Epicus Doomus

Takes One To Blow One

“Lampshades Askew – The Cliff Anger Story”

I’m looking forward to the part where Cliff explains what he was doing for those sixty years between film gigs. Should be some compelling stuff there. She’ll no doubt have minutes of footage to sift through. It’ll be the first documentary film ever where they ADD stuff from the cutting room floor.

“Food, dope, hookers…you can get anything delivered in Manhattan but just try to find a lampshade de-skewerer that speaks f*cking English in that town, consarnit! No one knows the shame I’ve had to endure (beings weeping). Uneven shadows, difficulty reading properly…so many wasted decades….damn that Nixon for de-regulating the lampshade de-skewering industry back in ’73!”

BanTom is really going all out to very, very slowly and painstakingly set the stage here, or as we call it, “killing as much time as humanly possible to avoid having to exert any effort at all or create a story anyone would actually want to read”. I’ve seen enough wry Mason/Cindy banter for ten lifetimes, just get to the f*cking fireworks factory already, dammit. And what the hell is the deal with this f*cking movie? What is it, “9 1/2 Weeks In Space” or something? It’s more like “9 1/2 Years”, amirite?

Goat Cheese

Link to today’s strip

For two whole weeks BanTom teased the possibility of Bull being stricken with a serious medical malady but, as usual, it turned out to be less than nothing. Today he’s back on the sidelines, cracking wise about how shitty his football team is. I guess the Scapegoats recent run of (relative) success never happened either. FW has reached a point where you don’t even need to read it to know what’s “going on”, so to speak. Same old, same old. Plus Les is still around for some reason, apparently just to annoy everyone for no real reason. Again, same old, same old.

And that’s it for me, stay tuned for the legendary founder of SoSF, TF Hackett, as he takes the wheel for what promises to be a whole lot of glacially-paced nothingness!

What, Les Worry?

Link to today’s strip

Way to spin a yarn there, BanTom. I mean what a pitiful effort, all that sound and fury and in the end it’s all a big fat zero. Just Dick Facey pretending to give a crap and Linda “worrying” about Bull’s inability to reminisce about things that happened thirty years ago. This “story” literally went nowhere. Is Bull going to seek medical attention? Are they going to discuss it with him? Will it ever be mentioned again? Who the hell knows? My guess is no, of course, as that might involve actually telling a story in some sort of linear coherent manner and we all know THAT just isn’t going to f*cking happen. I mean I knew he’d find some way to weasel his way out of his premise like he always does but, as usual, he found a way even weaker and more pathetic than I ever even imagined he would. So Linda got home from work safely…big f*cking deal. What a sorry display, why even create these premises if he finds them so boring he can’t even bring himself to resolve them?

Great, Maybe Les Will Write A Book About It

Link to today’s strip

“Failure To Charge: Bull’s Phone’s Story”. Talk about an anti-climax. After all that, Bull merely skulks home all sad-sack and sorry while Dick Facey smirks away like driving Linda home was some historically altruistic act of kindness, what a dick. His “phone died” (actually it was working fine until he threw it against some filing cabinets but I digress) and he was unable to find his wife who works in the same building? Oh, that’s right…the head injuries. Interesting how a story about Bull becoming forgetful makes the average FW reader’s brain malfunction as well, although in fairness any TomBan authored story is going to fry some synapses, what with the total lack of logic, continuity and common sense and all.

This has long been one of Batiuk’s favorite tactics. He introduces a premise that’s rooted (at least somewhat) in a “real issue affecting real people and blah blah”, then that’s it. They never actually go anywhere, nothing ever actually happens and nothing ever changes when they’re finished. Then he’ll gloat about how he “explored” the issue of concussions among football players even though in actuality he did no such thing, he merely brought it up is all. It’s like going out with your friends, saying “hey, how about this election, huh?” then claiming you “discussed politics” all night. I thought he might at least try to wring a “what can WE do about this issue?” kind of thing out of this but apparently even that’s too much to ask.

Jerome???

Link to today’s stupid installment

Jerome? Wow, you really DO learn something new every day. I’m really enjoying how this Jerome “Bull” Bushka career retrospective flies right in the face of Linda’s sudden concerns re: her husband’s wacky antics. She knew all about his endless litany of football injury-related woes for all these years and only now sees a correlation? Is she really the diabolical monster I always assumed she was or is she just that stupid?

And while I’m bandying these questions about, how about this one: is BanTom the single worst storyteller who ever lived or is there another mad genius out there who’s built an entire career from repeating a simple premise over and over again to the point where that’s all it is? I doubt it’s ever even occurred to anyone else to “write” stories like this, much less actually do it.

“Mary had a little lamb, Mary owned a small sheep, Mary’s lamb was little, lambs are sheep”…”It was the best of times, times were good, it was the worst of times, bad times, good, bad, bad good, time”…see what I mean? It shouldn’t surprise me anymore, but nevertheless, sometimes I an just incredulous that FW even exists at all. It can’t, it shouldn’t, yet here it is, each and every day.