You, Reading Gil Thorp. Me, Trying To Snark About It.

Charis the tennis player (the only Milford High girl we’ve been introduced to this season so far) points out how ludicrous it seems to jump to conclusions about Papa Hamm’s camera-shyness. Since the witness protection program idea has already been thrown out, it can’t be the reason. Odds are it’s something really stupid he’s using as an excuse for ghostwriting books for business executives.

Smash cut to La Maison Du Jambon where we have another Milford athlete’s mom ticked off at that Milford athlete’s dad’s bizarre behavior. Shades of last spring, non? Mama Hamm’s appearance begs the question: If he’s the one trying to hide, why’s she the one who’s constantly changing her hair, clothes, and glasses? Mama’s confrontational speech reads like a lame Milford Mad Lib:

“You, fantasizing about Marjie Ducey. Me, indulging your fantasy by dyeing my hair blonde and putting on wire-rimmed glasses.”

“You, trying to live down the failed tryout for Colonel Sanders you lost to Norm McDonald. Me, suggesting you should be the one who dyes their hair.”

“You, thinking you can’t be seen. Me, thinking our son can’t see.” Wait, neither of them are thinking this. That’s how this plot has remained even remotely plausible.

Have at it with your own Milford Mad Libs in the comments, gentle readers, and stay dry this weekend.

Poke Sallet Cressa*

Late in the day and I don’t see Rob’s Friday post so I will double up here. Apologies if I’m stepping on toes.

March 18, 2022

We’ve reached the point where Rubin realizes he didn’t pace the plot very well, so he crams multiple games into a single strip and makes it clear that no Milford team will make the playdowns. We’ve also reached a point where we realize that Whigham can’t draw lower body parts very well. Mimi has a case of the gone-ass while Central’s coach has stovepipes for legs and earrings that can be seen from orbit.

Knowing her team is playing out the string, Mimi has decided to play musical guards, with the previously maligned Maddie Bloom now taking the place of Cathy Sasaki in the backcourt. Cathy, ever the team snitch player, isn’t bothered by this. The only person this doesn’t seem to sit well with is…

March 19, 2022

… Cressa Baxter, who’s lucky Gil isn’t the Thorp coaching her team. That whole hard seltzer fiasco would’ve had her expelled and banished to Valley Mod, where she could’ve replaced Corina as the girl with a chip on her shoulder. And what exactly is the source of that chip? Did Cressa get passed over for a service academy appointment? Does she feel she should’ve been made captain over Hollis? Come on, Rubin, don’t leave us hangin’. Did Hollis ignore her when she was being bullied or something?

BTW, I know the song is “Polk Salad Annie” but the plant it’s made from is pokeweed and the actual dish is poke sallet. Learn more about preparing it without killing yourself here.

Drinking and thinking

The title of this post is a salute to an old bar trivia team I was on from 2018-2020. We started playing every Tuesday with 4 players, and the group grew to 18; by then we had split up into 3 groups of 6. The bar started a tournament in the fall of 2019 that lasted about 8 weeks ( I didnt come every week but was fairly regular) and we had 3 teams in it; the primary team was called Drinking and Thinking, and if memory serves they finished in the top 3, which earned them a gift certificate for appetizers. We had used several monikers before settling on that one for the tournament, and continued to use it afterward. We stopped playing when the pandemic closed the bars in March 2020, and I now play in Indiana with a smaller group but similar format during the winter months.

Mountain Dew vs hard seltzer– hmmm. I’d rather drink piss than MD, so the winner is the liquor, for me anyway. In fact after I have to drink MD, I would need the stiffest drink on earth to wash it down. Yuck.

I guess Jesus wasnt around to make more seltzer like he made more wine at the wedding back in biblical times, huh? They didnt have enough to go around just like back then. Hey there’s even a Youtube video of the event! Check it out! (Those of you not Catholic may find it helpful; the rest of us find it amusing)

P3 we have a confrontation- I cant believe the blond girl was so naive she didnt know what was going on. Drinking? At OUR party?? Stop the presses! No, start the presses! Heather Burns has herself a story!

Cressa? She Is FIERCE!

I’m sorry but whenever I hear someone referred to as “fierce,” I think of… Cory Booker’s cousin.

Hey, there’s a basketball reference in there, too.

