Two Douches and a Four-speed and a 389

What have we learned today, TWIMers?

1. Doug Guthrie’s favorite NASCAR racing family? The Pettys.
2. Vic Doucette was seen by drove a Plymouth Satellite faster than the speed of light.
3. When it comes to teaching your kids how to drive, Doug’s dad got it all wrong. Kid sits on dad’s lap, steers and shifts while dad works the pedals and takes hold of the steering wheel as necessary.
4. Thanks to #3, Gil Thorp is the strip that has come the closest to a depiction of road head since For Better or for Worse introduced the bizarre term “going roadside.”
5. A girl rejecting a guy for his grandpa van? Bad. Said guy catcalling said girl? A-OK!

I guess this wack-ass approach to putting Vic behind the wheel of a cool ride is cheaper than pimping out Vic’s van or fitting hand controls to Doug’s GTO. Style points to Whigham for getting the ’66 Goat interior close to correct, adding a column-mounted tach even if he defaulted to the cliched 8-ball gearshift knob.

Honestly this strip doesn’t feel like any kind of arc-ender, much as we might want it to be. If it is, a metapost might be in order.

meta: Well I’ll be darned; it is the arc-ender. Can you say “anticlimactic”? Sure, I knew you could. The post title is, of course, an homage to the second line of “Little GTO.”

Saying the Quiet Part Loud

Odds are you heard this phrase a lot in the news over the past year. It has its origins in an episode of The Simpsons I referenced once a couple of years ago.

Now in a heel turn the lies of which would have made Andre the Giant proud, Tessi says the quiet part loud.

To be honest I think Tessi’s remained quiet on the really quiet part. Using a guy’s car as an excuse to go out or not out with him might’ve been a thing back in 1958 when this strip started and it might still have been a thing for quite a few years after; now, not so much. It probably started becoming less of a thing after the OPEC embargo in 1973, but I could be wrong. In today’s world where fewer teens are getting drivers’ licenses, it’s become even less of a thing. Maybe that’s why girls don’t compete with Goats for Doug Guthrie.

I doubt it’s fear of being seen in Vic’s GMC (Grandpa Motors Corporation?) van – or of what could happen to her inside it – that keeps Tessi from accepting his invitation. But even Tessi can’t state the obvious and she can’t be entirely wrong in P2, either. Those dueling exploding eyes with a head bobble are part “Oh no she din’t!” and part “She says what we’re all thinking!” If any of those Lady Mudlarks’ eyes should not be exploding, it’s Corina’s. It’s impossible that a tank town like Milford didn’t get the news about her little ménage à trois with the dueling QBs last fall.

Tune in on Monday when we see how high off the floor and onto a horse Corina gets at that postgame pizza party. Let’s hope she takes that flyswatter off the pizza first. (What? You can’t tell me that’s a spatula!)

Oh Godleski, Not This Again!

Hey look, some hoops action that doesn’t involve injury, unless you count the bruises the ball’s getting being clanked off the rim. No Muench and a sluggish Guthrie mean the Mudlarks are struggling until Mark Godleski puts one in, then catches fire after Vic eggs him on. Oh my! George Takei‘s not gonna be too happy with Vic’s second Bermanism (Doucetteism?) as Mark hits the no-look fadeaway jumper. Will the next basket be made by Mark “look at those” Godles”(s) heathens making the horns at me behind Vic’s back” ki?

I’m getting the sense here that the Tilden game, while not making or breaking the Mudlarks’ season (they’re not contending for the Valley, or else we’d have heard about it by now), may be dispositive of several characters’ futures. Vic’s gonna Vic and a future calling celebrity softball games awaits him. Muench will play at least another season of baseball as he’s the current version of Paul Beaudry. As for Guthrie, it will be time for him to fish or cut bait between hoops and wheels. He hurts the Mudlarks more than helps them, so maybe he’s best cut out for the garage. Still you’d think if all that time with his tailbone two inches from the ground was propelling his racing career forward we’d have heard about it by now. Doug should ask Corina if Valley Mod has any automotive technician programs and think about transferring there.

Roll Your Eyes and Think of England

That direction is for us, dear readers, as we are going to be continually subjected to Corina whether we like it or not. Now this little fire hydrant spark plug is going to be some sort of guard. For the sake of the plot let’s hope she’s a shooting guard; I can’t imagine anyone wanting to take direction from this sarcastic smart-ass. What started out as a realistic plot device – plucky girl has a chip on her shoulder because doctors didn’t take her mom’s mental health issues seriously – started to wear thin by the time she invited the dueling QBs to her house and is practically threadbare by now. Why couldn’t Rubin stow her away in an equipment bag until the end of March?

Because Tessi Milton might need a foil. A quick Googling doesn’t turn up a Tessi Milton but LinkedIn serves up a Tess Milton in Australia. Tessi’s being set up as the social butterfly of the Lady Mudlarks and we know by now that in Milford, extroversion always has an ulterior motive. Is it possible she’s hiding some deep dark secret and is overcompensating for it much in the way Corina’s been overcompensating for hers? Sit back and prepare to soak up the sarcasm for a fourth consecutive arc.

