Gone Blotto

http://www.chron.com/apps/comics/showComick.mpl?date=20101120&name=Funky_Winkerbean
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With all the time he spends with his ass parked on one of Montoni’s stools, you’d think Klinghorn would know every detail of the place, “right down to the nails in the floor“. But the absence of a giant rotating beer sign only registers a vague “crazy sense” that “something’s different”. Together the old friends undertake to remedy the situation by expending the absolute minimum thought, effort and expense. It serves as sort of a metaphor: today’s strip is the equivalent of an empty bottle of cheap beer, hastily put up in lieu of something truly pleasing to the senses.

I’m pretty sure the “Blotto Beer display” is based on the Budweiser Champion Clydesdale Rotating Carousel lamp, a handsome lighted globe that contained a miniature horse-drawn beer wagon that circled ’round and ’round. It made me think of my bartending days, where I had to eject a patron who stood on his stool and counter-rotated the lamp in an effort to get the horses to stand still…

Lastly: Google-image-searching “blotto beer” yields some borderline-NSFW results.

Oh my…Darling?!?

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What the…

Via flashback, Batiuk resurrects the other character whom he famously killed off. I guess the Westview football coaches really do have to talk to the media. And back when “Bull” Bushka was still playing (I’m guessing that’s him in panel 3, holding his helmet and weeping), their coach was…I don’t know, some guy. Young Ed Crankshaft, perhaps? Well, he does share Ed’s doorknob-esque nose, as well as his “is-he-being-sarcastic-or-is-he-really-that-clueless” worldview.

Ka-bitch-nik

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(A tip of the SoSF coonskin cap to Mr. David Orth for a stellar week of guest bloggin’! I’m back, rested and rarin’ to go! -TFH)

Are the halls of Westview High haunted by Mark Twain’s ghost? Nah, that would be too entertaining. ‘Tis merely Jim Kablichnik, the Science Guy of Westview High. Jim really, really loves his job. Shudder at his cold, soulless gaze in the first panel…“horrific” indeed.

TB’s bio states that he was a junior high teacher before becoming successful as a cartoonist. Yet he depicts the Westview faculty members as despising their jobs, and the students as clueless, unteachable delinquents. It’s a good thing for his students that he chose another line of work.