Mudlarks with Filthy Souls

Well surprise, surprise, surprise! Rapson enters Casa Karenna only to find Thayer manspreading across Corina’s sofa. Didn’t realize Will had such enmity toward Rapp, but then again he might just be pissed that his quarterbacking rival has turned into a potential blocker. I’ve already used up my Fight Club references and I’m really hard pressed to come up with any explanation of what we’re seeing here that doesn’t quickly devolve into pornography. So have at it, ya filthy animals.

Being Milford, this is going to end in the most nonsexual way possible. Also being Milford, my money is on Gil putting up Mimi to put up Corina to do his job for free what he could not: get his quarterbacks – and, by extension, the rest of their teammates – to play nice with each other, again in the most nonsexual way possible.

Your Mother Has A Face Like Franconia Notch!!!!!

Uh oh. When Coach Thorp is displaying his Old Man of the Mountain visage, we know issues are getting down to cases.

Old Man of the Mountain was a piece of rock sticking out of the mountains of New Hampshire that, logically, looked like a gigantic face of an old man. For centuries, it had been like that as many influential people, including Nathaniel Hawthorne and Daniel Webster, made a special note of it in literature and otherwise. New Hampshire’s state highway markers used the Old Man on its design (and still do) .

Unfortunately, due to several factors, the structure collapsed in May of 2003. Several attempts were made to create a replica but were shot down for several reasons, many of THOSE obvious reasons. Realistically, you couldn’t reconstruct history as if it were a Lego block. Let memories take over and give the Old Man a decent burial. Wise.

I was fortunate enough to see the structure before it collapsed and it was truly a geological fascination. My own memories are positive and make me glad I could see nature come alive.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Old Mudlark of the Mountain is calling in the last people you would think would be part of this schism on the football team. C’mon, Gil, if you’re going to get pissy-faced over football players establishing their own agendas, you get to the heart of the problem. Blaming Dennis the Menace and Ruff for the catfight between Marcia Brady and Jan Brady isn’t really going to get anywhere. We haven’t seen Charlie Roh and Chance Macy for any more than a cup of coffee and when we do, they’re being sent to the lions over the finger-pointing that Will Thayer and Terry Rapson instigated in the first place. God almighty, what a plot-starter (as if we can stomach another one in a long line of plot stubs) . Chet Ballard is back with a vengence. And he proves it by calling Gil at midnight at a phone booth, using one of his socks to disguise his voice, on a deserted Milford 7-11.

“Yeah, Coach? You don’t know me but I caught Charlie and Chance sitting apart from each other at a volleyball match. And that caused Will and Rapp to flip each other off and sit on opposite ends of the scorer’s table. Me? Just call me a friend.”

I hope they throw the book at you, Chet.

Today’s headline in the Milford Enquirer

“Old Mudlark Of The Mountain Collapses Just Shy Of O.J.’s Condo Suite Property!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

sub headline

“Dude, I heard some heavy rumbling and I asked my neighbor, why are buffalo stampeding Milford????”

Gil, if you want to deal with the cliques on your team, you address it IN PRACTICE!!!!!!! Dumbass, you don’t call people out of class to deal with a problem that needs to get settled between the lines. Sure, there’s times to encourage players to show up at games as a unit because you do want them thinking in the same direction. And some coaches make that mandatory. I agree wholeheartedly.

But A) My nephew’s cross-country team showed up at football games in a different section from, say, the girls basketball team. They STILL supported each other. B) Your team is sitting in different sections stemming from issues you chose to neglect until Mimi broached the subject over coffee and Edy’s Low Sugar Chocolate Ice Cream. Some teams pull together at the time of kickoff while yours is sniping at each other AT SOMEBODY ELSE’S GAME. How in the name of Jerry Pulver do you expect them to join forces when it counts????

And pulling players out of Biology Lab Class is going to instantly fix the issue???? Charlie Roh was identifying body parts on a dead pig he dissected before the student assistant dropped him a note from Coach Thorp instructing him to drop what he’s doing and get his butt to his office pronto???? Just don’t drop that dead pig on the floor on your way out, Charlie. You can identify the duodenum later.

And how far do you go with this, Gil? Are you going to make players run laps because one player’s family reunion was at one shelter area while the other player’s family reunion like the event closer to the river???? Pull them out of French where they were conjugating the subjunctive case only to inform them that they have to do 100 knuckle push-ups because players sat in different parts of Milford Cineplex at the matinee showing of “Bambi”? Better not divide the group of football players into 2 tour groups at Mammoth Cave. Gil will have you doing 1000 wind sprints in the parking lot when you exit the cave.

