Tag: Montoni's

Unfunnies

Today’s strip offers up plenty to snark upon! Let’s go in order, left to right.

The draftsmanship: terrible. Really. Funky’s profile has all the vitality of  an Indian on the head of a well-worn nickel. Les’ sweater makes him look like a Westview High freshman after a magic marker attack. Crazy Harry looks strangely 2-D; and when did USPS workers adopt a bright yellow shoulder patch? What a crew.

Moving on: Harry has three school-age children (that’s right, three), yet he’s completely unaware that “there’s a school levy on the ballot?” (And isn’t there a school levy on the ballot every year?)

Panel 2: “Don’t you read the newspaper?” BWHA ha ha ha! That’s funny enough by itself to serve as today’s punchline! But boy, oh boy oh boy: panel 3…what can I say? Who has done more to suck the funny out of the funnies than our boy TB? And he’s copped to it before…

Punchlines? There should be an app for that.

The end of summer means hauling the outside patio furniture down into the basement (unless they do this every evening for some weird reason) and gives us a chance to see what cruel ravages dementia has wrought upon poor ol’ Tony, who, by even conservative guesses, must be pushing 80 by now.  Thankfully, the time jump was much kinder to older characters like Dinkle and Tony than it was to Funky.  A halfhearted attempt at humor is made, punctuated by a chime-in from the new employee at Montoni’s, who appears to be baked off of his ass.

Oh wait, that’s Summer,who lives with Les, goes to the same school Les teaches at, and works at the same greasy pizza dump he manages.

I know they say running away never solves anything but whoever said that obviously never spent any time in Westview.

Meanwhile, Tony, sliding comically into full blown dementia, complains that Darwin confused him with all of his technical gobbly-gook talk about application programming, probably in a desperate attempt to justify his salary, to which one thinks; hey, boy wonder, if you can’t explain what the hell you’re doing to the average layman then you’re probably not a very good MBA.

I Am the Man in the Box

Where I come from, we print things out. “Printed it off” sounded weird to me (like “playdowns” instead of “playoffs”). But a Google search turned up this forum thread, so we’ll allow it. Today’s strip continues to beat the same dead horse, but anyone reading it outside the context of the rest of the week’s strips would have no idea what the joke was.

Your humble scribe feels the need for a mental health week; for the next seven days, guest blogger davidorth will serve as your guide to the Westviewniverse!

To Each His *yawn*

The odd perspective in panel one of today’s strip is no doubt meant to draw attention to the cup filled with pens and pencils atop Tony’s quaint and homey roll-top desk.  It is one of these writing implements (and not a flip phone as I first thought) that Tony wields, and I hoped that he was sneaking up on “Boy Lisa” to “stab him in the eye” as suggested by Epicus Doomus. It’s been interesting to follow the comments here this week: it’s an unscientific sampling, to be sure, but the bottom line is that, paper-based or digital (or both), you’re going to use what you’re comfortable with.

'Roids

“It’s-a meeee, Ton-eeee!”

“…and speaking of Asteroids, I think I’ll go downstairs and lose myself in my collection of vintage arcade games.” The harangue continues into Day 4, and yeah, folks, I peeked ahead because I have to: the theme continues through Friday and Saturday. As I pointed out Tuesday, Darin has, over time, lost his Pinocchio nose and become less “cartoony”, while Tony is just a red cap and pair of overalls away from going into the plumbing business.

SoSF would like to note the passing of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, a genius entrepreneur and inventor whose vision changed the world (while unfortunately giving rise to smug know-it-all technogeeks like Darin). Rest in peace, Steve.