My Dinner With Andre was a 1981 movie starring Wallace “Inconceivable!” Shawn, and director Andre Gregory. The entire movie is a restaurant-table conversation between the jaded, frustrated Shawn and the happier, new age-y Gregory, about their lives in the theater. Gregory recounts his very strange adventures, like experimental theater deep in the forests of Poland (when it was still a People’s Republic). Gregory argues that these experiences made him feel more human, more fulfilled, and better at his job. Shawn counters that most people don’t have the means to go lengthy journeys of self-discovery, and finds satisfaction in small things instead.
In Crankshaft this week, Tom Batiuk is having this conversation with himself. (And probably for the next two weeks as well.)
In this analogy, Batton Thomas is Andre Gregory, the more successful of the two. The character Batton Thomas is a obvious stand-in for Batiuk himself. Batton’s life matches Batiuk’s down to the last detail, such as having one comic strip that ended but another that’s still ongoing. Skip isn’t exactly Wallace Shawn, because Shawn is Gregory’s old friend, while Skip is ostensibly a journalist doing a formal interview. But Skip serves the same purpose in the comic strip Shawn does in the movie, which is: prompt Gregory to tell his amazing stories.
What does Skip prompt Batton to talk about? I don’t get paid as much as I want. I want free pizza. I like music in an outdated format and look down my nose at anyone who doesn’t. I spend all my time at the comic book store.
This is My Dinner With Andre, if Andre was the most boring, insufferable twit you’ve ever met. And his dinner partner failed ninth-grade journalism.
Let’s start with Skip. Good lord, he is terrible at his job. He does no pre-interview research. Dialogue reveals that he doesn’t even know the cartoonist’s name or what strips he creates, things a five-second Google search would tell you.
If you’re a professional journalist who wants to interview someone, you call them (or their representative) and make an appointment. You don’t show up at a place of business, hope they’re there, and invite them to lunch. That is how a skeevy high school sophomore approaches the cute stocker at Old Navy.
And you don’t insta-bribe your interview subjects with food. Especially not when the subject is as attention-starved as Batton Thomas is. This man’s ego is so huge, not being interviewed may actually kill him faster than starvation would. If I wanted to interview Batton Thomas, I’d make him buy me lunch. And not at Montoni’s; expensive urban steakhouse, please. If he springs for the cheesecake, I’ll promise to ask him a Phantom Empire question.
Also, an interview isn’t supposed to be a list of facts, but rather an insight into what it’s like to talk with the person. Skip interviews Batton like he’s helping him fill out a job application. Did you retire? What work did you do? Did you like doing it? Again, he should have found all this out before he approached Batton at all. The same thing happened in the recent interview with the 94-year-old softball player. Happy Birthday! How are you feeling? Why do you still play softball? How has the game changed for you? And that was for TV, where wasting audience time with a list of banal facts is even more inexcusable. And she couldn’t even keep those banal facts straight, calling him “90-year-old” at one point.
But back to Batton. On the surface, this is what I call a “Vaudeville Week”, where the characters Q-and-A each other like some old-time comedy team, except that nothing resembles a joke. But it’s also a window into Tom Batiuk’s mind.
Batton Thomas is what Tom Batiuk thinks he is. Batton Thomas stories represent how Batiuk wants other people to interact with him in real life. He wants people to hold him in high regard as a writer, like they would a war hero or genuinely accomplished artist. He wants people to interact with him on his terms only, buy him the food he likes, and only ask questions about the things he wants to talk about. The same is true of every award, interview, and book signing arc in the Funkyverse, of which there have been many.
I’ve argued in the past that Tom Batiuk’s real-life interviews seem very stage-managed. Batton Thomas’ fictional interviews are even worse. As boring an interview subject as Tom Batiuk is, interviewer Terrance Dollard had a motivation to make interesting content for his audience, and succeeded as well as anyone could. Skip doesn’t even try. He’s not writing an actual story; it’s all just an excuse to make him the straight man. Skip feeds non-premises to Batton, and Batton delivers the non-punchline to the non-joke.
