School chums Cindy and Les arrive, not at the Jarre’s beach house, but at Mason’s new pied-à-terre in “the ‘Hills’.” I don’t know where TB cribbed his California architecture notes, but all those tubular steel railings and odd-sized windows do give the building a sort of Cali modern feel, even if the doors on their three-car garage suggest a public storage unit.
Tag: Les
Les’ll Wrestle
“Wrestling out of my weight class“? Again with the sporto metaphors from 97-pound weakling Les. And again with the “Most Popular Girl in the School” crap. Does anyone who graduated high school before the 21st century recall who was the “most popular” girl in the school–not the class but the entire goddam school? The most popular. Whoever she is, I hope she’s holding up even half as well as Cindy here. And while dwelling upon one’s social status in high school may get old, one never outgrows a taste for flirtatious banter.
Passed Pass from the Past
Maybe she didn’t beat him up like Bull did, but during the twenty years they spent in high school together, Cindy generally treated Les like shit. She wouldn’t have him for a lab partner, let alone a boyfriend. Even when Les wound up keeping her company on that dateless New Year’s Eve, Cindy swore him to secrecy. And decades later she has the gall to break his chops for being a gentleman.
Top-Down Approach
After paying to fly Les 2,000 miles to LAX, you’d suppose Mason would at least spring for an Uber to bring him the rest of the way. Instead, the task falls to the eternally youthful and hot Cindy Summers Winkerbean Jarre to fetch Les. because what else are true friends for? Also, does Cindy still even have that job at Buddyblog? His arrival in sunny California has done nothing to snap Les out of his apathy; he even slouches in the passenger seat of Cindy’s sporty, battleship gray roadster. Batty’s gone to great lengths to depict Les’ complete lack of confidence. And you knew that TB was going to compose some kind of wry punchline around “pitch”… but when else have we seen Les “pitch” anything? His endless book signings attract fans who come prepared to buy his work (in multiple!). He sure doesn’t “pitch” an appreciation of language arts to the generation of students who’ve endured his class. He pitched himself in matrimony–twice–and somehow succeeded both times. You know who can pitch though? Mrs. Les Moore, aka Cayla. Come to think of it, Les is the last denizen of the Funkiverse who should be making sporto analogies.
The Les You No
Today being 4/20 and all, I found it perfectly appropriate that Mason’s contact photo on Les’ phone should be a picture of some cannabis. But the “trees” we’re looking at in today’s strip are the kind that “don’t provide any shade,” not the kind you smoke. So, the Lisa’s movie is already in the pitch meeting stage, is it? Normally, this would mean that the screenplay’s been completed. Otherwise, they have nothing to “pitch.” Of course, normally, location scouting for a major motion picture takes place after the script is done, and by someone (or a team of people) whose job it is to scout locations; not by the leading man/exectutive producer taking pictures with his cellphone.
Les, perhaps still smarting over his students’ shabby treatment of Batton Thomas, shows little enthusiasm over going to Hollywood to pitch the movie. This sends the normally mellow Mason into a tizzy, demanding that Les join him immediately, his teaching job be damned. Mason is hellbent on involving Les in every single aspect of this movie project, but one questions the wisdom of dragging him along to the pitch meetings. Is no one in Hollywood going to be aware that Lisa’s Story already had been optioned and gone into production nearly six (!) years ago? And that, after insisting that he write the screenplay, Les arrived in Hollywood, splitting his time between complaining, daydreaming, and wishing for death , before walking away from and sabotaging the project?
Son of Stuck Funky 
