I Need to JO

Jo Dawg, I heard you like joe so I put “JO” on your joe mug so you can read “JO” while you drink joe

*****

 

Well, the talk on the street
Says you coach Rick Soto
This brother of mine
Says he shouldn’t play no mo’

I need to know (I need to know)
I need to know (I need to know)
If you think he shouldn’t play
Then you better say so
I need to know (I need to know)
I need to know (I need to know)
Because I don’t know who’s wrong, him or my son
If I’m needin’ to wait, if I’m needin’ a spine
I need to know (I need to know)
I need to know (I need to know)

Who would’ve thought that
I’d listen to this guy?
I’ll be right back
I gotta call Dubai

I need to know (I need to know)
I need to know (I need to know)
If you think he oughta play
Then you better say so
I need to know (I need to know)
I need to know (I need to know)
Because I don’t know who’s wrong, him or my son
If I’m needin’ to wait, if I’m needin’ a spine
I need to know (I need to know)
I need to know (I need to know)
Wow!

*apologies to the late great TP

Wish I knew how to get my thumb to migrate to the other side of my palm like Gil has. He must be double-jointed and Hungarian.

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All Wet

Goshen won the slugfest in the rain. We had one panel of action in said slugfest, so it wasn’t exactly clear who wore what unis, but I believe Goshen was in the dark jerseys. So that would be the Goshen guys standing miserably in the rain waiting until the coach finishes up his handshake before they can get to the visitors locker room and get out of their waterlogged gear. (I was pondering that situation last night watching the conclusion of the Patriots vs. Steelers game and wondering about the logistics of dealing with tons of soaking wet uniforms, pads, shoes, etc. In the NFL and even big time college football, of course there’s considerable staff and resources for such things, but it can’t be too pleasant in high school.)

If you look even deeper into the first panel, you’ll also see some very devoted fans who are still parked in the stands. One has a comically small umbrella and another appears to be holding a folded piece of paper or cardboard over his head. They certainly got soaked. Maybe they have to wait to ride back to Goshen with the team.

Marjie Ducey looks like she got pretty soaked. That might be an early Christmas present for robmize, at least in concept.

What’s left to chew on here? Puddles on Steve Luhm’s shiny floors, more shiny floors, and more Ricky Soto/UG drama.

Sluggy in the Rain

“Kaz, are you pondering what I’m pondering?”

“I think so, Gil, but me and Marjie Ducey — I mean, what would the children look like?” 

Why are Kaz and Gil cut off at the ankles? Oh, it’s because we’re looking up at them from a POV somewhere down a flight of stairs. Uncle Gary’s, after Kaz pushed him down them? We should be so lucky. What an anticlimax.

Gil’s worried about Rick now? He wasn’t when he got clocked a couple of weeks ago? If his concern is about Rick’s manipulative uncle and spineless mom, why didn’t he lower the boom yesterday? Already armed with the lowdown on Uncle Gary’s Astroturfing campaign, Gil had every opportunity to expose the goateed one for what he is but chose to punt. The Mudlarks will be doing the same – both in the game and with their season – directly.

Today’s post inspiration:

Takes One to Know One… or Two

Y’know, it’s been hard to make light of this fall’s subject matter, especially since Rubin’s done the legwork to pull in “Dr.” Joanne Gerstner and give cred where cred’s due. (I’d pat myself on the back for calling out the caveats in the BU study that Dr. Gerstner called out yesterday but that feels like piling on.) By now the TWIM faithful has no doubt seen what happened to the Texans’ Tom Savage and the aftermath last weekend (and no, I’m not gonna link to it) or read about ex-Chief Larry Johnson’s trials and tribulations with what he suspects might be CTE. No, none of this is a laughing matter, and again credit to Rubin for at least trying to approach the subject from a reasonable POV. High school kid has a potential talent outside of a sport that could be negatively impacted by certain injuries that could be sustained in that sport? Concerned parents seek to dissuade their child from participation in that sport for that reason? Sure, it all checks out.

We’re left with snarking on the usual shortcomings of this strip: the need to contrive a villainous adult with bad intentions as a plot device; the continual parade of weak, underdeveloped female characters who consistently fail the Bechdel Test; and the haphazard pacing that seldom reflects the actual pace of the season of the sport being played. All of those come to a head today as Rick finally calls bullshit on Uncle Gary’s little charade. Uncle Snidely Whiplash falls back on the “I’mma tell yo’ mama!” defense and it’s up to the reader to connect the dots between a Central City parking lot and Gil’s cushy office. Gil exposes Uncle Gary tomorrow, gets to spout some pithy platitudes on Saturday, and next week will be a mad rush of strips telling but not showing us how Milford misses the playdowns.

