The Milford Punching Rules

3/30/10

Hey the Blue Oyster Bar cop is back! And he’s brought the chief of police for this high-profile crime. I imagine Milford is similar to Springfield in that it only employs a couple of inept cops (and a Chief Whigham/Wiggum of course…) It’s nice that the Chief will believe anything Gil tells him…even if it’s a line so bad it would make David Caruso leave his sunglasses on his face. But too bad there will be no investigation into whether Steve deserved a punch to the mouth (He didn’t. He deserved waaay more of a beat-down than that.)

So here are the rules:
Punching drunken lout: Awesome
Punching Valley Tech prankster after receiving boxing lesson from Gil: OK
Punching wall and hurting yourself: Good reason to be blackmailed into doing the Thorps’ yard work
Punching guy who does all of Milford’s coaching work for free: Assault AND Battery

Meanwhile the game that started 12 days ago is still going on. The eight remaining fans are now discussing who they plan to eat in order to survive this nightmare.

3/31/10

In a bizarre compromise, the fans decide it’s best to all eat each other’s faces. Shocked and appalled by the mutant crowd, and unwilling to make this game last a whole two weeks, Brenda Larkin wisely throws the ball into the stands and flees before the faceless zombie freaks notice some tasty-looking players are still in the building.

Marty, safe because the living undead prefer to eat brains, wakes up in time to see the end of the game. Luckily there will me no play-downs for Milford. Zombies hate play-downs.

The big mouth of the omega male

Gil saves the day for poor li’l Stevie. And so, with one alpha male safely pinning down another, omega male Steve inexplicably continues to be a dick by talking more smack to Ray. At this point, if Gil was any kind of man himself, he’d release the pizza flipper and let him finish off Steve for calling him “sport.”

But since Coach Thorp would rather not lose a guy who coaches for free, he keeps Ray pinned down. If only Cassie would explain to him that he’d get free pizzas instead of free coaching, maybe Gil would change his mind.

Wak of Love

So Steve takes a well deserved WAK! to the face for his smart-ass mouth and meddling ways. And Ray, being a distant cousin of Mark Trail, is inclined to punch anyone with suspicious facial hair. But even when being punched, Steve still has to be a jerk…defying the laws of physics by falling to the right from a punch to the right side of his mug. At least his glasses are with the program.

But then…someone with very nubby fingers comes to Steve’s rescue! Who could it be? While we’d all love to see Kaz get involved in fisticuffs, or possibly even Mr. Bakst or Clambake, money’s on Gil having finally stumbled in the door after knocking back a few at PUB then stopping off for some quick finger-shortening surgery.

Steve wants it hard. He gets it.

Panel 1: As we get a thirty-second snippet of the game each day, the current over-under on the completion of this game is July, 2013.

Panel 2: Meanwhile, Cassie realizes doing a load of laundry will ease the pain of her difficult situation.

Panel 3: Wow, coming from a drop-out janitor, that’s a pretty dickish comment, Steve. Wait a sec…holy crap, there’s gonna be a threesome! (Seriously though…”You want hard? You got it.”? What kind of writing is that? Intended entendre? Or not? You decide. )

No one asked you, Mr. Janitor. So keep talking.

3/23/10

Thanks for the exposition, Steve…I feel like this story did start around the time that luggage was in fashion.

3/24/10

What’s wrong with panel 1? It appears there’s a Thorp…coaching?

Meanwhile, moving onto “The Negotiator 6″,  where Steve attempts to block the young lovebirds’ marriage by boring them to death. By the looks of the third panel, he’s already lulled Ray into a coma, so it appears to be working.

3/25/10

I would really prefer just to turn into “WDIG Latenight” with our pal Marty to get the final score of this game…and just stick with resolving the Cassie drama at faster than glacial speed (I use the word “drama” loosely at this flat-lining plot.)

How dare people judge her! That’s certainly never happened to any high schooler before. So it seems like a swell reason to get married…And Cassie does have a good point: Milford hasn’t been in any title games for as long as she’s been alive, why should they start now?

Viva Las Milford!

3/20/10

Steve affirms his asexuality by not getting at all distracted by someone flashing her brights at him as he heads towards Ray’s apartment…

3/22/10

…where the exciting revelation is that Ray and Cassie never really broke up, and are on their way to Vegas for a quickie wedding! Cassie goes back to being one of my favorite characters, for staging an entire public break-up then feigning  interest in Steve for weeks to cover her tracks (Talk about a tough gig!) However, as soon as the Luhm-er convinces her not to get married, I’ll probably lose all respect for her again. Oh well, it’s nice to have characters with backbone…even if it’s only short-lived.

Backpack Attack!

3/18/10

What? Cassie’s gone missing and we need some useless ancillary character to drive to her house and see if she’s there? How about Coach Shaw? No, sorry, he’s busy driving around looking for the panel two background. How about we send Gil? He’s not all that drunk yet…

Meanwhile, Steve remembers Cassie left her backpack in his unibomber-style shack…the one where he stores his wrecking balls. (What he doesn’t realize is that she left it there on purpose. Who would want a backpack with a giant “M”* on it?)

3/19/10

…and the twist is, snoopy Steve discovers…PAPER!

Stay tuned to see if anything comes of this. But don’t hold your breath.

*The “M”, of course, stands for “monogram”.

Stupefying me into a stupidly stupid stupor: It’s stuporiffic!

3/16/10

Leave it to Marty Moon to liven things up again…First he pops in to wander around aimlessly through the gym with his freakiest of freak hands, proclaiming he’ll broadcast the girls’ next game on his imaginary radio show. Then he goes on to wave to his imaginary listeners while the ladies of Milford openly mock him. Perhaps he’s waving to the ghost of the guy who hung those championship banners in the rafters 85 years ago, you know, back when Milford was good.

Meanwhile…uh, what the hell is going on in the third panel? Is Cassie hanging out with Marty in his basement while he chugs down more Duff beer?

3/17/10

OK so, uh, Gil should take a look at what? Did Steve chop up Cassie into little bits and stick her in the fridge? This whole narrative is so confusing and sucky, I wish I was as lit up as Rubin was when he wrote it. And I bet it will all make some horrible, lame sense tomorrow. Tomorrow: today’s comic hangover. I can’t wait.