Tag: The Bleat

The Les You Know-Part 3

Link to today’s strip.

Okay, perhaps Les’ students do know what a newspaper is, they’ve just never heard of the Westview Gazette.  Some communities will have a main newspaper, with local and national news, weather, ads, and so forth; they might also have a smaller, more-locally focused paper that’s a sort of “goings-on around town” thing.  They’ll have articles like “8 Signs You Should Replace Your Lawn Sprinkler” and “New Fish-Themed Restaurant Hopes to ‘Hook’ Diners.”  That could be what we’re talking about here, but leave it to Batiuk to absolutely refuse to be clear.

As for the joke…well, I can’t find one.

Update:  Well, I was wrong–the Westview Gazette is the town’s main paper.  And it has been for some time.  So, my attempt to excuse those darn kids’ ignorance was equally ignorant!

The Les You Know-Part 2

Link to today’s strip.

Okay, so the “joke” today is that kids are stupid and don’t know what a newspaper is.   Pretty typical of the “jokes” he makes when the setting is high school.  What I don’t get is that the Bleat crew, who make in-school videos, are also going to be writing copy for the local paper?  Can they do this?  Do they have any training?  It should be obvious that writing for a newspaper is not the same as writing for broadcast; I guess Batiuk feels that some of the crew wear headphones, so that’s like a hat with a “PRESS” card in it, so they can do both.  Right?

A podcast is probably more the Bleat crew’s speed, though I question the value of putting it on the county fair’s website.  County fairs do their best to be colorful and eye-catching, so a video would probably be much better.  (I’m assuming the Bleat crew could make a competent one.)  My understanding is that a podcast is an audio file of people chatting.   Would visitor’s to a fair’s website, upon seeing “Westview High Podcast,” click so they could hear “Look at the lights on that Ferris wheel!”  “And these hot dogs are great, I’ve already had forty!”?

The Power And The Snore-y

Link To Today’s Strip

Lacking anything of actual substance to say, strong female role model Cindy opts to brag about her salary instead, much to Dick Facey’s infernally smirking delight. What a waste of time, ink and paper. Maybe next year the “mass com” class can convert to some sort of pizza and comic books workshop, in which case they’ll have a whole host of interesting guest speakers to choose from.

The Internet Did It

Link To Today’s Idiocy

Yes, it was The Internet, the very same internet that saved Cindy’s flagging career. Everything used to be sort of almost halfway decent, then These Kids Today came along with their “world wide web” and the gizmos and such and yadda yadda yadda, it’s all mostly bullshit now. Sort of like how FW itself used to be halfway decent, then Lisa got wasted at a party and yadda yadda yadda everyone became a wry cynical asshole…if they managed to survive at all.

Everyone knows why BatBrain hates the internet so much, it’s given his dozens of critics a medium with which they can band together and mock his feeble efforts in unison as opposed to having to sit down and pen a letter to the editor of their local newspaper, a letter no one was ever going to read anyhow. Well I say “hard cheese” to that, my good sir. As long as I have some sort of functional internet access this blog isn’t going anywhere until that final Sunday strip where they FINALLY plop Les’ casket into the cold frozen leaf-strewn earth. Bank on it.

Fake It Til You Make It

Link To Today’s Thing

“My dad says your comic strip doesn’t really address the issues that young people face today and you just say that in your interviews to give the impression that FW is far more substantive than it actually is.”

“Ummmmmm, uh, yeah.”

Bernie’s dad sounds like he’s quite a character. He must be beaming with pride, what with Bernie just about ready to move up to 13th grade and all. Why is everyone pretending that Cindy is still a news anchor? Her last “big story” involved a ninety year old actor talking about the 1950s and while it may have made for a ripping good yarn, it’s hardly “news”, fake or otherwise.