If you told me that Uncle Gary and Mama Soto were in some kind of incestuous, mind-controlling relationship and that Mama gets propped up in front of the monitor like one of Saddam Hussein’s human shields on Skype calls to Daddy Soto, I wouldn’t blink. It’d at least offer some explanation for the adult interpersonal relationships in the Soto household.

metapost: In the roar of so many other things going on this week I completely missed the obituary for “Mr. Falcon,” Tommy Nobis. The face of that franchise in its early years – and a force for good in and around Atlanta after his playing career – Nobis was another player haunted by injury to his body and mind.

Step Off, Uncle Gary

We’re on the road, at Jefferson for a no action game with an unknown outcome. This paves the way for more time for gaslighting Uncle Gary to further his agenda.

The unseen Dr. Gerstner’s pronouncement seems to have an edge on annoyance in it, in a “stop wasting my time kind” kind of way. How can one read that much into one statement? Because Uncle Gary is in the mix, probably posing all of his own unfounded theories and just generally being Uncle Gary. (“Yes, Uncle Gary, I’m familiar with the Boston University Study. It’s interesting but somewhat limited for drawing conclusions. There’s no control group and there is a selection bias in the brain collection itself.”)

Of course there is a real Joanne Gerstner. But this Rubin name check has a little more depth to it than the usual one’s involving Neal Rubin’s friends. Joanne Gerstner is a journalist and author. She has recently co-authored the book, Back In the Game: Why Concussion Doesn’t Have To End Your Athletic Career, along with concussion neurologist, Jeffrey S. Kutcher. Maybe Uncle Gary should take a look at this book.

Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Dubai

December 8, 2017

Wow, Rick Soto must’ve grown a foot and gained 100 pounds since he took that knee to the helmet. He looks like he could be selling Niblets. Again, there’s nothing in this strip that would hip the novice Gil Thorp reader to the dynamics at work here. Convos like this are no doubt playing out all over this land of ours on a regular basis, but in most cases I’d venture “your mother and I” ≠ “your mother, my milquetoast sister and I, your creeper uncle who wants to make a buck off you.”

December 9, 2017

I’d been waiting to throw today’s title out ever since Richard Soto, Sr. got his backstory, but at this point I don’t know if we’ll ever see him in person so I figured since he’s referenced today I might as well use it now.*  It’s almost as though Rubin invested so much effort into making Uncle Gary the evil father substitute that he forgot he had written in an actual father for Rick. Hence this quick-dump, poor excuse of a throwaway line to Andre to keep from having to develop that character, or have him behave as an actual father might when he learned about all that’s gone down this fall.

Nice to see the Milford Public Library stay relatively on-model.

*Also, it’s not baseball season but it’s still worth throwing out the origin of the song’s use in a sports context.

We can’t trust Rick’s long-term health to some big-city lawyer, either

He said “tested” instead of “studied”? Does he know anything about scientific research? Currently the only reliable diagnoses of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) are post-mortem studies of brain tissue. Testing for CTE may come in the future, once reliable biomarkers are found. The data Uncle Gary cites comes from a study, not from testing. Why leave out the CFL players and collegians, Gary? Huh? How about the caveat that the brains donated belonged to people who had been symptomatic?

A reader new to Gil Thorp who had just read only the past week of strips might be forgiven for siding with creepy uncle.  Longtime readers know Gary is just one in a long line of Thorpiverse adults seeking to exploit a child athlete for their own personal gain or wish fulfillment. That he chooses to do so by cherry-picking data favorable to his case is consistent with his portrayal as some kind of lawyer (ambulance chaser PI litigator, maybe? still not established) but calls his own credentials into question. Why Connie Soto or, especially, Absent Dad Soto hasn’t yet done so is one of the biggest plot holes in this fall story arc.

We’re that Much Closer to Giving Up This Silly Plot

Know what else needs to be given up? Whigham’s obsession with goatees, sidelong glances, elf hair on women and whipping down the glasses Horatio Caine style. It’s already a comic strip; it doesn’t need to be any more cartoonish. Maybe a cameo from Tank McNamara‘s Dr. Tszap would help.

Going with the color version of the strip today so we can all see that Uncle Gary is so full of shit his eyes are brown. Neither he nor Connie Soto are doctors; how would they know better than Rick Scott that Rick Soto needs medical attention? Of course, UG could be one of those ambulance chasing kind of lawyers who knows just enough about personal injury to have made it big on contingencies to sit around at his sister’s house all fall and play Svengali.

There are four NCAA FBS conference championship games being played this afternoon and evening. What says Milford will lose that many games in that many days over the next two weeks?