Tag: WHS

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.

We The Sweeple

Link To Today’s Strip

Uh, Cindy works for Buddyblog and there is no “sweeps month” on the interwebs. Thus this gag, aside from being unnecessarily cynical and sort of obnoxious, is also quite dated and stupid too. “And that’s what we try to do…unless our advertisers balk”…there, it still sucks but at least it’s something applicable to THIS decade and not the 1990s. “Sweeps month”…when was the last time you even heard that mentioned in any context?

I hate it when he tries to pretend he’s commenting on “these times we live in” and such. Just get to the f*cking Butter Brickel thing, we all know it’s coming and the sooner it begins the sooner it’ll end, at least in theory. Cindy is by no means his worst female character but she’s undoubtedly one of the more grating ones.

Did I Stutter?

Link To Today’s Strip

Back in 1994 BatYak was considered something of a modern-day Nostradamus, courageously addressing timely social issues of the day long before they became fashionable. Guns in schools, teen pregnancy, drunk prom driving, alcoholism, divorce, talk radio, medical chart snafus…BatHack saw these broad social trends coming and tried to communicate these truths to us via his unique brand of obtuse wry banter, which unfortunately was just a bit too far ahead of its time for the “average” comic strip reader to properly appreciate. In an era marked by noisy dissonant pop-culture phenomenons like Nirvana and “For Better And For Worse” Batiuk’s subtle, more writer-ly take was lost in the shuffle. It was truly America’s loss.

Anyhow, it’s a real delight to see the still-dying Fred manage to weakly mutter his approval for the #hashtag movement as his loveless wife and reluctant caretaker Ann looks on with barely interested disgust at the frail wretch of a man her philandering ambition-crushing husband has become. So it turns out that the whole #anti-guns in schools arc was just a prop to take a victory lap acknowledging that FW addressed the issue way before it became trendy and fashionable. Nicely done. If any “young people” get teen pregnant or let talk radio inspire them to blow up post offices he’ll have that covered too. Sigh.

Koo Koo For Cocoa Putz

Link To Today’s Slice O’ Holiday Cheer

Beck I hear you calling
But I can’t come home right now,
Me and the band are in shambles,
And Harry ain’t around

Just a few more hours
And he’ll tell me what to do,
I think I hear him cackling,
Oh Beck, what can I do?

Sorry. Sorry about the post title too. Maybe one day we’ll have a big SoSF contest and YOU can try to title these things. Trust me, aside from reading the strip it’s the hardest thing about this. Anyhow, today we see WHS’ incredibly lax security exposed, as John blithely saunters into the school toting some hot chocolate for his right-handed bride Becky without as much as a “visitor” pass to identify himself. Shameful in this day and age. Apparently our armless pal Becky needs to burn the midnight oil and spend endless nights toiling over having her band play some basic Christmas standards for an hour and apparently there’s some sort of cutting edge band software involved as well, software I assume Dinkle invented. I like how she has to identify her own husband by his full name so “casual” FW readers will know they’re married, as how else would they? I bet that if you were to (ugh) go back and check out the entirety of (gak) Act III Becky and John are in maybe ten or fifteen panels together total. Ten or fifteen too many if you ask me.

This has been mentioned in the comments before, but isn’t it, uh…”interesting” how every FW character’s “passion” is always depicted as a thankless miserable chore? Drawing comic books, making pizza, writing maudlin cancer books, playing tennis, teaching music…no one ever actually enjoys these pursuits, they merely endure them. It’s just a thought, but perhaps FW might be more popular if only its worldview wasn’t so perpetually downbeat. But you already knew that.