Down Goes Fowler!

12/10/12

It’s officially basketball season, but first a nod to the difficult transitions that take place from one season to the next. The troglodytic Mudlarks must be reprogrammed to different sets of skills, which takes time and often leads to scores of injuries in the case of the grid-iron to hardwood switchover. You would think that the round ball (and the subversively sexy fishnet outerwear) would signal the shift, but mouth breathers like Harvey* and Ottewill need to be reminded of the general idea of the sport they are currently playing. This is called coaching and it involves yelling and the proper use of a whistle. No, Gil, you put it in your mouth.

“Coach? We’re over here. You’re talking to a whistle.”

12/11/12

As Gil goes back to his office to find the owners manual for his whistle, the scrimmage continues and it’s The Lord of the Flies time and Bobby Ottewill goes up…and brings the pain. It’s these fishnets! He hates these fishnets! His father probably used to dress up in fishnet hose and stage his own production of Bus Stop at family gatherings. It’s the simplest explanation for Bobby’s violent outbursts.

Neal Rubin has once again honored a member of the sports writing fraternity by naming a character Scott Fowler as a nod to the national award-winning sports columnist for The Charlotte Observer. You’ve made it Scott, like Rick Bozich and some other people that escape memory (and you got to be a sharp-shooting forward instead of a chubby student journalist. Bonus!)

*Stephan Harvey is shown unmarked again, so it would seem that the tattoos the kids got at Ransom Hale’s Tattoo and Legitimately Fake Bootleg DVD Emporium last season were temporary. (But the memories are forever!)

The Color of Flub

As crack* field reporter Ned Ryerson recently reported, the Seattle Post Intelligencer (official motto: “We’re intelligencer than you!”) has a color monkey decorating our glorious episodes of the Thorpster. Today, I’m running those fine color versions…the down side is that these are smaller size than the ol’ black and white ones. Be sure to vote at the bottom of today’s post to let me know which fancy-pants version you prefer!

8/6/12

“Hope it’s okay that Steve is using the driving range.”
“For a wounded vet, no problem. If he was an unwounded vet, or just some armless dude, I’d tell him to go to hell.”
SHANK!
“And since he’s not hitting any balls on the course anyway, what do I care? As long as there’s no foozling going on out there.”

8/7/12

Do you think Molly’s sexy advance of removing her (cardboard?) underwear in panel one makes up in any way for her insensitive second panel question? Everyone who knows Steve is aware that he lost the arm in that wacky but tragic lima bean cafeteria food fight at Fort Benning.

8/8/12

To blur the lines of reality, Gil steps away from Milford to bring in real-life Michigan golf pro John Jawor. He’s an expert at bringing out the best golf sound effects in his students. Steve will progress from FLUB! and SHANK! all the way to MIGHTY-ONE-ARMED-BALL-SMACK! in just a few short lessons.

*On crack.

Rugged Break? Is That A Thing?

7/19/12

Grab a bottle of water. That’s hilarious! What will they do next, show us how a one armed guy gets a bottle of water from a cooler and opens it?

7/20/12

Oops.

So, Kenny Rogers Steve Boone is a Wounded Warrior. Okay. Let’s just watch and see if this can be handled with more sensitivity than the Funky Winkerbean take on this subject. Wait, Gil Thorp taught an amputee how to box, so, yeah…

I’m sure this Budd Lynch story will be inspiring.

7/21/12

I don’t know what to say. 94 year-old Budd Lynch will “show you how to get by” then give you a cufflink. What if you had a leg amputated, or both arms. Does he have gag gifts for those eventualities? I’m sure Budd’s heart is in the right place, and I’m sure there’s more to his efforts there is room to detail in this strip, but I’m not inspired by what I’m looking at here.

 

 

Milford: The City Of The Sore Shoulders

7/7/12

Fun facts about today’s strip:

• First year caddy Noah Boone’s name is an anagram for A Neon Hobo.
• You can earn big money as a caddy!
• Dr. Jeffrey Zonder is board certified in oncology. Perhaps he should take a look at the suspicious growths on his caddy’s face.
• Ambition means one thing to Gil Thorp: Maybe this ambitious, sore shouldered gent can be easily conned into leading junior golfers in their swing drills for the rest of the summer!
• MCC is 1200 in Roman numerals. 1200 is the number of ounces of beer you have to drink before you can even think about writing a blog entry for this crap.

Hot town, Steve’s summer in the city

7/4/12

“Fore!”
“Actually, Teddy, you only yell that on the course.”
“My name is Timmy. And where are we if we’re not on the course?”
“This is Putterz Rooftop Sports Lounge, Toddie. Looks like ya wet yourself again. You smell like piss…Go clean yourself up.”
“Timmy. You smell like my drunk grandpa.”
“Here’s a dollar, Billy. Go get me another vodka tonic after you clean your piss-pants.”

