Of Bulls and Talking Horses

I recall having a convo a few years ago with mrs. teenchy* and her late grandmother, a woman born before the US entry into World War I and who nearly lived long enough to see the centennial of the Great War’s start. We were talking about TV and mrs. teenchy asked her grandma if she ever watched The Lawrence Welk Show. “Heck no!” replied grandma, “that show’s for old people!” In her mind, Lawrence Welk’s target demographic was people born in the 19th century.

Previously I’d speculated that Gil Thorp‘s target audience might be people who read GRIT, but now it’s clear: it’s people who are old enough to have watched Mr. Ed**. But yay continuity, if in name only. Visually, it’s another Ed that’s getting the shout-out.

It just dawned on me that it’s never been established which NBA team Jaquan plays for. Today’s strip establishes that he does not play for the Bulls, so the color version of the July 4 strip is just flat out wrong. Blazers maybe?

It also establishes that lawyer Ed V. Baxendale has become kinda clueless. He should have some idea of the average partner salary in Chicago, even if those average salaries are a bit depressed due to “the city’s historic practice of making lawyers partner at a younger age.” The upshot is that Jaquadley has enough disposable income (and, probably, no student loans) to own multiple properties, including pretty much anything in Milford. Also pretty clueless of him to think that Hadley would have to leave her job for the sake of the relationship. Pretty sexist, too, but that’s par for the course*** in the Thorpiverse.

*Yes, Virginia, there is a mrs. teenchy. Shocking, I know.

**Hey, remember when Mr. Ed took BP with the Dodgers? Wouldn’t a horse playing for the Mudlarks have been more interesting than that TCFS nonsense this past spring?

 

***That’s the only golf reference you’ll be reading here for some time.

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Old Home Week? More Like Old Home Summer

Picking up a few of the pieces of the meet-cute backstory from yesterday. TWIM old-timers, you may want to fast-forward through this (or read this kinda summary from two summers ago).

In 2005 Jaquan Case, then playing for Bishop Tardy, was under pressure to turn pro straight out of high school. The pressure was coming from his Uncle Rudy, who was Jaquan’s guardian after the death of both of his parents, and from the sporting goods company Tronix (which would rear its head years later by sponsoring a football camp for college prospects). Meanwhile Hadley V. Baxendale, spawn of lawyers, was making her case that the Lady Mudlarks weren’t getting the perks and attention that the boys’ team was getting. Gil shot Hadley’s demands down whilst manspreading, except the one for letting the girls have the gym on a Friday night because the boys wouldn’t be using it.

After meeting Jaquan in Gil’s office (where he ducked his handler to study), Hadley decided that she needed to help Case make his case to postpone his NBA plans and go to college. With then-boyfriend Steve Luhm’s help, Hadley arranged a meeting between Jaquan, Gil, and Hadley’s lawyer father, Ed (what is it with lawyers named Ed in the comics?) who confirmed that Jaquan’s dealings with Tronix wouldn’t harm his college eligibility. Turned out Rudy could fail and Jaquan could go to college.

As a way of thanking Hadley for helping him make his case, Jaquan pulled some strings and had Tronix send new practice jerseys and game unis to the Lady Mudlarks, who proceeded to work their way through the playdowns against several teams from the Philly suburbs. What Jaquan still thought he owed Hadley is best left to the imagination.

Hello, TWIM readers. We’ve come to the point in this post where those who didn’t read through all of this will have to stand up, or sit down and scroll down the page. In fairness to those readers, we’ll now take a few seconds before we begin side two.

 

 

Thank you. Here’s side two.

Once again Gil reminds us that Milford is a man’s man’s man’s world. He can’t be bothered by such trivia as wedding dates and locations, knit hats, rally hippos, merit badges, and winning ball teams. Those spatula-shaped second-degree burns on the back of his hand might bother him, though.

Oh look, another old character pops in this summer to make us forget about golf.  This time we don’t have to go back a decade and half but only a few months to revisit the tale of Tiki Jansen. You’ll recall Tiki was a New Thayer football player who wanted out of New Thayer because he was being bullied there, so his fam rented an apartment in Milford to give him a fake address and let him play there. Looks like the Jansens are keeping up this charade but the MHS School Board has no interest. How do these plot lines come together? Probably by letting Hadley get in some pro bono work.

Let Us Not Speak Of The Cool Again

 

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Damn Rubin, why not go for the trifecta and use “too cool” in every panel?

Since my TCFS Goes To Eleven post on May 11 the phrase has been uttered (in whole, in part, or as its abbreviation) on-panel an additional twelve (12) times not counting today. Add two more today and we get a total of twenty-five (25) “too cool”s in this arc. That horse hasn’t been beaten to death, it’s been pounded into jerky. So has the major plot point that celebrating your interests can turn into cliquishness faster than you can say a tired catchphrase.

