Vaya con carne, Martín Luna

This has to have gone down as the Gil Thorp arc with the least amount of actual sports action ever. It also has to be near the top of arcs requiring the greatest suspension of disbelief. On top of all we’ve had to choke down around Marty, Pirate Boy and the Milford Pirate Network (does one station constitute a network?), now we’re supposed to believe that WDIG has at least three studios? Couldn’t at least one of them held Marty’s substitute, re-creating the basketball games Ronald Reagan style while Marty was suspended?

Marty played his traditional role of designated heel, between making light of the Padillas’ life situation, the gratuitous Mexican food references (intended to woo a potential sponsor but interpreted as “Puerto Ricans/Mexicans are all alike and their cultures all the same”) and the mispronunciation/pissy over-pronunciation in response to criticism. But really, Gil doesn’t come off as much less of a schmuck either. True, he couldn’t have anticipated the tack the MPN took on covering Milford hoops – nor Marty’s blue response to them – but he did in effect goad them on to goad Marty on. His ham-handed efforts at negotiation showed how little he thinks of Milford girls’ basketball and required us to connect the dots and assume Marty’s suspension would turn into termination if Marty didn’t accede.

Finally, Gil’s little dig at Marty in the last panel (yet another in which characters depart via a doorway), meant to remind Marty of the Boricua culture of which he is so ignorant, comes off a bit dickish as well. I’ll admit I like the idea of Marty as Scooby-Doo villain, but wouldn’t that mean he’s actually somebody else under a rubber mask? My money’s on Dr. Pearl.

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Pining for the fjords? No, just for some actual sports action

Oh look, Pirate Boy Levin finally got his puffy shirt, and just as Seinfeld was a show about nothing, this has become a plot about nothing.

It’s just become a mockery on so many levels it’s ceased to even be funny. The whole idea of the alternative broadcast was to compete with the WDIG broadcast and to protest Marty’s culturally insensitive references to Jorge Padilla via occasional outbursts. The outbursts haven’t been protests so much as snark; only Pirate Boy has even brought up the Pirate Network’s reason for being. And competitive? There’s been zero effort to make this anything but a bunch of goofy, childish antics. “Sportsball” is what people who are contemptuous of sports (and the people who play them) call sports. By playing up this angle, Pirate Boy & co. are as disrespectful to Jorge in their own way as Marty has been in his.

I dunno. Maybe I was expecting MPN to play the games a little straighter, showing some sensitivity to the Padillas’ situation and calling Marty out for his lack of same. Maybe Pirate Boy will hit Marty with that stick on Monday, but I’m not holding my breath.

That’s Using Your Head! Or, The Other Guy.

Ugh. Well, here we are.

Uncle Gary should actually be quite satisfied with this outcome. Little Ricky’s golden throat appears uninjured (a blow to the larynx would delay if not derail his future crooning career at the Central City Copacabana) and, even if Ricky drops a few points off the ol’ IQ metric, it’s not exactly like singers are paid to think.

Tune in tomorrow to see if we get to find out what happened to the other guy.

The Best-Laid Plans Aren’t Much Fun

October 17, 2017

Yep, the same ol’ same ol’. Marty asks a not terribly snarky question, Gil delivers a douchey answer. If your game plan is as dull and nonspecific as the one Gil delivers in his pre-game pep talk, then what exactly are you giving away repeating that verbatim on the air? If I’m Marty I’m throwing Gil’s crap back in his face on Saturday morning, as the next two strips will reveal.

October 18, 2017

Another situation where the home team wears white at night. Is it really that hot in Nebraska this time of year? Other minutiae: weird perspective in P1 (at least three different planes), funky stadium architecture in general (do the bleachers face the field?), Milford’s uni numbers glow in the dark but their helmet decals no longer do. (Also wondering why Gil didn’t retire True Standish’s #11, since it doesn’t look like he’ll be sniffing any championships again anytime soon.) Minus points for Whigrub for not having a QB shout “Omaha!”

