MeeMaw who??

Boy we have a lot to get to here so lets get crackin–

1. Most girls dont wear torn-sleeve muscle shirts. Guys do, like me. Keri is a girl as far as I know.
2. How does Keri already know how to drive? Isnt she a freshman? (I already related how only seniors could drive at my school.)
3. Its ok to like Iggy Pop but who the hell is that on her T-shirt?
4. The way the window/door is in the background indicates the room is not Keri’s bedroom but likely the living room. If so, why the hell is Iggy Pop on the wall in the living room? Gil put that there? Egads!
5. I thought Jami was older then Keri. And HE needs a ride?
6. Whoever the hell Meemaw Debbie is, why does Jamie have to make a deal like that? Mimi should only accept a yes or no answer. And its wrong for Mimi to accept that deal. Apparently Meemaw Debbie only plays right after school. Otherwise why cant one of the parents drive Jami to Lukes house? Good Lord.
7. And now Gil is concerned about Luke being a bad influence on Jami. Cripes, my parents wern’t saying stuff like that when I needed a ride somewhere. They trusted that my friends were ok.
8. Mimi, whats better, a bad friend or no friend? Apparently she doesnt care. Hey, hang around with a drug dealer for all I care. You need to make friends dude!!

It Must’ve Been Zane Clark’s Doing

How bleeding edge are we now, kids? The Linda Lindas’ new album is their first album, released only this past June. They’d previously released an EP in 2020. Their breakout hit was “Racist, Sexist Boy” which kinda seems on brand for the nu-look Gil Thorp. Here they are performing it at a public library, which kinda seems on brand for the old-look Gil Thorp.

Rock ‘n Roll Thursday comes a day early to TWIM, then.

That, in a nutshell, is what today’s strip is all about: getting past the hard candy shell of modern society to get to the chewy middle of adolescent desire to be popular and part of a group. Look beyond the hijab-clad volleyball player and her brown-bagged meal (possibly halal, because the MHS cafeteria can’t be trusted) and see the girl who wants to let her circle of friends know she’s hip to the latest music. Look past Arianna’s acknowledgement of the hijab-clad girl (who hasn’t been given a name yet IIRC) and see the girl who wants her friends to know she uses Urban Dictionary. Look beyond Keri’s suddenly green-dyed hair and bejeweled everything and see the girl whose nose is out of joint because she’s not in the team picture one of her teammates took and posted to social media.

So sit back, relax, and watch the old Too Cool For School drama play out with a bunch of new faces. At this rate, we’ll probably see more of that than we will of Mudlark football.

More Pronoun Trouble

Football season! Volleyball season!

Here we go again, but it’s not a dispute as to whether sportsball should take precedence over non-sportsball extracurriculars but the modern problem of remembering what pronouns people choose to identify themselves. Today, Toby née Tabatha identifies as he/him, Keri identifies as they/them, and Gil identifies as coach/Coach.

Now why are these three having this little confab at The Bucket of all places? (And why are they having coffee? Don’t they know there’s a cantina in town for that?) Are they here to pick up them after their postgame dinner? Are they serving as their chaperones for said dinner? Is it time for a jangle-off as Mel and Mimi see who can rattle their jewelry the loudest? Winner gets Gil – if she wants him, that is.

The unspoken tension here is so thick you could cut it with a butter knife, not unlike the one Mimi’s twisting into Mel as she deadnames Toby. Clearly she hasn’t forgotten that Mel wanted to be her at one time. Meanwhile Gil, still aware of that history and that Mimi is unhappy in the marriage, tries to play the supportive husband by throwing out a patronizing “sweetie.” Will Mimi have the divorce papers served publicly to Gil right here in The Bucket, the way Jason Sudeikis had Olivia Wilde served with custody papers while she was presenting at CinemaCon?

One thing is clear: despite Mel’s claim, in Milford, nothing is the same as it was.

edit: Oops! I forgot to identify the players from the Dolphins’ No-name Defense I posted this past Saturday!

