September 2017 – saleintothe90s

325. “Censors Keep a Christmas List” (The Evening News, 12/24/1985)

“Banned Books Week” begins this week, and even if this article says “CHRISTMAS”, I thought it would be timely to post it this week:

(source)

I tried SO hard to find the article about the Donny & Marie album bonfire. The two articles I found were both behind paywalls at newspapers.com. It happened around October 19, 1984 in Bowie, Maryland.

324. Eve, the Chimpnapped Chimp (Chicago, October, 1982)

“Eve, the chimpanzee missing rom the Lincoln Park Zoo since Monday was found late this afternoon in a house in the Sotuhside. Police found the chimp during a drug raid.”

(source)

Now we know, you guys. Don’t feed the chimp you stole bananas. They’ll poop ‘em out everywhere.

There’s an open monkey market? She was only worth $4,000? She’s adorable.

Her captor got probation in April of 1983.

323. Funky Winkerbean 1984-1986, part 2

(part 1)

So I left off with Les wetting the bed over breaking up with Lisa and Lisa being with a new guy. Les decides to confront Lisa at her house, with intent on getting back together:

At the time, we thought that Lisa and her boyfriend at the rival school thought they were ready for the responsibilities of sex, and they were not. Then, in 2013, Batiuk edited (?) the storyline and made it appear that he date-raped Lisa:

Les takes care of Lisa in the last weeks of her pregnancy (archived in a flashback series from 2001) . Lisa tells Les that her once supportive parents now don’t speak to her:

even when she was dying in 2007, Lisa’s parents were still cold:

Near the end of 1986, Lisa gives birth (of course she would go into labor at Montoni’s):

and guess who adopted Lisa’s baby: Fred and Ann. Lisa flew off to her grandma’s house. She wasn’t seen again for a long time. A long long time.

At their 5 year high school reunion in 1993, Bull (Les’ bully growing up) thought that Les got Lisa pregnant:

Lisa’s baby, Darin found out that Lisa was his mom right before she died:

Yup Lisa gave him the sex talk. Like a good mom.

323. Funky Winkerbean 1984-1986, part 1

There’s so much to unpack from this volume of Funky Winkerbean. While Funky now runs at a snail’s pace with its storylines (Les hasn’t been seen at all this summer!) back in the day, the strip moved at a more enjoyable pace. Almost all the storylines took place at the school, no depressing things.

I skipped some things like any Dinkle / band storylines, the endless weeks of the kids defining words poorly on tests, inanimate objects thinking, and the reader submitted Star Wars jokes.

There were more celebrity references back then. Now Tom Batiuk just gets things inaccurate, like Conan O’Brien having yellow hair at comiccon a few months back:

One celebrity driven storyline that lasted a week was Les not liking Michael Jackson, making Les even more lame than he already was:

There’s even a Ted Koppel Nightline reference with the big interview screen.

I feel like Batiuk had a bug up his butt about Michael? Les even got to see him in concert with Funky near the end of the volume:

Mike?

Another long-running storyline was Les vs. the rope climb. One time it caught on fire?

The “popular” later spun off into his own strip, Crankshaft the bus driver was introduced because Les broke his leg falling off the rope climb. Was he not allowed to ride the bus before? I don’t get that everybody had to walk or drive themselves to Westview high school? You had to have permission to ride the bus?

I don’t know where to categorize this one, but for some reason, the kids in the cafeteria had a fight about the old “tastes great! less filling!” Miller Lite beer commercials? Underage drinking was way more lax back then.

There was a parody of Halley’s comet being a huge disappointment. There’s old man crankshaft remembering the first time it went by in the Victorian era.

I hope my husband says that to me at my wedding .. oh wait. Pretend historians don’t get married.

Other than Lisa (more on that in a sec), Ann was da real mvp of this series. Ann is the school’s secretary who is married to the vice principal, Fred. In a book full of stupid Dinkle the bandleader storylines, Ann was a breath of fresh air. I love her cute little glasses and tube tops.

Unfortunately, Batiuk has made even their love depressing. Fred had a stroke a while back and is totally unresponsive.

BUT. Their wedding was almost like Les & Lisa’s in ‘96. Les forgot the license, and had to get Susan’s help. They got married and had their reception at Montonis too.

I’m finally getting to Lisa. Lisa was introduced in this volume as a skittish girl who was afraid of her SAT: