Hey kids! Didja ever wonder whatever happened to Jaxxxon Kiser? Well wonder no more! He grew up and changed his name to Eli “Scooter” Borden. Just look at him – the same monster paws, the same glazed-over stare at no one and nothing in particular – no way they’re not out of the same gene pool.
Anyhoo this little trivia buff has obviously burned a lot of brain cells coming up with this scheme that he’s only gonna use with this one pitcher, that’s gonna require the catcher to buy in and, oh yeah, that the coaches are gonna go along with too. Think Scooter and the Hammer are gonna let Gilberto and El Kaz in on this ploy? How many games into the season before Milford’s opponents pick up on it? It might work in a non-conference game against one of those school’s Neal’s buddies went to, but it won’t take long for, say, Goshen to pick up on Borden’s chatter and start banging on trash cans.
Smirky Charis does nothing to dispel the notion that she’s definitely not with Scooter because of his mouth.
Boy that Hollis sure took some tough stands, didn’t she? Calling out teammates who sipped hard seltzer and twisting Mimi’s arm to get more playing time and fluff up her resume was tough. Speaking of tough stands, tough guy Gil finally eases up on Pranit Hollywood when nothing’s on the line…
… or at least we’re being led to think that. A quick scan of the game results and I see Milford’s at 4-2, 2-2 in the conference, with 1 unknown outcome.* More than one conference loss usually implies no playdowns, so it’s safe to say the Mudlarks are playing out the string. And of course Milford was out of it because Pranit didn’t play. No one ever steps up for Milford.
Now, with nothing on the line and Kaz pulling the baseball gear out of storage, Gil relents and lets Pranit Smoothie back in the game. A meaningless win, some platitudes for the next two days, a lame joke on Saturday, and then time to pound that Budweiser hit the old batting cage. Wonder if Pranit will ever collect on the gambling debts owed him. Guess we’ll have to wait and see if he shows up for baseball with all his limbs intact.
What a wasted use of Marty this season. No way he wouldn’t have gotten word of Pranit’s suspension and run with it like a drunk with scissors. Even the Chief is phoning it in. He’s put Tevin’s head on Gordon Achebe’s Ted Kluszewskiesque body.
* The season so far:
@ All Saints W, 57-56
Redford W, 60-54
Jefferson L
Goshen W (“a bounce back”)
@ New Thayer W (“comfortable”)
@ Madison ???
Central L, 58-60 (notice how a three would’ve won it? Pranit the implied scapegoat)
Happy Groundhog Day, everybody! Just like in the movie and just in time for the rodent to see his shadow, we get a strip that feels as boring and repetitive as many before it in this arc.
Pranit “Call me Bob” Smith has been bragging about his online gambling from the moment we were introduced to him and pretty much every time we’ve seen him since. The only thing he hasn’t done was jump up on a cafeteria table and shout it to the entire student body (though he has bragged about it in the cafeteria proper). Why he’s acting surprised when Chubsy-Ubsy* rolls up and asks him about his gambling is a surprise in itself.
It’s only a matter of time before Gil, either directly or through his mouthpiece Kaz, confronts Pranit Smoothie about his little racket. What it does to Pranit and the Mudlark hoopsters remains to be seen, but odds are it won’t be positive.
Do those Milford High lockers keep getting bigger or what? Pranit Rock could stuff big boy in one of them without skipping a beat – that is, if he wasn’t so scrawny.
*Fun fact of the day: Norman Chaney, who played Norman a/k/a “Chubsy-Ubsy” in the Our Gang comedies, was a native of Cambridge, MD. Apropos of nothing, here’s a photo son of teenchy took of some ducks wintering in Cambridge.
Yes its Saturday and this is the Friday post– had too much to do yesterday after work and with this weekend being a holiday for me I figured why not just do this on Saturday? (After I take down the Christmas tree, run errands and do some laundry.)
P1– I assume Cressa is fine and Maddie is trying. Is Maddie trying to be fine or be a better captain? Or both? Is Mimi also trying or is she fine? Either way she looks way too worried about the state of affairs 3 games into the season then she should be.
P2– and P3– we have the guys sitting at lunch and one of em proudly displays his first bet on SportsDuke. Well gee. All it is is a bet, dipwad. The time to strut your stuff is when you have your first WIN on SportsDuke. Who shows someone their phone when they make a bet? Yeah, these guys.
At least theyre doing 2 storylines at once and giving both genders equal treatment. How much money will be blown by the SportsDuke gamblers this season relative to their winnings? I was on one site where you had to have a minimum amount in your pot to be allowed to bet. I basically only gamble on the Triple Crown races and the Super Bowl, so its not like Im always on these sites, but hopefully these high school dudes have the means to blow money like that because the odds will catch up to them eventually and good luck asking their parents for a raise in their allowance after SportsDuke sucks away all their savings for college. Better concentrate on that basketball scholarship as well.
Job One as Lady Mudlarks captain: hand feeding your teammates pizza, apparently. At Casa Talley, Hollis floats a piece in front of McKinsey consultant Cathy Sasaki in an effort to snap her out of her trance and get some input on how to lead the team.
