New Favorite

It’s been a busy week in Milford, what with the Memorial Day salute and the handshake line brawl and the frenemy teammates and the therapy, more of which should be scheduled by la familia Hernandez.

Before we dive into that, I feel like some cheers and jeers are in order for this recent run of strips:

CHEERS:

1. Gil in uniform on Memorial Day (not Henry’s fault, btw, that he wasn’t drawn in the uniform of his canonical branch of service; see his comment on that day’s strip on Gocomics)
2. Henry’s callback to last November 16th‘s strip in his June 1 strip. That should help people with short institutional memories.
3. Genuine character development among the Milford jayvee girls’ softball players.
4. Henry’s sticking to his guns in making Luke Sr. an insufferable monomaniac who will stop at nothing, including using the family of his assistant coach and destroying his relationships with his own, to gain revenge over his perceived rival for a perceived slight from decades past. This all feels like it’s gonna blow up in his face before the calendar year is through.
5. It looks like between Whigham and the color monkeys, they’ve settled on a color scheme for Valley Tech. That it’s old gold, white and black makes Valley Tech look more like Georgia Tech and – at least in the eyes of yhs – easier to hate. (This is about the only positive in the art department of late; see below.)

JEERS:

1. The continued failure to recognize that baseball and softball teams carry more than one pitcher. There’s this thing called a rotation, in which a team has multiple starting pitchers and can rest each starting pitcher for several days between starts, reducing the wear and tear on each pitcher. There’s also this thing called a bullpen, which consists of a physical location on a baseball field as well as a team’s pitchers who are not starting pitchers. Recognizing that pitching rotations and bullpens are things would reduce a lot of the implausible aspects of the strip, e.g., Gregg Hamm teaching his blind man kung fu treachery to Leo and Dorothy and only Leo and Dorothy and Pedro being “benched” in favor of The Korean Nightmare today.
2. The reintroduction of the Marty we used to know and hate. Admittedly this is a minor jeer, but I’m having a hard time grasping it in the overall context of the strip. What’s the point of Marty acting all Dishonest John snapping a pic of the Mudlark vape selling ring? Hasn’t the horse already left that barn? I just don’t know what he’s trying to accomplish her. Will he blow the lid on it and force Milford to vacate the Valley hoops title? Or is he just jealous of Luke replacing him as designated asshole? Surely he knows who butters his bread here, and if he shares it with Gil, Marjie and/or Heather, they’ll focus more on the fact that Marty’s been surreptitiously taking pictures of underage boys than on the content of those pictures.
3. While I appreciate Valley Tech being clad in pee stain yellow, there have been some notable issues with the artwork of late. I’m pretty sure the Memorial Day strip isn’t the first example of one in which Henry intended one thing and the Chief drew another, and I’m pretty sure more than one of us TWIMers have called that out. It’s a Strother Martinesque failure to communicate in the making. Whigham’s fascination with not completely drawing fences has its consequences today, as Keri’s going to get her earlobes torn off as the jagged edges snag her ginormous earrings (another Whigham fascination).

It might not be an inconsistency but it’s noteworthy that Kwan’s uniform number has changed from 5, a very rare number for a pitcher to 1, an even rarer number for a pitcher. (The only one I can think of off the top of my head is MacKenzie Gore for the Nats; others? please comment.) Between “number one” and “favorite son” I’m getting a bad Charlie Chan* vibe from this, and I hope it’s just me. At least we know that Luke has seen The Sandlot.

Just a sad day to be Pedro, and a sad song to capture the feeling.

*In the Charlie Chan films, Number One Son was played by Keye Luke. Coincidence?

“Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful. Hate me because I look like the rest of you.”

So this played out kinda the way we thought it might on Saturday. Dot’s teammates threw hands in her defense (Repercussions? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?) and now remind her why. Guessing Dorothy didn’t buy Keri a milkshake at the Bucket? That tradition may have gone the way of the last pitcher to honor it.

