What more need we say?
P1: If Jaquan was a star these past two months would’ve been moot. Not all who wander are lost – except for Rubin, who was lost.
P2: Albrecht Dürer meets Roy Lichtenstein, Whigham style.
P3: Freeze-Frame Ending. If you listen hard enough you can hear the theme from “CHiPs.” Here are a few more to hold y’all over until Monday.
Oh snap! You mean a 30-year-old is able to give an 18-year-old some career advice for once? Is the Thorpiverse becoming less parallel? Somebody pinch me!
When did Heather and softball ever appear in the same sentence in this strip to date? Did the fact that, in Milford, you can ditch softball practice for “journalism” with no ill effects influence her decision? Or is it her understanding that softball and soccer are the only coaching options for women in this country? What about, you know, basketball? You can coach that in Milford without experience; just ask Steve Luhm and Bobby Howry. Maybe Jaquan wants her to coach him.
We’ve had a field day with the badly drawn vehicles in the strip this week. Today Heather’s car looks like the love child of a last-generation Ford Focus and a Subaru Baja. I’m never quite sure if this is cartoonists’ way of avoiding IP infringement claims, but Rex Morgan‘s Terry Beatty seems to be able to draw a reasonable facsimile of a Mercedes-Benz GL-Class SUV, so take that however you will.
Enough for today; I need to find a sports bar with ACC Network Extra so I can watch True Standish’s Demon Deacons host the mighty Blue Hose this evening.
Why else would we have all this third-person navel gazing?
Jaquan is 30. If we’re to believe the narrative, he’s been in the NBA for about eight seasons. Next LeBron or not, he could still earn a pretty damn good living, even at the league minimum – enough to fill his giant paws with tiny water bottles for years to come. Does he want to quit pro sports altogether, get an M.Ed., and become a high school history teacher and basketball coach? With that atrophied right thigh and messed up ankle, he could be a lot closer to that reality than he thinks.
From the Dept. of Regional Accents: Reading P2 makes me wonder if Heather isn’t originally from New Orleans.
So now Case is concerned about people comparing him to.. Lebron James??? And thats why he wants to play football instead of basketball? That’ll shut everyone up right? They’ll really lay off him now that he’s wearing a helmet over his eyes.
So if he plays football, nobody will expect anything because he’s not expected to be any good at football. But to play in the NFL, you have to be way more then good at football. So hows he gonna make an NFL roster if he isnt any good at football??
Hey Case, why dont you just quit basketball and do a real job like bagging groceries at the HyVie? Then everyone will see you and you can explain why you quit basketball and are out of the limelight that you cant stand.
I dont really think Case knows that NBA and NFL skills arent interchangeable. You dont just plug in a point guard from the Bulls when a safety on the Bears goes down injured, do you?
P3 they look like theyre running downhill. This strip is following suit. Fast.
I’m not gonna engage in mental gymnastics today beyond guessing what Jaquan has backward is that he wishes Heather (or Trey, or Pelwecki, or someone) would tell him they wished he coached basketball.
There’s been too much suspension of disbelief required to hang with this summer plot. An NBA star rehabs an injury under the supervision of one of his old high school opponents, in a gym he converted from his parents’ old house? That old opponent is now some kind of master trainer with more than one client? The ex-soccer player, ex-undersized tight end is now a coaching genius? The greasy-haired big lunk lineman is suddenly gonna turn into a skilled ball carrier/receiver? The greasy-haired big lunk lineman’s regular-season coaches are gonna note this and give him touches (but not like the touches the coaching genius has been giving him)? Stop this crazy train, I wanna get off.
What I do find remotely plausible is that Jaquan wants to coach. We’ve heard nothing about his NBA career post-draft. Even after donning a hoodie in the middle of summer, he’s drawn only the attention of the cook at Janet’s Diner (via the waitress who looks like Claude Akins). Maybe he’s not the superstar we’ve been led to believe and has just been eking out a living on a string of 10-day contracts between stints in the D-League. Maybe he’s seen enough of how Gil skates by in Milford to want a taste of that life. Maybe I’ve run out of theories and just wish Herk the Mauler would show up again.
metapost: Even as I try to get back into the habit of posting the B&W version of the strip, it’s been pointed out to me that the color version contains a fairly egregious error.
Musical inspiration for the post title:
As predicted, Heather has turned Pelwecki into Tom Sawyer’s picket fence: a blank canvas onto which everyone involved can project some aspect of their personality.
Heather can indulge her little coaching fantasy, except for that part where fullbacks have to block. That was never her strong suit and besides, Kevin is a guard so he should already know how to do that, amirite?
Pop Burns can indulge his Uncle Rico QB fantasy, and I expect he’ll be telling us how he coulda been a contender at some point.
Jaquan can make this into a first step toward reinventing himself as Antonio Gates. After all, he’s not entirely confident he can rehab himself back into the NBA.
Eight Elbows, well, he can make some bucks off the whole scheme.
Well lookie here, it IS Jaquan ‘The Don’ Case and his merry man, Trey Davis. Good job whoever opined who these 2 new characters were. Oh for the old days, before I had t this weekly gig and all I did was read the shit. I dont remember when the Don was in his heyday, but I’m guessing 2008. Thats 9 years ago. If Pelweki is 17 or 18 now, that would make him 8 or 9 when the Don was in this strip. I wasnt watching high school sports or Any sports, until I was 12. So who knows whether Kevin is blowing smoke up the Dons ass or if he really was attending high school hoops games at an age when his attention span was roughly 27 seconds.
OK I looked around for an old The Don strip in action but I cant find one. So the editor team will have that job – it was a fun plot, and the old days are all some of us have going at this point. These last few storys have been like piles of manure, each one smelling a little worse then the last. Welcome back Don!!
As another rando Mudlark continues to double fist pump for heaven knows what reason, exit stage right Quadruple AAAA and Big Ken Brown in best Rick Blaine and Captain Renault fashion. (This twin figures walking away into the shadows to end an arc thing is becoming a Whigham hallmark.) All that’s missing is Tina Aagard boarding a plane with letters of transit to… a rehab clinic?
Here’s where I profess total ignorance. Is it typical for single parent addicts to be sent directly into residential rehab programs and give up custody of their children during that time, do not pass go, do not collect $200? Is it typical for single parent addicts being sent directly into rehab under such circumstances to not even say goodbye to said children? I’ll give Rubin a smidgen of credit for attempting to address some troubling phenomena facing the US today: the interplay between the spread of opioid addiction and the decline of the white working and middle class.
I will also profess total ignorance of this plot twist when I made my Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner reference a couple of weeks ago. I chose that reference thinking that Gil would use his animal charm to coerce Aaron’s teammates’ families to invite Aaron over for a series of meals. I did not factor race into the equation and, until reading yesterday’s post, didn’t really factor it into this arc at all. Given that Hiatt-Brown household has been portrayed as one of the more successful ones in the Thorpiverse over the past few arcs, I did wonder whether Ken’s snoopiness about Aaron’s home life was going to lead into a subplot that gave him feet of clay. Any thoughts of that have been erased now that Aaron will be getting a taste of Ken’s dad’s home cooking while giving the Hiatt-Browns an intro to the joys of EDM.
Baseball on Monday, then? I wonder what usual suspects Rubin will round up for the team this season.
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