Just Your Typical Three Panels of Obnoxiousness. Nothing to See Here, Part Deux

Did y’all do anything fun yesterday? Yeah, me neither, and I hope you slept better than I did.

Speaking of better, better late than never with today’s post. The Thayer v. Rapson competition is not only for quarterback but also for the attention of that little ray of sunshine, Corina. Judging from the look on Thayer’s face in P2, the competition at the moment exists only in Rapp’s head. He’s had enough of her outgoing personality and has decided any ongoing interaction is not worth the effort.

What he has not had enough of is twisting the knife into Rapp’s audible-calling, benchwarming ass. BFD that Rapp has convinced Corina to come to the Goshen game, unless she wants to see the true leader of the Mudlark offense in action, that is. Corina might not cotton to authority but she’s equally uninclined to warm up to a sycophant. Come to think of it, isn’t that what Thayer is in essence – a game manager who may not spark the big plays but who follows Gil’s instructions to the letter? Seems like neither one of these guys has a chance with her. Keep your eyes on that Dallas guy, though.

I’m Coming Out, So You Better Get The Perky Started

Hey y’all, it’s your old pal teenchy, subbing for Rob tonight. Have we ever had a dedicated volleyball arc? The closest we’ve come during my tenure here was last spring when one of Mimi’s softball players, Linda Carr, got burnt out on playing for the Valley Elites while not being TCFS so she quit the Valley Elites but went off to college to play volleyball anyway. Valerie Okumbe was a player (and rejector of infamous locker denizen Jamar Gaddis) for Milford (not the Valley Elites) in 2009, but she was never actually shown playing volleyball. I defer to our TWIM statisticians for additional background.

So we may finally get a bit of a fall girls’ sports angle, if only to showcase new resident jerkface Corina Karenna. Frizzy-haired girl Becca (who gets a Pantheon of Hair tag from me) asks an innocent question and gets called “perky” for it. Dark-haired girl Susan drops a hint that she won’t let Corina off quite so easily, even as Corina flips her a comeback (and the bird) as she strides off down the hall. Here’s hoping some of Mimi’s “bigs” tape Corina to a locker, Jamar Gaddis-style.

A New Thayer, Not in New Thayer

As much as Corina wants to be in Milford, I get the sense she really doesn’t belong there. First off, she’s wearing this tiny-ass backpack and asking about lockers. At son of teenchy’s high school there are lockers but nobody has enough time between classes to stop at them, so everybody carries all of their day’s materials in backpacks big enough to use on an extended Appalachian Trail hike. Then again, more of the class materials are becoming electronic and are accessed via school-issued Chromebooks. This is especially the case now since more and more schools (including son of teenchy’s) are going remote this fall. So maybe Corina is ahead of the curve here.

Where she isn’t – and where it appears she doesn’t really belong in Milford – is in keeping up this tough chick front. Wasn’t Corina’s problem with authority figures, not fellow students? So why mouth off to two girls who are innocently offering help? If either of them had any sense, they would take Corina’s reference to hiding a couple of bodies as a threat, report it to Dr. Pearl, and have Corina’s ass on the next bus back to Valley Mod so fast it’ll make her head spin. People have been expelled from Milford for less. But since Rubin has seen fit to carry her into a third story arc, she’s here for the duration. No softball this fall, so will she stay in shape playing soccer? Let’s hope so; <a href=”https://gilthorp.wordpress.com/2016/09/14/those-soccer-balls-seem-very-large/“> Coach Dawes</a> won’t put up with her shtick.

Rubin uses the bodies joke to transition us to football where, again, he and Whigham remain committed to detachment from reality. These two rando Mudlarks are already suited up in game unis and helmets fully decaled before even having played their first scrimmage. They’re scoping out a Will Thayer and how he fills out those pads. Is this a broad hint at steroid use? Isn’t that what we said about Saad Shamoun before he told Steve Boone he’d been working out with John Pascoe and Tipp Nunn?

metapost: Obviously I haven’t figured out yet how to embed hyperlinks in the new WordPress editor. Hopefully I can come back later today and work on that.

Low-mileage Arm, High-mileage Character

Note to Corina: if you’re on the clock, it doesn’t matter if you’re catching balls or not. So relax.

Note to True: if you’re paying your catcher by the hour, you might want to have her actually catch rather than stand around and listen to your spiel.

Note to Gil: Don’t you have some hooch to drink kids to teach golf? Stop wasting True’s and Corina’s time.

True throws heat, fans a lot but give up a lot of taters. So who does he turn into in the future? Robin Roberts? Max Scherzer? Aroldis Chapman? The guy dropping your Amazon package off on your doorstep? Lay minister at Milford First Baptist? He’s pretty good at eulogies and, after all, he is a Deacon. >rimshot<

metapost: It’s been a little over a month since my mishap in the mountains and, after follow-ups this past week with my GP and cardiologist, I’ve been given a clean bill of health – at least as far as the mishap is concerned. Still got a long row to hoe to get back in shape and I’ve gotta remember that I’m no spring chicken. My thanks to all you TWIMers for the kind thoughts and words. Here’s hoping I’m around for a few more seasons to come.