THAT’S WHAT PRACTICE IS FOR, OLD MUDLARK OF THE MOUNTAIN!!!!!! Well, I’ll concede you couldn’t pull ’em out of gym class. Not when it’s YOUR gym class. Heaven forbid.

If Old Mudlark of the Mountain collapses and lands on yore modular but yore renter’s insurance covers a replacement modular and yuz able ta continue takin’ showers in the new’n ta wipe the grease off yore hind end and shave the butt hairs in the bargain, ya might be a redneck.

Gang, I don’t know what you think but this is one of the lost “Leave it to Beaver” episodes. Wally and Beaver are on the Milford Little League team and they attend the school play (“As You Like It”) and the team sits close to the orchestra section while Beaver is nowhere near, discovered by the assistant principal in the senior citizens area.

“Golly, Beav, how could you be such a dope? When Dad finds out you were behind the popcorn machine, you’re gonna get clobbered.”

The extent of any crisis in Beaver’s world. Or Mudlarkland. Same difference.

At the Milford Comedy Club Open Mike Night

“…and The Beaver asked Wally, ‘I lost my lunch money in the smoothie blender. Could you spare some until this Friday?’ And Wally said, ‘What do I look like, Old Mudlark of the Mountain that dropped off the mountain and crushed The Bucket Drive-In cars????'”

A keg spigot can be heard

“Well, hey, it’s Coach Thorp’s first night. He’s a little nervous. He’ll knock ’em dead this Friday…”

And whattup with P2 anyway???? They get these notices in P1 wondering who in the name of ‘Watha could be paging them and for what purpose

“Is The Mayor going to pull off a FOOTBALL scrimmage? Do we need to bring our pads? Is Jay’s Subs catering again? Their reuben sub didn’t agree with me. Almost got food poisoning.”

But nooooooooooo, Old Man with the Mouth has to weigh in his two bits after getting a virtual nagging from his wife the night before. Yes, Honey, I’ll get some milk and eggs at the store and talk to the team about there being no “I” in the word “Bleachers”. And I’ll take out the trash later this evening.

And why do the players feel the need to deliver a short list of who was there, who was sitting with them, where they were sitting? What do you want me to do, Coach, have a clipboard handy at the Steve Miller Band concert at Milford Outdoor Amphitheater? Sure, we all lit our Zippos in unison demanding an encore. We were all dancing together when Steve performed “Jungle of Love”. With the girls, naturally. We’re a team but we’re teenagers.

Coach, you’re not only accusing A.J. Foyt of being the getaway driver for Pretty Boy Floyd when you call in Charlie and Chance, did you expect them to yank out a who’s who roster at the volleyball match out of their lunch box? OR the Steve Miller concert.

“Chance and Charlie, I want a compendium of everybody who was in attendance at Milford VFW Post 158 for the Lawrence Welk Halloween Hootenanny, typed and double-spaced.”

Where’s my Turabian “Elements of Style”? This might take a while.

P3 just absolutely takes the cake. Beaver and Wally are in trouble because they don’t know where Eddie Haskell and Lumpy Rutherford were sitting? Gil, this isn’t a pop quiz. Shoot, this isn’t the principal’s office. Some schmuck on the football team is going to get due-processed from school because he didn’t know if his teammates were sitting in the nose-bleed seats? Yeah, lay the paddle on the next kid who can’t recite the section, row, and seat number of the guy sitting next to him. Be sure to get a witness. You know how procedures can be.

Earth to Gil, that’s what PRACTICES ARE FOR!!!!!!!!!!!! You already have two pimples on your butt, Thayer and Rapp but you address the problem by putting more fluoride in your toothpaste. God, no wonder why you lost a couple of weeks ago. If somebody farted, you’d get to the root of the stench by spraying Endust. Yeah, it solve a problem or two but you still have problems lingering.

Competition is healthy and the Rapp-Thayer stand-off could make for a better team if handled right (Don’t leave an opening, T. Drew) . But Chance and Charlie are about as team as you’re gonna get. They ended the competition by playing better. Now end your own self-destructive rat race by coaching better.

Overheard by a couple of tourists at Old Mudlark of the Mountain State Park

“Where’s Gil face? It was there a minute ago.”

“Crap. And I had the camera loaded.”

“And we’ll be back to see if that locker room tirade did any good. The football team heard an earful based on what I heard through the wall. Hopefully, that might light a fire in the volleyball team. This is Marty Moon and you’re listening to WDIG, a division of Learfield Sports.”