And then Skip gives a knowing smirk. Selling the non-joke is the biggest part of the straight man’s job in the Funkyverse. It is also the biggest part of Tom Batiuk’s ego fantasy: that he’s a witty raconteur, leaving people in stitches with his sharp insights. There is little evidence that Tom Batiuk can write a joke with 11 months’ advance notice, much less on the spot. Nor does he have anything worthwhile to say. But he thinks he’s this:
I’ve used that clip before, but it is such a perfect summary of what all these “writer” stories boil down to. Everyone oohs and aahs over the main character’s unfunny, misaimed behavior. Because the main character wrote the story.
My favorite strip is Thursday, where Batiuk uses one of his joke-writing techniques I’ve been meaning to make into a TBTrope. I call it:
Nothingism: a turn of phrase that seems clever on the surface, but conveys absolutely no meaning.
I wanted to give it a more lofty name than that. “Nihilism” would have been perfect, but that word is already in use. Anyway, Batiuk does a Russian Reversal on a Dorothy Parker line, and ends up with “I love writing, but I hate having written.” What does this even mean? Nothing. It. Means. Nothing. It sounds witty, and on Planet Batiuk, that’s all that matters. Skip dutifully smirks at it, even though he can’t possibly have understood what Batton meant by that.
Besides, I know Tom Batiuk never read anything written by Dorothy Parker. Dorothy Parker never made a comic book.
Son of Stuck Funky 
Related to the Batiukverse: Even more FW/CS edits
Drunk Funky: 2015 New Years Edition
Fun Fact: I was going to make this into a series parody of Breaking Bad, but I got lost interest
X: I’M GOING TO COUNT TO TEN. ONE. TWO. THREE. FOUR. FIVE. SIX. SEVEN. EIGHT. NINE. TEN. READY OR NOT, HERE I COME!
I just dont get Bridgerton
Pete: I already translated it.
Darin: What does it say?
Pete: It says “There is a way to release ourselves. A spell to obtain our souls once more. But we must speak it — but when we speak — No sound. We are all deaf. So failure is inevitable. And I regret ever entering my internal bet with the devil inside of me. Immortality vs. soul snatching. Gary Crook vs. Jake Shanley. Ambition is overrated.” Darin, SHUT OFF THE PC!
(a hand reaches from Darin’s laptop)
These are honestly too hard to read.
Of course, “Batton’s” quip about how he “loves writing” raises the inevitable question: if you love writing so much, WHY did you “choose” to end Three O’Clock High? It obviously wasn’t to retire, if you’re still doing The Wrinkles. Sounds like the decision to end Three O’Clock High was not, in fact, your own choice, but was made by someone else, likely the syndicate. (Which would explain why The Wrinkles is being invaded by all the Three O’Clock High characters that no one ever cared about. Especially the most obvious author avatar out of a plethora of them.) Even though you insist it was your own decision, “Batton”.
(I hope the code isn’t too obvious here…)
For what it’s worth, Dorothy Parker was a great admirer of Crockett Johnson’s *Barnaby.*
But then I suppose that to Tom Batiuk “Barnaby” isn’t the inspiration for SOSF’s J.J. O’Malley but the Cleveland children’s TV show host Linn Sheldon portrayed for over thirty years.
Anyone for a cold lamb sandwich?
A friend of mine whose father worked on Cleveland TV (and also had a stint as a kids’ show host) said “The Barnaby Show” was genuinely amusing and Linn Sheldon was a nice guy despite a slew of personal problems. I’m just saying.
Yeah Linn was a big drinker back in the day. But unlike Tom, Linn readily admitted his mistakes and changed his life for the better. Tom has nowhere near that amount of self awareness, in his mind, everything he has done is some sort of artistic triumph.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
Cs facepalms because this week feels like it’s gonna last for twenty more days (At least it’s not that Rex Morgan, M.D. storyline where IT SPENT A YEAR’S WORTH OF STRIPS FOR A WEEKEND CRUISE)
Yeah, Skippy, comic strips were “a big deal” back then. Young people (and old people) didn’t have smartphones, tablets, and other devices that allowed them to view comics and change the size of the art at the drop of a hat. There were no TVs or streaming services to watch animated shows, movies, or imported anime on. Your own Sentinel has a website, remember? Things change.
