Not at all true my dear BeckoningChasm. Having complete volumes of Funky Winkerbean to flip through has been great. For me, and probably only me, they’ve been worth every penny.
Because flipping through, I stumble across important plot details that have fallen out of the collective memory of Funky Snarkers.
For example, this little two week arc from December 1988.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Him….losing his mind? A bit late to worry about that, eh?
I’m trying to figure out the woman’s face in the very first panel. Is her neck wearing glasses?
I think that’s TB’s stab at “what if Han Solo was a woman, and also wore a thick-collared mock turtleneck?”
Ah, so “tragic hearing loss” was an Act 1 invention. Good thing for those hearing aids, then, they’ve clearly been holding back the effects for the last 30-some years so the World’s Greatest Band Director never has to stop! That or the magical healing abilities of Bedside Manor that also relieved Funky’s dad of his more serious Alzheimer’s symptoms, even if Dinkle only visited instead of stayed. It’s Star Trek Insurrection’s fountain-of-youth planet all over again!
Also, huh, looks like Crankshaft is actually returning to the “lost week” we had last year when the gag about Cranky’s grill causing country-wide smoke. We’re going to be getting it “properly” this week with the Canada wildfire references filed off to be less “too-soon”-ish. Reruns for the attentive, new content to those who missed it!
That week about a year ago, Crankshaft and Arcamax ran different strips. https://sonofstuckfunky.com/2023/08/22/will-the-real-crankshaft-please-stand-up/. This week, both are running the Canadian wildfire story. Which is actually a rerun on Arcamax, because they ran it that week. IIRC that week’s strips also varied into some local newspapers.
Will Tom finally get his Major Award… from the EPA, for responsibly recycling last year’s trash?
Yeah this was a great find from CBH! But even though it dealt with a serious topic, it has handled in a humorous way that made it an enjoyable story.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
Looks like it’s a rehash of the Canadian Wildfire Week on Arcamax, but it’s on both sites this time
Related to the Batiukverse: A few more strips of Chien from the Toledo Blade
I think this is a dig at people who buy books that have women on the cover, but I’m not sure
This is the saturday strip before the storyline where Bull gets angry at Les for the Westview High Yearbook not having football pictures (because Chien refused to take them)
That Chien is a real piece of work. Ah the rich tapestry of characters that Batty has created.
Chien is an iteration of the “how do you do, fellow kids” meme, that actually predates the meme by 20 years.
Good observation!
Wait, who is this “Jessica” character? Have we ever seen her before (or since)? If only someone were to exposit on her biography, like maybe telling us who her father is (or perhaps was?). You know, the type of thing one usually drops in casual conversation.
ComicBookHarriet,
Thank you for spending $45 for the books. You put them to excellent use.
I am also glad you posted this musical post. Even if it has Dinkle. As Rusty Shackleford said, “it has handled in a humorous way that made it an enjoyable story.”
It has reminded me of the union between movies, tv, and music 🎼. I watched the final episode of M. A. S. H. when it was originally broadcast. I remember some of the plots, but what has stayed in my memory is Winchester practicing Wolfgang Amadeus *Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet A Major. What initially struck me was it started like “Eastside, Westside, All Around the Town”.
(*Be Ware of Eve Hill always pays me $5 every timei mention ‘Mozart’! [k’ching!])
Another music anecdote. This time directed at Anonymous Sparrow. I have mentioned before that I started watching Sherlock Holmes 1955.
(BWOEH pays me nothing for Holmes mentions!)
Last night I watched “the Case of the Belligerent Ghost. Quite humorous. There is a scene where Watson walks into their flat, and Holmes is playing his violin 🎻. I had heard the tune. I knew the song, but the title escaped me. I used my phone record the scene, and sent an “Help Needed” text to my family. Within moments, I received the answer: Antonin Dvořàk’s Humoresques Op. 101.
A night of pure musical enjoyment thanks to ComicBookHarriet spending $45 on a Tom Batiuk book.
❤️💝🩷🫂🌺🥀🌹
People most likely think I pay you $5 every time you mention me in your comments. 😉😁
Be Ware of Eve Hill,
That is a kind, generous offer. It would also be quite lucrative to me, Be Ware of Eve Hill. But alas, Be Ware of Eve Hill, I cannot accept. One must think of the children. I am that kind of guy. I am steadfastnissible through and through.
