How many haiku
Can today’s strip generate?
Maybe four or five
Funky cannot lift
As much as active duty
Soldier, surprising?
Where did Funky learn
To lift heavy things? Was it
On a fishing boat?
Off balance? Ha no
We all know “Weebles wobble
but they don’t fall down”
A dove in the park
Up on a helium tank
It makes a high coo
So sorry about
Last irrelevant haiku
Needed to get five
She had to go there, didn’t she? The inexorable March of Time is Cindy Summer’s own cancer, her PTSD. Her classmates back in Westview may grumble–a lot– about getting older, but they do so with smirking resignation. She has to make it the leadoff topic of your afternoon beach time with her Hollywood Actor Boyfriend. Cin: you were Most Popular in high school and went on to a career in network television news. Yeah, you got a raw deal at ABC, but if you’re so obsessed with aging, why did you pass up the opportunity to call them on their blatant age discrimination? Even given that setback, you were handed a job that allowed you to be near your boyfriend who inexplicably seems to be truly in love with you. The rest of the women in your WHS graduating class have all given up and morphed into indistinguishable slatterns (or live on in digital video!). Their “last cute decade” ended with Act I. And the only available male in Westview runs a comic book store. Quit. Whining.
Oh boy, everything in today’s strip not only unsurprisingly goes back to comics but even features what appears to be a 18 year old Pete getting the chance to haul Darin in to the clutches of the evil Hollywood.
“We’re ready to get started on the story boards, Pete?” I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t film first and then do storyboards later, given Tombat’s understanding of Hollywood.
So now we have Darin, an MBA, working at a pizza joint, raising a kid, developing apps and sidelining a job storyboarding for a major film for Hollywood. Yes, this is a normal person, sure. At this rate, by next year he’ll also be doing anesthesiology and training circus seals.
Today, DSH John suddenly appears, which is always unsettling. We can be grateful, however, that he has nothing to say, although he does smirk in the final panel.
BanTom favors us once again with unnatural dialog that exists only to introduce a pun. When Stephan Pastis does this in Pearls Before Swine, however, he builds elaborate chains of verbiage—so you know what’s coming, and the fun is in trying to anticipate the pun line.
The structure of today’s joke is much different. (To paraphrase the magnificent Alice from The Vicar of Dibley, and as a reminder, a joke is a story with a humorous climax.) Panel 1: Funky delivers the straight line, which contains the curious phrase “the band box is R.I.P.” Do people use R.I.P. as a synonym for dead in Ohio? If so, I haven’t heard it during my visits there. Anyway, he delivers the straight line: “Either the band box is R.I.P., or I bite the bullet and get it repaired.”
In Panel 2, in a case of premature jocularity, Crazy Harry delivers the punch line: “Biting the bullet would make you a very high-caliber person.”
And aye, here’s the rub: there’s still one more panel to fill. There has to be a second punch line, which I’ll not deign to reproduce here. And that utterly ruins the structure of the joke. Also, there’s smirking.
Happy Easter, gang, and a tip of the ol’ SoSF Easter bonnet to Epicus and SoSFDavidO for their guest stints over the last several weeks! Your pal TFH is stepping in to ramp up the “festivities” marking the fifth anniversary of Son of Stuck Funky this week!
Before laying eyes on today’s tableau, I’d have wagered that today’s holiday would have passed unremarked (as it is in today’s Crankshaft, but then Easter 10 years ago might have fallen on a different Sunday). Despite the abundance of baskets, bunnies, and eggs, this scene suggests Christmas (specifically the Epiphany) more than Easter, as Westview’s Holy Family is surrounded by the Magi bearing gifts. I recognized dowdy, nondescript Kerry, Fred’s daughter from his first marriage, though she’s not been seen since Thanksgiving 2013. It took me a lot longer to surmise that the big smirking blonde to the right is Jessica’s mom Jan Murdoch Darling (you’re welcome).
Anyway, it’s a good thing for Skyler that this mob showed up bearing baskets, else he’d have had to content himself with that pitiful tiny basket before him, which I don’t think even contains any chocolate—that green rabbit’s probably made of carob or some crap. It’s certain that the basket’s chintzy size has less to do with “keeping Skyler away from candy”—on one of the two big candy holidays all year, for goodness’ sake—and everything to do with Boy Lisa’s meager Montoni’s salary.
Son of Stuck Funky 
