Branch out for some booze

8/26/09

You know you’re doing poorly when a guy walks in off the street in his Farrah slacks and hits a home run off you. And hey look, Marty DeBong is a changed man now that he has a purpose in life! How heartwarmingly unrealistic…Well, I guess it’s at least as realistic as that giant freak hand and the mini-head fused to his shoulder.

8/27/09

Hey look, a coach drunker than Gil! That explains how he let a hobo kid pitch three innings. (Coach Branch didn’t even see any of the game. He just has a young hobo pitcher arm fetish.)

Looking for a silver lining? Well, it looks like this may be ending soon, so that’s something. Or if you’d rather, just hit the “Read a random post” button. You’re bound do get a comic and/or commentary more inspired than today. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go meet Coach Branch passed out in the gutter behind Taco King.

The lesson, as always, is: “Never try.”

8/24/09

8/25/09

The clear winner of the recent “What’s the  Crappiest Thing?” poll was “The fact that they taunted us with Coach Kaz, P.I. and the whole thing devolved into THIS abomination.” Yep, the unfulfilled tease is probably the worst crime currently going on.

And now it seems this whole sorry mess is starting to resemble last year at this time, where we learned that when you take an unprepared kid and put him in a game against much better talent, he’ll probably suck.

Since I can’t think of any good new lessons to be learned, why not just recycle some lessons from last summer?

First we learned the lesson: “Go to college, even if it’s a crappy imaginary college…because Lord knows it’s better than playing independent league baseball. Which is truly awful, but at least it’s better than living in Mexico. Stay in school, kids! Unless you’re Mexican, then skip school, but make a living selling smutty ‘Girls Gone Roadside’ DVDs to your college friends!”

Then we learned another valuable lesson: “Even if you give it your best effort, you probably suck, so you might as well get used to disappointment. It’s great how Gil can keep his nose clean and just make ol’ Coach Whatshisname do the dirty work of telling Elmer he’s been cut and will be sent back to Mexico on the next donkey out of town.”

And what did we learn today? That when all else fails, if recycling last year’s summer lameness is good enough for Neal, it’s good enough for me.

Poor Ted Catches a Stinkin’ Poll

8/21/09

Can I find a glimmer of interest in this? Sure, just take a line out of context:

“Every night. Poor Ted has to stay and be the catcher.”

Yeah that’s fun. Big fun, Coach Ted.

8/22/09

Nothing brings out a poll like a continually lame summer plot! So here ya go…

Delta, Schmelta

8/19/09

8/20/09

Hey look, Ted’s plan is to have the pitcher teach pitching! Goddamn brilliant, Ted.

Did you know that Delta (Δ), the symbol on the Local Hobo squad’s hats and shirts, in the world of finance measures the rate of change of option value with respect to changes in the underlying asset’s price. Delta is the first derivative of the value, V, of a portfolio of derivative securities on a single underlying instrument, S, with respect to the underlying instrument’s price.

Why am I telling you this? Well, I figured if you were into reading this comic lately, you were interested in totally boring crap. And now you’ve made it to the end of this post. Wow, what a glutton for punishment you are!

Smug Dick in Training

Ted: Gee Gil, it was sure nice of you to take time out of your busy schedule of sitting on your ass all summer to come meet me for lunch again.
Gil: Well, to be honest, I thought this place served Irish coffee. But as long as I’m here, I figure I can get you to pay for my lunch…
Ted: Yeah, great. And thanks so much for sending me the world’s biggest asshole to come be my assistant coach.
Gil: Sure, no problem. It was easier than paying him to do imaginary chores around my house. Plus I had to keep an eye on him so he wouldn’t violate my house, or my wife. This way I can play golf all day…and the worst that happens is he kills a couple poor kids. Who’s gonna miss them? But say, I think Marty may have swiped some of Mimi’s underwear. Mind if I talk with him?
Ted: Nah, I’ll do it, Coach. I realize if I’m gonna be a high school coach like you someday, I’ll have to start being a smug dick to everyone around me.
Gil: That’s the spirit. Now if you don’t mind I’m gonna space out for a bit and watch these melting walls…

Later…

Ted: (with a mighty tone of smug dickishness in his voice) Tell me Marty, how did you  BLOW $60,000?
Marty: Well, let’s see. That was about 6 years ago I got the money, which calculates out to about $834 a month. I spent it all on rent and groceries.
Ted: RENT and GROCERIES? If you were a thrifty hobo like me, you could have eaten out a dumpster and lived in the one next to it…You’d still have $59,998 today, presuming you spent two bucks on a swell shirt with flowers on it.
Marty: Wow, what a smug dick you are.
Ted: Thanks, I learned from the best!