Also, “running full truck”? What in the name of Hal Foster is Skipster talking about? Does he mean it took up a full page of the paper’s comics section, like many strips (particularly adventure titles) did 70-plus years ago? Or is this a variation on the cargo trucking term, because in that context it makes no sense.
Also also, you’re late to the party, Batiuk. Shrinking comics pages and less room for strips has been a bugaboo cartoonists complain about for decades (“Calvin and Hobbes” did a much funnier take on this subject back in 1987). In fact, creators like Bill Watterson, Garry Trudeau, and select others were able to get their syndicates to insist that papers carrying their strips run them at their intended size. I guess Batton Thomas—and his real-life counterpart—don’t have that kind of audience or clout.
”Running full truck”…I let out a big groan when I read that. Another failed attempt at being clever. Just say what you mean Tom.
This makes me want roll up one of those cherished newspapers and whack him on the nose with it. No! Bad Tom!
I would guess that “running full truck” is some kind of moronic way of saying “with the throwaway panels” (the first two panels of most Sunday strips were designed so that they could be clipped off if need be and not affect the joke).
“Double truck” is a thing, but I’m not sure it’s the same thing Skip is trying to describe.
Ah, so Batiuk is trying to praise Hal Foster now, I guess? After the way he libelously accused Foster of stealing art from Undead Phil Holt? Nice try, Tom.
If I wanted to interview Batton Thomas, I’d make him buy me lunch. And not at Montoni’s; expensive urban steakhouse, please. If he springs for the cheesecake, I’ll promise to ask him a Phantom Empire question.
I would have Batton order something from either Lawrence’s Fish and Shrimp (Batton would have a heart attack because of the high cost of a pound of fish) or Burger King
It seems to me that this is a symptom of the disorder that made him think that what he was good at and respected for was a bad thing. Just as making people a little happier was a hateful disservice and betrayal of the audience when his job was to traumatize them into action, some unknown event made him think that he has to be a colossal bore.
I don’t even have to read Crankshaft anymore. I can vicariously experience the offensiveness through this discussion.
Is TB no longer able to find a newspaper to write a puff piece on him? Not enough people reading his blogs and providing positive feedback on his website? No free invite to Comic-Con this year?
TB can’t find any volunteers, so he has to pat his own back by utilizing a thinly veiled version of himself in his comic strip. Who does that? How can he not realize how off-putting it is? Nobody likes celebrating Tom Batiuk as much as Tom Batiuk.
How can I not think of that Terrell Owens quote, “I LOVE ME SOME ME!”
Crankshaft might be a decent feature if TB spent as much time writing it as he does in praising himself and wallowing in his past achievements. At this point, the income from Crankshaft is merely a means to continue indulging in that behavior.
I think Batton Thomas may very well be the single worst “new” Act III FW character of them all. Bull’s CTE buddy Buck was certainly up there (man, that one sure ended weird), and Adeela belongs in the discussion, as does Cliff Anger. But Batton really stands out, at least to me. Trying to riff on Batton arcs was really, really tough, I’ll tell you what. The guy wrote himself into his own comic strip, and STILL couldn’t make it interesting, not even slightly.
Batton Thomas is only ‘interesting’ in the sense that he (surely unwittingly) reveals so much about the desperately empty, completely uninteresting non-entity that is Tom Batiuk. There is nothing beyond this author avatar except that he IS an author avatar. That’s the entirety of his character.
Batton Thomas is someone you’d go out of your way to avoid … except you wouldn’t have to, because the places he goes to are so lacking in appeal you wouldn’t have gone there to begin with.
He’s instantly forgettable, except you wouldn’t have devoted any brain cells to remembering him in the first place.