😜😍🤪
SP:
Dinkle forgive me
(As I forgive Dinkle when he lets go of the trophy)
I’m not as sound on the years of the premiere dates of instrumental pieces as I am on operas. Therefore, when you mentioned Dvorak, I had to do some research to learn whether Sherlock Holmes (in practice twenty-three years, with Dr. Watson allowed to keep notes for seventeen) could actually play the piece in question.
To my delight, I found that the Opus in question came out in 1894, which was a crucial year for the Great Detective (he returned to Baker Street), and, even better, it commenced a busy seven years for him (as we learn in “The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist”)…yet he still found time to keep up with current music and to learn to play it upon his Stradivarius (his violin is that, according to “The Adventure of the Cardboard Box”).
So thank you!
For what it’s worth, I’m reading autobiographies from Peter Cushing, who portrayed Sherlock Holmes on a number of occasions, both on the big screen and on television. And in a splendid anthology called *And Darkness Falls,* edited by Boris Karloff (though some speculate he only loaned his name to the project…I like to think he is responsible for the introductions and comments, even when they’re wrong about there being 68 Holmes stories and our meeting him for the first time in *The Sign of the Four*), I read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “Case of Lady Sannox,” which was quite horrific.
In a *Peanuts* strip, Charlie Brown complains about “an adaptation of Sherlock Holmes” and likens it to drinking diluted root beer.
Sounds like something Lillian McKenzie wouldn’t want to miss after reading the mystery series Stephen King’s Tess wrote in “Big Driver.”
Anonymous Sparrow,
I was ready to feel foolish if Humoresque had not been published by 1894. You wiped my fear away. Yet then, my fear came back when you quoted Charlie Brown, “drinking diluted root beer.” What if the reference was to Holmes,1955?
Fortunately, I could google it! October 24, 1963.
An aside for that date: 9 years later to the day, I entered the USAF. (It’s all connected.)
A Dvorak anecdote for you from Wikipedia:
Humoresque became even more popular when it became the melody for train station toilets. Sung to the opening lines, “Passengers will please refrain from flushing toilets while the train is standing in or passing through a station” I believe there was some editing to fit the melody. Hugely popular with school children. I don’t know why?
Someone claimed the honor of starting the little ditty. It is claimed by Supreme Court Justice William O Douglas and a Yale Law School professor. As soon as I found this out, I said, “That is worthy to be an Anonymous Sparrow story.
Last of all, I must read tonight, “The Case of Lady Sannox”. I had not heard it before.
You have made it the start of a great week, even counting tomorrow and Wednesday as my 2 day chemical cardiac tests. C’est la vie’!
SP:
October 24, 1963 is also the day Adlai E. Stevenson celebrated United Nations Day in Dallas, Texas — and he was not received warmly. The residents booed him and spat on him. (What’s that, Shylock? Yes, they probably did spurn him and call him dog.)
That was indeed a great story about Dvorak, although the part I liked best was the reference to William O. Douglas…because it reminded me of his brief appearance in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window.” At the end of the movie, Grace Kelly’s Lisa Fremont is reading Douglas’s book *Beyond the High Himalayas.*
It is all connected, as you say…I alluded to “The Adventure of the Cardboard Box” for details about Holmes’s violin, and when you read “The Case of Lady Sannox,” you’ll find that it makes an interesting companion piece to that “earie” (pun stolen not from Tom Batiuk, but from Samuel Rosenberg’s *Naked Is the Best Disguise*) exploit of Holmes. (Left out of *Memoirs* in book form, and not published in hardcover until *His Last Bow* over twenty years later.)
Other Doyle recommendations if you’re interested, from the 1908 *Round the Fire* collection: “The Lost Special,” “The Man with the Watches,” “The Black Doctor” and “The Jew’s Breastplate.” “Escape” did a fine adaptation of “The Lost Special” for radio, and an even better version of another Doyle tale, “The Ring of Thoth” (which appeared in *The Captain of the Polestar*)
Anonymous Sparrow,
My first day chemical cardiac test went well. I did all the preps. I did not realize it, but withholding chocolate surprised me. After the test, I went into the gift shop and seemed forced to buy a Kit Kat, a Milky Way, and a 3 Musketeers. I also bought my wife a scented candle as a gift. [I know how to get the attention of my female SOSFers. It is so easy to get on their good side. Shhh! It is our secret. Even right now, Be Ware of Eve Hill, is punching Mr. BWOEH on the shoulder and asking, “Why don’t you ever buy me scented candles? You are a better man than SP!” I bet she denies it, but we know! 😜]
As for your Adlai Stevenson story: Wow! Autumn 1963 was a horrible season for liberals to visit Dallas, Texas!!!
