Tag: Cindy

Change Stinks

Link To Today’s Strip

Well, Cindy, it might not smell so bad if you had the cab drop you off anywhere other than directly in front of that horrible pizza place, like the local dump or the fat rendering plant or the sewage treatment facility. But then again, without that hilarious Montoni’s backdrop her soul-crushing career and personal setbacks wouldn’t be quite as comical. RIGHT???

Speaking of comical, isn’t it funny how the good-looking popular girl from high school is now an old washed-up schlub who feels terrible about herself? And speaking of funny, isn’t it just SO WACKY how Cindy inexplicably visited her ex-husband’s awful pizzeria before she bothered with things like accommodations in the Cleveland area and visiting her new employer? The genius of it is that by the time whatever the premise is here finally unfolds, everyone will have forgotten that it began with a character doing something no sane, rational human being would ever do in “real life”. Welcome to the Funkyverse.

This has “bad sitcom premise” written all over it. I will tell you this: if it turns out that there’s another vacant apartment above Montoni’s that “no one’s using right now”, I am going to let the expletives fly, you can bank on that.

(Question for those of whom were paying attention at the time: what were the circumstances surrounding Funky and Cindy’s break-up? Was it Funky’s boozing or did she realize his dumb ass was holding her back or what? I believe it was semi-mutual, was it not? I sort of remember the original Funky & Cindy premise was “ordinary nobody (Funky) marries high school superstar (Cindy)” but I was ignoring huge chunks of Act II at the time so the rest of it is a blank to me. Fill us in if you remember, please.)

Shaft (Shut Your Mouth…No, Really, STFU Already)

Link To Today’s Strip
While I know a bit about the history of comic books, I’m far from being an expert in the field, so I’m just going to assume that somehow the Cleveland-based creators of “Superman” (REGISTERED TRADEMARK) were indeed somehow screwed over by those mean nasty impudent New Yorkers. Either that or TB is taking a shot at those “big city” folk, like how he’s always bashing “Hollywood”. Poor, poor Ohio, always getting “shafted” by those awful coastal folk and their decidedly un-Ohioian ways. But hey, at least they didn’t send her to Cincinnati, am I right?

Remarkably, Cindy’s plane landed uneventfully with no obvious fatalities, so I guess we’re to assume she is indeed Cleveland’s newest anchorwoman. One can also assume she’s going to spend the majority of the week bitching about it, too. Has there been a single arc so far in 2014 that DIDN’T feature a character or characters bitching and moaning about something? I’m gonna go out on a limb here and also assume that her first stop will be that f*cking town, although to what end is anyone’s guess at this point. But you can bet everything on this: whatever happens will be as uneventful and dull as watching paint dry (but at least with paint you can catch a cheap buzz off the fumes). No one can suck the life out of a premise like BatDrone can.

He’s Got a Million of ’Em

In Saturday’s strip, H.R. “Baldy” McNightmare continues to regale Cindy with brilliant one-liners. “Women, am I right?” he’ll continue. “Can’t fire ’em, can’t ship ’em off to Cleveland.”

So, we’ve got the “Cleveland sucks” joke. Check. To be fair, Cleveland really sucked in 2010. A year ago, however, when this overcooked noodle of a strip was being conceived, Cleveland fell to 17th most miserable, beating out #11 Toledo by 6 positions.

Good thing Forbes doesn’t include Westview in its misery index. The #1 position would never change.

Cindy, like the downtrodden Westview woman that she is, meekly accepts her fate and a clear violation of 29 U.S.C. § 623. Naturally, she’ll pay for her own cab and air fare as she rushes to LaGuardia to get to Cleveland’s Channel 5 before air time. Because this is the way TV stations are run, ¼ inch from reality.

I admit I was among those astonished that these events were taking place in New York City, based on Cindy being the one to report on Les’s Hollywood deal. I keep forgetting that Les lies at the nexus of history. The pope himself was awakened to keep him abreast of the contract negotiations. So of course ABC’s national weekend anchor broke the news.

But who’ll break the news to Cindy that she can fight this age discrimination? I’m sure anything we come up with will be more interesting than what Batominc comes up with.

Atop Demerit Hill

Friday’s strip careens substantially more than ¼ inch from reality. There doesn’t seem to be any readily Googleable analogue to this situation here in reality prime. Using Google is all the effort I’ll put into this; it’s already more than Batominc puts into these plot lines. The Batominc plan is even simpler than that of the South Park gnomes.

  1. Draw some comics about a well-known social issue.
  2. Pulitzer!

We learned yesterday that “digital” shows Cindy’s age, in the words of her boss Dick “Baldy” McLitigationmagnet. This arc is turning out to be a perfect storm of things Batominc knows nothing about. Digital TV doesn’t have to be HD; I’m sure Cindy looks ravishing in SD 480i. Or at least vague and fuzzy. And current ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer is 68 years young.

As a member of the dominant boomer generation, Batominc’s stockholder ought to know that, as that generation ages while life expectancy increases, its attitudes about the visible signifiers of age are evolving. But that would require him to have his finger on the pulse of society. And there’s one thing about pulses: you can’t feel them from ¼ inch away. You have to actually touch the patient.

Batominc is bad at social observation, OK. Now, to be fair, he’s also bad at drawing his own characters. Or did Cindy get a sudden massive wrinkle in the milliseconds between panels 2 and 3?

Where’s That Confounded Pulitzer?

Wednesday’s strip has the big reveal of the reason for this arc: Batominc’s Pulitzer-trolling issue du jour: age discrimination in TV news.

It’s unclear now why Cindy was drinking in a hotel bar. Is she freshly back from an assignment? Unclear.

It’s unclear how much time has passed between yesterday’s scene and today’s. It’s unclear how Batominc will bring a fresh perspective to the issue at hand. I mean, the Google search for scholarly articles on the subject of age discrimination in media has ¾ million results.

But there’s got to be a Pulitzer in here this time, right? Right?