Well, at least we’re not at the Korner anymore. Small blessings and all. BatHam has apparently become aware of 4K TV, which is very interesting and all, at least to him. The rest of us, not so much. “Heh, you know, I think it’d be very, very funny if someone thought “4K” meant how much it cost, tee hee!”. He really needs to learn how to self-edit better (ha). Continue reading
Tag Archives: Crazy Harry
D-I-V-O-R-C-(zzzzzz)
OK, I’ll just come right out and say it: this isn’t the worst FW gag I’ve ever seen. A little edgy (by FW standards), a little crazy (by FW standards)…if BatHam could string together another 359 of these in a row perhaps 2021 might not be so bad. If anyone wants trillion-to-one odds on that proposition, PM me please. Continue reading
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Frankie’s House
Thanks to Billy the Skink for pointing out yesterday that Chez Francois is an actual fancy restaurant in Ohio. I had just assumed it was made up, because the name sounded so Batiukian. And our Ohio correspondent Rusty Shackleford even provided a review.
I don’t know what Rusty ordered when he was there, but whatever it was it cost him a pretty penny. Frankie’s House is no ten-dollar steak joint. This is the kind of place that serves Waygu and quail eggs and escargot. Where a ham on arugula salad, dressed with olive oil, will put you back 25 bucks.
Maybe Donna and Crazy will partake of the special this month. A seven course meal, paired with a wine for every course, called, “Truffles Truffles Truffles.” After eating this tour of mushrooms, you’d be full of more fungus than a musty bin of unwashed gym socks. I’m sure that Montoni’s finest
condimento per l’insalata would pair well atop any of these dishes.
First Course
Duo of Eggs & Truffles, Truffle Cappuccino
Ohio Proud Scrambled eggs cooked with truffle butter, garnished with black truffles and truffle oil, and a Cappuccino of purée of fall wild mushrooms and black “Burgundy” truffles, truffle foam.
Cremant de Bourgogne Rose “N˚ 69”, JCB, Burgundy, France, NV
Second Course
Maine Diver Sea Scallop En Croûte, Black Truffle Butter
A Maine diver sea scallop served in its natural shell, filled with sliced truffles and truffle butter, wrapped in puff pastry.
Chablis 1er “Les Sechets”, Jean & Sebastian Dauvissat, Burgundy, France, 2015
Third Course
Soufflé au Fromage, Black Truffle and Quail Egg
A blend of Ubriaco and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, oven baked in a ramekin and topped with a poached quail egg and freshly shaved black truffles.
Condrieu “La Côte Chatillon”, Xavier Gerard, Northern Rhône Valley, France 2015
Fourth Course
Puglia Tagliatelle, “Alba” White Truffles
Freshly shaved White Truffles served over Puglia tagliatelle with truffle butter and fine herbs.
Savigny-Les-Beaune 1er “Cru Les Peuillets”, Lucien Jacob, Burgundy, France, 2013
Fifth Course
Char-Grilled Farmed Raised Coturnix Quail, Black “Burgundy” Truffle Butter Sauce
Char-grilled quail filled with a quail and truffle forcemeat, serve with a chestnut mousseline, finished with Black “Burgundy” truffle butter sauce.
Or
Seasonal Wild Mushroom, Truffles & Foie Gras, en Croûte
Wild mushroom and truffle consommé, with Foie Gras, duck confit and Black “Burgundy” Truffles topped with puff pastry.
St Joseph “Cavanos” Vielles Vignes, Cuilleron, Northern Rhône Valley, France, 2016
Sixth Course
Roast Tenderloin of Veal, Sauce Périgueux
Tenderloin of Wisconsin Veal, served over a delicata squash filled with white and black truffle risotto finished with wild mushrooms and a truffle reduction sauce.
Or
Grilled Ora King Salmon Filet, Wild Mushroom, Truffle Butter Sauce
Char-grilled New Zealand King Salmon served over baby bok choy, seasonal wild mushrooms, finished with truffle butter sauce.
Barbaresco “Riserva Cichin”, Ada Nada , Piedmont, Italy, 2013
Seventh Course
White Truffle Ice Cream, Truffle Honey & Seasonal Berries
French vanilla bean ice cream with Alba White Truffles, Truffle honey, almond tuile and seasonal berries.
Coteaux du Layon 1er “Cru Chaume”, Château Soucherie, Loire Valley, France, 2014
$200 per guest
Tax & Gratuity not included
*$75.00 per person supplemental charge for a 2.5oz. pour of the above dinner wines and 2oz. pour of the dessert wine.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Test of Patience.
Ugh. What an anti-climax. It is the peak of Batikuian storytelling to hinge an entire week’s worth of strips on a non-existent conflict. We never had to be worried about how Donna would receive her bottle of salad dressing, because Crazy Harry always had a stock fancy restaurant in his back pocket. He didn’t mention this to Funky or Holly because he doesn’t want to ruin what’s left of his eccentric mystique by admitting he’s basically planning a cookie cutter anniversary with a bit of oil and vinegar pregaming.
Unless the entire salad dressing gift ceremony was some kind of morality test? And if Donna hadn’t sufficiently appreciated the bottle of Montoni’s finest Crazy would just have driven her to Toxic Taco.
Regardless, it’s a good thing that the salad dressing wasn’t actually a tiny bottle of champagne, because judging by the look on Donna’s face in panel two, she’s already plenty intoxicated.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
Now is the Crouton of Our Discontent.
Come to Funky Winkerbean for the mesmerizingly inane plot, stay for the intense first-person envelope stuffing action! And in such detail! We almost get to see what the ingredients of Montoni’s famous salad dressing are. Alas, all we will know is that it contains ‘< of 10 em WWWW’.
