Category: Son of Stuck Funky

Culture Schlock

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Sigh. A completely played-out premise masquerading as a “beloved running gag”, featuring the usual half-assed and really bad “punchlines” that make less sense the more you ponder them. Otherwise known as “a Wednesday in August” in FW parlance. Hearing Bull whine about a “culture” of losing is like hearing Lisa complain about how sickeningly goody-goody everyone in town is, or Les bitching about someone else constantly speaking in bad puns. Part of me wants to believe that maybe the joke is at least partly that Bull is just too stupid to realize that he IS the “losing culture” at WHS but I know better. This strip doesn’t have any subtexts like that and whenever it appears that it might it’s pretty much guaranteed to be just an accident. Nope, the “gag” here is what the football gag always is: some variation on “we suck” and that’s it. Forty years in a row. Sigh.

Everyone here knows that I’m a big fan and admirer of Westview’s long tradition of making hand-lettered signs and banners and hanging them with haphazardly placed, non-symmetrical pieces of tape. I always wonder about that, as it’s one of the most consistent things about the artwork from year to year. Every time you see one of those hand-lettered signs, it’s always taped to the wall all crookedly and randomly. I think it’s because TB feels it lends an element of “down home” folksiness to it, but I like to believe it’s because all Westviewians suffer from some sort of strange tape dyslexia that prevents them from doing it right. Anyhow, nice job with that today, Batom Inc. Nice cinder block wall, too.

Homedumbing Lame

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Sound logic there, Funky, you could land a gig with several NFL franchises or TV networks with that kind of keen pigskin analysis. No, seriously, he’d probably be an upgrade in a few cities (all eyes peer eastward to East Rutherford or westward to Oakland). At least the question of how Bull keeps his job has been answered: turns out the school board is always composed entirely of morons. “Let’s stay the course and hope that the law of averages balances things out”, otherwise known as “the roulette strategy”.

Seriously though, way to sell the program there, Tubby. Sitting there on the bench, gorging on pizza while his young charges get the crap knocked out of them by other high school programs whose coaches actually pretend to give a damn, doing little other than complaining, being grossly overweight and nonchalantly mocking his team’s incompetence. I mean I realize that BatTom has been doling out the karmic revenge upon Bull for a long, long time but seriously, does he have to be so thoroughly unlikeable? (I meant Bull but it works the other way too I suppose).

Suggestion re: a possible winning, successful, revenue-generating future WHS sports program…competitive eating. That is all.

Bull? Crap.

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History is made in the Funkyverse today as Montoni’s features an actual PAYING CUSTOMER! Yep, money and everything! Will Funky frame the bill and hang it up next to that band box thing? Does the drawer on the cash register even work? A funny touch there would have been to have Funky hold the bill up to the light to see if it’s real.

Small Town High School Extra-Curricular Activities Are A Nightmare For All Involved Month continues today as Bull hops on board the complaint train with his sad-sack-sorry little tale of woe. Poor, poor Bull has to somehow find the time to go through the motions TWICE this coming school year, first manning the helm for his perpetually horrible football team and then guiding the Summer-less (and thus irrelevant) Ladygoats during the upcoming basketball season. Oh the grim burden these gym and band teachers carry upon their shoulders (or shoulder, as the case may be). That school board should be ashamed of itself for forcing that beloved, obese and tremendously incompetent moron to do a little actual work for a change. No, I mean it…look at him. The work very well may kill him.

So does Annie only grace the girls’ basketball team with her presence when they just happen to have two all-time KSU-bound WHS legends on the squad, or was that just (ahem) a coincidence? Annie: kindly old basketball sage or spotlight-hogging front-runner? And, simply because I never run out of things to complain about with this strip, what of the boys’ basketball team?

Not Cool

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I know of something that could possibly act as a “cooler”. It’s called a “refrigerator”. It’s like a cooler, only bigger. Seriously though, nice try at one of those “these damned kids today” strips but no, I’m fairly certain that young people today are quite familiar with glass, what with their beer and bongs and meth pipes and all. This one reads like it probably should have been left in the outtake pile or maybe the blooper reel. Although I always love how he draws that creepy Komix Korner staircase, though, one of my favorite things in the strip in fact. It’s like a portal leading to some insane geek hell dimension.

And isn’t there probably a cooler full of drinks right downstairs in Montoni’s anyway? I take back that “nice try”.

 

For Worse Or For Worse-er-er

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Forget about Dinkle’s execrable, mind-numbingly stupid “joke” and ignore the ridiculous notion of DSH John actually WANTING to spend more time with his incessantly complaining, miserable one-armed wife instead of hanging out in his tree fort with his comic books all day. No, the one truly noteworthy thing about this otherwise awful arc is the fact that Batom managed to go an entire week without featuring Becky’s infamous pinned-up sleeve even once! I know, amazing, right? She’s just letting that freak sleeve fly this week and I for one welcome the change because that tri-folded pinned-up sleeve always annoys the hell out of me.

Hopefully this marks the end of “Pandering To Band Directors In The Hope They’ll Clip These Strips And Tape Them To The Band Room Door” week because we’re really scraping the absolute bottom of the barrel here now. You’d think he’d put a little effort into these seeing how it’s a subject so near and dear to him, but I guess not, based on how staggeringly flaccid and feeble this arc was. Par for the course, I suppose.