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.

That’s No Catcher’s Mitt, That’s Our Waitress

Alright TWIMers, I think we can start connecting some dots here. Corina has been casing set her sights on Milford as a place to go commit crimes to school next year. If that happens, she’ll end up another in a long line of talented Mudlark athletes the Coaches Thorp didn’t have to coach to end up that way. The fact that she’s doing this opens things up for a lot of exposition that we may or may not get. Is going to Valley Mod a sentence that a student has to serve, and that student is free to go to whatever school in the Valley s/he chooses once time has been served?

She’s already trying to fit in by donning the Milford uniform of chunky bracelets and huge earrings – the same earrings as her waitress, Maureen – after sporting demure studs previously. She’s also trying to fit in by eating mass quantities of greasy diner food. I mean, look at the size of that burger! Wait, that’s not a burger but a catcher’s mitt? Who puts a catcher’s mitt on the table they’re gonna be eating from? And why, if she’s talking about said catcher’s mitt, is Miss Pointy Fingers Phoebe pointing to her left and not down and in front of her where the catcher’s mitt is sitting?  Maureen’s fourth wall-breaking glance says it all. Nobody expects waiting tables at a diner in Milford to be glamorous, but she certainly didn’t sign up for this kind of insult. I mean, come on! She may not be very pretty now, but she was someone’s baby once.

I’d be much more interested in learning about the path Maureen took to end up waiting on Corina and Phoebe. Something tells me she’s been around the Valley a time or two.

They Tried to Make Me Go to Milford

Well robmize gently reminded me that I was covering for him this week, so let me get on the stick and give you a twofer.

July 24, 2020

You know, if this whole summer plot turned out to be nothing but Corinna tossing off one-liners about her family’s criminal past, I could live with it.

Speaking of burning things, Mimi’s gonna end up with some pretty serious burns herself if she doesn’t stop choking up on that spatula. The handle’s there for a reason, Mimi! Luckily she appears to be grilling on a Hammond B3. In any event, Gil is too hammered to notice.

July 25, 2020

You know, if this whole summer plot turned out to be nothing but drunk, glassy-eyed Gil tossing off Captain Obvious one-liners, I could live with it.

“True should be in rookie camp but the minor leagues have been scrapped this season due to the pandemic he has some lame-assed excuse to come back to Milford.” Quick cut back to the MCC where Gil, with yet another drink glued to his hand, gets the beginning of True Standish’s sob story. Hard to believe it’s been almost five years since True led the Mudlarks to a football state championship and, aside from that little mishap with his girlfriend BFF, had the world on a string. How far and how fast can True fall? Will he be selling industrial solvents on the old Del Bader route before we’re through?

Let’s not cast True aside so quickly. Maybe he can hook up with Trey Davis. I hear Trey’s full-service.

Les Expos(ition) sont là, part deux

Called it! Well, kinda sorta, except for the wearing one’s employer’s uniform in public part.

Phoebe has a habit of pointing at everything and everybody a lot, even by Milford standards, so pointing to the diner door to call out True seems a bit belabored. Corinna’s words say “big whoop” but her rapidly swelling hands say otherwise. Careful, Ms. Karenina: sassy, athletic girls who get involved with True come to bad ends.

Corrina’s zinger in P2 pretty much sums up every summer Gil Thorp arc ever and, in a more normal world, should’ve been today’s post title. But nothing is normal these days. Major League Baseball is getting ready to kick off its regular season tomorrow evening, with a 60-game schedule, new rules straight out of the sandlot, and no fans in the stands. Anything and everything that happens in the game this season will be forever tagged with the mother of all asterisks. Besides, it also gives me an excuse to post this, again, something that every wise NL East scoreboard operator should play when the Nats come to town:

Now let’s sit back for the rest of the week and wait for True to explain how he went from being Wake Forest’s QB of the future to a potential future playing in front of sparse crowds in the worst stadium in the majors, and somehow giving Gil credit for it.