Bye Bye Birdshit

3/16/13

Right, coach…baseball’s a bird of a different feather! What does that mean? The kids been learning his witty bantering skills from Ed Crankshaft.

Yes, baseball is a bird of a different feather, and golf is a bird of an even different feather, although golf actually has several bird related terms like “birdie”, “eagle” and “krakfoozle”. However, baseball had Mark “The Bird” Fidrych and Rick “Goose” Gossage and also this bird getting blowed up real good by a Randy Johnson pitch.

Oh yeah, if you wanna rap about your dead brother and you can find me, I’ll be there for you, usually. I think I hear a hot toddy calling. Smell ya later, Birdbrain.

So Jay-Bird Wasn’t Two Peacocks?

2/20/13

Sorry folks, but you’ll have to look all the strips up here if you want to see them. I’d look soon. I think you can view the previous month at that site. I miss the old Tribune site and its generous archive, plus the window to the McLaughlin era. Well, heck, we still have that here if this blog never gets shut down for violating intellectual property law. I think the bottom line is that the producers don’t care. Who could blame them?

So if you haven’t kept up or you don’t care to, here is what you’ve missed: Fowler has been inspired to shoot the ball better by spotting a wandering peacock that represents to him his dead little brother. Okay, maybe that’s being generous to dimwitted Fowler. He thinks the peacock is his little brother. He shares this feeling with his girlfriend Mia, and shows her the peacock (which sounded funny the first ten times, but now, not so much) and Mia begins to play better. Fowler’s teammates get wind of the inspiration and the stupidest among them start to get jealous and insist that Fowler, yep, you guessed it, “show them his peacock”. Yes they they say these things with a straight face in the locker room.

I would like to pause at this point to offer a longwinded critique about the way this trip is written. It seems that the Milford sports teams always contain one ancilliary character who steps up to act impulsively and irrationally, shaving their head, getting tatted up, demanding to see your peacock, etc. These actions serve as an illustration of the spreading lunacy of the moment, but then the character fades back into the background and all is forgotten when the main character learns their lesson. Shouldn’t there be a trail of dead Milford Idiots that met their demise due to severe lack of good judgement or willingness to buy into wild, fanciful speculation about the nature of the world? Maybe I’ve forgotten how stupid teenagers are?

So, to pick up on the recap, Fowler bumped into a farmer that keeps peacocks on his farm down near the ravine and now he’s broken hearted because there are multiple peacocks, proving his little brother hasn’t been reincarnated. The good news is that Fowler is still Mia’s Boo. The bad news is that he’ll have to go back to the locker room and tell his teammates that the peaocks aren’t magical, so they should all chill out on demanding that Scott show his peacock to everyone because it won’t help. Either that, or he could wise up and treat them as the idiots they are and send them down to the ravine to look at the peacocks. The farmer will probably be happy to show his peacocks to teenage boys. If we’re lucky, some of them will fall in the ravine.

Motorcade Of Passion

11/1/12

“Hey Doyle”
“Hey, other guy. Ya wanna hear my latest scheme?”
“Do I have any choice?”
“Well I got us a couple of nun’s habits and a bullwhip…”

We interrupt this comic strip to bring you one delightful panel of the passion that can only exist between a girl and a delicious patty melt. She wraps her rapturous fingers around that lightly grilled sourdough bun which in turn caresses eight sumptuous ounces of the best charbroiled hunk of what can be referred to by law as beef. Zippy the Pinhead, what are you doing here? I thought you had to drive your Nash Metropolitan through the Delegates’ Lounge at the United Nations? Nice wig, it almost subtly disguises your disfigurement.

Excuse me, Doyle Dane over here. I’m advancing the plot with more of my master plan to elevate the Irish kid to Homecoming Court. If I can achieve that, I can do anything. I might even be able to get Mia Meeks to look at me without giving me the finger. Now if you’re through with your perverse hamburger commercial over there, I’ve got a butt load of marketing stuff to do.

Excuse us, Doyle, but you’re just shoveling shit. This chick over here is selling this patty melt!

Steaming towards Midweek…

“Ha Ha Ha, because we both live on Beech Street!”

11/2/12

Ah yes, the dreaded tonsil hockey triangle, the cause of over thirty percent of all violent incidents at Homecoming. Wait, two more? Okay, I’m going to need a compass and one of those nice soft leaded pencils so I can inscribe a tonsil hockey parallelogram on some butcher’s paper.

11/3/12

C’mon Terry! Wave to Mr. Zapruder!

Now, we find that the driver of the car is Doyle Dane in a wig. He’s nabbing Gallagher to take him out in the woods to force him to reveal the location of his pot of gold. Then Terry will ease Cyndy Canty to womanhood while they’re both chained to a log in the deep woods, why Doyle dances in front of a mirror by candlelight in a nearby decaying trapper’s cabin.

Blogger note: When I saw the girl rapturously eating that hamburger in panel 2 of the 11/1 strip, the first thing I thought of was a scene from the movie Showgirls, where Elizabeth Berkley devours a hamburger. I mean, she attacks the thing. I wanted to find an image of that on the web. I can’t believe I could find that. I guess most searchers are satisfied with several shots of her licking a stripper pole. Personally, I find that the hamburger eating has more artistic merit than any other shot in that movie.

 

Having Said That…

10/1/12

“I’m a formerly scruffy amputee who just spent the summer learning to golf with a cufflink and hitting on a disinterested career caddie lady and cardboard model while I waited for my VA disability benefits to kick in, but having said that…I’m about to go Vince Lombardi on your asses!