October 19, 2017

“Coach Thorp couldn’t tell me his game plan ’cause he didn’t have one!” – Marty Moon, on his first broadcast after the Millard West game

By the light of the 2×4 Lego brick Milford is stymied and humiliated. Not only are the Mudlarks held scoreless in the second half, they get groped in the process. Adding insult to, well, just adding insult, the now-balding Marty Uncle Gary takes another opportunity to twist his tiny knife into Rick, hoping to drain the boy’s desire to play football by a thousand paper cuts. Shouldn’t Rick be dragging himself onto the team bus for a long, sad ride back to Milford? Or has Dr. Pearl cut Gil’s athletic budget so deeply that the players’ parents are forced to shuttle them to and from each game?

 

 

Trust me, you’re full of c**p

When I was in high school we had a thing called Career Day where various reps from careers ranging from artist to zookeeper would come in and we would gravitate toward the field(s) of our interest and hopefully get a taste of the field before we decided to either pursue it as a major in college or as a future job etc. I cant recall who I visited but rest assured it was nothing of the sort of work I wound up doing, which I’m sure is the case for most people.

Some years later in my school newsletter I got as an alumni they had a blurb about the upcoming Career Day and a short list of which fields they needed to fill for the event. On the list:  Singer. My eyes froze.

Really!  Someone in a high school that was 90% college prep was gonna take all that algebra, world history, calculus, and physics education he/she was getting and turn it into a career that is mostly self-employed and mainly requires long hair, tattoos, and drugs as well as late-night gigs with a band and no guarantees of anything financially secure plus you need to hire (and pay) an agent to promote your sound and schedule gigs. Its a hard and mostly difficult life and all but the very few who actually make a profit are soon left with nothing but debts and sore throats. Plus some cool tats. But I digress. I was imagining someone from Twisted Sister (like Dee Snyder) coming to the school and everyone dropping who they were visiting to see him. Too funny.

The strip basically is about Garys pipe dream that Katie should be a singer; I thought Rick was the one singing. And who’s Connie?? Who’s he pointing at in P3? Somebodys mom? Whos mom?? When are they gonna play another game? Whens the bonfire? What does Millard West high school have to do with any of this??

And how  the fuck does being in LA for 20 years qualify you to determine that a dude singing 1 song in a high school cafeteria should be a professional singer??

 

Transition into Ambition

Today we learn that The Secret Pelwecki will share linebacking duties with an internationally-known professor of economics (or maybe a bassist) who is currently on leave from his day job. If Pelwecki is to be a right guard/linebacker/fullback/butt of jokes (or, in Milfordese, RG/LB/FB/BOJ!) why is he getting reps at QB? Even more curiously, why is he wearing True Standish’s number? (BTW that link also shows an instance of Gil actually using a fullback.) You might think Gil would’ve retired that jersey and put it in a littlefreelibrary shrine on campus.

So: a bunch of slow receivers too small to play tight end. A small, scrappy, quick quarterback. A couple of decent offensive linemen, one of whom will occasionally line up at fullback. What kind of offense will Gil put on the field this fall? Speculate away.

In Which We Learn Milford Truly Is 1959 with Cell Phones*

Why else would Rick choose to sing** a song that became a Billboard #1 hit that year?  Why else would he dress like Howdy Doody while he sang it?  Finally, why else would Uncle Gary refer to him as “young nephew”? Who actually speaks that way? Snidely Whiplash? Dishonest John? I’d better stop now lest y’all think I was alive in 1959. (I wasn’t quite yet.)

Uncle Gary gets tiny props for recognizing the minuscule odds of Rick having a football career, but loses those props for not recognizing the minuscule odds of Rick having a singing career.  The fraternal organization lounge singer circuit must be a hot one. Maybe he has a hot tip that a remake of Beyond the Sea is in the works.

*h/t TWIMer Philip, in yesterday’s comments.

**For that matter, why did Rubin feel the need to lampshade that Rick was singing, a/o/t playing some sort of instrument?

Muff Big or Go Home

There’s been a lot of turmoil along Tobacco Road this past week, pretty much none of it good. You’d think the syndicate color monkeys would’ve had the decency not to add to it yesterday by rendering True’s Wake t-shirt in UNC colors.

That said, I can appreciate Eight Elbows’ efforts to bring this wacky subplot to an end by having Milford’s Goldenest Child dash Jaquan’s far-fetched hopes to make the switch from pro basketball to pro football at age 30. I don’t even mind Trey’s little spaz dance there at the end.  However, I have no clue why Gil brought Mimi out to watch this spectacle, unless watching all those hot sweaty mens would put her in the mood for more than just sipping cocktails back at Casa Thorp.