Author: Charles

Jelloponically Blown

Today’s strip continues this week’s dumb one-off jokefest by having Logan Church join Progressively-Lumpier Black Guy and Preschooler Bernie Silver. Batiuk shows his lack of range by putting Logan in the now Westview woman uniform colors of magenta and black. Make her vest a cardigan and she’s stolen the elderly Holly’s wardrobe.

Anyway, dumb joke about mandarin oranges and Jello, which, for the record, I have only seen together sparingly in my many years on this planet, and none of those times in a school cafeteria. That Lumpy finishes Bernie’s punchline only underscores how labored this joke is.

And one wonders why Logan, who was introduced as savvy enough to have a business blog “picked up by ABC News”, would be hanging out with these two goobers. Perhaps her status nosedived when she switched her ethnicity.

Brown bag it, dumbasses

Today’s strip shows Batiuk at his most daring – a strip about how cafeteria food is terrible! Who else but Batiuk would have the fortitude to take on this controversial, multitudinous topic?

Anyway, he blows it by having the cafeteria lady herself refer to the slop in front of Bernie and the random lumpy black guy who hangs around with Bernie as “Mystery Meat”, “Cafeteria Cod” and “Leftover Drum Rolls”. That kind of defeats the whole purpose of Bernie and Lumpy commenting on it, doesn’t it?

“What are you serving for lunch?”

“Something terrible.”

“Wow, you’re serving something terrible for lunch.”

Random

Today’s strip features the two dippy Crankshaft girls in a phone-related joke intended to show just how stupid the two of them are. It succeeds on that level, I guess. Otherwise, it’s totally unrelated to anything else in the strip. I guess it’s remarkable in one sense that it shows their father, but I don’t know enough about their appearances in Crankshaft to know whether he’s ever been shown in the past. I think their mom showed up at some point.

Have at it!

Don’t be yellow

Today’s strip shows the extremely jaundiced Linda speaking to Cayla in the main office about this week’s storyline. Even though yesterday’s strip said that Les was the faculty advisor of The Bleat, Linda today suggests that she’s the faculty advisor, even though unlike Les, we’ve never in fact seen her in that position. Guess Linda’s just one of those  busybody teachers who has her hand in literally everything at the school.

Anyway, you have to love the claim that what’s happened this week is an example of those kids “thinking independently”. It just so happens that their “thinking independently” constitutes bullying the principal on behalf of their loathsome faculty advisor over a subject that none of those kids could actually care about. Yes, Batiuk, I’m sure that all these kids, upon seeing Les’ tantrum, would be persuaded that publicly supporting him would be the proper thing to do, potentially slandering the principal in the process.

And it’s not surprising. If you were to view Batiuk’s work in total, his idea of a child thinking independently and admirably would be one who agrees with everything he, or his author avatar, believes. Otherwise they’re just foolish and intellectually vapid. (Seriously, he had Owen not knowing what glass is) Batiuk may think that Cayla’s comment is a joke, but his entire oeuvre shows that she ought to be completely serious.

Anyway, Linda really ought to get to a doctor to deal with her jaundice. Jesus.