The only comic character less interesting than Batton Thomas? That’s probably Batton Thomas’ author avatar, Tommy Batting, who appeared towards the end of “Three O’Clock High” and now makes regular appearances in “The Wrinkles”. (Although maybe even less interesting is Tommy Batting’s author avatar Batrum Tomsic, who appears in Batting’s strip “Geezer Follies”… where a dull, uninteresting author avatar named Thomson Battle appears regularly to talk about his comic strip “Piston Pete”….and so on, and so on into the infinite…)
I don’t know why he didn’t just add a character called “Tom Batiuk” and be done with it. He’d probably protest that doing so would be so egotistical, but then he goes and names the character so that only the dimmest person couldn’t figure out.
He might at least have the courage of his convictions. False modesty doesn’t suit him.
Or he could have made Batton funnier, instead of deciding to go with “dismal self-deprecating sad-sack” as his default personality. Like, for example, if Batton was a good-natured doofus with a knack for depressing everyone with grim, dark anecdotes about cancer, amputations, and etc. You know, a genuine piss-take as opposed to a dreary dolt complaining about the comic strip business for decades on end.
There is nothing beyond (Batton Thomas) except that he IS an author avatar. That’s the entirety of his character.
There’s nothing about Tom Batiuk except that he is an author. That’s the entirety of his personality.
Y. Knott,
You expressed a most beautiful description of Tom and his writing style. Just an endless list of author avatars having author avatars stretching into infinity. Beautiful.
SP:
Stan Freberg had a brief (15 episodes) radio show in 1957. It began with an audio montage of various characters Freberg had played — from “St. George and the Dragonet” to the “Yellow Rose of Texas” singer — and a question arises about “who all you people are,” resulting in a chorus of:
“We’re all Stan Freberg!”
Leaving the “real” Freberg to observe:
“Frightening…frightening!”
In 2024, I think the word would be “weird.”
The “Weird Sisters” from Shakespeare’s Scottish Play would have the line of avatars “stretch out to the crack of doom.”
Anonymous Sparrow,
Modern Family had an opening where each pose became the next picture. Very well done. Back in 1965, Marvel and Stan Lee/Steve Ditko worked together on Tales to Astonish #63. It is the origin of the Leader. Ditko draws a frame of the Leader looking on a computer at the Hulk fighting the Android. It is caught on camera. And it shows infinite reflections. I thought then and now, that was pretty cool.
Did you notice, a couple of our posters included links to past issues of SOSF. It was nice to go over those older posts. You are there. I am there. So was the Duck of Death and Cheezy-kun. I miss them both. What I noticed, is my posts were clever, succinct, witty, and erudite. AND EVERYONE ELSE’s WERE BETTER THAN MINE!
I think it was ComicBookHarriet that commented, “Who let that guy on here? Epicus!!!”
(Perhaps my memory is a tad faulty.)
Life is good and so are you!
CS 8/11:
Norma Desmond was a delusional narcissist. It’s telling that Tom chose a quote from her.
This immediately made me think of how Tom once quoted Dave Wigransky, someone who comics didn’t save.
https://sonofstuckfunky.com/2023/11/28/a-snails-pace/
The common thread? Take the most superficial element that fits the narrative without making the slightest inquiry into the background of the element. Reflections of an incurious mind, I believe.
Thank you for today’s and this week’s postings.
“Madame is the greatest star of them all…I will take Mr. Gillis’s bags.”
In other words, Billthesplut, watch out for swimming pools and vicuna coats!
Not to mention circus tents in mourning for their elephant which has died…
Looks like “running full truck” should be another entry in the Batiuktionary.
I Grandpa’d a lot, and the phrase “full truck” doesn’t Venn with newspapers at all.
Does Tommy Boy know what “R.O.P.” means? I bet he’s so truck-spotting it must’ve pierced his earwig-lobbers!
