Hollywood – Page 4 – Son of Stuck Funky

Some Like It Lumpy

Wow. Major Act II flashbacks, man. I didn’t think he’d go THERE with this story, but once again I vastly underestimated his shamelessness. He could have chosen to go with some nice breast cancer awareness platitudes and how “Lisa’s Story” was ultimately helping people and so forth. But, with his usual sledgehammer-like subtlety, he decided to go ahead and GIVE MARIANNE CANCER instead. So now she really is just like Lisa, except hotter and, you know, alive and everything.

Even after all these years and all the tedium, this is still one weird-ass f*cking comic strip, I’ll tell you what. This is just ghastly and the fact that BatYam doesn’t know this makes it even more twisted and strange. It doesn’t insult your intelligence, it shoots your intelligence in the back, rummages through its pockets and leaves it for dead. Ham-fisted, heavy-handed, this one is as tone-deaf and ridiculous as it gets. Once again BatYarn goes in a direction no one else would have even considered.

Has any comic strip ever used the word “lump” more than FW has? “Maybe For Better Or For Worse” did, but most of that strip’s tragedies weren’t cancer related, so I dunno. If it’s “Crankshaft” I definitely don’t want to know.

What’s Behind Door #5?

Link To Today’s One

What the f*ck is she talking about? Does she mean the movie itself, the book being translated into Spanish, the news that the movie won’t be shown anywhere, or what? For the time being I will assume she means how he “feels” about “Lisa’s Story” itself, because “Delicate Genius is deeply conflicted about sharing personal details of his life” is more or less the entire point of the “LS” arc, but given Batiuk’s uniquely non-linear “storytelling” style, who the hell really knows. She could be talking about the crab puffs or the ketamine she slipped into his drink or God only knows what.

And Cayla’s slow descent from “character” to “caricature” to “prop” continues unabated today, as BatNard couldn’t resist throwing in a touch of that patented “female = jealous” trope he enjoys so much. “GASP! She’s going into that room to talk to my HUSBAND…ALONE!!! I hope SEX isn’t involved!”. And while I’m braying on and on about shitty, poorly-developed female characters (again), there’s Marianne Winters, the beautiful twenty-something movie star with the small-town heart of gold, about to confide in her dear friend Les Moore, who didn’t even want her cast as Lisa in the first place. Luckily for her, she won him over with her pitch-perfect Lisa-isms thus immediately putting Les at ease to a point where he chose to allow himself to befriend her and not dismiss her as another cheap Hollywood phony like he initially assumed she was. Another believable and convincing female FW character and not at all indicative of far bigger and way weirder issues that are just too icky and disturbing to address at any length today.

Si Habla Lespanol?

Link To Today’s Strip

Only two languages? How incredibly humiliating for poor, poor Dick Facey. It’s all just another burden Les has to bear, the price he’s being forced to pay for bearing his innermost soul and so forth. Now I’m not a big-shot professional author, so I can’t say for sure, but it seems to me that getting your book translated and published in Spanish would be a pretty big and possibly even lucrative deal. But, as we know, the bearded dick with ears cares not about wealth or fame or notoriety or success, as demonstrated by the obnoxious way he tilts his stupid beard in panel three as Marianne futilely attempts to placate and pander to him. What a dick.

My God, Pukey

Link To The One Today

Thanks to BC and everyone who kept steering the S.S. SoSF since my last stint! You’re the heroes the funny pages need.

It’s Self-Deprecation Guy himself, the actor who KNOWS he sucks, Mason Jarre! This guy needs to work with Kevin Smith, like pronto. He could mail in a performance as “Boss Who Doesn’t Give A Shit” in “Clerks 6 – The Clerkening”. Seriously though, the whole unbearably humble “my career is a big joke” shtick got old last week, so this is just typical BatYam overkill. It’s somewhat interesting how BatYarn uses this kid of wry self-deprecation to paint Mason as being a “nice guy”, as if the readers wouldn’t like him as much if he happened to be proud of his career. Everyone in the strip does it all the time, so it seems normal by Funkyverse standards but when you think about it, it’s kind of a strange world view.

Also of note: Cayla’s status as one of if not the biggest rube in the strip. It’s pretty funny how Mason unintentionally tells her as much, too. But not intentionally funny, of course, as we simply cannot have that. We all assumed she was remarkably easy to please way back when she first started (gak) dating Les, but now we know for sure.

Together Again for the First Time

Link to today’s strip.

I thought Les had already met Cliff and Vera, but then I thought that Les had nothing to do with Starbuck Jones, so maybe he didn’t meet them before.

So, they’re meeting now. Fine. Make another movie from it, “Les Moore Meets The Killer Klowns From Outer Space.”

Oh, and thanks Batiuk (via Cayla) for telling us how we’re supposed to regard this joke. Just for the record, it’s not cute. It’s not even clever. It barely recognizes as an attempt at humor.

And that’s why these two fossils are here, right? Who wants to bet they never make another appearance during this week? Batiuk just came up with a pun and had to shove it in here.

I could think of a better place he could have shoved it.