I’m pretty sure a sales fundraiser in which you wind up with a garage full of unsold merch is kind of a bust, no? What exactly is Classic Dinkle’s plan here in panel 1? Even if a polar vortex were to descend on Westview tonight, and linger through Christmas and New Year’s, no poultry (especially organic) would still remain edible. Those “Sam ‘n’ Ella’s” turkeys would soon be living up to their name. If “next year” means “next Thanksgiving,” then the premise becomes even more absurd.
Tag Archives: Falling leaves
You Took the Bird Right Out of My Mouth
Now I know meatloaf is typically not gluten free, especially the way I make it, and the way I make it is different every time (my pièce de résistance is my heart shaped, bacon wrapped Valentine’s Day meatloaf). Pizza may be the most ubiquitous foodstuff in the Funkiverse, but I was just thinking back to a little over a year ago, to the last time we saw a wife preparing a meatloaf.
Back at the Dinkle home (which has been repainted at some point in the last three weeks) we find Harry and Harriet joined by daughter Halle, and some fella whom we’ve not met. From the way his right arm seems to disappear behind Halle, he’s either her amputee fiancé or a heretofore off-panel conjoined twin. The last place Halle Dinkle was spotted was at her parents’ 50th anniversary pizza party, but the character was created by Batiuk for the National Association for Music Education (she’s a music educator like her dad). This most niche of comics heroine has her own shrine here at SoSF.
On behalf of all of us who bring you Son of Stuck Funky, here’s to a peaceful and joyous Thanksgiving to you and yours!
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TurDinken
I, your genial host, on behalf of myself and the rest of Team SoSF, stand in line for comicbookharriet and her always unique and entertaining take on Funky!
I don’t know about you, but Thanksgiving reminds us to be grateful to have made it nearly to the end of this calamitous year. Whatever else can be said about the distortion of time in the Funkiverse, the holidays usually coincide with our own, and Thanksgiving brings the Scapegoats’ annual fall fundraiser. I didn’t call it the “band turkey sale” because, in addition to turkeys and “rand curdy“, Becky and Dinkle have gone door-to-door peddling non-comestibles, like mattresses, and indigestibles (volume 3 of Dinkle’s autobiography).
(This time last year)
COVID-19 has yet to arrive in Westview, and depending on how you reckon strip time, it might yet take place ten years before or hence (yours truly is betting that the characters in FW will finally begin sporting masks sometime in March 2021). But you have to give Becky credit for having the foresight to take the whole thing “totally online” via Bandigogo™ a year ago. She showed this accomplishment off to Dinkel, who either didn’t comprehend or care; that is, until Becky got to the part about never having “to actually touch a turkey.” Looking at today’s strip, we can understand why this resonated with so strongly with Harry. “Why, when I was band director,” Dinkel himself would show up at your door, proffering an unfrozen, unwrapped, whole uncooked turkey. In his bare hands. This is about as far as you can get from today’s “contactless delivery.”
When Batiuk inserts flashback scenes showing the casts in their Act I & II iterations, those scenes usually employ the sepia tones and photo album corners. I’m wondering if that visual shorthand only applies when it’s a conscious flashback and not a dream? At any rate, contrast young Harry the Hat’s nearly featureless mug with his exquisite, old man grimace in panel 3.
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Always Enjoyable?
Oh goodie! I get a Dinkle arc. Having to scrape together some kind of humor or commentary for Dinkel arcs is ‘always enjoyable.’ But it gets tedious trying to remember everything that has happened to Dinkle in Act III that has slowly morphed him from a unique and bombastic caricature of a passionate band director into just another bland, smug, Westview Pod Person.
Please note, while Dinkle claims that teaching piano is ‘always enjoyable’ he doesn’t look like he’s enjoying it today, and…spoilers…he doesn’t seem to enjoy it all week long. Maybe in Westview the words ‘always’ or ‘enjoyable’ mean something very different than what’s listed in the dictonary?
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De-10-tion Center
Amicus continues to Amicus in today’s strip, quoting last year’s newspaper headlines almost verbatim… Big kudos to commenter Banana Jr. 6000 for uncovering Breef’s past appearance in Crankshaft back on Monday. The “Lionel Hutz of Westview” is not only less entertaining than the beloved Simpsons character (obviously), he also appears to somehow be even less competent at practicing law than the intentionally idiotic Hutz.
Writing facial recognition software in the Batiukverse has got to be the ultimate fool’s errand. While I was not able to find any source for Amicus’ 20% of the time figure here in real life internetland, in Westview I would think the figure would be well above that. WAY well above that.
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Ha-ICE-ku
Surely there is more This is all of today's strip? Missing third panel?
We already know Identity mistake stuff And so does Wally
Oh it's "possible"? Truly a legal savant is Amicus Breef
A word of warning ICE will not hesitate to deport falling leaves
Adeela's right, though This whole story arc is a Horrible mistake
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Premium Tool.