IF HE CAN MAKE UP PHRASES, BY GOURD WE ALL MUST, you PANCAKE AVOIDERS
(“Run Of Print.” Back in the Before the Burning Times, it was a full page newspaper ad that was on Page 3, so it was the first thing you saw when you turned the front page. Tom does not know this, but will insist he does)
I got Batton A LOT when my turn to write came up, I think I got his first 3 or 4 appearances, and he was extremely tough to write about because he was such a nonentity of a character… which infuriated you because he was masquerading as a character with substance.
“Nothing. Batton was nothing.” I ranted back in early 2023 as we handed out awards in the wake of FW‘s end, unsure of what was to come. “WAS nothing.” How laughably naive of me…
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
Jeff: WHY DO VINYLS COST SO DAMN MUCH NOW!?
Dead-Inside Cashier: Sir, just pay the money and leave.
I’m still waiting to see if this turns into a week of kvetching about Modern Times and Evil New Media like CDs (which came out five years before Crankshaft made its debut), MP3s, streaming, etc., or a string of wordless strips about the hot college babes Jff passed over in favor of Pmm. Each with her own “our song,” and ending with Willie & Julio singing to all the girls they’ve loved before.
I can see Tom complaining about CDs, MP3s, Reddit, Twitter, Skibidi Toilet, whatever Gen Alpha is into
Eh, let’s not forget that insipid week where Funky yet again used an AA meeting to run his completely irrelevant Z-Grade stand up material, this time about “the last CD player on Earth” getting knocked off of a treadmill. CD players are old enough to be OK for Tom now.
Skibidi Toilet seems to be a particular target of ire from older generations, probably because it’s the first creation of Generation Alpha that found a mass audience. Personally, I find it incomprehensible. But I’m 52, and if I don’t understand something, the problem’s probably on my end. I don’t bash younger people for not liking the same things I did.
Sorry Jeff, sorry TB…
But yesterday’s gone. Hard concept to grasp, I know.
So with the swerve of today, unless followed up, the lukewarm week of journalist and cartoonist nostalging over pizza was completely self-contained and, dare I say, pointless. Tom just wanted to write about Batton getting “interviewed”, as contrived as the process was described here.
Back to wistful nostalgiaing over records now, I guess.
Just to really confuse things, the Chad and Jeremy album the strip is featuring looks like the “Essential Chad and Jeremy” which came out in 1992. Time mop? Bad research? WTK knows but TB is so lost in his own nostalgia that he forgot the punchline.
I was surprised to learn “Chad and Jeremy” was a real act that exists in Tom Batiuk’s musical wheelhouse. Because these are Generation X baby names. Chad and Jeremy are ideal names for the high school jock bullies in an 80s teen comedy. They sound like a couple of… well, Chads.
Apologies to anyone who happens to have one of these names.
There was also a Peter and Gordon (Peter was Peter Asher, whose sister Jane had a serious relationship with Paul McCartney in the 1960s; Peter went on to become a successful producer, especially for Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor).
Given the Kent State connection, it would have made more sense to go for Simon & Garfunkel.
“The elephants are kindly, but they’re dumb…”
Fun Fact: While Chad Stuart passed away in 2020, Jeremy Clyde is still performing as a solo artist and with Peter Asher, the surviving half of Peter and Gordon (Gordon Waller having died in 2009). Peter and Jeremy, though, just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Anyway, Garfunkel and Oates are cuter and funnier.
What’s the connection between Simon & Garfunkel and Kent State?
Joshua K:
Jeff and Pam were in college at the time of the Kent State shooting, which occurred in 1970. That was the year that Simon and Garfunkel put out *Bridge over Troubled Water,* and I would think that Jeff would be more apt to seek that out (or its predecessor, *Bookends*) than something from Chad and Jeremy.
Especially since Chad and Jeremy broke up in 1968 (the year *Bookends* was released), and didn’t reunite until 1983.
I wonder whether Jeff would agree with Lester Bangs that another British Invasion group, Freddie and the Dreamers, “reveled in rock as cretinous swill, and, as such, deserved their place in history.”
