silhouette – Page 12 – Son of Stuck Funky

Doo Diligence

So Mason is insisting on holding a phony casting call just to assure Les that he’s putting every available resource into finding the perfect Lisa, even though he’s already decided who’ll play her? So they’re going to waste thousands of dollars and everyone’s valuable time just to put the smug bearded dick with ears at ease? BatHam’s insane “inside Hollywood” fantasies are spiraling out of control again. This is the most laughable cancer movie premise yet and they haven’t even settled on the cast yet. For anyone else setting your story on the set of a Hollywood movie would have all sorts of potential, but just like with Starbuck Jones he instead opts to focus on the most mundane aspects, like picking up a guy who’ll be sitting in during casting. Yet another fanciful sub-universe full of lore, characters and lingo where absolutely nothing ever happens. Sigh.

Why is Cindy always chauffeuring Les around? Isn’t she some sort of newscaster? It always amazes me how everyone in the Funkyverse always seems to have nothing better to do at any given moment. “The same driver”…he mentioned another arc, albeit a way more recent one this time. He’s suddenly doing that all the time and I find it kind of unnerving.

The Lifetime of a Role

Link to today’s strip.

Charles: I just realized that with Mason being on the masthead, the guy tailing Les is Mason, who is surreptitiously researching Les for his role.

Holy moley, I think that’s got to be correct. It’s so utterly stupid (on Batiuk’s part, I hasten to add) that it has to be real. I can just see Mason thinking (if that’s the right word) “I’ll follow Les as he drives to and from work, so I can get his driving pattern down perfect, for the movie to be real.” (Let’s not bring up that it’s actually Cayla driving.)

Because I can just as easily see someone in the Valentine audience wrinkling his face with disgust and saying, “This movie is total garbage. Everyone knows Les does a ‘rolling stop‘ when he drives away from the high school. He also tends to weave leftward. I’m leaving and I want my money back.”

Because I can thirdly see Mason imagining the above scenario, and breaking out into a cold sweat.

Speaking of cold sweat, our “mysterious” driver seems to be experiencing one, despite the fact that a) he could simply go around and continue on the road, and thus allay suspicion, and b) the sight of a racing Les, arms flailing, is one of the most hilarious things this strip has shown. Our mystery driver should be shaking with laughter.

It’s a pity that “Shoot!” in panel three is just a thought balloon, rather than an order to a guy with a shotgun sitting in the passenger seat. That would lead to the greatest Saturday strip in the history of Funky Winkerbean. I wouldn’t even mind the sideways comic-book tribute Sunday strip showing the funeral.

Dreaming of Sleazebags

Link to today’s strip.

Well, I guess the dream is over, as Les pivots from a dream that kept him tossing to now note how he’s “thinking” about Frankie. Maybe Batiuk doesn’t know the difference between dreaming and idle musing, but I’m pretty sure the latter is how he gets all his “ideas.” But look at Cayla in panel one! That’s the face of someone who is soaked in regret. I’ve never seen weariness, God-am-I-sorry-I-asked, Please-Stop-Talking so well portrayed, so kudos to Ayers again.

And of course that’s Frankie in panel three. What exactly is he going to do? Demand that he be in the movie, or get money from the movie, because…reasons? He has no relation to anyone still alive other than Dullard. He certainly won’t have anything he can use as leverage over Les. If the movie was “Dullard’s Story” he could, perhaps, claim to be an integral part but it isn’t so he can’t. I am genuinely curious as to what kind of scheme he’s going to launch, despite the fact that Batiuk always disappoints.

I guess since the movie version seems to be moving along nicely, Batiuk needed a villain and, well, why not Frankie. More Hollywood types whining that “Lisa’s Story” won’t play in China might have been too much repetition, even for Batiuk (hard as that is to believe).

The music of the years gone by.

Link to today’s strip

Except he wasn’t named for a sandwich, Pete. According to the ever reliable Wikipedia, Hoagland Howard “Hoagy” Carmichael was named after a circus troupe called the “Hoaglands” that had stayed at the Carmichael house during his mother’s pregnancy.

And we keep slipping further back in musical history, because ‘Stardust’ was recorded in 1927. I expect tomorrow we’ll be referencing ‘Maple Leaf Rag’, and by June Ruby will have pulled out a phonautograph to listen to the 1860 recording of ‘Claire De La Lune’.

At least Stardust has become something of a timeless classic, with famous covers by Sinatra, Louie Armstron, Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, Willie Nelson, and Fred Flinstone.

So don’t besmirch the Hoag for his weird name dear Pete. Then man wrote hundreds of songs, over decades, including ‘Georgia On My Mind,’ ‘Stardust’ and ‘Heart and Soul.’ HEART AND SOUL, Pete! The only song other than ‘Chopsticks’ passed around from one unlessoned kid to another via church basement pianos and children’s keyboards for decades immemorial. The song 70% of the population would try to plunk out if tied to a piano and told to play something under pain of death.

You will never, in your entire life, do anything that could even come close. Stardust was chosen by Library of Congress for the National Recording Registery. All you’ve done is come up with a handful of pathetic comic characters with even stupider names than Hoagland flailing their way through inane plots, barely earning you a footnote in history, Tom.

Um, I mean, Pete.

China Hates Lisa

today’s strip

Man, that Les face in the first panel is priceless. Poor, poor Les. Being forced to have a movie made of Lisa’s Story. If only he could say no. Which he could, of course, but won’t, because he’s a whiny child. A whiny child who called his wife up to whine about the travesty being done to the memory of his dead wife. Which, if it’s not the world’s story, then why did he publish it in a book as “Lisa’s Story”, exactly?

This really is Les at his most insufferable. I have an extremely hard time believing that even Batiuk thinks Les is sympathetic or at all likeable, but apparently he does.