Today’s strip is simultaneously one of the most realistic and unrealistic FW strips in recent memory.
That a film studio outside of The Asylum (and maybe not even them) would hire a pizzeria manager to draw storyboards for a movie, even a straight-to-cellphone one, is tremendously unrealistic of course.
That Jessica is super eager to pack up her young son and everything they own and get out of Westview as fast as possible… Does this make too much real-life sense to actually happen in the Batiukverse?
TFH here, starting things off with a hat tip to SoSfDavidO and the rest of the guest author rotation for bringing you the daily snark!
Guest Page Turner Author June 27, 2015 at 1:50 am
So Funky had the band box repaired…[b]ut he repaired the Bandbox specifically to watch these individuals dance…[i]nstead, they are jamming to the music from the jukebox. Which didn’t need fixing…[a]nd probably worked all along.
I’ll bet Les’ friends cringe anytime he starts a sentence with “I don’t know if you guys know this, but…” With Westview’s cultural totem refurbished and restored to its place of honor, Montoni’s is once again “alive with music”, if not with paying customers. Naturally Les, the walking Wikipedia, cannot resist using the occasion to school his lessers on the history and etymology of the jukebox, and is chastened by Funky—Funky!—for being a buzzkill.
Happy Easter, gang, and a tip of the ol’ SoSF Easter bonnet to Epicus and SoSFDavidO for their guest stints over the last several weeks! Your pal TFH is stepping in to ramp up the “festivities” marking the fifth anniversary of Son of Stuck Funky this week!
Before laying eyes on today’s tableau, I’d have wagered that today’s holiday would have passed unremarked (as it is in today’s Crankshaft, but then Easter 10 years ago might have fallen on a different Sunday). Despite the abundance of baskets, bunnies, and eggs, this scene suggests Christmas (specifically the Epiphany) more than Easter, as Westview’s Holy Family is surrounded by the Magi bearing gifts. I recognized dowdy, nondescript Kerry, Fred’s daughter from his first marriage, though she’s not been seen since Thanksgiving 2013. It took me a lot longer to surmise that the big smirking blonde to the right is Jessica’s mom Jan Murdoch Darling (you’re welcome).
Anyway, it’s a good thing for Skyler that this mob showed up bearing baskets, else he’d have had to content himself with that pitiful tiny basket before him, which I don’t think even contains any chocolate—that green rabbit’s probably made of carob or some crap. It’s certain that the basket’s chintzy size has less to do with “keeping Skyler away from candy”—on one of the two big candy holidays all year, for goodness’ sake—and everything to do with Boy Lisa’s meager Montoni’s salary.
Because today’s strip wasn’t available at editing time, I’ll go all meta and describe my SOSF workflow. If you don’t care about such geekery, feel free to skip to the comments and snark away! Cheers!
I don’t like editing posts directly in a web browser, because I don’t like rich web editors or plain text fields for writing, and I really don’t like losing a bunch of work due to a silly web error or browser crash. Also, I like working in Markdown.
I made a little template (just a simple markdown file with all the relevant bits of a SOSF post), so when I start a stint as guest-snarker, I copy that into a folder and modify it for the first strip in my series. On each subsequent day, I duplicate the previous day’s file to make a starting point for the new post.
I put the title and tags up in the markdown metadata headers so that I don’t forget them. Because they’re in the metadata, when I export to HTML, they don’t mess up the actual body of the post. Looks like this:
Title: No One Mourns the Comics
Tags: Holly, Chester the Chiseler, Comics
Because
<a target="_blank" href="http://www.nj.com/comics-kingdom/?…
I then separately paste the title, tags, and body into the corresponding fields in WordPress.
I’m on a Mac, and use Byword to edit my markdown and Marked to preview and export it to HTML. Because Byword is also on iOS, I often start a post in Byword on an iPad.
Here’s what my Mac screen looks like, with Byword on the left and Marked on the right.
Stay tuned for the incredible snark stylings of Beckoning Chasm, starting tomorrow!!!
An extremely rare Sunday strip arc wrap-up today, as Jessica decides that after almost three years in the planning stages and one day in production she will not allow “Hollywood” to wrap its disgusting filthy immoral paws around her pet project, instead opting to forget all about it and settle for occasionally filming various ceremonies and parties for the local townies instead. Aim high, strong female character, aim high!
See, I thought the original question was “what was JD really like?” but actually it was “did my father ever play Barbie with me?” instead. And now that she knows the answer and has seen actual video proof, her ambition and passion for the project have vanished completely. I see. And by that I mean “I see why they live above Montoni’s”. Aim low, baby Skyler, aim low!
And a typically keen observation from Boy Lisa, who seems oddly content with his wife’s fickle nature. Perhaps someday he’ll run into the doctor who screwed up Lisa’s medical chart that time so HE can get some closure too! That’d be swell.
It’s been a great two weeks here at SoSF HQ but now it’s time to pass the batom (get it?) to our next guest snarker and time for me to hit the bourbon and airplane glue in an attempt to purge the last four weeks from my memory. Until next time, stay Barbie…err, I mean Funky!
Son of Stuck Funky 
