I know one way the school can save money. If you’re having a guy who’s been retired for over a decade come in and do a significant part of your job for you because you’re too busy with other stuff to do it, then you probably shouldn’t have that job anymore.
So, Becky is so busy trying to steal money designated for the football team that she can’t oversee practices? What is she doing in that time? Emailing the school board? While she’s actually on the clock for her job? That seems bad.
Dinkle commenting about returning to band land is one of the funniest things in this strip in years. He has never left. He has no life outside of band. Near as I can tell he spends every day lurking behind Becky. And the only times he’s not doing that he’s writing biographies about band.
For a guy who went pretty much deaf long ago, being able to differentiate between “raising” and “raiding” is pretty damn impressive. Far, far less impressive is the fact that the “band room” is crappily taped to the inside of the door. Rather than the outside where it would actually do any good.
Category: Son of Stuck Funky
If Smiles Could Kill
You know, if somehow you’d made it this far reading this strip and still expected some level of quality and for it to make sense, today’s strip would confuse you. Like, Mason is a star because of comics. Harry helped him prepare for the biggest role of his career. Interacting with his fans would be good for his image. But sure, let’s have Mason be the sole person in this strip who isn’t obsessed with comics, all for the sake of hilarity. Wait, something’s missing . . .
More Lips in This Strip Should Be Sealed
I’m a little more shocked that Crazy apparently has all of Butter Brinkel’s films on CD/DVD stacked up in what look to be jewel cases. And he’s just handing these rare treasures to Cindy stacked haphazardly, and not in a box or anything.
It’s pretty hilarious to me that Cindy is swearing Crazy to silence. I mean, why? You would think she’d want to build hype and buzz around her documentary. Is she afraid someone else is going to steal her idea? (Ha.) Or is she afraid this is going to damage her reputation? (Again, ha.)
By far the best/dumbest part of this strip, and the storyline as a whole- these “films” were apparently burned onto a CD or DVD. Meaning somehow Crazy either made digital files of them from the original film, or maybe a VHS release himself, which seems unlikely, or downloaded them off the internet somewhere. Meaning there’s literally no reason he couldn’t just have sent the files to Cindy directly, or barring that, made copies of the discs and mailed the discs to Cindy. I thought for sure it would turn out he somehow had the original theatrical reels of the movies, that would understandably be fragile, which would explain why Cindy had to spend thousands of dollars to fly cross-country. But yet again, I was giving Batiuk too much credit.
Something Definitely Needs to Be Dialed Down
Well, I never! Cindy called Harry! Someone better stop all this hilariousness, before it’s too late.
So many of the story lines in this strip lately have started this way. Somebody needs to go back to Westview because somebody there has something old timey that apparently nobody else in the world has and can’t be shipped or sent digitally. And even though apparently it’s so rare and forgotten that it only exists in Westview, somehow people will end up being wildly passionate about whatever old crap it is.
Here’s Batiuk’s writing process now:
“Gosh, I sure like old comics/movie serials/decoder rings/silent movies. If only I didn’t have to write this stupid strip, I could spend all my time reading back issues of Old Timey Junk Quarterly. I know! I could do a four month arc where someone in Westview has silent movies, and somebody else wants to see them, for some reason!” (runs the bases in his mind)
Also, am I crazy, or should it not be Cindy Jarre now? I don’t know if this is just Batiuk not giving a crap about his strip or “She was Cindy Summers in high school and that’s the only period of her live that matters”, but either way it’s dumb.
The Butter Battle Flick
Yuck. Batiukian Overexposition strikes again. This conversation’s probably been going on for like thirty seconds and I think this is the second time “silent film” has been said and third time “Butter Brinkel” has been said. This is just terrible. There’s nothing funny about the name “Butter Brinkel”, and definitely nothing that makes it worth repeating over and over. There’s nobody at home reading this who cares so much that it’s important Batiuk ensures they know precisely what’s going on, and if there was he wouldn’t have to repeat everything incessantly. Cindy telling Jess who her ex is has to take the prize, though. Jess knows who Funky is. I think this is all just a result of Batiuk trying to fill up as much space with as little effort and content as possible, and probably the realization that nobody really keeps up with his strip and he has to drill it in his readers’ heads over and over. I also think it’s probably his ego thinking that the Epic Funky Winkerbean Backstory is so magnificent he’s going to repeat it over and over. But probably mostly the laziness.
And if the “someone Funky knows” doesn’t turn out to be Jeff I’ll be shocked. Or possibly Harry. Also, the odds are if Funky knows him, Cindy knows him. It’s not a big town.
Son of Stuck Funky 