Nate – Son of Stuck Funky

Testimony Of Nate Green

(NOTE: This begins my retelling of The Burnings. It uses information from the real comic strips to tell a much different story. Think of it as an “alternate universe” version of The Burnings. Be aware that court transcripts do not include stage directions, or descriptions of how forcefully or quietly the defendants spoke, just what they said.)

BAILIFF: All rise for the Honorable Collis D. Smizer.

JUDGE: Please be seated. We begin with case 53766673. Ah, this is the criminal trial for the Village Booksmith fire. Prosecution, you may call your first witness.

(Nate Green, having sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, testifies as follows:)

PROSECUTION: Please state your name for the record.

NATE: Nathaniel Green, but I go by Nate.

PROSECUTION: And you are the principal of Westview High School?

NATE: Yes.

PROSECUTION: And how long have you had that position?

NATE: I joined Westview High School in 1977 as a teacher, Al Burch retired in 1986, I was vice principal in 1988, and was principal by 2008.

PROSECUTION: Were you aware that Westview’s teacher Les Moore was teaching Fahrenheit 451 in class, even though this book was unapproved by the school board?

NATE: Yes.

PROSECUTION: Did you allow him to teach it?

NATE: No.

PROSECTION: Did you take any action to stop him from teaching it?

NATE: Yes. I specifically told him it wasn’t approved to order, and that meant “not approved to teach.”

PROSECUTION: What did you do when you discovered he was teaching the book anyway?

NATE: Nothing.

PROSECUTION: Why not?

NATE: Because I can’t do anything to Les Moore. For some reason, he’s got some kind of protected status in this community. I don’t dare discipline him. I get that he’s famous because of Lisa’s Story, but he’s honestly an awful teacher. He’s basically a tenured professor, and he knows it. I couldn’t even get rid of him when we had layoffs.

PROSECUTION: How is he an ineffective teacher?

NATE: Have you interviewed the guy yet? He’s elitist, condescending to his students, thinks he’s God’s gift to writing because of that book, wastes class time on pointless speakers he likes, and disappears for months at a time. One time he used his students to wage an in-school media war against me about copier usage, and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

PROSECUTION: You couldn’t discipline him for that?

NATE: No. The school board said it would “upset the community.” The same school board he’s defying now.

PROSECUTION: You said he missed months at a time? You couldn’t discipline him for missing too many work days?

NATE: Oh, get this. Every time Les didn’t want to go to work, he took bereavement leave. He found out the school board never put a time limit on it, so he just kept mourning Lisa for decades. Then when it was time to make the movie, he spent months in Hollywood because he had a huge number of sick days saved up. Again, the same school board he’s defying now.

PROSECUTION: Did you know that Mr. Moore had instructed his students to pick up the books at Booksmellers, and later The Village Booksmith?

NATE: Well, he didn’t tell me, but you know, it’s high school. Kids talk, word gets around.

PROSECUTION: Did Mr. Moore say anything to you about this plan?

NATE: Of course not.

PROSECUTION: Did any parents contact you with concerns about the book being taught in class?

NATE: No.

PROSECUTION: What did you think when you heard about the Booksmellers fire?

NATE: I didn’t really believe it. It seemed far-fetched. Fahrenheit 451 is not an offensive book. It’s not the kind of book anybody would burn in protest. At the time, I thought maybe the fire was unrelated.

PROSECUTION: And what about the second fire?

NATE: Well, after the second fire, the school board called me in for a meeting. I guess they didn’t believe the first fire either.

PROSECUTION: What did you say?

NATE: Well, technically Les was right. The book wasn’t approved to order, and he didn’t order it. So he didn’t really do anything they could punish him for. I just told the board he did this without my permission or approval, which was true.

PROSECUTION: So Mr. Moore openly defied you and the school board?

NATE: Well, he found a loophole, but he knew he was defying their wishes. He gave me this smug speech about the list not being clear.

PROSECUTION: Did he ever say why he chose to teach the book when the list implicitly forbade it?

NATE: Hmm. He didn’t, now that you mention it. You know what else he did, though? This one time–

PROSECUTION: –okay, thank you, Mr. Green.

No, Principal Nate, “Suggested” Means “Not Legally Enforceable”

After wasting a week on Dinkle and book signings, Week 2 of The Burnings begins with a huge exposition dump.