I heard a Richard Nixon interview today. He said Americans do not want someone like the person next door to be president. They want someone different. I think that idea holds up pretty well.
FDR, Ike, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, Obama, and Trump meet that criteria.
Truman, Ford, Carter, HW Bush, W, seem to me to be more ‘every man’ kind of guys. That is not a criticism of any of them. Just a simple analysis.
Tomorrow is day 2 cardiac. But no preps!
(The 3 Musketeers is already gone!)
SP:
No chemical cardiac procedures for me, but the urologist wanted me to supply another urine sample, which I did this morning.
Next week, the hematologist.
The week after that, a CT scan.
You often heard an explanation for the appeal of George W. Bush lying in the fact that “you could have a beer with him.” (He wouldn’t have a beer with you, having sworn off alcohol, causing his champions to say: “Well, more for me then!”)
Politics is funny, as Franklin Roosevelt’s first Vice-President, John Nance Garner, put it, and a man with little political experience (the State Legislature, one term in Congress, a losing Senate race) may prove to be a better President than a man who served as a Congressman, a Senator, Secretary of State (under James K. Polk, the most successful one-term President this country’s ever had, to my mind) and minister to two countries, as we see with Abraham Lincoln and James Buchanan. Garner’s fellow Texan, Sam Rayburn, listened to Lyndon Johnson gush about the braininess of the men John Kennedy chose for his Cabinet and remarked:
“Well, you may be right, Lyndon, and they may be every bit as intelligent as you say. All I know is I’d feel a whole lot better about them if just one of them had run for sheriff once.”
Sometimes it’s enough to Like Ike (liking Don Quixote was enough for Sancho Panza to follow him in *Man of La Mancha*) and sometimes it’s not.
We can learn a lot from Nixon, but we have to temper it with Theodore H. White’s tale of Kennedy listening to a Nixon speech and saying:
“You know, Nixon is really smart. How can he talk such stuff?”
(As he put it in 1961. When he revisited the story in 1975, he used another word than “stuff,” which was “shit.”)
Some of my recent reading was the second volume of John Quincy Adams’s *Diaries* from the Library of America. To read them is to regret that a man who could have been one of the great Presidents never got the chance in his single term, while the man who followed him gave his name to a kind of democracy and is still with us on the twenty-dollar bill…but they also make it clear why he didn’t. He couldn’t always connect with the voters, any more than Robert Taft could (who said of 1948: “I don’t care how you explain it. It just defies all common sense to return that roughneck ward politician back to that White House”)
Taft was a man who when asked what people should do about high food prices replied: “We should eat less.”
Lindsey Graham likes to imagine what Joe Lieberman would say to John McCain. I’d be more interested in the conversations of John Quincy Adams and Robert Taft.
But I’ll settle for seeing “Stagecoach” again in a movie house and hearing the reaction of the audience to banker Gatewood’s claim that “what this country needs is a businessman for President.”
We’ve had two more since 1939, after all.
Ace that cardiac, and don’t utter Funky Winkerbeanisms to the doctors!
Anonymous Sparrow,
1. Thank you for the mention of James K Polk. I agree, he was one of our most successful Presidents. Unfortunately, he chose not to run again, and died within weeks after the election.
2. I appreciate your habit of historical personages. I try to investigate most of them. Today’s was especially interesting: John Nance Garner. Born November 22. That will come up again. Texan. One of two people to serve as Speaker of the House, and President of the Senate as Vice President of the USA. FDR’s Vice President for 8 years. Not strong on Civil Rights. Opposed packing the Supreme Court. (Apparently, we are repeating history.) He seems to be the originator of the quote: the Vice Presidency is not worth a bucket of warm p*ss. (I guess, “A man’s got to know his limitations.”) Here is another 1963 reference. JFK calls to wish him congratulations on his birthday of November 22, 1963. Now we know the rest of the story.
Wow!
P. S. May your tests only reveal good news.
🩷💖🧡💝
SP:
In 1944, John Nance Garner told Harry S Truman that he was “gonna live to be 93.”
Garner almost made it to 99 (fifteen days short) and is the longest-lived Vice-President. (On the Democratic side. The longest-lived Republican Vice-President is Levi Parsons Morton, who died on his 96th birthday in 1920. He’s the last elected Vice-President to hold a state office — Governor of New York in 1895-96 — though Alben Barkley returned to the Senate in 1954 and Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush and Joe Biden went on to be elected President.)
