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.

Awestruck Freshman Theater

Orientation day for new students means we are definitely exiting Summer and going into Fall, but we’re sticking with Corina as the focal point for now. This follows the True Standish model where True ate at the diner and had cokes with Gil all summer before deciding to go to school in Milford. (Does anybody remember True’s mother’s mental health coming up at all then? I’m sure Maureen wasn’t shown but maybe she was working her magic behind the scene.)

Awestruck freshman are waiting in a line to get sheets of paper. Panel 2’s faces are struck with awe over the fancy WELCOME TO MILFORD HIGH banner and the shiny, shiny floor. Awestruck boy wants to touch awestruck girl’s hair. Should I do it? Maybe I’m too old to do that? Do girls like that? Oh boy, I’m so awestruck I think I need to throw up!

In comes Corina, who is the opposite of awestruck. She’s without awe. A welcoming committee greets her and she is not in awe of them. Who are they? They are there for orientation but they knew Corina was coming? Maybe they are just awestruck freshman who were at the social event of the summer, the big baseball game/food truck rally where Corina Karenna’s name was suddenly on everybody’s lips. Maybe there’s already an anti-Corina faction and these two are representatives?

Keep in mind that softball won’t start until spring, so Corina’s got a whole semester to navigate MHS before her ascendancy as queen of softball (which will happen in eight to twelve scattered throwaway panels).

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and Shut Your Piehole

Corina must not have gotten enough free meals out of Milford, so she whipped out Mim’s* business card, punched up those digits, and set up a lunch date at the diner to glom one last one. Wow, that diner table sure is shiny, ain’t it? Looks like Steve Luhm must’ve dropped in and applied his mop skills to it. You sure as shootin’ know Maureen didn’t, since her nosy ass has been spending so much time burning up the phone lines.

This feels like an arc-ender, what with Maureen’s snappy one-liner and the fact that this is the last weekend in August. What, really, have the last couple of months advanced in this strip, besides laying the groundwork for two possible long-term (by Gil Thorp standards) characters? That Milford has its own version of Mary Worth in Maureen? That Mimi’s gonna end up with a decent catcher for the Lady Mudlarks next spring? That Golden Boy True Standish isn’t so golden?

Tune in Monday when we’ll see if Kaz and Rick Scott are attaching face shields behind the Mudlarks’ face masks.

*Not a typo; see Thursday’s strip.

Hypnocookie!

Suddenly, Mrs. Standish produces a plate of cookies, which symbolizes the comfort and support that Milford offers the mentally ill. She suggests to Corina that Art has been trying to get out of the tank town for years now that True’s high school football career has been over for six years. Ma Standish isn’t budging though. There’s no place like Milford. She offers Corina a cookie in a paper cookie holder (?) and Corina freezes in place, wondering what the heck this woman is talking about, how any of this is going to help her mother, and what the heck is in these cookies.

Phoebe stops by the Thorps’ to tell Mimi that she should talk to Maureen at the diner about an exciting softball catching prospect that may be moving to Milford!

So Corina Did Have A Hat!

Corina appears to be on a mission to find a place where there is support and treatment for her mom. There’s an old maxim (at least a week old), if you want anything in Milford, go to the Diner and Maureen can hook you up. True Standish found a practice catcher in Corina and now Corina can find support and treatment for her mom. We’ll just sit back and wait for Maureen to go through her Rolodex and pull up some affordable, comprehensive mental health care for Corina’s mom. Maybe Corina has a line on some low income housing too, assuming that Corina and her mother aren’t rolling in dough. While Mo works her magic, it’s a good time for a picnic down at the lake.

I’m wondering how widely available comprehensive mental health care is in the entire Valley and in Milford in particular. Is there any reason why you could expect that it so happens that Milford is a mecca for psychiatric services while the rest of the valley is lacking in these resources? What are the chances that some key community resources exists in Milford alone but not in the surrounding area? Should I just cool it with my questions and let Maureen do her thing?

One last thing: What’s going on behind Alexa? It looks like disembodied freak hands are reaching up to grope her.

You Should Leave Your Hat On

August 14, 2020

Alexa hasn’t had many opportunities to throw her weight around since graduation; pressing her line of questioning on Corina gives her one. Mama Karenna may not be behind bars after all, since she’s going to “appointments,” but that still doesn’t explain why Corina’s able to call her own shots when it comes to moving to Milford. Emancipated minor? Mom on parole? Wearing a chunky ankle bracelet? Corina’s not giving a straight answer, speaking in metaphors about depression until finally she makes up some story about a hat to break off the conversation.

August 15, 2020

co·mor·bid·i·ty /ˌkōmôrˈbidədē/, n. comorbidity; plural noun: comorbidities; noun: co-morbidity; plural noun: co-morbidities. the simultaneous presence of two chronic diseases or conditions in a patient.

Okay, so the hat wasn’t a red herring. Where did it come from then? We didn’t see it at any time since Wednesday, when first we saw these three at the diner. And where did Alexa go? The depression song and dance might’ve been enough to satisfy her curiosity. Maybe she had to go buy some more stuff for her dorm room. Corina’s not her problem anyway…

… and she sure as hell isn’t Maureen’s problem either. Mo better keep her trap shut else Corina comes back to the diner and lobotomizes her with that pencil.

Moving in Mono

Finally Phoebe gets some quality time with her bestie-for-now and Hoosierina-to-be  Alexa and what does she wanna do? Introduce her to Corina, of course.

This is BFF transition planning no doubt. Unless I missed something in the past six months, there’s been no indication that Pheebs is a graduating senior. She’ll need someone to hang with once Alexa has broken away so why not start grooming the new girl in town? Well, there’s this little matter of the new girl’s attitude. She’s decidedly not a team player, and that’s just not The Milford Way. Alexa’s snark isn’t off base in that respect. If (as an alert TWIMer pointed out in yesterpost’s comments) Corina gets stripped of her amateur status for accepting cash from True it’ll be a moot point, albeit one not made until well after Mimi Thorp has hung her hopes of a successful season on Corina’s chest protector.

Despite her ongoing contact with Phoebe Corina seems to be more than a bit of a loner, right down to her choice of moving to Milford. Either Mom’s behind bars or Corina heard about that Tiki Jansen arrangement.