Everything I know I learned from reading Gil Thorp

Oh boy, another valuable set of Gil Thorp lessons! It’s always good when we can learn while reading, right?

Primary Lesson: When your hairdresser tells you your kids are dating criminals, don’t believe her, because remember that time that you got pulled over on your way to North Hamptonchestershire Hills to buy cigarettes and that evangelical cop tried to convert you using his Jesus flashlight? Well that was, like almost the same thing! So be sure to let your kids date whoever they want, I guess.

Secondary Lesson: If you’re gonna smoke, don’t smoke some snooty brand of cigarettes, because it would be tragic if you had to send your son to the nice part of town to buy them for you.

Tertiary Lesson: Make sure you decorate your house with unclear, possibly pornographic pictures, so that strangers might debate what precisely is going on in them. Also, for everyone’s amusement, your home should appear to have an elevator.

Now she can play jai alai without buying equipment.

Panel One Challenge: Find the biggest, freakiest hand pictured.
Answer: If you said the one at bottom left, you’re wrong! It’s Brenda’s right hand which has expanded to the size and shape of a laundry basket.

Panel Two Challenge: What methods has Brenda used to keep her psycho mother out of her room?
Answer: In addition to scary metal spikes near the entryway, she has set up the hallway lighting to project her mother’s shadow onto the front of her door. Having the same-sized brain as a groundhog, Mrs. Larkin will soon become frightened and scamper back to her burrow. (Unfortunately for us, this also means six more weeks of this stupid winter plot.)

Panel  Three Challenge: How did Bryce escape the wrath of his parents, while Brenda did not?
Answer: Having hands that are not the size of laundry baskets, he was able to run away more quickly. And now he can spend time with his boygirlfriend.

Take a Load Off, Larkin

2/12/09

We’ve got Bryce’s weird package in Panel 1. We’ve got freak hands (Steve Rosen’s hand looks like a sea creature). We have some craptastic basketball in an empty gym. They don’t even bother to pull the bleachers out, so where is everybody supposed to sit? We also have an interesting development in the hair department. What the heck is going on with Bryce’s hair in Panel 3? It looks like his hair system in coming loose from its moorings.

Also, Gil shows Bryce:

a giant VHS cassette.

a lunch tray.

the stupidest looking chair ever.

you decide. Send your answers to What Does Gil Want Bryce To Sit On? c/o Internal Affairs Division, Milford Department of Education, Milford, USA

Heart to Handle

Hey look, The Bucket now serves boxes of cassette tapes for lunch! And the creepy floating giant hand of the day is composed entirely of fingers! And Matt’s girlfriend’s nose is shrinking…she’s at least been downgraded from Transvestite Gonzo to Female Bert!

Bad news for him though, as she doesn’t want him to drop dead from any physical exertion. Guess the giant hand will be useful for something after all…

I hope she’s fattening him up in order to eat him…

Facts learned from the Kalamazoo Kings official site:

• The actual logo is in fact a K sporting a giant wang sword. (Though Whigham has, er…enhanced the sword length for some reason.)
• Vice President/General Manager/Co-Owner of the team: Joe Rosenhagen.
• While there are no players under 21 on the team, looks like there’s no minimum age requirement to try out (If you’re under 18, you just need parental permission, kids!)
• There is an actual host family program. Not surprisingly, players may not make enough money to afford their own Kalamazoo-area bachelor pad.

Things I didn’t learn from the site, but Whigham must know:

• Joe Rosenhagen can’t afford to have his office floor mowed.
• Joe Rosenhagen has OCD and must keep all paper on his desk aligned at the same angle.
• Joe Rosenhagen has a spine shaped like a washboard.
• Joe Rosenhagen hires host families who don’t know the meaning of “personal space.” Luckily, neither does Mrs. Vargas, so El-Mullet should feel right at home.

Meanwhile, Jimmy’s dad has a theory that actually makes sense: The Detroit Tigers were Method Man high when they drafted a no-talent pinky-flapping retard like Jimmy.

Kalamazoo-palooza!