He died in Uvalde, the location of the 2022 school shooting; though the tragedy occurred at Robb Elementary School, I believe that there was a High School named for Garner in Dos Rios in DC’s *El Diablo* series. (I initially thought it was “Gardner” and named for the gallivanting Green Lantern Guy.)
Speaking of the Supreme Court…when Garner reported to Roosevelt on the difficulties the Judicial Reform Act was facing, he asked the President if he wanted the report with the bark on or with the bark off.
Roosevelt had no idea what he meant, and Garner explained that in Texan politics “bark on” meant with a certain amount of face-saving, while “bark off” meant with the unvarnished facts. Roosevelt laughed and said he would take it with the bark off.
In terms of the Court, I don’t see “a switch in time that saves nine” (which would have to be two switches as there are five Horsemen and one Horsewoman where there were four in 1937) or someone thinking of retiring as Willis Van Devanter did.
Then again, 1937 was the beginning of a second term, and 2024 is the end of an administration.
Mea culpa for reading Karl Marx’s *18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte* and thinking about history repeating, I suppose.
Thank you for your good wishes. I extend similar ones to you, along with psychological scented candles.
Three Musketeers bars go well with champagne and Monica’s Thunder.
Sorial Promise:
Thanks for another mention. I have tied a $5 bill to a carrier pigeons leg. It should reach you sometime next week.
Wow. You’re two for two.
I do like scented candles. While we lived in Missouri, I took a candle making class. I no longer make them, but I do buy them. Mr. BWOEH is not a fan. which is a good excuse not to buy me any candles. When I want him to leave me alone, I light a ‘Raspberry Reserve’ candle, his least favorite. Have a nice time up in your study, dear. His idea of aromatherapy is grilling a steak.
Unfortunately, I confess to abusing my husband. He equates my slender fists to being poked with a broom handle. Got him with a good shot the other morning, though. He’s semi-retired and usually gets up after me in the morning. That morning he got up before me and made the coffee. He thought it would be fun to tease me by blocking my access to the coffeemaker with his big backside. Instead of a playful punch to the shoulder like I usually do, I gave him a hard shot in the ribs. I felt bad about that.
Mr. BWOEH: OOF! That didn’t hurt. (groans)
Me: I W̸A̸N̸T̸ NEED COFFEE! GET OUTTA MY WAY!
I hope your tests went well. (cyber hug)
Be Ware of Eve Hill,
1. The longer I know you, my respect for Mr. BWOEH grows ever larger. ❤️💖💝🧡
2. “He equates my slender fists to being poked with a broom handle.” Wow! It sounds like your fists should be registered as lethal weapons!
3. If I were your husband, (you would think you won the lottery…Mrs SP is the woman known as Lucky🤪)…I would buy a contract where you would have coffee delivered to you daily. Expensive? Yes! But cheaper than a hospital bill
I must say good night, but say hello to the best man in the room Mr. BWOEH.
“Beauty keeps a lot of grief away from your door”? Isn’t that Lisa? Wow.
“What more recognizable symbol of high school life is there than a piece of gum a drinking fountain”? Almost anything.
“Beauty is so superficial”? Fuck you, Luann.
I believe that’s Ally Roberts, Pete’s older sister and the editor of the school paper and the yearbook. Just as it was with his editors in real life, TB lost interest in Ally before the year 2000…
I think Batiuk lost interest Ally in 2002, and Ally last appeared in FW in 2004
Ally is the one who with the frizzy hair, looks sullen and wearing a green tracksuit
Yeoman’s work CSR! Ally’s final appearance rivals Lyman’s final appearance in Garfield…
Too bad TB didn’t have a similar loss of interest with Ally’s brother, Mopey Pete. If TB did, we wouldn’t have to witness his unwelcome presence in Crankshaft.
Well, TB lost interest in Pete running Montoni’s pretty fast.
Why does Harry Dinkle, “The World’s Greatest Band Director,” continually have an underperforming trombone section?
Traumatic vehicular amputations.
As we all know, Lefty wasn’t introduced until ACT II, but that was bloody brilliant.
That’s easy: Dinkle sucks at his job. Forced endless practice isn’t a sign of a competent instructor.
But… but… but “The World’s Greatest Band Director”?