For more information about the proper use of “Having Said That”:

10/2/12

“Hey Gil, thanks for nothing so far this season. First, you scream at me to teach some Irish kid ‘how to play defense’ (like what the hell dude?) and I’m off panel doing that. Then I’m staring into Coach Cufflink’s crotch while he starts going Knute Rockne. Now I’m just standing here bantering with you…and you’ve got the nerve to correct me on my banter. Geez, why do I hang around here for this crap?”
“Stow it, Shaw, and pass me that jibber.”

Steve prefers the “cop a squat and lower your jazz hand” technique. Having said that, I think this shadow line is going to be a fabulous success.

Word To The Mother

9/10/12

“What do you think about the team this year, Coach?”
“Well, Marjie, I think they’ll probably do better than those suckholes we had last year. What’d we go last year, like 3-6?”
“Actually it was 1-8.”
“Yeesh. Yeah, like I said, we sucked ass. But that was before I found our secret weapon Brophy Apropos. Have you seen that little weirdo kick the ball?”
“Do you mean Brody Abro, Coach?”
“Yeah, whatever. I just call him the best place kicker in the valley.”
“What else can we look forward to this year, Coach?”
“Well we’ve got linebackers and stuff…I’m sorry, I’m having trouble focusing looking at your moustache.”

Is it just me or is that a lot of red?

9/11/12

Right on schedule! The Irishman tries out for football….hey what happened to the part where the Irishman actually tries out for football? Oh, it was deleted due to boredom.

Yeah, you may feel like a knight, but you smell like Schweaty McBromhidrosis, the last guy who wore those pads.

9/12/12

A scrimmage just for the kickoff squad? Okay sounds like a recipe for disaster, but what do I know. It looks like Hamani Gaines has a special jersey that turns from red to white once he “breaks free”. (Of course…what kickoff squad scrimmage would be complete without such a special jersey?!)

Until…the ol’ Irish helmet to the groin.

“Anyone think they can handle returning kickoffs?”

Keep Circulating The Tapes

9/3/12

Time is getting away from the team here at TWIM, so here is as much random crap as we can throw at you 25 loyal readers:

Are those bootleg DVDs back there behind Terry Gallagher’s?

In case you’re wondering about the license plate, this isn’t the first MST 3K shoutout in Gil Thorp. The previous appearance of the license plate was on a totally different car, but to be fair, we couldn’t see the whole plate last time, so…oh my what a boring line of blogging. suffice to say, we are seeing Terry Gallagher getting drawn into football in some way.

9/4/12

Let’s recap: how can Terry get involved in football? What skills might he possess that will get him out onto the gridiron. We’ll put that on hold and focus on some odd language. What’s odder, the exotic foreign expression of Terry Gallagher: “Grand” or the home grown weirdness of Milford speak: “Buckos”?

On a positive note, it’s nice to know that Apex Industrial is hiring again, after the massive layoffs of 2009. Maybe they expanded into tattoo removal. What happened to Stefan’s ink?

Check out panel 3. Here’s one of the pitfalls of coloring this strip: Is that supposed to be Stefan Harvey’s hand or Chip Visci’s?

9/5/12

Is there another word to describe the Gallaghers’ accent other than “adorable”?  Who are these two girls anyway? Just random Bucketheads who are a Milford Greek chorus singing the praises of Terry, announcing his hotness as perceived by Milford girls in general. Perhaps he has no sports skills, but will be taking ‘em to the Bucket with regularity.

His first victim just might be his new pal Chip’s girlfriend Cyndy Canty, brand new Grandma and world’s biggest Roger Daltry fan. She’s eying that adorable Irishman like a plate of peanut butter cookies!

Fore!-feiting another summer

7/2/12

Quickly becoming one of This Week in Milford‘s least favorite annual traditions, it’s that day in early July that Gil makes hilarious jokes about just how damned tough it is to spend his summer teaching nimrod rich kids to play golf. Yeah, we get it. You’re a lucky bastard.

This year the Thorps up the ante a bit by friskily talking about their kinky S&M sex life that nobody wants to hear about. Stay tuned July 8th, 2013, when they try to top this year with a day of full-on bangin’ action that nobody wants to see! (Admit it, even if you were morbidly curious, the depiction of ThorpSex™ by Whigham would make your head do this.)

7/3/12

Last year’s golf plot was so forgettable, I had to look up what it was about. (Answer: FOOZLE and DRUNK MOM).

This year we can look forward to Fat Timmy, the kid with a starter mullet who talks to his front door and calls it “Steve.”  I can’t wait! Can you, Lanny Penn?

Stay tuned, the summer hos are coming soon!

6/20/12

While Darby Kiser is ON, the narrator forgets to mention the real reason Milford has won: Jaxxxon has gotten on another rampage and eaten the faces off of most of the Jefferson players. He would have also attacked the Milford players, but was thwarted by their extreme ugliness. Even a beast like that has some standards.

Meanwhile, the illegitimate father of the beast (who else but those two has hair like that?), Winky Dinky has just received a tweet: “All Jefferson players dead,  and we pitched a shutout! LOL. #JaxxxonKillingSpree”

6/21/12

“Life is complicated! Boys… pitching…school…being a slutty, negative role model, it’s all too much.”
“Plus Jaxxxxxon.”
“Wait, who?”

Later:
“I have to break up with you.”
“Which you? Me, or him?”
“Hmmm, which one of you is my 150-pound bastard toddler son? That one.”

6/22/12

Today’s Important Gil Thorp Life Lesson:
It’s a cruel world. With lots of girls in it. Lots of easy, easy girls. So no need to get upset when one ho (especially one with baggage) walks out on you. Another easy girl will come along soon! And hey, if you get too horny in the meantime, a little Dinty Moore in a wig action will surely tide you over.

Now where’s that drunken Gil on the 19th hole story*?

*Not about golf. Just about…Gil, and lots and lots of holes. Refer to today’s life lesson for details.