A Shot in the Dark

Oh geez, here we go again with the volleyball girls who finish each other’s sentences. This schtick is getting old, just like everything else in this fall arc. (Don’t try getting your left hand and wrist that close to your face at that angle like the dark-haired girl in P2. We don’t have any chiropractors on staff here.) So what’s with the tiny crack in Corina’s “What football team? I don’t care about the football team” veneer? Does the idea of guys fighting get her all tingly and stuff?

Now for the mildly interesting cliffhanger that might answer that question. It’s been established that Corinna has zero interest in the quarterback boys. So why the h-e-double-hockey sticks is she inviting Rapp over to her place on a school night? Time for a “shot” to impress mama Karenna by sitting in on a hot game of Uno? Or is mama Karenna off to therapy and Rapp’s “shot” is to steal as many bases as possible off the catcher? Oh, it’s high ribaldry at its best! And it’s about to start – let’s watch!

Going Dutch? No, Going Swiss.

I have tried to keep politics out of my posts here for the most part, with the notable exception of the Padilla siblings basketball arc when I echoed timbuys’ sentiment about the treatment of Puerto Rico after Hurricane Irma. Yet not until robmize’s* post yesterday did it dawn on me that the quarterback controversy aspect of this fall arc could be seen as an allegory of the 2020 US presidential campaign. The Mudlark gridders are roughly split between the steady, unflashy game manager who plays the cards he’s dealt with and the mouthy loose cannon who calls his own shots and comes up bigly as often as not. But enough of that analogy.

How is a high school student like Switzerland? Does he hold on to the lunch money bullies steal from other kids for safekeeping? Does he sell nice watches at recess? Oh, I get it, he’s neutral, as in he sits in his own little clique separate from the quarterback cliques.

Mimi allegedly coaches the Lady Mudlark volleyball team. Have we ever seen her coach them? Not really, but that’s par for the course. It should come as no surprise, then, that she spends as much time scanning the stands to see who’s watching her team as she does actually coaching that team. Watch for Gil to preach unity, not division, in the locker room next week after Mimi rats out his players for sitting in bunches and not in a group. Come to think of it, that’s kind of an allegory for what we saw in US politics tonight.

*Again, I think it’s appropriate to tip our collective hats to robmize for the work he does. We who have no view into the inner workings of the USPS have no idea of the forces that have influenced his ability to do his job. That he’s still able to do it is a testament to him and his fellow postal workers. Thank you, Rob.

Advantage, Dallas?

Rapson is rounding up a volleyball posse so CK will talk to him. That sounds like another hairbrained scheme. Why bring other guys? Is Rap afraid of being seen by himself at a volleyball game?

What’s the story with Dallas? Is he part of the Rapson crew or was he already a volleyball stalwart? Maybe Dallas has been stalking CK at the volleyball games all along after he clocked her in her catching gear after he delivered pizza to that famous baseball game. I’ll definitely root for Dallas to win the CK sweepstakes, even if the prize is ambiguous at this point. Maybe if someone plays their cards right, they will get an invite to a Friday night game of canasta. Oh, but what about those pesky football games? Score one for Dallas (if he’s not on the football team.)

Corina’s Shakin’, Not Stirred

Boy, Central pretty much sucks at everything this season, don’t they? Too bad we didn’t see how badly they sucked at volleyball. Then again we haven’t seen much more volleyball action than Rapp has – just that one panel about a month ago. We should get to see some more soon, though, since Corina has made that a prerequisite to getting down the base path with her.

That is Corina, isn’t it? The coarsening of her profile in P1 looks like a throwback to Berrill’s style and that’s not her usual mullet she’s wearing, either. Next panel she looks like a completely different person as she has a seizure describing Becca’s performance against Central. Finally all hairs are back in place as Rapp hates to see her leave but loves to watch her go.

Now it’s a matter of time to see which of the dueling QBs shows his face first at a Lady Mudlarks volleyball match. I’ll laugh if it ends up being Leonard Fleming. Heaven knows we need a good laugh right about now. Hope you TWIMers had a fun and safe Halloween, shook one, not stirred one, in Sean Connery’s memory, and remember to turn your clocks back before you turn in tonight.

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.