Front, reclining: Lloyd Mumphord, CB

Front row, left to right: Bob Matheson, LB; Bill Stanfill, DE; Bob Heinz, DT; Manny Fernandez, DT; Vern Den Herder, DE

Center: Nick Buoniconti, LB

Back row, left to right: Dick Anderson, SS; Curtis Johnson, CB; Mike Kolen, LB; Doug Swift, LB; Tim Foley, CB; Jake Scott, FS

What is this, effing ponderous, man. Ponderous, effing ponderous.

“I want a concerted effort to come out of a strip that isn’t an up-tempo strip about fapping into a damned death dedication!” Here I am set up to spike some snark after Gil played setter yesterday and all I can think of after reading today’s installment is Casey Kasem’s infamous ranting outtake.

Well that puts a damper on my catty remarks about how sick Mimi’s mother really was, how far away (and how close to a beach) from Milford she was living, and how old Cami Ochoa is.* It’s taken me the better part of today to decide which is the bigger bombshell: that Mimi’s mother is terminally ill or that Mimi had an aspiring professional golf career we hadn’t heard about until today.

Let’s start with the first one. When Mimi took the Thorplets to the beach and/or to see her mother, we were under the impression that Grandma Clover didn’t exactly live around the corner. Now we’re told Mimi’s gone “to take care of her mom up north” only to find them at Milford Adult Care LLC? Either Milford is about the size of Sitka, Alaska, or Mimi went up north and brought her mom closer, well, to die.

A slightly meta digression is in order. In the time that I’ve been part of the TWIM rotation, I’ve lost both my parents: father of teenchy in July 2014 and mother of teenchy in November 2016. When my father died, I don’t think I missed a regularly scheduled post; however when my mother died I took a leave of absence from TWIM that lasted until late January 2017. In hindsight I think the main difference was that my mother died very suddenly and somewhat unexpectedly, whereas my father had been terminally ill for over a year and his passing was not so much a matter of if, but when. It also didn’t help matters that I became the sole surviving member of my family after my mother passed and had to deal with the material consequences of that. That’s also why I spent a fair part of 2017 in Bakst country.

What’s my point? My point is that when you know with some certainty that a loved one has a limited time remaining, you are allowed an opportunity to prepare for that eventuality. In Mimi’s case, it appears that includes not only bringing her mom closer to her for the time she has left** but also preparing to pursue a golf dream that’s been on hold for as long as I’ve been reading this strip if not longer. I suppose next we’ll find out that Kaz has gone off on a spiritual trek to Nepal and Silent John Pascoe has returned to help Gil coach the football team.

*How many years of a time jump did Barajas make when he took the super soph from six months ago and made her a high school sports coach? Is there a fountain of youth in Casa Thorp that kept Keri and Jami from aging while Cami did the reverse Benjamin Button? If so, maybe they better give a glass or two to Mimi’s mom. Just sayin’.

**Not sure how Mimi’s mom can say with such certainty that she’s dying in six months and not tonight. Does she have a physician-assisted suicide penciled into her calendar for that date? Does she know that Mimi’s going to carefully wheel her into Milford Adult Care LLC and not do something else with her? There’s a string of morbid jokes as long as my arm I could roll out here but good taste (and maybe my earlier aside) won’t let me do that. Instead I’ll refrain and leave that for the commenters.

WOKE must be a new rival station to WDIG

Mimi Thorp.

Likes: Hairy stay-at-home dads. Passive-aggressive notes.

Dislikes: Successful coach dads with pilot’s licenses.

Gil Thorp.

Likes: Old fashioneds. Old tech.

Dislikes: Threats to his masculinity.

Jami Thorp.

Likes: Hentai. Staining his pants to hentai.

Dislikes: His mom knowing he looks at hentai.

Keri Thorp.

Likes: Playing her parents off each other. Wearing her politics on her sleeve torso.

Dislikes: Whatever it’s hip to dislike.

Gil Thorp readers.

Pronouns: y’all/ all y’all

Likes: Continuity. Artwork that matches the dialogue.

Dislikes: Retcons. Random pointy fingers. Consistenly inconsistent uniform colors.