If Cathy’s math comprehension is any indication, Hollis may be better off ignoring her. It looks like only about a third of the pizza has been eaten at most; even if Hollis has been doing all the eating so far, there’s still enough left for Cathy to get her share and then some. Better Hollis lean on her apparent powers to make the pizza regenerate, fold her body in half, pull her head into her shoulders turtle style and make her cleavage magically disappear.
Cathy does have a point just the same. Off to a 1-2 start – all in non-conference games – isn’t quite time for soul searching or rallying the troops so much as its finding out who and what works on the team or doesn’t. That’s more Mimi’s job, so, um… yeah, maybe Hollis does need to figure out what she can do as captain to help the team.
meta: Kinda stinks that I used up all of my Sidney Poitier references here before the time came to actually pay him tribute. I thought Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner lent itself naturally to the Aaron Aagard saga but finally found a use for it during the Summer of Jaquadley. I even worked a They Call Me MISTER Tibbs! reference in very early during my time here. Maybe something will come to me, like the Milford basketball teams finding their stride in the heat of the night.
Who orders tea at the Coffee Cantina? Pranit Smith, that’s who.
Full Pantheon of Hair trifecta today with Tevin’s (that’s still Tevin, innit?) Esquerita ‘do, Pranit rocking the Bobby Bittman and Trevor Lawrence-looking guy looking all Trevor Lawrence-y. Pranit’s rationale for going with the cheap option makes sense…
…but opens the door to speculation. Trevor’s Spidey-sense must be tingling.
Money’s tight for the Smiths, but Pranit is good at assembling and managing a fantasy football team. If he can raise the stakes while maintaining his level of success, maybe he can help augment the Smith family income. Maybe he’ll try to push his luck into other forms of sports gambling. But where will he find the funds to take that plunge?
This is where the Central City Mob steps in. Next thing you know, he’ll get involved in a point-shaving scandal, tanking shots to help make Milford lose or to keep Milford wins close. Nah, that would assume people bet on Valley hoops, which assumes that people are interested in Valley hoops. More than likely he’ll get in deeper in a fantasy football league, where his luck will run out. His contribution to the Mudlarks’ downfall will come via a kneecapping which will come after he can’t pony up his gambling debts.
Now it’s time to hear from our Milford boy protagonist this season. Pranit Smith appears to be either a phone scammer or an online scammer. Like seemingly every other Milfordian (Milfordite?) these days, he’s somehow under the spell of the little machine in his hand. Maybe he’s trying to land a spot in the Top 100 Scammers List. Since the only boys’ sport we see in the winter is basketball (no pesky gymnastics, skating or rugby to distract them), Pranit’s gonna be playing hoops for Gil. Why the Valley no hockey? There’s a Winter Blast with ice skating, and we saw a figure skater a while back, so… oh, wait, never mind. I’ve beaten this dead horse before.
Let’s sit back and see how Pranit’s quest to break the Top 100 in whatever will interfere with his sportsball just enough to keep his team from achieving success. Gil will intercede just in time for Pranit to learn his lesson but not in time for the Mudlarks to make the playdowns. Either way, you know he’s gonna hit the court to this tune.
Earlier this afternoon, the Michigan Wolverines beat the Ohio State Buckeyes 42-27 in Ann Arbor, snapping an eight-game losing streak against their arch rivals.* The Wolverines were led by running back Hassan Haskins**, who had 28 carries for 169 yards and five touchdowns. With the win, Michigan wins the Big Ten East Division and will play for the conference championship against either Iowa or Wisconsin.
Rushing for five touchdowns to beat your most hated rival in The Big House in front of a hundred thousand plus with a light snow coming down. You’d have to think that would be football nirvana for a Michigan high school running back. You would, but then you wouldn’t be Chance Macy.
After cramming two uninspired Milford losses in five strips (one of which only showed one non-action panel from the game), Chance Macy’s Big Football Decision is gonna get dragged out over at least three strips. Chance doesn’t care what Gil thinks and doesn’t care that he’s created expectations in people based on his talent. Not a major issue, really; the kid should make his decision on what he thinks will be best for him in the long run. What does matter is that he seems intent not only on not seeking advice but also on actively ignoring any advice offered him, consigning it to that big trash can that doubles as Gil’s mail bin.
Chance isn’t interested in finding out if he could play at a big football factory, and has no interest in football as a career. So what does he want to do with his life? Does he even want to go to college? If he does, why shouldn’t he take a free ride somewhere and take a load off his grandparents’ (and possibly his absent parents’) backs? What heretofore unknown motivation will guide Chance’s decision?
Odds are it’ll be something as random as this season’s plot Tevin Claxton’s admission that he’d been using a sports psychologist. What isn’t random at this point is getting the readers to care.
Apologies for taking so long to get today’s post up. I spent far more time than usual watching actual football games than trying to come up with something clever to say about fictional ones.
*Disclaimer: teenchy neither attended these schools nor is a fan of either of their football teams.
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This Week in Milford 