Cute pun too. Nice to see that the salad dressing gift was really a prop in service of a sentiment. Provided Donna likes salad dressing, this is a perfectly adequate anniversary present for an older couple living off of the income of a single part time job at a comics shack. Certainly better than an IOU for a trip to China that is quickly forgotten.
‘Salad Days’ is such a weird idiom though. We’ve become so removed from the concrete meaning of the metaphor, that usage of the phrase keeps sliding further and further away from it’s genesis in Shakespeare. Nowadays it generally means a worry-free and pleasant time of life. Either youth, or retirement. But that’s only after evolving more times than a Pokémon.
Of course, I fell down the internet hole again on this one. It’s my specialty.
‘Salad days’ comes from a line in Shakespeare’s 1606 play, Antony and Cleopatra. But like a lot of popular Shakespearian idioms, the turn of phrase didn’t get pulled out as a stock phrase until the mid 19th century. Initially salad days was a somewhat negative expression, meaning a time of ignorant indiscretion in youth. You’re green, and cold, and will soon wilt, and so do stupid things. Like get a Star Wars tattoo or seduce Julius Caesar.
Which brings us to the origin of the phrase in the play. In Act 1 Scene V of Antony and Cleopatra, Cleo is gushing about Marc Antony, her hunky Roman boyfriend, and preparing to send dozens of messengers after him like the first century equivalent of blowing up his cell phone with texts. She asks one of her servants if she ever loved her old, now dead, Italian dressing, Julius Caesar so much.
CLEOPATRA Did I, Charmian, Ever love Caesar so?
CLEOPATRA Be choked with such another emphasis!
Say, the brave Antony.
CLEOPATRA By Isis, I will give thee bloody teeth,
If thou with Caesar paragon again
My man of men.
CHARMIAN By your most gracious pardon,
I sing but after you.
CLEOPATRA My salad days,
When I was green in judgment: cold in blood,
To say as I said then! But, come, away;
Get me ink and paper:
He shall have every day a several greeting,
Or I’ll unpeople Egypt.
So, you know, if Batiuk wants to go with this original allusion that’s fine. It’s nice to think that Crazy Harry and Donna will grow to disavow this time in their lives, and see themselves as stupid for ever feeling this way. And if they want to finish it all off by dying of snakebite, so much the better.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
All Dressed Up, (With No Place to Hide.)
Nice to know that the Sunday teal and salmon colors have been washed off the walls, and we’re back to horrific fleshcave known as weekday Montoni’s. I don’t know where you would buy a skin colored coffee maker, and I don’t want to know.
Did you find Sunday’s joke amusing? I sure hope so! Because today we get the same joke again, told to a different person. I can’t wait for tomorrow where Wally will enter and they can tell HIM all about Crazy Harry’s crazy salad dressing idea.
We don’t even know if the salad dressing is a bad gift, because we know almost nothing about Donna. For all we know she loves salad dressing, and will be thrilled by this present. She’s as much of a faceless cypher as any Funky Winkerbean background character at this point. The last time she was given any significant speaking role was a single week back in 2014, where she talked to Holly about how comic books ‘aren’t just for boys.’
I jumped into the archives to revisit that particular arc. Maybe it would give some insight into Donna’s personality. And WOW, there is an entire Pandora’s box of unfortunate implications to unpack here. Whatever Donna may seem on the outside, inside she is one messed up chick.
1.) Donna sees the world as men against women, with men as destructive mutants, and women as humanity.
3.) So Donna, as a girl liking video games, saw herself as ‘half-boy’ because of her interests, and identified with Hunter. Hunter was a character who straddled both worlds, half-human, half-mutant. In her analogy, half-woman, half-man.
4.) She saw video games as, ‘the boy’s turf’ and thus felt she needed to hide the female side of herself in order to participate. And saw participating in disguise as a form of battle against the fully mutant male.
5.) Now that she is a wife and mother, she expresses no nerdy interests and has become identical to every doudy Westview hausfrau.
None of this furthers the assertion that comic books are for girls too. They are still ‘boy’s turf’ and a girl must be part male if she wants to enter.
This just feels like a sad little girl’s internalized misogyny manifesting itself in unwarranted gender dysphoria.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
A Dressing Down.
Oh good. I was getting worried. We hadn’t seen Montoni’s in what feels like FOREVER and I was starting to wonder if Batiuk had forgotten about it, just like he forgot about Wally Jr or Crazy Harry’s children.
I said once that I thought Lisa’s Legacy was the Axis Mundi around which this entire universe turned, and while Dead St Lisa is certainly the spiritual heart, the physical center of the Funkyverse is this stupid little pizza joint. Monk’s Cafe in Seinfeld, or the Central Perk in Friends pale in comparison to this monolith.
As many of you know, Montoni’s is based off of the real restaurant Luigi’s located in Akron, Ohio. So, today’s strip instantly raises the question, does Luigi’s sell salad dressing. After a little digging using that internet Dinkle loathes so much, I found out that yes Luigi’s does offer bottled Italian salad dressing for sale in store. Seven-fifty will buy you this little number.
Really, looking at Luigi’s, they should be insulted by the Montoni’s comparison. Sure, they share a band box, and a counter with stools, but Luigi’s looks like a decent place, with a much more inviting and charming interior. By all the accounts I read, this place is almost always packed, and with a line waiting outside.
They do have weird idiosyncrasies, like not accepting credit cards, instead having an ATM in the back that doesn’t print out cash, but prints out a receipt to use up front. And the monstrosity below is their interpretation of a salad.
Weirdest of all, while scrolling through pictures of Luigi’s looking for salad dressing, I found what must be the inspiration for another old Montoni’s friend. See if you can spot it.
Filed under Son of Stuck Funky
