Tag: Son of Stuck Funky

Dear Beady-Eyed Nitpickers:

Ladies and gentlemen,

To make a long story short: I’ve made the difficult decision to step aside after three years as your genial host. Snarking on Funky Winkerbean has been lots of fun, but it does consume quite a bit of time that I really need to be devoting to my family and my career.

The SoSF community is the wittiest and friendliest online community I’ve ever had the pleasure to be involved with, and I would hate to turn you all loose with no place to snark. To that end, I am looking for a successor. I feel that there are more than a few of you reading this whose ability to rip Tom Batiuk a new one on a daily basis far surpasses my own.

I’m hoping that I can turn over the proceedings here to a new master (or mistress) of ceremonies. In addition to a knowledge of Funky Winkerbean canon, the ideal candidate should have experience with WordPress and access to a web hosting service (preferably not GoDaddy, but that’s up to you). I would be handing over all assets: the sonofstuckfunky.com domain, the @sonofstuckfunky Twitter account, the last three years’ worth of posts, and help with the transition.

So give it some thought; do be advised that maintaining a blog like this can turn into a time suck (hell, just reading Funky Winkerbean can be a waste of time, let alone analyzing it). I will entertain any questions in the comments below, or you can contact me directly using the “Contact SoSF” form in the right sidebar of this page.

Thanks for reading and, for the love of God, stay Funky!

Your pal,

TFHackett
Son of Stuck Funky

SoSF's Third Anniversary Giveaway!

What’s the perfect reward for someone who invests precious time and energy every day into actively hating and griping about a 41-year old newspaper comic strip? How about a handsome, bound volume collecting three years’ worth of that comic strip? You know you want this book.

I just wish I could come up with a clever and challenging contest around such a coveted prize. Instead, the path to winning is stupid easy: just leave a comment on this post between now and 11:59 PM EDT, Saturday, April 13. As in past giveaways, the winner will be selected totally at random using the WordPress plugin “And the Winner Is“. Enter as often as you like, but if you’ve won a previous giveaway, another winner will be randomly chosen.

Thanks to everyone who reads and comments on SoSF!

Your pal,
TFH aka Tom Hackett

 

Small print:
Prize is a new, hardcover copy of The Complete Funky Winkerbean Vol. II, shipped directly from Amazon.com. Winner must provide shipping address. Enter before 11:59PM EDT, Saturday, April 13, 2013. Son of Stuck Funky and this contest are in no way sponsored by or affiliated with Batom Inc., King Features Syndicate, or amazon.com.

Kathy Potter, 1960-2013

My youngest sister, Kathy Potter, suffered a sudden cerebral hemorrhage early Friday morning, and passed away Sunday, January 6, surrounded by family and many friends. Kathy was an amazing sister, mother, wife and daughter. Generous, caring, funny, extremely wise and immensely gifted, Kathy was the embodiment of our Dad’s humility and our Mom’s gentleness. She was the youngest of the six Hackett children, and the first to be reunited with our parents in Heaven. Kathy understood me like nobody else ever will, and she takes with her the million little in-jokes we had, as well as our shared hatred of poor font choices.

Kathy also shared my love/hate relationship with Funky Winkerbean. She returned to college later in life, majoring in Creative Writing and graduating summa cum laude from New Jersey City University in 2010. She helped form a poetry circle, and mentored, influenced and inspired many younger writers. I would be immensely flattered whenever she’d tell me she read one of my posts, and I wrote and edited SoSF always with the thought that she might be reading and secretly, gently critiquing.

Kathy’s generosity extends even beyond her time here with us, as the gift of her organs will improve and perhaps even save an untold number of lives. I ask that you keep Kathy, her husband Rae, her children Alannah and Garvey, and our extended family in your thoughts and prayers; consider being an organ donor; and most importantly, always be mindful that our time here is much, much too short. Thank you all for your well-wishes.

My Snark Will Go On

Not to sound too dire, because I don’t know how this will turn out…

This week King Features Syndicate finally wised up, and went to some kind of dynamic coding scheme that generates a crazy, non-human-decipherable link to the FW strips; replacing the old format in which a human could easily edit the date string to view past, present, and next weeks’ strips.

The old format allowed me to preview each week’s story arc, and write and schedule each days’ posts in advance, scheduling them to go live each day (ok, the night before each day; maybe that was asking for trouble).

I don’t think this affects the availability of  FW strips already on the web. However, it’s likely that the daily strips will now “go live” only at midnight or even later every day. I’m going to have to post “on the fly”, and that’s not going to be easy, what with having to be at my real job every morning.

In order that the snark may still have a home, I will continue to schedule a “placeholder” post each day. You all collectively create the bulk of the content here anyway (as well as the funniest). I’ll add my own daily observations as time permits. On the bright side, my newspaper carrier delivers my Sunday funnies with my Saturday Bergen Record, so even though I won’t be able to link to the strip, I can lay eyes on it first.

So this kinda sucks, but SoSF is still my favorite place on the web, and hopefully one of your favorites as well.

Thanks as always, and stay Funky!

TFH