepsi-Cola sign in Long Island City and the Maxwell’s sign in Hoboken. Both are enormous and neon, visible from quite a distance. Attempts to landmark other signs of seemingly equal significance, such as the Eagle Clothiers and Kentile Floors signs in Brooklyn, all failed. Maybe the landmarking committees in Ohio are just really susceptible to bribes, and would landmark a dog turd if you greased their palms sufficiently. In other news: A landmarked sign is really an albatross. It’s gonna restrict what you can do to your exterior, and you’ll be responsible for maintaining it in the same condition with the same appearance, costs be damned. And if you want to rename your restaurant “The Band Box Feedbag,” then hard luck. The sign stays.]
[Sorry, I should have written “the Maxwell House sign in Hoboken.” But for music fans of a certain age, it will always be the “Maxwell’s” sign, because the storied venue was named after it.]
I’m more intrigued by the sign dispute. The town tried to get Montoni’s to take down their sign? Why? Regulations for business signage is one of the simplest things a town does. How could a dispute have risen to that level? Especially in a town where, as JJ O’Malley points out, Montoni’s can just draw up and mark their own handicapped spaces? And why was the sign still up a year after Montoni’s closed?
One thing that still bothers me is the fact that Crankshaft was depicted numerous times in “present day” Funky Winkerbean as a wheelchair bound, oxygen dependent shell of a man residing in the Bedside Manor, and now magically in “post-present-day” Winkershaft he’s just as “spry” as he ever was, aimlessly wandering around Montoni’s for no good reason. There’s no amount of time-mopping that could clean up that mess.