7/5/12

Rookie caddie Noah Boone is possibly a living custom bed maker. Or maybe he’s deceased. Or maybe he’s some kid who has tweeted 2,548 more times than Gil Thorp ever has. In any case, let’s keep an eye out for that mom of his, who appears to be digging a grave for her mysterious other son, Steve. But experts say that’s what you’re supposed to do.

7/6/12

You may still be speculating what the deal with Steve is. But it’s clear to me, when you’re the 68-year-old bass guitarist for the Lovin’ Spoonful, and still living at home with your mom, you likely have a myriad of problems. Steve is like Marty Moon on acid. So…like Marty Moon.

Dragon Fisting: Enter the Rectum!

9/26/11

The dragons, huh? Well that must mean we’ve made it all the way to Kansas for this game. Luckily, we can add this result of this match-up here, (if it ever ends) as it appears it’s been left off the schedule.

Speaking of brain damage, hey look: Gil’s at the game! And he’s wisely realized that if he pulls Chip Visci out of the game now, he can send him on a beer run…after all, he does look a bit old for a high-schooler.

9/27/11

 

You can tell Marty in’t actually at the game. Otherwise he would have told his audience of none that the way Derek Tolan knocked the ball loose was by sticking his fist twelve inches up the quarterback’s rectum. Which earned him a loving helmet caress from his teammate. So when’s Chip getting back with the beer for Chrissake?

Doing the French Mistake!

9/14/11

Panel 1: No, fellas, try it with me one more time: Throw up your hands, stick out your tush, hands on your hips, give ‘em a push…You’ll be surprised, you’re doing the French Mistake!

Panel 2: While Gil discusses his fantasy football line-up with Kaz, and um…what appears to be a sleeping Freddy Prinze Jr.(?), it seems nobody has remembered to wipe the year’s worth of dust off of Coach Shaw, fresh out of the storage closet.

Panel 3: Gil and Marty discuss their recent bathtub gin creation, code name: Depth Chart.

9/15/11

Panel 1:  Two solid QBs, an Arkansas Congressman and a Denver sports columnist? That’s great but who the hell belongs to that hand?

Panel 2: Did you know that Stefan Harvey likes Bananas in Pajamas? And that I can’t figure out which one is Joey Carter’s wife? And that Derek Tolan quit the team to play golf? And that I’m an all-world coach for remembering several names?

Panel 3: My Bobby’s opening some huge holes! And now he’s locking his eye on one of them, swinging, and he keeps doing it! He learned that from the last coach who ever worked at Milford.

Crash cows! Old dead Tabors! Treacherous Gil! Are you ready for some football?

My quick post-mortem on the 2011 summer of madness lameness: I’d like to imagine we’ll never see ol’ Kenny Lark again. But then we thought that about Kemper Peake, Elmer Vargas, Steve Luhm…the list goes on and on. Most anyone we hoped would stay gone has a pesky knack for reappearing. So I’m sure Kenny will  be back to ruin next summer. At least we’ll be prepared this time.

Oh and I’m convinced that Chief Whigham has been creating crazy onomatopoeia words just to keep himself from slipping into a summer coma. FOOZLE!

8/29/11

 

Panel 1′s ominous beginning: Superman hurtles straight down toward Earth at lightning speed, as an early and blatant reminder that this plot is destined to crash horribly into the Earth, creating an enormous crater that will eventually destroy all life on this planet as we know it. Hold on, Asian Mom… what cows? Say, are you my Asian mom?

Brody Abro? Neal has officially run out of friends who want to be name dropped when Google only returns this on a name search. Welcome, new Milford moron. Or as you will now be referred to: Brody D. Abro, D student.

Meanwhile, Gil’s attempts to get free coaching are becoming more and more elaborate: Now he’s managed to convince the cable repairman to stay for a cup of coffee. Which is of course laced with roofies. When Mark wakes up, he’ll be half lobotomized and chained to the goal post. Also known as “pulling a Cully Vale.”

8/30/11

Oh crap, not the retirement of retired Assistant Coach Mark Tabor!!! Um, wait, who?

I’m pretty positive I’ve never seen this Tabor guy in five years of writing about this comic. (Though now that I think about it, I guess he’s been lurking around in his secret occasional guise of  Skippy the Angry Janitor.) So why would he bother to go tell Gil that he was going to continue to not show up as an unpaid assistant coach, because he’d rather go euthanize his 120-year-old parents than spend another day not coaching for free?  Oh that’s right, because Gil has some eerie hold on the Milford townsfolk, hypnotizing them to do his slave labor bidding. And Gil clearly wants Mark Tabors’ parents out of the picture. Sorry old Tabors. Gil needs that handicapped parking spot.

It appears Superman crash landed faster than I expected.