Panel one of today’s strip – containing a 14-stripe US flag with all of its twenty-ish stars concentrated in the southeastern part of the canton, and the increasingly accepted form of the second-person plural – might lead one to believe Milford has moved below the Mason-Dixon Line. I think they still call carbonated soft drinks “pop” there so maybe I ought not jump the gun.

Weird mix of self-awareness and lack of same going on in the last panel. Unlike her shiner-wearing teammate, Dorothy recognizes that Whigham can only draw a few different facial features. She fails to recognize that it’s not her popularity that draws ire, but her behavior towards others. Making fun of someone traumatized by an active shooter drill is not TCFS, fer sher.

Post title inspired by the famous 1980s ad campaign with the same tagline. You might recognize the actress.

Doin’ the Bump, Not the Madison

The fun never ends in Milford as The Hammmmer’s blind magic rubs off on another Mudlark hurler. No-hitters aren’t that uncommon in high school sports given the frequent talent disparities across teams, but it’s a little surprising that a girl whose making the team came as a bit of a surprise* throws one in, what, her second or third start? Madison must really suck this year.

The Capitols’ suckiness extends to their sportsmanship as well. The sports world is full of egregious examples of fights breaking out during postgame handshakes; Juwan Howard v. Wisconsin (speaking of Madison) is only one in a long line. I’m not inserting any here but you can go to YouTube and take your pick. What set Big Barda off here? Was it that Dorothy didn’t take her glove off to high-five right-handed? Does it really matter if you’re high-fiving and not shaking hands?

What should be interesting (that is, should be interesting but will probably be disappointing) is the response to Big Barda’s elbow to the back. Dorothy has already turned the other cheek, but will her catcher – who previously threw hands at her – start throwing hands in her defense?

*Note that both Dot’s making the team and hurling the no-no both elicit one-word responses from Keri.

“Know Who Else Tries to Catch Two Balls in the Dark? My Mom!”

Sorry, folks, I had to do it again. The setup was just there.

There is just really no point to this. The blind kid – who may not be blind after all(?) – is now gonna have two blindfolded kids throw balls at him simultaneously? If they’re lucky, everyone will just flail and nobody will get hurt. I still can’t get over how everyone involved with this strip seems to think baseball and softball involve the same pitching mechanics and even use the same sized ball thrown from the same distance from home plate. Sheesh.

The Chief must miss drawing Kaz on the regular. He’s added Kaz’s forelock first to Gil and now to Gregg.

I got nothing more for this right now. Thinking about it makes my brain hurt. Maybe I’ll sweat in my eyes and have a bright idea later.

In Which Gil Decides to Wrestle with the Pig

I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it. – George Bernard Shaw

Credit where credit is due: In Luke Martinez, Henry has created one toxic character. His never-ending obsession to one-up Gil Thorp and beat Gil’s teams in every sport he coaches has managed to suck in both his assistant coach and Gil himself. He’s also managed to piss off his elder son who, if there’s any sense of irony in this strip, will soon quit the team and/or transfer to Milford High in the fall.

Why does Gil need to call Hamm? To ask him if he’s seen the Korean Nightmare* clip? He should know the answer to that.

Coachella is looking a bit off-character today BTW, Chief. She needs to shave.

That’s all I’ve got for today. My laptop has been crashing and not recognizing its charger for weeks, and today I finally had to back it up and reinstall the OS. Took hours. Sorry not to have more pithy insights.

Oh, wait: I came across this online earlier this week. It dates from the late 1930s and might be as appropriate to share as Kaz’s out-of-left-field Cab Calloway reference a few days ago.

* Or, as he was known in his home country, “The Nightmare.”

At Least It’s Not In the Bandar Tongue

I don’t know about y’all but I’m convinced this whole junket is an elaborate scam by Coach Kim to get a trip to see his fam on the taxpayer’s Luke’s dime.

What could Luke possibly say to Kwan to convince him to come to the US and A to play for Valley Tech? He doesn’t speak Korean, if the convo thus far is any indication. I’m envisioning some sort of loud, slow, horrible pidgin talk like the kind we used to see in old movies. A thinly veiled appeal to avenge imagined dishonor by Gil. Some BS about fast tracking Kwan to MLB via the Valley. It shouldn’t take Kwan long to see that Luke is all hat and no cowboy.

