Bedside Manor – Page 3 – Son of Stuck Funky

Mort-uary Madness

Holly’s thousand yard stare into the middle distance is absolutely haunting today. If she actually managed to look at her son, she would realize that he seems to have de-aged about ten years.

It’s also seemed strange at first that Funky has pulled up a wooden chair rather than sit on the couch with his father. But then again, I wouldn’t want to be sitting on anything contiguous with my father’s loins when discussing carnal matters. Also Funky is probably afraid of getting crabs.

Looks like the rest of the week will be this conversation between two doughy-faced doppelgangers barely differentiated by hair color. Yay. My booze budget will be through the roof.

The Unfair Penitent.

Link to Today’s Comic.

Yes Funky, you are living proof that your father had intercourse with your mother at least once. That is, in fact, how humans reproduce. Not the asexual budding process that you seemed to have assumed for the first sixty years of your life. I would say we need a paternity test to be sure it was Mort who knocked on heaven’s door to bring to earth your doughy face, but given the the family resemblance, we can safely go with Nasus semper certa est.

This is nearly unbearable. However, let us at least attempt to learn and grow from our pain.

According to Webster’s online: “Lothario comes from The Fair Penitent (1703), a tragedy by Nicholas Rowe. In the play, Lothario is a notorious seducer, extremely attractive but beneath his charming exterior a haughty and unfeeling scoundrel. He seduces Calista, an unfaithful wife and later the fair penitent of the title. After the play was published, the character of Lothario became a stock figure in English literature. For example, Samuel Richardson modeled the character of Lovelace on Lothario in his 1748 novel Clarissa. As the character became well known, his name became progressively more generic, and since the 18th century the word lothario has been used for a foppish, unscrupulous rake.”

[insert barf emoji here]

Link to Today’s Comic.

Comic Book Harriet back again. I stayed up late waiting for this strip to drop.

I am now drinking heavily in an attempt to simultaneously write about and forget it.

So Mort’s regeneration has extended from mind, to body, to virility. And now the nursing staff assume he is completely capable of remembering safe sex instructions from his son… and taking Mort’s ability to consent for granted.

You remember when Mort’s Alzheimers was so bad he was reduced to a blankly staring, practically non-verbal, vegetable in a wheelchair that couldn’t even recognize his own son? I really really REALLY wish he’d stayed that way. Because this week is going to be agony.

While Visions Of Garden Hoes Danced In His Head

Link To Today’s Strip

There’s Ed’s name…right there on the wall next to his door. Who’d have thunk it? Talk about wrapping things up with an anti-climactic thud. I get the feeling that they could have given Ed a Chinese restaurant menu or an old orange rind and it’d have made no appreciable difference (and it might have saved Funky a nice chunk of change too but that’s just speculation). Normal people might be amazed that a nationally-syndicated comic strip creator needed TWO daily strips to spin a yarn about an old gardening catalog but regular FW readers know this is more or less par for the course. In fact I’m sort of surprised that John Darling wasn’t somehow involved too.

Coming soon: A health aide at Bedside Manor mistakes Ed’s precious life-affirming gardening catalog for garbage and tosses it, prompting Mort to convince Dinkle to hijack a WHS school bus and take “the gang” to the local municipal landfill for a good old-fashioned scavenger hunt.

That Almost Imperceptibly Grinning Guy From Room /Z/

Link To Today’s Strip

Crankshaft’s fondest-ever possession and the one thing he secretly pines for the most…an old gardening catalog from the 1950s. Such a deep and complex character, no wonder BatStrips felt he merited an entire spin-off strip to himself. I like how Mort and Funky are completely indistinguishable from one another now, which will make things a lot easier for Batom in the long run, continuity (guffaw) be damned.

One can easily imagine a young Ed huddled in the attic with his catalog, some cookies and a glass of milk, engrossed in comparing rake prices and marveling at the innovations in wheelbarrow technology that made the entire post-war boom possible. Or one could continue to ignore Crankshaft, as I prefer. Whose heart is warmed by this drivel? Who’s been waiting years to see Ed crack a dreary dying grin? Do people who read Crankshaft but not FW even know that this is supposed to be Future Ed? Are FW readers who don’t read Crankshaft trying to figure out why Funky is in a nursing home and/or what the f*ck is going on here?

One can safely assume that Funky is eventually footing the bill for this idiotic gesture, probably without even knowing about it too. Funky essentially paid for the SJ collection Cory later pawned (and he’ll be paying for and hosting the wedding too, bet on it) for Rocky’s engagement ring, then he financed the Dick Tracy collection that’s keeping the Korner afloat. And now he’s buying Chester’s already-flailing comic book company some time via his dad’s impulse purchase which also impacts Pete, Darin, Jessica and little baby Skyler. Plus he supplies the town folk with pizza. The guy is the backbone of the entire Westviewian economy and he doesn’t even know it.