Happy holidays to everyone in the SoSF community! I’ve enjoyed another year with all of you. I am honored that people continue to visit this strange little corner of the web, and read and comment about the even stranger world of Funky Winkerbean. I’m amazed that this community continues to thrive four years after the strip ended.
In the penultimate year of 2021, most of March was devoted to Dinkle answering an ad to become the new choir director at St. Spires Church in Centerville.
At the time, I used this story to make a parody Photoshop story of Harry Dinkle accidentally becoming a porn star, and posted it in the comments. It was well received. I recently realized that a lot of our visitors may never have seen it. So we decided to reprint it here, to have some new content that isn’t about dead birds or pizza box-wearing entities. I hope you enjoy it too.
NSFW Warning: The story contains lots of sexual content… in the same way late-night Cinemax movies did in the 1980s. In all seriousness, discretion is advised.
Enjoy.
Son of Stuck Funky 
It beats the usual needless misery we usually get. Nobody in a position to do anything can deflect Tom from his beloved “glumly accepting the ruinous end result of being stupid is a moral victory” bullhuckey.
Banana Jr. 6000,
Merry Christmas to you, ComicBookHarriet, and to all at SOSF!💝♥️💖🫂🌺💐🌹🎄🎄🎄
Well BJ, you warned us. Thank you for all the word pictures! (/s)
I may be wrong, but I did not see any changes upon the faces or attitudes of the characters. FW art is universal!
This is Christmas Eve. I grew up always celebrating Christmas on the 24th. Then we would go to Midnight Mass. Afterwards, we would go home and Dad would cook us all bacon 🥓, eggs 🍳, and toast 🍞 for a very early breakfast.
I really appreciate you and ComicBookHarriet for hosting this site. I also include TF Hackett and Epicus Doomus for their guidance and editorship.
I bless all of you at SOSF: I bless your health, your finances, and your families.
This next part is not have anything to do with SOSF. Oh well…let’s make this legal:
For Anonymous Sparrow: a true light in the world!
During your Christmas break, I recommend 2 shows to binge and enjoy.
1) *True Detective Season 1.* starring Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey. They are state detectives trying to capture a serial killer in Louisiana. Gripping. Powerful acting. Harrelson is under appreciated as an actor. McConaughey sets no boundaries to make you believe his character. There are only 8 episodes.
2) *Plur1bus* Season 1. Vince Gilligan director of *Breaking Bad* and *Better call Saul* directs Rhea Seehorn in an alien invasion of the Earth. That is not quite exactly true. But watch it. It is only 9 episodes.
Here is your teaser, Gilligan makes you enjoy the story without any of the protagonists being likable at all. That is a superior director.
Again, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to the best group of people on the internet.
You all are loved!
Especially you, Be Ware of Eve Hill!
I may be wrong, but I did not see any changes upon the faces or attitudes of the characters. FW art is universal!
No, you’re absolutely right. The only actual photo editing I did was adding Carol Burnett, the dick joke, Dinkle’s monologue, and piecing together the Sunday strip. Other than that, the images are unedited, except for the text and the order in which the panels appear. “So there’s only girls in the band?” was even the same dialogue as appeared in Funky Winkerbean on March 29, 2021.
The original FW story of Dinkle getting the choir director job was surprisingly packed with good reaction shots. So I took the reaction shots and wrote an entirely different story around them.
I’ll have to check out “Pluribus.” I love Breaking Bad, and I also enjoy British TV, so I’m into short series.
We love you too, Sorialpromise. Happy Whatever You Celebrate.
Carol Burnett was a nice touch!
That was just a random idea that popped into my head, but it worked really well.
Excellent!
A nitpick regarding what year FW ended: FW ended in December 31st, 2022, not 2021
Regarding the porn parody: I’d say it’s a 8/10
Today’s Crankfuckery
Day 9 of A Pam And Her Cardinal Storyline
I’d prefer it if this week was the Interview from HFIL instead of this because Tom’s trying so hard to copy Calvin Tries To Heal A Raccoon
I corrected the year, thanks for the nitpick.
And to all a good night. Merry Christmas SOSF!
It’s not titled Mr. Hole Nut Takes A Walk?
Let’s talk about that…
Yeah, the title kind of sucks. A couple of the jokes could have been better too. #3 would have been funnier if she said “Hairy Dinkle”, since that’s what she thinks she heard. But I don’t retcon things, so “Harry Potter And The Mystery Organ” and other imperfections remain as they were.