Another failure, how many band directors personally schlep fundraising merchandise door-to-door? Wouldn’t they “direct” their students to do the fundraising?
Well when I was in band, the band boosters did the fund raising. Sure, the students would participate, but it was the boosters who organized things.
My brother was in our school’s band. They sold Entertainment Books of coupons and large boxes of fruit. Texas Ruby Red Grapefruits and oranges (loved these).
My brother didn’t sell the items door-to-door. He’d take a order sheet around the neighborhood instead. When the orders came in, he’d deliver the merchandise and collect the money.
Batiuk had the students selling the merchandise door-to-door, often in their marching band uniforms. They must have things differently in TB’s school.
Selling door-to-door is Dinkle’s one legit skill. He’s been in the wrong career all this time.
Because he’s a massive piece of shit
That describes all of Batiuk’s characters.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
Day Two of The Canadian Wildfire Rehash, I Want Something New (Like having Chien, Mooch, Ally, Owen and Cody showing up)
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
Day Three Of The Canadian Wildfire Rehash Strip Week, And I’m Still Waiting For The FW Strips to Show Up on GoComics, The Wait Is KILLIN’ ME
TB probably pumping his fist over “climage damate” finally getting into all the papers that carry Crankshaft.
Related to the Batiukverse: A few more strips I got from CK before it got rid of the FW strips
Chien: Can you both be quiet?
Lee Kanker-Lookalike Student: SHUT THE FUCK UP!
A couple of things
Fred, You suspended Chien because of a school assignment that Les allowed to be published into the high school newspaper, why doesn’t she hold a grudge towards you? (or she might be not showing contempt for Mr. Fairgood)
Mooch’s surname is “Myers”, not “Meyers”
Darin doesn’t show up at ALL in this strip
This is the last appearance of Matt Miller in Funky Winkerbean
I think this is the last time Matt Miller is mentioned in The Batiukverse
Huh, Westview doesn’t announce the students by their proper names, instead using nicknames? That seems… unusual? I mean, I can see using “Pete” instead of “Peter” (though it would have been HILARIOUS if Fred had announced his name as “Mopey Pete”, or said “Pete Reynolds or Roberts or whatever the f*** your name is”), and “Jessica Darling Whose Father John Darling Was Murdered” might have been a bit too long, so I can see him shortening it to just “Jessica”. But “Mooch”? “Chien”? Would a school really announce them by those names during the graduation ceremony?
(Also, there’s a LOT of white space in those speech bubbles. Almost as if Batiuk didn’t care how off-center they looked or something. Nah…)
(Also also, in that last strip – the second panel in particular – Bull looks a lot like post-chemo Not-Dead-Yet Saint Lisa. I’m probably a terrible person for thinking that.)
Oh, fuck you, Les. I know you’re not paying those kids. And I’m sure you passive-aggressived them into giving you free moving services. Extra credit is the LEAST you could do. Quit acting like you’re a paragon of vitrue, because you are not. You’ve misused public or company resources to your own ends in at least three different time zones.
The faculty’s disdain for their students really jumps out of those strips… especially the way that this disdain was played straight. Really some great examples of how TB sanded away one of edges of Act I’s double-edged dynamic between the students and faculty at WHS, and how the poorly his high school gags started to land when this happened.
In Act I, the students and teachers are both terrible. Yes, it’s the same in Acts II and III, but for most of Act I the strip knowingly presents the faculty’s faults as such. This works because punching up at the teachers who should know better allows you to mock the teenagers who don’t know better without it coming across as punching down. Making the teachers’ indignations righteous takes away half the humor even before considering that a good bit of the audience isn’t going to find coming down on kids in such a way to be funny at all.
Think of The Lockhorns. How would that strip come across if only one of them behaved terribly in the relationship?
Think of The Lockhorns. How would that strip come across if only one of them behaved terribly in the relationship?
If Leroy was the one behaving terribly: The Lockhorns would’ve been canceled in within a couple of years
If Loretta was the one behaving terribly: The Lockhorns would’ve been better received in at least the first few decades (I think)
Even worse, the teachers act like their indignation is righteous when we can see that it isn’t. Like Les’ refusal to run pictures of the football team in the yearbook. He acts like he’s supporting his student’s (unreasonable) editorial choice, when he’s really just attacking other students and teachers. And for no reason other than his (and Tom Batiuk’s) petty antipathy against jocks.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
We should send Crankshaft on a rocket to the sun because this week is just painful