Before we get to it, a question: if Tom Batiuk hadn’t put out this puff piece in the Cleveland newspaper, would you even know last week was the beginning of The Burnings? Last week saw three authors, two of whom are nationally relevant, standing around smirking at each other during an unrelated book signing. Which is a very common story in the Funkyverse. The Act III links above show that Les alone did book signings in 2010, 2011, 2017, 2019, 2021, and now 2024. Most of them were multi-week arcs. Today’s strip feels like the beginning of the actual Burnings story.

Snarkocalypse, Soon!

today’s strip

Before I mock Summer and her new, sleek, angular, pointy appearance, a few words on the looming heat death of the Funkyverse. Obviously, without a daily strip, we will not be doing daily posts anymore after December 31. The site will remain alive for the foreseeable future, and we do hope we get new FW material to complain about. It’s not going to shutter right then and right there. But this is Batiuk we’re talking about here, so there’s just no way of knowing how it’ll actually go. He might drop 365 new FW strips on his blog on January 2, or he might do a feeble, one-off comic book cover eight months from now, or anything in-between. There will not be a re-read from the beginning, nor will we switch to “Crankshaft”. The daily strips are the engine that runs the whole thing and without those, it’ll never be the same. I’m not sure how or if sporadic posts will work, but that’s a bridge to cross at some later date.

From here on out, TFH and I will be sharing SoSF hosting duties. We are bandying around some ideas, and we very much want to give our beloved guest authors, both present and past, AT LEAST one more shot before the end, and see what happens after that. We likewise hope our faithful readers will remain entertained and engaged to the end, and we’ll do what we can to make that happen. For TFH and I, it marks the end of a long, long road. While Lord knows it wasn’t “hard work” by any means, it did require a daily commitment, and by “daily” I mean DAILY. FW runs literally every day, without fail, and we have always ensured that our loyal readers had a working link to the stupid strip, as well as a place to clown on it. We never missed a post, ever. We feel we owe it to ourselves and SoSF itself to ride it out to the very end, and savor it while we can. For me, SoSF is part writing exercise, part deranged personal vendetta, but mainly it’s been a labor of love. And I’ll be touching on that a lot more in the coming weeks.

So anyway, yeah, how about this new, aerodynamic, de-shaggified Summer, huh? I’m assuming that he brought her back upon learning that FW would be ending, as he didn’t seem to care too much for the last ten years. And, interestingly enough, I don’t care now! It’s just like Batiuk to be wasting time on Harley the janitor when he has barely six more weeks to go. The strip is jammed full of long-running characters, it’s winding down to the end, and he’s focused on Ruby and Harley.

And now, from the SoSF arc recap archives, a Great Moment In SoSF History:

Dec 27, 2010 – Jan. 2, 2011
Les hosts a New Year’s Eve party. Susan announces that her divorce is final. At the stroke of midnight, Les is smooching Lisa’s Ghost.

Man, that was a real humdinger. Easily one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever seen. Les was furiously making out with himself, while a horrified Cayla and Susan looked on in revulsion. That was Cayla’s second hairdo, her “dreads” look she was sporting for a while. See, back then, Les was still only “seeing” Cayla, and Susan was still lurking around, shamelessly throwing herself at Les at every opportunity. Meanwhile, Les was still madly in love with Ghost Lisa, who was a constant presence back then, despite being dead, which happened in a story arc you may have heard about once or twice. When you look back on that period now, it’s amazing how action-packed it was compared to, say, 2020 or something.

0-2-1-3-4

Today’s strip is all about the numbers for me… and not just the zip code of “Boston, Mass”. We’ve got 3 faculty on stage here, which is what… half of WHS’ known paid staff these days (along with Les, Cayla, and Lefty)? Of course, maybe you only need 4 teachers, 2 administrators, and a Dinkle when you only have 16 students in your senior class. To be fair, only nerds would show up for a school assembly during the last weeks of their senior year, so maybe these are just all the nerds (that would explain why Maris Rogers is having to plan on crashing graduation parties instead of hosting them).

Wait a second, this is the Senior Honors assembly. That explains it…

^{With credit and apologies to the Scotts, Smith and Hepting.}

My Dinkle-ing, My Dinkle-ing…

Twenty Twenty One may be just getting blessedly underway, but Our Winter Band Banquet is drawing to a close. I’m praying for Covid to finally reach Westview, Ohio soon, so that all those dopey, knowing smirks will be obscured by masks. Continue reading “My Dinkle-ing, My Dinkle-ing…”