(Bangs could be harsh in his opinions, but he could also admit that Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders had a masterpiece in them with “The Game of Love” and regret that the Zombies didn’t have more success in the U.S. than they did. I wonder whether Jeff knows *Odessey and Oracle” {another 1968 disc!} which ends with the celebrated “Time of the Season,” but contains eleven great songs before then.)
Jeremy Duncan’s older brother in the comic strip Zits is named “Chad”.
https://zits.fandom.com/wiki/Chad_Duncan.
Chad & Jeremy. I never made the connection until now. I’ve heard of the musical duo, but I’m not too familiar with them. They were a bit before my time.
Be Ware of Eve Hill,
Chad and Jeremy rode the waves of the British Invasion, started by the Beatles. They even guested on Season4 Episode20 of “the Dick Van Dyke Show” the Red Coats are Coming. They had a very enjoyable sound. It’s amazing that fellas who were so clean cut could represent Rock Music in the early 60’s. I guess that is due to the influence of Hollywood and Vegas upon TV at that time.
True story (as of 5 minutes ago): Whenever I hear Chad and Jeremy’s tune *A Summer Song*, I always think of Be Ware of Eve Hill.
Thanks. I have heard A Summer Song somewhere before. Probably a movie soundtrack.😁
https://youtu.be/vfvL2oLeBYs
SP:
When I think of “A Summer Song,” I think of Christine Lavin’s mash-up of it with the Everly Brothers’s “All I Have to Do Is Dream.”
My favorite mashup, though, is Emily Bergl’s combination of Lily Allen’s* “Fear” with Madonna’s “Material Girl.”
*
No relation to Barry (Flash) Allen as far as I know!
Well, that was the most catastrophic thing to happen to Chad and Jeremy since Catwoman stole their voices in that “Batman” episode.
“If memory serves me right, I left the record store that day without either the album or the girl.” Not exactly Bernstein remembering with girl with the white parasol on the passing ferry, was it?
Tomorrow, Jff moseys over to the Comedy section and looks at the multiple used copies of Vaughn Meader’s “The First Family” while recalling the grade-school girl he had a crush on in 1962.
J.J. O’M:
“The Cat’s Meow” and “The Bat’s Kow Tow” probably gave Chad and Jeremy the nod rather than Peter and Gordon.
(Or Paul and Art, who fit the timeline better.)
The British rockers want to get their hair cut in the latter episode, and their preferred coiffeur is Mr. Oceanbring. This is a nod to hotshot hairdresser Jay Sebring, who plays himself in the episode.
Sebring gets a mention in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once upon a Time…in Hollywood,” and in that scenario, thanks to Cliff Booth and Rick Dalton, he survived the Manson Family’s invasion of 10050 Cielo Drive.
Sadly, in our reality, the Great Pumpkin gave out no new battle plan, and Sebring died a victim of murder rather than of a word which begins with c and ends in r.
As for Vaughn Meader:
You probably know that Richard Nixon left Dallas on November 22, 1963, shortly before John Kennedy arrived. What you may not know is that on that same day, according to Tower Records’s in-house magazine, *Pulse!,* was that on that same day, a newspaper ran a story about Meader. The title was something like “Kennedy Album Still Haunts Meader.” As the *Pulse!* writer noted, the real haunting was a few hours away…along with Lenny Bruce’s caustic comment about Meader’s career: “Boy, is Vaughn Meader f***ed.”
Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty or more
The Bloody Red Baron was rollin’ up the score
Eighty men died tryin’ to end that spree
Of the Bloody Red Baron of Germany…
Also man the Match to Flame book extract today is worth comment. We actually get a sort-of callout, as Tom shares some beef with readers complaining about nonlinear storytelling, defending it as the same “realism” that other media do all the time with “meanwhile” cutaways. I don’t exactly have the pulse on matters to say if that was ever a “big” complaint in the way he did it (Though I can recall that jumping around in specific three-week periods for certain arcs was a tad too formulaic), but what I can observe equally is how bizarrely he feels slighted that he was actually complimented for this by another “comics pro”, rambling in how it’s so common in other media so it should be standard in comics, I guess?
