billytheskink

Back To Square One

Oh good, TB doesn’t have Lefty lollygag in explaining her community band problem in today’s strip. Yeah, it’s a stupid problem and it could have easily been explained in yesterday’s strip, but we also very well could have spent a week getting to this point. Unfortunately, I expect we’re still spending a week with these two.

Ah, the national community band competition… a great American 4th of July-ish tradition. Yes indeed, it’s up there with Coney Island hot dog eating contest and the international stingray decoration show and that thing Jimmy Smits used to host on public television.

In the reality that is recorded on the internet, I was able to find two things comparable to Lefty’s competition, but nothing exactly like it:

First is the Sousa Foundation’s Sudler Silver Scroll, which is an award for community bands but does not involve a live, competition show.
Second is the Music for All National Concert Band Festival, which isn’t a competition at all and has the decency to take place in March instead of around the 4th of July, the show date for which pretty much every community band in the United States was founded.

Note your cuts of meat

Hello folks, billytheskink back for another round of kicking off our daily deconstruction of the Batiukverse. As always, I hope to facilitate a strong discussion by highlighting key aspects of each comic and offering a basic analysis to be exapnded upon in the comments. When today’s strip sends that plan off the rails in a few seconds, I will likely resort to comparing the characters to various basketball players from the 1970s or reciting the specs of vintage Macintoshes.

Harry Dinkle is hosting a barbeque, which is a new thing for him… I think. Probably a new thing, given how overdone those hamburgers look. The phrase “Harry Dinkle barbeque” sounds like a setup on a hidden camera show aimed at 7-year olds. What a Harry Dinkle barbeque entails however, making poorly-timed complaints about the community band, sounds like a setup on a hidden camera show aimed at nobody.

Anyways, did you know?
– That the Macintosh IIfx, released in 1990, ran at an impressive 40 MHz and would remain the fastest Macintosh in existence until the release of the Quadra 840av in 1993. Originally priced at $9,900, the Macintosh IIfx cost roughly as much as a new, base model Ford Tempo in 1990.
– That Harry Dinkle did not become the “World’s Greatest Band Director” until after he changed his last name from Dinkl?

Krack-a-toe-r

Looks like another antique joke in today’s strip.

I actually don’t dislike the hacky old jokes that TB so often leans on, but they never EVER land in this strip because they are delivered in an environment completely and totally absent of joy. It’s like interrupting the end of Old Yeller with Hee Haw cornfield shtick and then using scenes from Schindler’s list for reaction shots.

That elderly relative we all have who asks “if it’s nacho cheese then whose is it?” doesn’t do so in between discussing their various medical ailments and how their life insurance policy will only pay for a fraction of their funeral. If your elderly relative does do this, then I am sorry that you are related to Tom Batiuk.

The often imitated but never duplicated beckoningchasm returns to the helm tomorrow. Thanks for putting up with me for the past couple weeks.

We turned left at Montoni’s

The joke in today’s strip appeared in Sumerian cuneiform. It likely dates back even further in oral tradition, as seen in the following paleontologist reconstruction:

Tilmily and Amtrilia

Of course back then, the trilobite’s twin didn’t step all over the punchline like Emily is doing today. And this “teachers are great” business? Hoy, Centerville schools must be in shambles.

Is Nate worried as all get out about what these two think of the school or what? Students moving TO Westview really is the rarest of rare cases, I guess, and he really is terrified of losing them. I don’t think Emily and Amelia’s mother cares half as much about their first day of school as Nate seems to.

Sortwhere is this going?

The red blue carpet tour continues in today’s strip. The Westview hive mind has fully taken control of Emily and Amelia now, as they both smirk at Nate’s anti-joke and don’t seem to even consider fleeing at the very sight of Les.

Given that Nate has shown the sisters “The Bleat” (which is really more min comm than mass comm) in addition to the band, can we assume that, like the band, Les’ video journalism fiefdom is failed levy-proof?
Of course we can! The last time Les didn’t get what he wanted, I could still watch UPN on my analog television.

By the way, I’m still wondering where the news desk that Cindy and Channel 1 donated went. “The Bleat” clearly isn’t using it. It’s rare that TB makes a plot point and then ignores it or forgets about it later…