Westview High School – Page 48

Blackburn Ordinances

Today’s strip is a serious reach. I mean, given that this is a band Holiday Concert I assume this is all instrumental, can’t Lefty just alter the program to say “The Christmas Song”, as us beady-eyed nitpickers (and everyone who bought a Christmas record ever) know to be the true title of “Chestnuts Roasting”?

Not that I expected this gag to match some absurd reality in Ohio, but for what it is worth, the Ohio EPA’s open burning regulations allow for “barbeques, campfires, and cookouts” provided these conditions are met:
– Wood stack no larger than 2 ft. high x 3 ft. wide.
– Use clean, seasoned firewood or equivalent.

Nothing that would prevent roasting chestnuts, of course. Also, big kudos to the Ohio EPA for titling their pamphlet on how your local fire department needs to be involved should you decide to raze a structure you own using fire “Burning Down the House: How Your Fire Department Can Do it Properly”.

Discr-hymn-ination

Mild-mannered principal Nate springs out of character in today’s strip and demands that Lefty remove “Faith Of Our Fathers” from the Holiday Concert program.

Yeah, yeah, seen it before. Public school has to alter Christmas performance, removing an explicitly Christian song or statement in order to maintain an apparent separation of church and sta- WHOA! Nate has an entirely different reason for wanting “Faith Of Our Fathers” removed from the program? Oh ho ho, Tom, you got me. You got me good. I was totally thinking the one thing and then, BAM! Never saw this “mothers” thing coming.

It’s a classic bait-and-switch, like when the table of contents of my newspaper says the comics are on page E6, and I turn to E6 and find Funky Winkerbean.

“Faith Of Our Fathers”, by the way, is a hymn written about/in memory of English Catholic martyrs of the Reformation period. When TB picks a theme, by gum, he sticks with it.

Natepicking

We’re exactly two weeks away from the “Holiday Concert” teased in Today’s strip. Wait, it’s not just teased, like February’s “Winter Concert” was, it’s actually relevant to the strip that it is in! Crazy! This is, perhaps, the Westview High School Scapegoat Sign’s first relevant appearance since Act II.

Typically level-headed (for the Batiukverse anyways) and hands-off principal Nate Green decides his first principal-y action since reading the student handbook before the 2012 prom will be to meddle in the concert Lefty’s band has surely been rehearsing for at least a month.

Hmmm… A holiday performance? A public school official? Changes demanded? I wonder what topic TB could have possibly chosen to cram into his gag cannon this week? I wonder… but I cannot blame you if you don’t.

Novel Idea

I had no idea Les was teaching a class in comic books but it makes sense, considering Westview’s entire economy runs on the currency of comics, pizza and heartache.

It’s almost weird seeing Les without his yellow shirt in today’s strip— it’s like Charlie Brown without his striped shirt!

Sands of Time

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.