Mighty white of Linda to allow Bull out of the basement in order to witness his rushing record being surpassed. “Buck never knew” Bull held the record, and yet showed up at Bull’s house when it was on the verge of being broken. I guess whoever succeeded Bull as Westview High’s football coach and athletic director “never knew” or “didn’t care” enough to consider inviting the Bushkas to be present for this occasion. We know Buck’s been (inexplicably) diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, but has he also suffered a stroke? In addition to his absent-mindedness regarding Bull’s record, he’s talking out of the right side of his mouth.
Tag: Bull
Buck Stops Here
Happy Labor Day, kids, and a hearty thank you to billytheskink for helming these last couple weeks!
God damn you, Tom Batiuk.
Three weeks of buildup to the Coming Alumni Band Reunion, two of those spent in the car with Funky, Holly, and her awful mom. Then a week of “practice” which takes place entirely off-camera. Followed by yesterday’s mawkish, verbose, and seemingly out of sequence Sunday strip, and then…do we at long last get to chuckle at the spectacle of an elderly, oxygen-huffing marching band? We do not. We get nothing, we lose, good day, sir!
And of all the dangling plot threads to pick up, TB decides to trot out Buck Bedlow, showing up as he always does, unannounced, at the Bushka residence. Buck, you’ll recall, showed up a year ago, to facilitate Bull’s rehabilitation from bullying, belligerent gridiron failure to enfeebled, doddering legend. The two erstwhile rivals reenacted their gridiron glories on Bull’s lawn. After they viewed Dinkle’s video demonstrating that Bull did indeed get the ball over the goal line on the last play of his last game, Buck presented Bull with a framed, fake sports page touting Westview’s “win.” This was followed by a trip to snow-covered Scapegoat Field to dig up a piece of turf from the end zone.
Bull’s wife Linda seemed to appreciate the visits, but probably thought she’d seen the last of Buck that night he revealed that he was in the same state of mental decline as her husband. But Buck was back a couple weeks later. And now that football season’s underway and the leaves are falling (hurtling, actually, judging by panel 1), here he is again. Linda doesn’t even attempt to hide her disdain.
A Coach Stropp Saved Is A Coach Stropp Urned
And suddenly, many months after the fact, that moronic arc where Bull dug up a hunk of grass and plopped it on his special “football memories” shelf comes full circle. Apparently vandalizing WHS property is OK if it’s for nostalgic purposes, which doesn’t surprise me at all. I like how the grass on his shelf is still sort of green, seeing how it’s all uprooted and dead and all. Quite a hardy turfgrass blend on that field, although it would have been funnier if Bull had ruined a costly Astroturf field instead.
So is the little tuft supposed to be where Bull stupidly dropped Coach Stropp? And if so, is he suggesting that Coach Stropp’s remains acted as a fertilizer that cause the grass to rapidly grow on that spot? Because if so, ewwww. Not to mention totally inaccurate, as you’d really want to use a higher nitrogen fertilizer at this time of year, one with a nice pre-emergent to keep those unsightly crabgrass clumps at bay. If Coach Stropp was a lifelong Westviewian I would suspect his ashes would mostly contain some carbon, traces of comic book printing ink and lots and lots of mozzarella cheese, none of which is especially good for your lawn.
Anyhow, the moral here is apparently that Bull is an inconsiderate moron who makes everyone’s jobs just a little more difficult via his special brand of dementia and idiocy. What a zany character, eh?
Yadnus Pirts
As is customary, Sunday’s strip was not available for preview. They’re always a surprise, but rarely a good surprise, something you’d actually enjoy reading. Here are some possibilities I’ve come up with; feel free to add your own guesses in the comments.
First, we might continue with Skyler and his g’rents, though that seems to be pretty played out. Now, never underestimate this cartoonist for stretching something past its sell-by date, but I can’t really see where he could go with this to “make a greater point,” so we’ve probably seen the last of Dullard & Co for the nonce.
Second possibility is we might re-visit the premise from a week or so ago, and pick up how Chester, the wealthy comics collector wants to get in touch with the comic book writer Peeved Radish.
Third, Funky and Les jogging. I mean, we haven’t seen that in pretty much forever! Not that I miss it or anything, but the cosmos feels misaligned.
Fourth, we might find out what happened to Becky’s mom. –ha ha, just kidding. That boat’s been scuttled for, what, five years now? No, the real fourth would be some sideways kids’ book that Ann found in her Dullard shrine, something that would inspire some wry remark about how things were better Back Then.
The fifth and final guess I’m going to add is that we’ll get something completely untied to anything from the last six months.
Anyway, we’ll all find out in a little less than a couple of hours. Wow!–it’s just like Christmas Eve, right? Only this is an eve where one measures not the delights that may come once morning breaks, but the various disappointments one is certain to encounter when one reaches the bottom of the stairs, beholds the menacing tree, and hopes that the bigger boxes are not addressed to oneself.
But, well, despite the paragraph above (sorry, folks, I’ve been a guest host for quite a long time, and it does leave a mark), there is one thing certain: no matter the subject, the characters, the dialogue or the story–it will be dull beyond bearing.
Sweet and Splice-y
We’re still in Crazy’s AV lair in today’s strip. When did Crazy become some sort of AV guru, a guy who owns shelves of different media players? I don’t even remember if he ran the projector back in Act I but now he’s going on about Bull’s sweet splice repairs. I’m a noted Betamax enthusiast who can talk at length about the late 80s rise in use of VHS cases and labels for Beta cassettes but I don’t say things like that.
One might wonder why Bull, who has both a fairly high opinion of his AV skills and lots (lots!) of free time, doesn’t simply buy or borrow the equipment and convert these tapes to DVD himself. One might also wonder why Bull, if he has such skills that he can splice videotape in a “sweet” manner, was never tasked with putting up any of Westview High’s legendary badly taped signs.
Son of Stuck Funky 
