Gil Gets His Dig(g)s In

One of our Central City protestors (the Tommie Smith/John Carlos descendant) gets a name and becomes as central to the plot as any Milford girl.  The “other item” Gil was shaking Skip down for must have been her name and digits. I leave it to the readership to discuss the propriety of what Skip and Gil have done. Suffice it to say it doesn’t leave a very good taste in my mouth.

I’m assuming Gil’s convo with, I’m assuming, Ryan will pick up tomorrow with, I’m assuming, what Gil said to Ms. Diggs after appreciating her “taking a stand” that wasn’t written here.  Odds are it will involve some gentle variation on “keep your ****in’ mouth shut.”  I’ll be surprised if her response isn’t some variation on the “HA” behind her head.

From the Pantheon of Mysterious Objects Dept.: Diagonally striped thing above and to the right of the GIL mug (or is it below and to the right? I can’t tell); backdrop of P3 (they’re standing outdoors, presumably; is it a huge backstop, more Prairie Style Windows, or what?).

Truly, Madly, Reluctantly, Unfortunately

Good thing I went with the color version of the strip today. These fair-haired women with prop glasses are all starting to look alike. Today it’s Ms. Rizk, not Dr. Pearl; we know this as Gil is the summoner, not the summoned. (Not that it’s clear Dr. Pearl summoned Gil but, you know, pecking order and all.)

Ever since the Central game the strip has been playing a huge game of connect-the-dots. Great leaps ever forward – from Kaz’s near telepathic understanding of what Gil wants to Gil’s visit to the Van Aukens to Gil’s chat with Dr. Pearl to today – with a lot of gaps to fill. Is it clear that Gil spoke with Ryan at his home? (The “genuinely remorseful” comment to Dr. Pearl might lead us to believe he did.) Whether he did or didn’t, what prompted Gil to speak with Dr. Pearl next? (To get the green light from the Doctor to lean on Ms. Rizk to quash Daftpunk’s article?)

And now, what leads Ms. Rizk to add the “unfortunately” tag to her statement implying that Dafunk’s article has already been quashed? Is it meant for us to deduce that, even though she’s been against Daffy’s hit piece on the ‘Cane from the get-go, she secretly wants to run the article? As our astute readers commented yesterday, this spring arc has turned into another of Rubin’s classic Bechdel Test fails. Girls’ sports have taken a back seat not only to boys’ sports but also to high school journalism which, by maintaining its integrity, may end up protecting a male athlete at the expense of his female victim and accusers. Ms. Rizk’s “unfortunately” may be her subtle form of protest against the Milford jockocracy.

Gil won’t give that a moment’s thought, ’cause sarcastically, he’s in charge.

The Full Story

Panel two is nearly the full Milford… Prairie style windows? Check. Freak hands? Check. Chunky Bracelets? Check. The rare bare midriff? Check. If only Dafne was registering her dismay with a case of EES, we’d have perfection.

Bonus pat myself on the back: I have continued to avoid the temptation to make a Risky Business joke based on Ms. Rizk’s name…

Maybe, But Does Ryan Have a Super Bowl Ring?

Today’s big highlight is getting to watch Papa Van Auken morph from Dabney Coleman into Carl Brutananadilewski. Holy crap where did his eyelids go? Between Pop’s chest slap and summoned rage and Mom’s agitated temple rubbing, the Van Aukens are starting to pile it on in defense of their son. Granted the Valley is full of gossips with nothing better to do than play telephone and potentially ruin some kid’s life, but dad’s overreacting a bit himself. It’s not like Alyssa and Ryan got married or anything.

is Gil gonna buy their version of the “Ryan hit Alyssa” story? Will he wait to get straight from the ‘Cane’s mouth? Or is a road trip to Central City to meet Alyssa in order? Those don’t often work out well for Milfordians…

Overrated fight

So it turns out that Gil already is on the case of extinquishing the fire that is Ryan Van Auiken vs his old girlfriend featured on the sign at the baseball game by the girls from his old school. Good for him-  but its still almost mid-June and the kids not only have to finish baseball/softball but graduate already.

His parents describe the incident as non-violent, and are adament about it.  So its great that they completely believe Ryans version of the story. Because no way were they there when it happened, right? And Gil asks them before he asks Ryan about it, even though he has a first-person account of things. Why not ask him first? Oh yeah, he vamoosed. For all that coffee Gil drinks, he’s asleep at the wheel 98 percent of the time. If there was no police report, then Gil should just go back to Milford and tell Dafne to move on and find another story to cover. After she graduates. After she figures out she no longer writes for the Trumpet because she doesnt attend Milford anymore. And so on and so on..

By next week we should be on to lemonade and beach scenes. And golf. Yikes!!

 

Alyssa? Explains It All

Many years ago I lived inside the Beltway, and a running joke at that time was that when people moved to Great Falls, Virginia, they were automatically issued a Range Rover. My initial observation of Mother Van Auken led me to believe that when women move to Milford, they are issued the same huge earrings and chunky bracelets that native Milfordian girls are issued at birth. (The Van Auken digs wouldn’t look out of place in Great Falls, either; I’m guessing on the opposite side of town from McShanes Hardware.) Then I noticed the chunky bracelet on the wrist of one of the Fun Girls from Central and realized that this is the way of the Valley.

A week ago I questioned how Dafunk reached the conclusion that the girl Ryan hit was his girlfriend, since that had yet to be explicitly stated. Well now it has. The next exposition should be how the Central girls learned about what happened between two Kingsbrook students and made it their business to let one of them not forget about it.

So, I Took A Little Vacation From The Blog…

May 30, 2017

And this is what I come back to… Nothing wrong with the first two panels of Tuesday’s strip and I even get a kick out of The Bucket supporting the baseball team, confident in the knowledge that they”ll more than make back their advertising spend through increased sales of milkshakes and french fries. But, boy howdy we swerve back to the Volcano hit a girl plotline and I got just about nothing.

May 31, 2017

I am trying to imagine that part of Ryan’s shock is coming not from the sign, which looks about a third the width of the one they were holding in panel three of Tuesday’s strip, but also the incessant clacking and clanging of those bracelets.

We’re Not Supposed To Talk About This

There’s really only one thing to talk about. Those earrings. There’s just that one kind of earring and Dafne, her BFF and the sign maker are all wearing it. Once I noticed it, I can’t look at anything else.

There are other things, but they are all being cycled through for the third or fourth time. There’s Dafne’s reporting on Ryan’s past. We get it. Dafne, emboldened by her breaking the Heenan story, thinks she’s got another huge scoop on her hands with the rumors about Ryan. Ms. Rizk has advised her to back off because there is no hard evidence and because Ryan is sixteen. It seems like Dafne still needs some help in learning a lesson.

Maybe it’s just me, but I think this situation should have been resolved weeks ago. There’s no place in a school paper to write about anything like this.  A student may or may not have committed a crime. Another student wants to dig into the incident and potentially publish it for other students (or anybody accessing the Trumpet website) to read. No. Just no. Like the dumb reality show in the classroom plot, this is another one that should be a cut and dried “No, we can’t do that here.” Milford is clearly in a heightened reality. I guess that’s for dramatic purposes, even though you’d never know because all the drama leaches out while the plot gets boiled and boiled and boiled….

Also, we’ve got our fun girls. They are still planning their stunt. This is their whole spring. They will probably need to go to summer school as they forgot to go to any classes while they hung out and planned this sign.