I’m a little ashamed to say it, but I chuckled unironically at the strip today. Well, it wasn’t really a chuckle, more of soft snort complete with an eye-roll. But props to Batiuk, this came within sighting distance of comedy.
Ayers deserves more of the credit though, the dead-eyed, wide-mouthed Dinkle in panel three hits my funny bone when partnered with the blunt punchline.
I wonder about the premiums paid out. It seems like even more fundraiser money sucked away from the band. I remember getting promised dumb prizes for selling enough during school fundraisers, but no one could sell enough to earn them.
Cabbage Jack yesterday in the comments pointed reader to Tom Batiuk’s blog. I’d never given it much of a look, but I browsed back a few months and it was quite a trip; an inane mishmash of narcissism and comics related shitposting. Most egregious are the little excerpts from his Funky Winkerbean volumes, where he deconstructs the history of his own creation like an art restorer painstakingly scraping the macaroni off a kindergardener’s project.
“The scenes with Fred and Ann and their son Darin were reflective of a different part of my life with Cathy and Brian that I was beginning to draw upon. Change was becoming a palpable part of Funky, and the biggest changes of all were just about to unfold. I didn’t have a master plan exactly, but I could see daylight ahead, and I was beginning to run toward it.”
“As was my habit, new characters continued to appear. Cindy Summers, the most popular girl in school, and Bodean, Westview High’s resident hood, joined the cast as the polar opposites of the high school continuum. Big hair was starting to come in for girls, and Cindy’s hair soon became the biggest of the biggest. Her tenure in the strip was destined to be remarkably long.”
And taking the cake, yesterday’s offering, where Batiuk goes borderline biblical talking about trying to renegotiate a contract.
“And lo, there came a day when the prophecy of the attorney in the beginning times came to pass.
It’s been said that the past is a knife (as an acolyte of Sigmund Freud, I’m all in on that one), and at the beginning of 1990 I was definitely feeling its point in my back.”
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Pigging Out.
As usual Sunday wasn’t available for preview. And I’m too worn out to wait for it to drop.
Ironically, I spent the afternoon and evening at my very first college football game. Iowa vs. Minnesota. It was an absolutely awesome time. Iowa fans were so excited when they won they rushed the field, as the ecstatic team held aloft Floyd of Rosedale, still safe in Iowa’s care.
Floyd of Rosedale is an 80 year old bronze pig the winning team gets to keep for the year. It references the time when the governors of Iowa and Minnesota bet an actual live hog on the outcome of the 1935 game.
What I’m saying is football is a, weird, exciting sport, with rich history and traditions. If enjoying the game today was also spiting Tom Batiuk’s horrible CTE arc, then I enjoyed it twice as much.
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Blunt Farce Trauma.
Linda, the cause of your husband’s death was still blunt force trauma in a car wreck. And implying that the hits he took in football were the inevitable cause of Bull’s death takes away the agency of the decision he made to end his life.
In my belief, one of the most dangerous post-suicide rationalizations friends and family make is trying to convince themselves that the suicide was inevitable or unavoidable. I have compassion for people who try to cope this way, but depression or despair should never be approached as terminal conditions.
The silver lining of this entire nightmare of an arc was people here getting a chance to share stories of their own struggles with despair. This tiny community of snarkers hate-reading Funky Winkerbean may have been the only people on the entire earth to actually engage with this horrible story on a deeper level and come away with any positive results.
So don’t despair my fellow Funkysnarkers! Next week Tom promises to serve us a week of Harry Dinkle, scraped together from his bag of recycled gags. I look forward to finding something both funny and insulting to say about Batiuk beating a dead band turkey.
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Getting the runaround
Did you know President Bill Clinton likes to jog? I sure didn’t, at least not until today’s strip… and when I say “today’s strip”, I mean “when he was first elected President”. Does TB think calling him “President Clinton” is not enough of an identifier for readers or did he just recently start watching a DVD box set of 1990s Saturday Night Live episodes?
What’s with all the Eeyores in the first panel? Funky just dialed up BILL CLINTON on a whim, got the former POTUS to answer directly, and was told by the man himself that he would help. Why is Rachel even questioning this?
Better yet, why am I questioning this? Any of this? It’s been a fool’s errand for decades.
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Tagged as 1/4 inch from reality, Adeela, Amicus Breef, An idiocy of Winkerbeans, cell phones, cellphone, delusional fantasies, deportation, enraging hair strands, exercise, Falling leaves, Funky, Funky Winkerbean, half-assed political commentary, Holly, hoodie, how things are NEVER done, immigration, leaves, Life is a dismal horror from which you can never escape, melting faces, mistaken identity, Montoni's, Montoni's logo, Montoni's T shirt, not how the world works, Now Funky, President Clinton, Rachel, sad-sackery, sheer idiocy, stupid, tags you never thought you'd use, technology, terrible artwork, the raptor claw in Holly's hair, this is all a horrible mistake, Wally, you have got to be f-ing kidding me