Cressa’s had enough of stale off-brand toaster pastries – she’s going where the action is! Hollis should catch the clue that bribing people with food won’t always guarantee the results she wants. She might also catch the clue that she’s not always wanted, either. Why else hadn’t she heard about the Tiffani Palmer shindig?

No matter, she and her right-hand snitch Cathy have crashed the joint. But Cressa’s nowhere in sight. Could be it’s more than her knee that’s feeling frisky; let’s hope she doesn’t reinjure that knee busting some kind of dance move. Legend has it that the Lady Mudlarks refrain from dancing until they’re eliminated from the playdowns. Hey, today’s strip has to advance the plot somehow…

Tell It Like It is Saturday

Today’s strip features two characters hearing things about themselves they don’t really want to hear. But before we dive into today’s story and tacking onto robmize’s comment about fishwrap, I just gotta ask: has the Milford Star always been a tabloid? If so, then some things start making sense.

Not far away and across a river from where I live lies Mercer County, New Jersey, home to the state capital Trenton and served by two newspapers: The Times and The Trentonian. How such a small market can sustain two papers in this day and age is remarkable, but the answer is straightforward: while The Times played it straight offering Washington Post-style reporting, The Trentonian played it yellow and offered Page 6 Girls, bikini-clad, PG-13 versions of The Sun‘s Page 3 Girls. The Trentonian also gave Ernie Kovacs a regular column, so I guess it had that going for it. Maybe, then, there’s another newspaper in Milford and/or the Valley that plays it straight.

Tabloid news is designed to get a rise out of its readers, and in Milford it’s no different. Cathy is so upset by Heather Burns’ Lady Mudlark hit piece that Hollis had to console her by quoting The Dude swapping blouses. It’s what a good captain does. (Okay, you tell me how they ended up in each other’s shirt, then.) For her sake, Cathy had better never find out that Heather was just paraphrasing something Mimi told her. Tough for the little snitch to learn that the Lady Mudlarks’ early struggles may lie with her and not with the two players she ratted on for not attending the non-mandatory post-practice practice.

Smash cut to the halls of Milford High School, home of lockers big enough to qualify as studio apartments in Manhattan. (Steve Luhm’s beat it back from Casa Talley quickly enough to get both floors squeaky clean.) Trevor Lawrence is the first of Pranit Hollywood’s teammates to throw his little gambling scheme back in his face, but it doesn’t stop Pranit from bragging about his success. Of course he’s successful now; that’s how the house sucks you in.

It takes a paper to raise a child

Boy these coaches sure plan ahead– instead of off-season weight-training in summer, they wait til the local rag notices their lack of muscle up front and hope the kids read the rag before it becomes a fishwrap. (Some of you remember I’m a mailman. Years ago we used to get a local news mailing once a month or so that looked like a folded paper, and we called it the fishwrap.)

What a pair of dummies. If they ever donated their bodies to science, the doctors would find nothing inside of em but wood.

P2– Last I checked, fury hath nothing to do with the size of ones biceps. Another dummy. (More wood inside)

And in P3 we have the besties reading the paper together (oh Pleeeeezze! Who the hell does that?) with a plate of cookies to one side. Methinks if you’re sharing cookies, normal people would put the plate in the middle, allowing both of you equal opportunity to graze as your perusing the local rag (future fishwrap).

Yep, 2 more dummies. (You know what goes here)

“This is your captain speaking. I’ve turned off the ‘No Hogging’ sign…”

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.

Oh get over it already

The girls lose to Tennessee-Chittenango but their sneakers have great treads on them!

Instead of the Bucket its pizza night for Hollis and Cathy as they order in. I usually pick up my pizza as it saves money on tips plus I like driving. Kinda odd to do this after a game at night unless these 2 live very close to each other. (walking distance) No idea why they cant sit at a table and eat unless theyre watching TV; they appear to be staring at the pizza box. Its also odd-looking pizza (white and tiny pieces). At any rate, we’ll see what develops, but being captain-ish means addressing the whole team in the locker room, not waiting til your bestie is with you in your house. Again, 1 loss and there’s panic in the streets. Normal girls would be so over it by the 3rd bite of pizza. Not this crew. And we’re stuck with them.

All.

Winter.

Long.