Merry Christmas, everyone. The longer time goes on, the more this feels like one of the last normal places on the internet. At very least, we know how to keep things presentable.
12/25: So he went for the heartwarming thing. It does happen but dumb people don’t know why.
Those strips are truly a masterpiece, BJ6K! Thanks for reprinting them.
I dug up a few holiday ones I did.
Merry Christmas and happy holidays, everyone!
Yours are great! I like the idea that are Mindy and Pete are Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Crankshaft being into edibles. Did you Photoshop Lillian flipping the bird, or was that some horribly inappropriate art decision by Tom Batiuk?
Thank you! Lillian was holding up all her fingers. With my free, ancient, most basic Paint program I took out all but the middle finger and using the pencil tool and my mouse I drew the other fingers curled under.
I didn’t realize how difficult it can be to make a good parody strip until I tried. The characters have to be speaking in the right order and it really helps sell the gag if their expressions are appropriate. The speech balloons have to be the right size and the dialogue needs to be succinct. The dialogue needs to be appropriate for the character, unless that’s the gag. That’s why I have Ed and Dinkle swearing so often. I imagine them swearing at the students that they deal with and also in casual conversation.
I try to avoid the crutch of using a line from a movie or commercial as a punch line, although sometimes it works well. I usually try and leave a lot of the original dialogue and just change a few things to twist it to suit my sick sense of humor.
The story and dialogue in “Harry Dinkle and the Mystery Organ” flow well within each strip and from strip to strip. The gags are good and the whole thing is a cohesive, funny story. I’ve thrown away a ton of parody strips when I couldn’t shoehorn a joke in properly. I know you guys can’t believe that you’re only seeing the “good” ones.
Today’s Crankfuckery
Day 10 of A Pam And Her Cardinal Storyline
I can’t shake the dread that something bad is gonna happen to the cardinal even if yesterday’s strip turned out to be a cop-out
Happy Christmas, Son of Stuck Funky!
Just because the cat won’t eat it right now, well, that doesn’t mean much.
Merry Christmas fellow snarkers!
12/26: The actual miracle will be surviving with a broken spine.
Hear, hear.
We’re hovering dangerously close to it being more humane to let Pickles eat the bird.
We’re hovering dangerously close to it being more humane to give the bird cancer, and let Les Moore take care of it.
Hm, I had predicted a “Christmas miracle” with the bird getting miraculously better on Thursday. But it actually got better on Friday, albeit with the “Christmas miracle” as the actual “punchline”. Does that count as predicting the (extremely obvious) turn of events, or does being off on the day mean I can continue to believe I haven’t succumbed to “thinking like Batiuk” syndrome?
You can relax. You predicted the obvious bit that I think many of us saw coming, but not the uniquely Batiukian twist of the weird off-by-a-day timing. If you had predicted THAT, I think there’d be legitimate cause for concern!
That’s the problem with way too much lead time: he forgot what day of the week Christmas is.
Today’s Crankfuckery
Day 11 of A Pam And Her Cardinal Storyline
(yawn)
12/27: In hindsight, it should have been obvious that neither Jff or Pmm would ask why the bird flew into the window in the first place…
My personal theory is it’s desperately trying to escape this comic by any means necessary. (Would that more characters would show this much resolve.)
I wish it luck.
Today’s Crankfuckery
Day 12 of A Pam And Her Cardinal Week
12/28: The sickening thing is how predictable this is. Ed would choose an insanely destructive means of accomplishing something, he’d be too stupid to understand why nobody was watering the tree, Pam would be too stupid to anticipate his being The Pyro from Team Fortress 2 and above all, Ed would be unapologetic about his senseless and unnecessary act of arson.
But burning stuff like old Christmas Trees is fun! I actually got a rare chuckle out of today’s (Sun., Dec 28) strip, possibly in part because of memories of disposing of the previous year’s tree during the first fire pit evening of the year. (This would usually be in Spring or even early Summer.)
This is a standard Crankshaft gag. I’ll give it a B-. Nothing great, but it is on-brand, and it was vaguely amusing.
Also, his not realizing that it’s artificial should have been this year’s arc.
They haul them away to be mulched where I live.
It does make for good fun, but I wonder how many hazards come out of burning a plastic tree.
Anyone downwind would end up looking like Deadpool.
Today’s Crankfuckery
Pam: Dad, stop trying to burn the entire town into ashes! It’s not gonna fix the timeline!
It bears repeating – this is yet another event in the strip where there was more fire and property damage shown than in The Burnings© as well.