Tag: cell phones

O-H! I-ugh…

Today’s strip simply confirms what we’ve all known since Monday, that this movie premiere is going to take place at “that damn Crankshaft theater”.

And we can all blame Jeff Murdoch, a passive-aggressive sad-sack who has never managed to elicit sympathy from readers despite constantly suffering under his mother and father-in-law, two of the nastiest and most despicable characters to have ever graced the comics page. We can also blame Batiukverse Twitter, which waived its character limit to allow Jeff to convey the following information in a single tweet (maybe he typed this all up in Notes and tweeted a photo, which is still contemptible):

– His first and last name
– His location
– The fact that he was a member of the Starbuck Jones Junior Spaceman Fan Club when he was a kid
– That he saw the original Starbuck Jones serial at the then-new Valentine Theater
– That his son now owns the Valentine Theater
– And that he thinks it would be a good place to hold the premiere of the new Starbuck Jones movies.

Given all of that, I’m surprised he didn’t mention how movie tickets only cost $0.10 when he first saw the Starbuck Jones serial, or how much he misses voting for Robert Taft Sr., or how great his old LaSalle ran.

Valium-tine

While Jeff Murdoch apparently violates Twitter’s character limit in today’s strip, Director Martin Johns violates general decorum by thinking Jeff’s tweet is worth reading out loud to these Hollywood types lounging about in wicker chairs.

Prescient SOSFer erdmann hypothesized yesterday that this would lead to the premiere of Starbuck Jones at “that damn Crankshaft theater”. Today’s strip all but confirms that, and I can tell you that the next several strips will not dispel the idea. If you consider this to be a spoiler then you haven’t read Funky Winkerbean for very long.

In other news, Cindy has lost her right foot. Oh, and Jeff Murdoch is apparently both old enough to have seen and remember original-run Starbuck Jones movie serials (before Cliff was blacklisted sometime in the early 1950s) and young enough to have also been attending Kent State in 1970 (on a John Sebastian impersonator scholarship, apparently). To be fair, there is a window of time in which that works, but it is narrower than Crankshaft’s mind.

If You Only Re-Knew

Link to today’s strip

I have to assume that Rachel’s hands are so calloused from years of pizza-slinging that she has no need for oven mitts. Anyhow, the Funk-Man is angrily waiting to re-take his driver’s exam, sitting and sulking as “those kids today” entertain themselves with their phone gizmos they’re all so fond of these days. Based on the way he’s carrying on you’d think he was the victim here and not merely an idiot who failed to renew his driver’s license for an entire year. The funniest thing about this one is how he has the exact same look on his face that I did upon seeing that TB was doing ANOTHER week of this.

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Ho Ho Ho

So it took until today’s strip for anyone to think about contacting Marianne?

I guess that is consistent with last week, when Mr. Director waited until Mason showed up at the lot to dress him down for his excursion to Marianne’s mom’s abode. We see today that he has a phone, so obviously that wasn’t stopping him from calling Mason last week, or Marianne anytime between last week and now. Must not be a talker… or he knows Mason screens and ignores his calls (which makes some sense, Mason makes all the decisions on this lot, after all). Marianne apparently does the same.

I consider myself fairly fluent in comic strip language, but am quite unsure as to what exactly panel 3’s wavy-border is supposed to signify. As I am sure most all of you know, wavy panel borders typically mean that what we are seeing is a dream/daydream, hallucination, or flashback. However, Marianne’s trip to the Hollywood sign began in an un-wavy panel (and also in color, for… reasons?) back on Sunday. I guess it is not unfair to assume that Marianne’s scenes are supposed to actually be occurring but in a surreal state, but it comes across more like the wavy panel border is being used to signal a change in setting. This is really awkward. Nice shot of the “HO” sign, though.