Today’s strip serves no purpose whatsoever aside from moving us one day closer to the end of this “story” arc, and to Funky’s 50th anniversary, and to Tom Batiuk’s retirement. Buck’s inane question receives an inane answer from Bull, and everyone smirks. I just can’t get over the fact that had Buck not invited the Bushkas, Bull would be sitting unawares in his basement instead of in the nosebleed seats as his decades-old rushing record is challenged.
Author: TFHackett
Rush to Judgment
Mighty white of Linda to allow Bull out of the basement in order to witness his rushing record being surpassed. “Buck never knew” Bull held the record, and yet showed up at Bull’s house when it was on the verge of being broken. I guess whoever succeeded Bull as Westview High’s football coach and athletic director “never knew” or “didn’t care” enough to consider inviting the Bushkas to be present for this occasion. We know Buck’s been (inexplicably) diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, but has he also suffered a stroke? In addition to his absent-mindedness regarding Bull’s record, he’s talking out of the right side of his mouth.
Buck Stops Here
Happy Labor Day, kids, and a hearty thank you to billytheskink for helming these last couple weeks!
God damn you, Tom Batiuk.
Three weeks of buildup to the Coming Alumni Band Reunion, two of those spent in the car with Funky, Holly, and her awful mom. Then a week of “practice” which takes place entirely off-camera. Followed by yesterday’s mawkish, verbose, and seemingly out of sequence Sunday strip, and then…do we at long last get to chuckle at the spectacle of an elderly, oxygen-huffing marching band? We do not. We get nothing, we lose, good day, sir!
And of all the dangling plot threads to pick up, TB decides to trot out Buck Bedlow, showing up as he always does, unannounced, at the Bushka residence. Buck, you’ll recall, showed up a year ago, to facilitate Bull’s rehabilitation from bullying, belligerent gridiron failure to enfeebled, doddering legend. The two erstwhile rivals reenacted their gridiron glories on Bull’s lawn. After they viewed Dinkle’s video demonstrating that Bull did indeed get the ball over the goal line on the last play of his last game, Buck presented Bull with a framed, fake sports page touting Westview’s “win.” This was followed by a trip to snow-covered Scapegoat Field to dig up a piece of turf from the end zone.
Bull’s wife Linda seemed to appreciate the visits, but probably thought she’d seen the last of Buck that night he revealed that he was in the same state of mental decline as her husband. But Buck was back a couple weeks later. And now that football season’s underway and the leaves are falling (hurtling, actually, judging by panel 1), here he is again. Linda doesn’t even attempt to hide her disdain.
Sunday, June 10
We’ll have to wait until midnight EDT to learn if today’s strip is another Dinkle knee slapper (unlikely) or maybe that “Scuba Cop” sideways comic book cover he’s flogging over at the blog. Epicus takes over the reins tomorrow just in time to rescue my sanity!
My Myth Take
Time and again, I promise myself that I will not allow Tom Batiuk to send me down the Google hole. Usually I’m compelled to search for context for a reference he’s made to some obscure (to me) silver age comic book. Sometimes I’ll search Grandpa Google for a particularly odd or stilted expression uttered by a character, to determine whether anyone IRL has said or would say it, before committing it to the Batiuktionary. Why, just last week I spent a good part of my morning querying why anyone would bring two rackets to play tennis. Though it pains me, I feel that it’s my duty to you, the reader, to at least try and comprehend the author’s intentions before proceeding to pee all over his life’s work.
I doubt I’m the only one completely flummoxed by today’s comic. This one sent me first to Google: “…with only hope to assuage him” is such a weirdly constructed phrase that it has to be a literary quotation, right? Not as far as I can tell. Next stop was Wikipedia, to read up on Pandora: not the music streaming and automated music recommendation internet radio service; that’s just part of the gag, see? And hey, props to Batiuk: I learned something. “Pandora’s Box” was actually a jar (not Jarre): sixteenth-century Erasmus of Rotterdam, when he translated the Greek legend of Pandora into Latin, translated pithos, meaning a large storage jar, into the Latin word pyxis, meaning “box”. When naughty Pandora opened that jar and unleashed evil into the world,
Only Hope was left within her unbreakable house, she remained under the lip of the jar, and did not fly away. Before [she could], Pandora replaced the lid of the jar.
The Wiki includes the image you see here of “Hermes carrying Pandora down from Mount Olympus,” which I suppose is where the “downhill” part comes in. Who knows? I’ve already spent too much time thinking about and composing a long-winded post which you probably won’t read before going straight to the comments, and I don’t blame you.
Son of Stuck Funky 