Serious question to Henry, if you’re still reading our dreck: How have you envisioned Valley Tech in your new Thorpiverse? You’ve put it in Milford, along with Milford High. Is the parochial school, St. Fabian, still there too? Is Valley Tech a trade school? STEM magnet school? Public or private? If public, where did the money for this trip come from? Did the basketball team really sell that many donuts?

Your Moment of Minutiae: Nice to see some baseball unis that aren’t a bunch of repetitive pastels or splashes of red on areas that weren’t meant to be colored. Getting a nice, stark White Sox vibe from them. I’ve not watched much KBO League action compared to Japanese ball, but I’ve seen enough to know that players can have triple digit uniform numbers (rendered in Arabic characters).

Like the Lava Lizards of the Galapagos Islands

No need to rehash how we got here. Barajas has dug up a character from Rubin’s next to last story arc, James Franciscus as Longstreet Gregg Hamm. Amazing how the Hammmmer can hit the strike zone now that he’s apparently completely blind. He had his problems with finding it when he still had some of his eyesight. Amazing too that these two pitchers magically move from in front of him to his throwing side in the blink of an eye – that is, unless Gil isn’t behind home plate but in center field and Gregg is hurling the ball at him Trevor Bauer style.

Barajas has dug up something else from the Rubin era: implying there’s only one starting pitcher in each team’s rotation. Why isn’t Gil having Gregg put on his show for all the Milford pitchers? Even Gregg himself had his Nomar Ramos to back him up. Hell, wasn’t Dorothy’s making the softball team a bit of a surprise? Can’t tell me Cami didn’t have someone else in mind to pitch.

I’ll admit I’m guilty of digging up old characters today, too. Longstreet was a short-lived show from the early 1970s with an interesting premise: the title character, an insurance investigator in New Orleans, is blinded in a bombing that kills his wife. Longstreet stays on the job and tracks down the bombers, then continues his work as insurance investigator and private detective. Realizing that he may come into sticky situations where he might need to defend himself, he engages the assistance of Li Tsung, an antiques dealer and expert in Jeet Kune Do.

Hey, any excuse to throw a Bruce Lee clip in the post, I’ll take it. Now let’s see if Gregg tells his protégés to be water or to breathe through their eyelids.

Dear (Kaz’s) Penthouse…

Well look who’s back. It’s our old pal Bob Kazinski – and now he has a penthouse. Did he move to North Carolina in the interim?

Oh. It’s not Gastonia, it’s The Gaston, Milford’s premier luxury high-rise. We visited Kaz and his new squeeze Rachel in the penthouse for the seudah hamafseket before Yom Kippur. Never mind.

For a moment there I was thinking that Kaz’s Penthouse was a new comedy club and Kaz was polishing his new standup routine. Hey, a Milford Juvenile Sports Program Manager can’t be making that much more coin than a Milford High assistant coach, can he? The Gaston can’t be rent-controlled, can it? Kaz has to have some kind of side hustle going on, amirite?

All of this is conjecture and backdrop for why Kaz feels the needs to regale his audience with a joke that’s even more dated* than Cami’s A League of Their Own line and somehow at Gil’s expense. (Anyone wanna guess what the setup was for the Cab Calloway punchline? Feel free to take a stab in the comments.) Gil “I don’t drink” Thorp finds it most amusing as he continues his lying sack ways – lying, that is, unless he’s still nursing that HooDad’s he had at the hospital while visiting Rod.

There’s gotta be some more exposition down the line this week. Why else would be seeing Kaz for the first time this year? I for one would welcome Kaz’s Penthouse as the Gil Thorp spinoff we all need.

*Cab Calloway’s last public performance came in 1992 at a benefit for the Associated Black Charities in Baltimore. His last public appearance was at the White House in 1993, when President Clinton awarded him with the National Medal of Arts.