Crankshaft by Tom Batiuk and Dan Davis for December 08, 2024

Let’s give credit where it is due today, as Tom Batiuk is writing what he knows here. In this case, it is giving a work one title and having its contents be something totally unrelated.

Actually, Harry, it was lyricist Joseph Mohr who called the poem he wrote “Silent Night.” Mohr then asked composer Franz Xaver Gruber to write a melody to accompany his words so they could play the new song at an 1818 Christmas Eve Mass in the Austrian town of Oberndorf. Maybe if you studied composers other than Claude Barlow you’d know this.

Just a side note, but today’s Lio shows how to do a proper Sideways Sunday.

Sounds like my old high school’s band. Drove our director crazy.

Hahaha! See, it’s funny because Dinkle is being an obnoxious a-hole to a roomful of children he literally just met!

What does the band play next? “O Holy Blight?” “It Came Upon a Midnight Drear?” “The Little Bummer Boy?” “Dork the Halls with Vows of Folly?” Or will we get an entire week dedicated to the classic about the Soviet diplomat who told a stubbornly contrary American visitor that a torrential downpour was about to strike Moscow? The argument ended only when the visitor’s wife gently told her husband “Rudolph the Red Knows Rain, Dear.”

“If the composer had wanted a hip-hop tempo, he would have called it ‘Suge Knight’!”

Maybe the band kids will show Dinkle their new original composition, “SOYLENT Night”. (He won’t be missed.)

I thought ‘blaring’ was the goal.

He shouldn’t be aloud to conduct that piece. He should stick to Dingle Bells.

They are making a joyful noise.

It’s past time to rename this strip if it’s not going to feature Ed Crankshaft.

I thought it sounded fine!

I seen that red coat…….thought……that’s what I get for thinking…….

Yeah, this isn’t funny.

next song revolution number 9

Well, he almost turned into crankshaft in the last panel. I guess that’s as good as it gets.

Good news: according to the penultimate panel, the “Holiday Concert” is this Thursday, 12/22! So only four more “Dinkle yells at children and assures they will never associate music with joy” left!

Sometimes it pays to be a beady-eyed nit-picker.

Been a very good week for me, hitting random and catching up on great old story lines where Ed Crankshaft, the title character was featured in every single strip.

Huh, the Centerville band director will be out of action until after the “holiday” concert. Just long enough for Dinkle to relive his past glories. What a coincidence.

I have to wonder, did the Centerville band director sufferer some kind of unfortunate accident? Were the brake lines of their automobile mysteriously severed?

Meanwhile down at the Dale Evans Ed asks:

“Does anyone know what happened to that guy Eugene that used to date Lucy?”

According to the marquee they only got four days. Never gonna make it.

Hard Day’s Loud Night

Where’s Crankshaft?

SILENT NIGHT is not orchestra. just have a sopran do it a’capella

In some secluded rendevous….WHOOPIE!

Just do the halftime medley of Beloved Christmas Carols and leave it at that.