Then he in prose segways to content from an older blogpost, but doesn’t actually share it in this post (guess that’s the next MtF entry?), and also is able to show his editorial request as the blog entry’s thumbnail with the sarcastic eyeroll emoiji. Classy, including how I can see it was a “free emoiji download” in the hover text. Wonder if that was actually in the book too.
So I guess we can add the phrase “linear storytelling” to the list of phrases whose definitions Batiuk doesn’t know.
Nonlinear storytelling is when the story is shown out of chronological order. So like Pulp Fiction, where the middle of the film (Butch’s story) takes place later than the finale (Jules and Vincent in the diner). Cutting between plots isn’t “nonlinear” if they’re still in chronological order.
(I mean, I suppose Batiuk does sometimes do actual nonlinear strips, when he’ll show the outcome of something then give a “two minutes earlier” caption or whatever to show the setup. But I don’t think people ever complained about those being nonlinear so much as they complained about them being nonfunny.)
His exact words were “turn away from a story without resolving it, only to return to it at a later point.” That’s just switching between subplots! Batiuk is calling this “non-linear storytelling”, or at least making a false equivalency between the two. By that definition, Star Wars is non-linear, because it switches between Luke/Obi-Wan on Tatooine, and the captured Leia on the Death Star.
Almost anything is non-linear storytelling by this definition. Even Sesame Street does this.
Funky Winkerbean has a lot of “turn away from a story without resolving it” and not so much “return to it at a later point.” And most of the actual turning away from a story is so it can drone on for years without violating Batiuk’s “three weeks in a row” cartooning rule.
We’re going to have a blog post about this.
Hey, gang! Remember earlier in this comments page how I mentioned that Jeremy (from Chad and Jeremy) has been performing in concert with Peter (from Peter and Gordon)? Well, you’ll never guess who’s looking up online ticket sales for the duo’s tour in Tuesday’s installment of “Seventysomething Man Strives to Relive His Teenage Years.” Go ahead, guess!
Does this mean that Sunday’s strip will be a sideways panel of Jff and Pmmm groovin’ out for Peter & Jeremy tunes while Jff’s inner adolescent appears in spectral form next to them?
Poor Peter, Jeff is clearly only going to see Jeremy. The Batiukverse truly is a world without love.
Today’s Funky Crankerbean
This week feels like going to a funeral, but at least the funeral wouldn’t be THIS depressing
Well, this is typical. Tom spends 7 solid days complaining that no one appreciates all the hard work comic strip writers do! This week:
MON, P1: The past. Jeff remembers seeing a Chad & Jeremy record in a record store. P2: The present. Jeff sees the same record in a record store. Smirks for no reason.
TUE, P1: The past. Jeff sees a poster for a C&J concert. P2: Jeff orders tix for a C&J concert. Smirks for no reason.
(sits on this for 11 months, hands his Oscar-worthy script to Davis)
Davis: “Oh, Ghost of Chuck Ayers, send me art my AI can scrape!”
Ayers: “I’m not dead! You’re thinking of Phil Holt!”
Phil Holt: “DAMN IT!!”
Any bets on whether we see the concert? Or just the lead-up and epilogue?
I think the lead-up and the epilogue will only be shown
Everybody always reminisces about buying LPs. As a youngster in the 1970s, I bought dozens of 45 singles before I bought my first albums* in middle school. You bought the single because the radio would take forever to play a particular song you liked, if at all. Even as an adult, I hated having to buy albums (LP, cassette, CD) with several mediocre songs just to have the one or two tunes I really liked.
On the other hand, my husband built most of his collection at a store in KC whose name I forget (help me, Sorial Promise). It was a place where they bought and sold old records along with new vinyl. It wasn’t unusual for him to make a trip to the store after work and come home with half-a-dozen albums. He was like a kid in a candy store. Some as cheap as $2.00 (late 1980s prices). A lot of progressive rock.
*The Beatles Red (1962–1966) and Blue (1967–1970) Albums.
BWOEH:
In Europe and the rest of the world, Beatles albums didn’t contain the singles the band released, as the bandmembers thought it was “a drag” for their fans to buy the same song twice.
In the U.S., no such consideration prevailed: Capitol executives assumed (rightly!) that those who bought the singles would buy the albums, and they did, which makes for something wonderfully preposterous with *Revolver.*
The U.K. version has fourteen songs: five with lead vocals from John Lennon, five with lead vocals from Paul McCartney, three with lead vocals from George Harrison and Ringo Starr with “Yellow Submarine.”
The U.S. version, however, has eleven songs, with three of Lennon’s songs appearing on *”Yesterday”…and Today,* thus giving Harrison one more song than Lennon. (Starr is still there with “Yellow Submarine.” On *”Yesterday”…and Today,* he has two tunes: “Act Naturally” and “What Goes On.”)
With *Sgt. Pepper,* Brian Epstein negotiated a deal to make the albums uniform (the one exception being *Hey Jude* in 1970) and the Capitol-created discs vanished, making the world safe for *Past Masters.*
In his essay on the Beatles in *The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll* (1976), Greil Marcus claimed that *Rubber Soul* was the group’s artistic peak, and he looked to the U.S. version. It wouldn’t be my choice (that would be *Abbey Road*), and after comparing it with the superior U.K. version, it still wouldn’t be.
Naturally, I wrote this to Creedence Clearwater Revival’s *Green River.*
We always went to Peaches Records. I think it was on Metcalf over in Overland Park. Good times. Good times.
I remember Peaches. Loving husband says the name of his favorite store was “The Record Exchange”. It was in Missouri on his way home from the plant. He says they added CDs and video games to their inventory, but closed for good in the late 1990s.
Jeremy Clyde and Peter Asher played at the Kent Stage in Kent Ohio on June 22, 2023, so you know where this week’s strip is coming from.
At least I hope it’s only a week.
Is there some criteria that puts you in the Chute, so that I can avoid doing that? (yes, I get where I’m asking this, and may not get posted for a while)
RE: Wed’s ChadAndJeremyShaft:
Wonderful. Now we’ll never know how much Jfff paid in service/convenience fees for those tickets.
My predictions for the rest of the week:
Thursday: Hippie Jfff and Pmm take a bus to the concert, while 70something Jfff and Pmm drive their hybrid car.
Friday: The security guard hassles Hippie Jfff for sneaking in a bag of suspicious brownies, while a security guard hassles 70something Jfff for sneaking in a bag of spare Depends.
Saturday: Hippie Jfff and Pmm’s post-concert goodnight kiss on her front porch is interrupted by a watchful Ed, while 70something Jff and Pmm’s post-concert goodnight kiss in the living room is interrupted by Ed, who was watching a Winnipeg Blue Bombers game on the TV.
Sunday: A sideways Chad and Jeremy poster.
Imagine someone had never heard of Crankshaft and just started reading this week. They’d have no idea what this story is supposed to be, and they wouldn’t come back on Thursday
Today’s Funky Crankerbean:
Day Three of the Chad and Jeremy Nostalgia Trip, I want to see something else than this boring week o’nothing
Related to the Batiukverse: more Act II strips I got before CK removed the FW strips
Crazy: It’s for Donna, you homophobic drunkard.
Les: I wouldn’t call them friends, because me, Cindy, Bull and Funky are absolute jerks.
Another reason why I think Dinkle was fired between the Act II-Act III timeskip
Man On Phone: I’m afraid I cannot do that, Dinkle.
Chien: Mr. Moore would’ve have lectured you about it if you did that, Jess.
Nah, Les doesn’t care enough about his students to lecture them about cheating. He just holds their misdeed over them until he needs a favor…
For example:
https://nuless.org/comics/2009.05.30/Funky%20Winkerbean-2009.05.30
https://nuless.org/comics/2009.06.06/Funky%20Winkerbean-2009.06.06
Every manager I’ve heard say “If you’ve got time to lean, you’ve got time to CLEAN!” would immediately disappear into their office and make personal phone calls until store closing.