Category: Son of Stuck Funky

All I’ve Got is a Photograph

Charles
September 14, 2014 at 11:52 pm
So a struggling sports department in a school with a constantly shrinking budget somehow manages to find the money to equip its entire team with Riddell Revolution helmets. For a team that is a yearly laughingstock…And that’s probably not their most egregious waste of money, since they apparently hired a head coach who doesn’t actually coach…Just watch as Batiuk runs the “Westview cuts the school budget” storyline yet again…

Charles’ quote came to mind when I saw today’s strip. The Fighting Scapegoats are indeed a laughingstock (though we’re not laughing). Clearly neither the coach nor the players could care less about football, winning, or even showing up for the team picture. In interviews, Batiuk is fond of talking about how he still visits his former high school for inspiration. But the Midview Middies of Grafton, OH are off to a 3-0 start (and even allowing for Batiuk’s famous year-in-advance schedule, last year they were on their way to a 7-3 record). But even back when TB, and you, and I were in high school, I never heard of a sports team that would accept losing as the status quo. Perhaps the team exists solely to give Les, Cayla, Linda, and the rest of Westview someplace to go on Friday nights in autumn.

Band Busters

The hits keep on coming: yesterday Bull was suggesting his players might “die of embarrassment”; today he’s dissing the band, and this time, Bull isn’t even smiling. It’s unclear exactly what hazard the marching band presents to the football team, but at least in Becky they have a leader who shows some commitment and is slightly (just slightly) less condescending and dismissive.

C’est la Mort!

Well, after a week spent rehashing Funky’s failed fitness program, today’s strip is a change of pace indeed!

Six months after we learned of it, Funky finally gets around to telling Holly that his father has started smoking. As he’s telling her this, a nurse passes by pushing a wheelchair in which sits the crumpled, soulless husk of Ed Crankshaft! But that, that’s not the big news! Today we learn that Funky’s dad has a name!

No doubt his friends knew him as “Mort.” His daughter-in-law, however, in the first time we’ve seen her come to visit, stiffly addresses him: “Hello, Morton” (I imagine her intoning this the same way Seinfeld would say  “Hello, Newman“). Without imparting a hug or a kiss, she proceeds to lace into him about his recently acquired habit. Mort gives no fucks: he proceeds to smoothly light two cigs with his Zippo, proffering the second one to his lady friend.

Six months ago a doctor took Funky aside and raised the prospect of moving his father into “full-time nursing care.” But Mort seems happier and more engaged then we’ve ever seen him.

Nocturia. Who’s There?

Is Funky’s physician’s office right next door to the gym? As did the fitness arc back in May, this one winds up with a doctor visit. And like Fitness Girl, the doctor (not only nameless, but seemingly a different person every visit) serves merely as a foil, a sounding board for Funky’s perpetual woe.

Sort of off-topic, but not…here’s a really original way to get attention for your cause: Man Rolls Giant Testicle Across America to Raise Cancer Awareness