Sure. Whatever.

8/13/09

Panel 1 concern: Did Gil gouge out Marty’s eyes before dropping him off at hobo child baseball camp?

Panel 2 concern: How are these kids’ standards so low that they give such a cheer to a scowling squinter? Oh that’s right, they live in Milford. (“Milford: We set the bar so low, it’s underground!”)

Panel 3 Concern A: Apparently Kaz’s pants are magical: How else could their plaidness maintain a straight line, even over a curved leg like that?

Panel 3 Concern B: Are Gil’s legs attached to his body?

8/14/09

If Marty isn’t careful, he could smack one of those goofy urchins in the face! C’mon Mary, quit being so careful!

Which he blew indeed…and a rant about archives or something

8/6/09

8/7/09

Quick questions before I get into a half off-topic rant:

• Why is Mimi yelling the word “overuse”?
• Has Whigham spaced out as much as we have? He apparently keeps himself amused by drawing somewhat hott-ish pics of flexible jogging Mimi…But has forgotten that Marty DeJong is left-handed.
• Is Marty drinking Buzz Cola?
• Is the summer now time for repeats? This recap is dragging on and on with no end in sight…sooooo bored.
• “Which he blew” indeed.

So half-related rant (if you don’t care about comics archives, feel free to space out): It seems that the Chicago Tribune site has rerouted its main Gil Thorp page to the Go Comics site, where you can read a whopping week’s worth of comics if you sign up for free, or have access to all the archives for 99 cents a month. (Yeah, like I’m gonna do that.) I rerouted the link to “Today’s Comic” in the sidebar to the Houston Chronicle site, where they display the comic larger and prettier. Unfortunately, the Chron, which has always been the best newspaper for comics and their archives, now has dropped the way-back archives to a mere month of strips. Sigh.

At least all previous links back to the archives (like this for example) still work. They take you to the week in question, but no way to navigate to other weeks. Double sigh. So I’m gonna check with the nice folks at the Tribune to see if they can hook up a decent archive page again. I’m not holding my breath.

What does everyone have against free Gil archives? If you have any tips on finding a workin’ archive page, e-mail me please. End rant.

Now back to sit in my Grampa Simpson old crackpot chair in the corner.

What DeJong strange trip it’s been…

Well then…it seems we weren’t supposed to recognize the, um, whatever type of criminal this kid is supposed to be.

It turns out it’s Marty DeJong! You know, Marty DeJong? The guy recently retired as a popular Kalamazoo softball coach (word on the street is Elmer Vargas muscled his way into the job with his excellent bi-lingual marketing skills…)

No wait, that was the real Marty. The Milford Marty DeJong was in high school earlier this decade (thanks commenter billytheskink for the reminder of exactly when…), where he was a super-studly star pitcher who wanted to win State as a senior. He was good enough that creepy-looking pro scouts (are there any other kind?) took notice, and with Gil’s guidance, decided to skip college and go pro. Which was all well and good, except Brent Raptor, a fat freshman at the time, cost the team the State championship with a fielding error followed by the inability to get his lard ass to first on what should have been a deep single that would have won the game. Good times.

Back from reading all that back story? Good. You can tell that was a long time ago because A) Milford had a good team, B) Gil cared about coaching and C) Brent Raptor was only 350 pounds. So what’s Marty’s beef? That he went pro and failed miserably, thereby missing  out on all the opportunities a degree from Shain Tech had to offer? That Gil’s starting a shortstop the size of Neptune cost him a title? That his first name steered him toward a life of Gil-Hatred, like all Martys? In any case, I’ll hold out hope that Kaz will eventually be punching the crap out of poor little Uncle Rico, who probably now lives in a van down by the river.

UPDATE: I also dug up Billy’s other DeJong reference, the time Gil golfed with Marty’s chain-smokin’ dad. Enjoy.