This is what we get when we ask for a female-centered arc in Gil Thorp. And we thought we were getting somewhere with Paloma Padilla. I have nothing more to say about this nonsense; I’m off to hang with Mr. Bakst this weekend.  Hopefully when we get back on Monday they’re plotting something over cocktails at Casa Thorp that doesn’t involve balls and sticks.

 

Not This “Branding” Crap Again!

Okay, so for s & g’s I searched on spirit buttons and 39 cents per seems like a fair deal. The catch is you gotta buy ’em in bulk, at volumes that would ensure every Milford student and their family could have a button with buttons left to spare. The TCFS movement has become less about celebrating softball players’ extracurriculars and more about being cliquish and excluding the one girl on the softball team who cares more about playing softball than the rest of them.

Nancy is perfectly cool with that as she sees being TCFS as a “brand,” a thing that seems to be a thing with kids in Milford (or with a senior citizen who seems to think that branding is a thing with kids). Molly Hatchet seems to have an inkling about that as she and Nancy get brain freezes sucking down their Blastos while they sit on the hood of a… a…  an impossibly drawn clown car with about five planes of perspective and no room for an engine, wheels or passengers.

Added a Swifti Mart tag as I’m surprised we haven’t done that already.

Time to stick this dude in the toilet and press Flush

Really. He hasnt even been home 5 minutes from getting canned at WDIG and he’s already orchestrated the removal of FIRE THORP from the billboard and the painting of an ad for a local pizza joint that I’m sure blows just like his basketball skills, his radio skills and his ingratiating personality.

Yeah bro you got talent all right. The next company that interviews you for your so-called skills will send you away laughing up their sleeve at the sucker who actually hires you.

I havent seen his  pizza-flipping skills yet but maybe thats what he has in mind. Pretty sad to go from the next Bobby Knight to the next Joe Aurelio, basketball-wise anyway.  Maybe he could start this business:

“This town will never forget me.” Yeah right — — as a matter of fact when Milford erects a statue of you the birds will be lining up to shit on it.

Just Who Owes Who?

Hey kids, guess what? I stumbled across some rare footage of Gil and Marty commuting to and from work! Here ’tis:

That would seem to be the dynamic at work here, but I suspect Gil doesn’t see it as so two-sided.  Since he is clearly of the opinion that he singlehandedly pulled Marty’s frijoles from the fire last basketball season, he likely believes he doesn’t owe Marty squat. That said he does recognize the need for Marty in his world, and acknowledged as much to WDIG’s station manager in a previous Kaffeeklatsch.

Still I imagine we’ll soon be treated to some version of “no, you still owe me, and B/Robby would’ve found a way to hang himself by his own rope with or without you.” Then it’s time to see how Mike Fillion self-medicated came out of his depression enough in time for baseball season.

metapost: Since tdrew and I swapped Wednesday and Thursday posts a while back, I’ve missed out on Rock ‘n Roll Thursdays. I want to interject a bit and light a candle for Sara Romweber, who lost her battle with cancer a few days ago. Sara laid down the beats for Mitch Easter’s jangle-pop in Let’s Active, and later formed Snatches of Pink and teamed up with her brother Dexter, previously with Flat Duo Jets, as a duo of their own. The Romweber kids played a part in the formative years of my musical tastes, and Sara’s passing comes as a reminder of my own mortality. So here, then, a musical candle.

Rammer Jammer, Gil Can Yammer

Tonight on WDIG

Listen for Marty Moon’s call:

“Injury report:

 

Jansen, Ruffin have

Hyperextended right legs,

Will miss finale”

 

Uniforms are red

Just like the herring: Tiki’s

“Slow sister” problem 

 

Did Rubin forget?

Why even mention her?

Bullies the problem

 

Speaking of bullies:

Why for the love of Pete would

Jansen go back there?

 

New Thayer, where

The bullies go scot free while

Victim has to leave

 

Maybe New Thayer

Is better for special needs

We will never know

 

And what of Bolek?

Thought he’d help analyze film

Team might get better

 

Maybe film useless

When all the coach can do is

Make the kids run laps

 

We can all agree

Plot was stupider than hell

Let’s go shoot some hoops

Help a Buddy Out?

Today’s cameo

By Toshiro Mifune

Which film, I’m not sure

 

Surprised Whigham drew

Recognizable actor

Mudlarks look alike

 

How many of you

Knew that was Bolek next to

Tiki in the caf?

 

“Feeling frisky” is

Euphemism for “horny”

Is it sexy time?

 

Nah. Let’s interrupt

The Kurosawa screening

For some adventure

 

“Help a buddy out”

Will translate into filming

Some wacky hijinks

 

Phone camera vid

Of Tiki getting bullied

Make it go viral!

 

Toshiro would be

As confused as we all are

With what’s going on

 

 

Haiku metapost:

Here’s to our Ned Ryerson

Ten years at the helm

 

How has he done it?

It’s been hard enough for me

To post twice a week

 

Ned is the straw that

Stirs This Week in Milford’s drink

Here’s to ten years more…?