Mimi, not coaching? ¡Oh mi corazón!

The past week’s action at the MCC was setting up to be a 21st-century version of Caddyshack, with Gil and Mimi as the Smails and the Martinezes (well, at least Luke) as some kind of Al Czervik. Sra. Martinez (a/k/a Fran) was looking to fall into the Czervik mold, with huge earrings huger and chunky bracelets chunkier than any heretofore seen in Milford. So when Fran replies to Mimi’s quintessential American question, you can literally hear the mic drop in print.

Look how gobsmacked Mimi is. You can almost hear the Locust Valley Lockjaw and see the privilege explode out of her eyes. That someone who looks and sounds like Fran could be a heart surgeon? Mind. Blown. That a heart surgeon could be married to such an obvious boor as Luke? Mind. Blowner.

Know what? Mimi’s mind is nowhere near as blown as mine when she introduces herself as a “stay-at-home-mom.” What happened to her basketball-softball-volleyball-PE coaching job at Milford? Is that why there was no girls’ sports arc this past spring? Will that ellipsis explain it all come Monday? This retcon train has been rolling for the past seven weeks; now it’s in danger of jumping the tracks.

Urban Thorp

Today it’s all flashback as Luke Martinez y Hernnandez spins his tale for Marty’s “podcast,” painting Gil as the Valley’s version of Urban Meyer.

To hear old Hairy Hand Luke tell it, he was quietly minding his own business, admiring his reflection in the carefully polished bar top and nursing his glass of 2% milk while he waited for Bethany the barkeep to pour him another. But where was Bethany? Leaping across the bar to get up in Gil’s grill – and Gil didn’t turn away! (The artwork doesn’t quite match the dialog, Chief.)

There’s a grain of truth in observing that Bethany might have a thing for Gil, but it wouldn’t have been easy for Knuckles there to pick up on it as much as he was running his mouth. If Marty lets this hit the podosphere, this might boil down to a he-said, she-said, with Gil flying Bethany in to cast the tiebreaker.

Marty sounds downright incredulous in response – which does not sound like Marty Moon at all! Kinda reinforces the notion that Gil and Marty have a Ralph and Sam-style working relationship. Looking forward to seeing Gil leave his doghouse for a round of Johnnie Walkers with Marty at Barney’s before this arc is through.

Special Guest Cameo: The role of Gil in P3 is being played by Bob Crane.

Leaving the Light On for Gil

Midday Saturday, I don’t see robmize’s post and I’m in between errands so I’m gonna do a twofer. Thanks for covering for me while I was island-hopping, rob.

July 29, 2022

It doesn’t look like Gil took the crazy bet from Hairy Hands Martinez. Why would he? If Martinez is new at Valley Tech, how has he been tired of watching Gil win the COTY award “every year”? We need a bit more backstory to buy anything Luke’s spouting. No doubt it’s the liquor talking, which is why Bethany the barkeep is cutting everybody off, including Gil.

As Gil saunters off through the bar’s doorway, Bethany gazes wistfully in his direction. In her tiny voiced farewell are traces of a desire to make something else stiff for Gil besides an old-fashioned. Nice tiny, dashed word balloon by the Chief there; can’t recall the last time I saw one of those from him.

July 30, 2022

Can’t recall the last time we saw the Thorp kids, either. Some posters on the ‘mudgeon suggested that it was in the Christmas 2008 strip. A lot can happen in thirteen-plus years (I’m still holding out for the convent and military school angle, myself) so this retcon better have them back as young adults and not preteens, is all I’m saying.

The Valley COTY award ceremonies weren’t held in Milford, apparently but somewhere where there’s an Embassy McCormick Suites Inn. Wherever it is, that’s where Gil’s been staying at least for the past night… plus? Emmett Tays drops in on Gil in the breakfast room to drop off the COTY golden butt plug he left on the podium the night before, gets the lowdown on the kerflulffle with Martinez, then opens the can of worms by asking about la famiglia Thorp. Sit back and order another round, gentle readers; we’re in for a whole lotta backstory next week.