7/19/08

Upon closer examination…

• There seems to be a small thermonuclear explosion happening in the Vargas front yard.
• Gil is being held hostage by Mrs. Vargas.
• Judging by the scars it leaves, Midget Mexican baseball is more dangerous than I originally suspected.
• Bugs McCoy has a portable toilet on his raft to nowhere, and enjoys using it while on the phone.
• Toxic fumes from Bug’s current activity are quickly destroying local trees.

Kalamazoo? Really? I just pulled the Kalamazoo River reference out o’ my ass (first mentioned on July 2nd). If I didn’t figure the lead time on producing this comic was waaay more than three weeks, I’d wonder what the deuce was going on here. So I’ll just chalk it up to Neal and I agreeing that “Kalamazoo” is an inherently funny word and should be used as often as possible. Now let’s just see if he’ll take it to the next level, and have the Kalamazoo Kings play their also-hilariously named Michigan rivals, the Traverse City Beach Bums.

7/21/08

“Yes, Elmer, the Kalamazoo Kings are a real team. In fact I already updated their Wikipedia page to reflect the fact that we just mentioned them. But it doesn’t matter, because they’re good. And you’re not. Bugs just called me because he wanted to say the word ‘Kalamazoo’ in a sentence. And have me contact you to remind you that you suck and got deported. And to rub it in that he got that schmuck Jimmy Hughes drafted rather than you. Hey, while you’re on the line, I also should tell you that here in America, we have the technology to use our toasters as telephones. So enjoy your squalid village where the internet access is still just a 56k dial-up connection! Oops, gotta go. Your mom just spilled coffee all over my pants and is insisting I take them off!”

Happy Idiot-pendence Day!

7/3/08

Since there’s really nothing to be said about this comic (early graduation in July, eh?) let’s just be glad that there are only two more strips in this mediocre story arc.

Instead, I’ll do some more discussion of an equally as exciting topic: Tribune Comics Facebook Groups! This week, Tribune Media Services shut down their site at comicspage.com, and moved all their comics over to gocomics.com. For some reason they also created Facebook Groups for each of their (incredibly awesome) comics. At latest count, the total member count of some of the groups:

Broom-Hilda: 4 members
Pink Panther: 4 members
Annie: 5 members
Pluggers: 6 members
Brenda Starr: 9 members
Gasoline Alley: 10 members
Dick Tracy: 15 members
Gil Thorp: 20 members
Love Is…: 540 members(wtf?!?!)

So good work, folks! Way to build up stronger ranks than every group save the inexplicable rabid fan-base of Love Is… readers. And the This Week in Milford Facebook page, (created by reader KarenD) with a whopping seven members at press time, is at least currently more popular than Pluggers.

What does all this mean? Well, reader RobM would likely contend “nothing.” Which is probably true. But it appears I wasted enough time talking about this crap that tomorrow’s comic has been posted in the meantime, so at least there’s that, right?

7/4/08

Ah, Independence Day! What better day to celebrate our soon-to-be independence from El-mullet the schmuck, his boring family and this tedious, plodding story? And I’m happy to see Brendan-Oyl has assured her friend of being beaten up and robbed on his first day in Mexico, the moment he walks of the plane in those idiotic sunglasses. (Then again, maybe the robbers will let him keep that weird melted pile of crap she’s just handed him.)

The dynamic rules of U.S. immigration law: Catch the excitement!

Finally…some vague attempt to explain this silliness! As I understand it, even though Elmer has been in the U.S. over ten years, like his parents, he didn’t ‘count’ as illegal until this year. So now there’s some crazy-ass exponential reverse visit clock ticking, meaning the longer he stays, the longer he can’t come back. I’ve created this handy chart to clarify everything:

If Elmer Leaves:              Elmer May Return:

Twenty minutes ago            After lunch

At the end of this strip      Just in time to catch Gail Martin in Central City in July

When he's 17 1/2              Three years from Monday

After he's 18                 In ten years

When football season starts   In fifty seven years

When football season ends     Forty billion centuries from now, (a.k.a. "One Gil Half-Life")

Meanwhile, let’s all bask in Gil’s award for six consecutive years of not caring about people.

Up Next: Elmer marries Brendan-Oyl so he can stick around for the rest of baseball season, then immediately regrets it.