Today’s strip is a bit weird for multiple reasons. It’s odd that Batiuk is highlighting that there’s a pandemic going on, and yet neither character is wearing a mask. And the whole punchline of the pandemic making meetings more crowded seems to be the exact opposite of what the pandemic actually did. Unfunny, uninteresting, and baffling-it’s the Batiuk Way!
Table discussion
Whether or not the St. Spries choir will ever sing a note under Dinkle’s direction will have to wait for another day, for today’s strip returns to (what I assume is) TB’s latest writer’s block go-to: domestic scenes with the Winkerbeans. Hey, that rhymes!
Did you forget that Funky and Holly were having their kitchen “reno”-ed renovated? I don’t want to brag… but I did! And now Holly’s trying to spend the cataract surgery that Funky’s other eye still needs on a table they don’t need… such timeless humor. Wives, they’ll do it every time! What, there wasn’t a tip of the Hatlo Hat at the bottom of this strip? Guess my brain’s filling in missing visuals again.
Hey, thanks for putting up with me through two more weeks of this mess. I genuinely appreciate it. Steering us all through the swamp starting tomorrow will be the one and only man of space named Spiff, Spaceman Spiff. May you see no Les or Dinkle story arcs on your journey, good sir.
Hitting the route notes
I suppose we have the consolation that today’s strip is not nearly as terrifying as Dinkle’s last music directing dream. That’s not much, but we have to take what we can get here.
So this group really is a “Gospel” choir? That wasn’t just a set up for last month’s “gossip choir” joke? Look, I’m not saying that a choir of interchangeable old white midwestern women in what appears to be a staid mainline Protestant church cannot sing a genre of music that is most strongly associated with (often) male feature performers in southern evangelical or (particularly) Black churches. Unexpected as it might be, of course they can. What I’m saying is that I don’t think TB has any idea that Gospel music is an actual genre of music itself and not simply another term for “hymns” or “church music”.
Unfortunately for TB and for us, music is not like a choir loft. It can’t be researched by taking a photo of it and e-mailing it to Chuck Ayers.
Looking for Mr. Goodbar?
Hey, I know who that is in today’s strip! No, not the choir lady. Bunhead. She went to community college and/or Kent State with Wally and Adeela! She even changed her sweatshirt mid-class once. No, twice! She also was in one of Rachel’s community college art teaching certification classes, apparently. And now she’s answering the door in a neighborhood deemed moneyed enough to waste money on band choir candy! Moving up in the world. Maybe one day she’ll graduate from college, or at least wear something other than a sweatshirt. It is good to have goals.
I have nothing else to say about this strip other than “at least Dinkle isn’t in it”.
At least Dinkle isn’t in it.
Medal of Horror
Today’s strip marks the third straight day that Dinkle is doing his eyes-closed, head tilted back, mouth-agape, peacocking thing… which I think we can all agree is seven days too many. Hopefully we can also all agree that the poetic tire fire that is “I believe this is the first time a man’s crew-neck undershirt has been seen in the choir loft!” is a sentence that is just too perfectly execrable to exist. Yet it does exist.
Yes, we have here a call back here to Dinkle’s May 2017 trip to Belgium, where he was showered with unearned praise, given this unbearably punny-named medal, and stood in front of TB’s uncredited tracing of the legendary Hergé’s work. I’m not wordly enough to know if the Belgians hate us, but I can’t blame them if they do…
Son of Stuck Funky 
