Montoni's – Page 2 – Son of Stuck Funky

Get The Funk Out

If comic strips can have clip shows. I guess they can have voice overs, too.

No characters are visible today, as (presumably) Funky rambles about how great Montoni’s history wall is. It’s the same irrelevant junk we saw Sunday, except that Mason Jarre is up there now. It’s not even drawn with much more detail.

And it feels out of order in the narrative. Summer has spent the last two days interviewing Tony about Montoni’s history, so she doesn’t need to be convinced Montoni’s has a lot of history she should investigate. Was this supposed to be Monday’s strip?

It even has another rewriting of its own history, calling John Darling a “TV celeb.” Oh, come on! The man’s dying words were a lament that he never got to become a celebrity:

On top of that, we saw John Darling being equated with these ancient fossils barely a month ago.

“Much of Westview’s history has passed through Montoni’s doors.” Yes, it’s amazing that prominent people in a small town have eaten in the town’s only restaurant. Sheesh. Get over yourself.

Four Weddings And A Funeral

Today’s strip inspired me to add “backpfeifengesicht” as a tag. The more obnoxious, unfunny, and useless Funky is being, the more proud of himself he is. Look at that gigantic wide-mouth smirk. You could open a Coke bottle on it.

“Westview history” has already turned into “Montoni’s history,” and is now turning into “Funky’s boring life story.” I realize that main characters will be disproportionately represented in a flashback arc like this. But could the strip pretend anyone else exists in this town?

If Montoni’s is a suitable venue for wedding events (and yes, that’s a big if) then it should have hosted dozens of marriages over 50+ years, not just the owner and his friends. Also, Montoni’s was a restaurant long before Funky ran it. Why are there no photos of weddings, receptions, or anything else from that era?

I guess catering doesn’t warrant mention in the history books, since Funky doesn’t mention Cory and Rocky’s recent ceremony. Or the time Montoni’s poisoned an entire wedding party. (hat tip: Comic Book Harriet.)

At least this is a little bit of a flashback. From left to right, I think that’s Jff and Pmm; Funky and his first wife Cindy; Becky and… who is that? That man is way too dashing and blond to be John Howard. Was Becky also previously married? I honestly don’t remember. And of course we have Les and Lisa and their forced, copyright-infringing Funderoos wedding.

The most interesting thing here is the facial hair on the man in the light blue shirt. Who in the Funkyverse had a Van Dyke beard and a Wade Boggs moustache?

For the second day in a row, Funky is telling Summer things about her own family history she should already know. And she’s apparently surprised to learn them.

His Story, Not Her Story

Blah blah blah.

I’d like to revisit Sunday’s strip, because there was a relevant bit of dialog:

She asked about the history of Westview, and he’s giving her the history of Montoni’s. These are not the same thing, even though the strip acts like they are.

It’s also not clear what narrative purpose this is supposed to serve. This week should be the comic strip equivalent of a clip show, where Summer’s “book research” is a framing device to setup a walkthrough of old stories. But it’s not even giving us that. It’s telling us trivia about old stories it assumes we already know, and doesn’t advance the current story of Summer writing her book. How do you get a clip show wrong? Funky Winkerbean found a way.

It almost feels like Summer is trolling here. Look at that big smirk as she dutifully writes down this useless information… about her own life. How does Summer not already know this story? Especially when there is a book series, a major motion picture, and a one-man fanatical cult devoted to her mother’s life.

Unnecessary Procedure

Hey, we got an appropriate Halloween visitor after all! The undead.

Tony Montoni is suddenly back from the dead and/or Florida. Or maybe he was just covered in flour the last time we saw him.

He recites the banal details of how the restaurant started, in classic Batiukian style: by listing all the steps in the process. “How did Montoni’s come to be? My father bought an Italian restaurant and renamed it. He smelled like pizza ingredients a lot.” That’s the kind of amazing insight into the human condition that will make Summer’s book an immediate best seller!

Tom Batiuk does not tell stories. He describes procedures. Think about any storyline you’ve ever seen in Funky Winkerbean. Everything is a rote description of the steps involved. Especially when it’s one of his precious publishing stories, where the whole point is to indulge his fantasy that’s the one being praised and fussed over.

What was Lisa’s Story? Fly to Westview. Ask Les to make the movie. Have Les sign the shopping agreement. Fly Les to Hollywood for the pitch meetings. Go to three different production companies. Find one you like. Go to lunch with them. Reach an agreement. Choose a director. Audition actresses. Begin filming. On and on it goes. Lisa’s Procedure was mercifully interrupted by the Point Dume fire procedure: unknown golfers accidentally start fire, fire spreads, Jeff announces plans to visit Bronson Cave, Jeff flies to Los Angeles, Jeff goes to Bronson Cave, Jeff ignores wildfire, Jeff has to be saved from wildfire, etc.

This strip loves to tell you what the procedure is going to be, describe or show every step of the procedure, negotiate irrelevant details, and perform formalities.

Not only is this going to be a boring rehash of unimportant trivia, it’s going to be done in the most tedious way possible. And no pizza box monster.

This week is going to be painful.

Forgetabilia

Today’s strip echoed a personal experience for me.

For almost as long as I can remember, my parents were small business owners. They ran a family business that started in 1980. When my father couldn’t do it anymore in 2005, my brother took it over. It operated continuously until 2020. You can probably guess what contributed to its demise.

When it was time to move out of the building, one of the more difficult things we had to do was take down all the pictures, mementos, awards, and other history that had been hanging on the wall for decades. There were pictures of old friends and loved ones who aren’t with us anymore. There were pictures of us with famous people. There were pictures of the time we were on a local TV news story. There were print magazine and newspaper articles. There were letters of commendation we had received about the work we did. There were letters that mentioned Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. There was even a Little League team photo plaque dated 1985, for a team I played on. Every item brought back a fond memory of a former time in our lives. So much of my family history was documented on those walls.

Montoni’s history wall sucks.

Three pictures of Tony Montoni? A local TV host? A 12-year-old playing Defender? A vague woman on a motorcycle? Most of this junk isn’t worth hanging on the bathroom wall, much less selling as “memorabilia.”

The picture of the visit from Bill Clinton is fine. Any personal interaction with a current or former POTUS is a big deal. But let’s talk about what’s not on this “history wall”:

Mason Jarre, a major Hollywood movie star who has been to Montoni’s multiple times, and initiated the Oscar-winning movie on the premises
Atomik Komix, a local, nationally prominent comic book publishing company, with two Hall of Famers on staff
Pete, the writer of this world’s equivalent of Star Wars, which was also filmed in this town
Holtron, a noteworthy prop from this movie, that is housed nearby
Cindy Summers, a local product who became a national news reporter and was so popular in high school her parties were covered by MTV
Bull Bushka, a local product who played in the NFL
Any of the high school championships Westview won (my local Applebee’s commemorates such things, and I live in a big city with several high schools)
Harry Dinkle, a man who single-handedly propped up the economy of Belgium
The pizza box monster, who doesn’t turn up in today’s strip either. As commenter Andrew pointed out yesterday, his real-life counterpart is on Luigi’s history wall.

And I never thought I’d have to ask this, but…. where are Les and Lisa? We’re supposed to take their ridiculous over-the-top Love Story rip-off and all its side plots seriously. So they’re a massive part of Westview history.

This pathetic display should be enough to convince Summer that her proposed “oral history of Westview” is unviable. On top of that, Funky is selling all this! Why would anyone want to read a history of Westview, when the people who live there and collected that history, don’t care enough to keep it?