“Folks, it’s scary when a team is not pulling in the same direction, isn’t it? When you see two mules heading in opposite directions for a bale of hay when, if they’d sit down and talk about it, they’d head in the same direction and both would get a generous portion of the pie, er, bale of hay. That’s what I would do if I were a mule. And when mules sit together in the bleachers, they can make a lot of noise. It might distract the volleyball team to see how mules got in the bleachers in the first place but you learn to tune out the crowd anyway.

But I’m not here to talk about mules heckling the opposing team. Hi, this is Coach Thorp on behalf of Milford Beverage Warehouse. And do we have a problem. Studies performed by the Milford Community College Medical School have turned up some alarming statistics in relation to people’s health. The studies noted that 81% of the general populace in Milford will not get a colon screening because of the fear of discovering cancer in their bodies. People perish for lack of information, don’t you know.

Now, Folks, Yours Truly has had one done thanks to the latest promo engineered by The Warehouse. The Good People here were concerned about losing customers over needless suffering so they joined forces with the Milford Minor Medical Clinic to assuage the fears and paranoia that pervade when a colon screening is suggested. And they enlisted my help so that the masses could see that if Coach Thorp can take a few minutes out of his busy schedule from teaching his own kids how to look the putt all the way to the pin to undergo preventive medicine, by gum, the masses would shout “Sign me up!!!!!!!”. You should have seen the line.

But The Warehouse wants to sweeten the pot by offering you its best merchandise and still make sure your innards are alive and well. That’s why the Milford Minor Medical Clinic will be here for the next two weeks waiting for you to let it all hang out.

And what better way than to purchase Busch Light in the 30-Pack 12 Fluid Ounce cans for a ridiculous price of $18.99, then once you have made your purchase, you’ll get a voucher to earn a free colonoscopy. That’s right, The Warehouse has cleared some space by the Cheetos display to put down a couple of beds. My goodness, they just stick a plastic tube up your butt after they’ve euthanized you and before you know it, if the medical team doesn’t find any polyps, you can walk out with booze and piece of mind. C’mon, save that $20 bill you were going to tip the lawn maintenance man with and take care of your health. Sorry, they won’t numb you with the booze you just purchased.

Some of you feel comfortable lying on a table and getting scanned. No problem. The doctors borrowed the EMT ambulance from the Milford Fire Department and constructed a temporary sofa. And with a purchase of Jim Beam Bourbon in the 1.75 Liter bottle for a price you’d pay Milford Powerball, you can lie in LaLa Land while the nurses use the latest advanced radioactive technology to detect any lumps in your descending colon or ascending colon. Dang, I didn’t know there were so many colons. I knew I should have studied harder on my 5th Grade Health Final.

Then there’s some of you who want to take the Fecal Immunochemical Test. In plain English, you poop in a cup and the doctors test your sample. Thank goodness, Port-a-Pot gave in on that final concession and and allowed unlimited number of stalls in the parking lot. I don’t blame some people. I wouldn’t want to take a poop test if there were people already lined up at the bathroom. This way, you’re guaranteed free access to the throne or The Warehouse will throw in a free can of Milford Vending Beer Nuts to go along with the required purchase of Kendall Jackson Chardonnay at a poopy $10.97. Shoot, for that price, I’ll be headin’ to the nearest stall and dead-bolting the door. Just hope it has toilet paper. Hard to do a poop test without Mr. Whipple.

And there’s some of you who want to have litmus paper determine the deal. For a $39.99 purchase of Jack Daniels, you can have doctors employ a special kind of paper that sends chemicals to the affected area. Because these chemicals are extensive, they can send a reading back up through your esophagus and be accurate at that in as little as 5 minutes. Geez, isn’t it nice that you can get stoned softly with her song and run a strong chance that the only lumps you have is the one in your throat? I’ll get stoned like that tonight when I put the kids to bed.

Folks, what more can I say? Get your booze and your colon both in one piece and be able to live a long life thanks to both of them and tell ’em Coach Thorp sent ya.”

If Dad finds out you took a poop test without any toilet paper, you’re gonna get clobbered.

Otherwise, God bless you, Gang.

“Now, Beaver, if you and Wally and your other teammates promise to sit together during the school recital of “Les Miserables”, I promise to take you all to Opening Night of “Deep Throat: The Sequel” at Milford Cineplex.”

“Gee, Dad, you’re swell.”

Special Edition to the Milford Enquirer

“Milford Museum of Natural History To Reconstruct Gil’s Face From Remaining Fragments!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

sub headline

“Museum Spokesperson: ‘This could take a while.”

Oh.

Time for everybody’s favorite game, Monday Morning Saturday Night Quarterback.

Previously on TWIM, the consensus was that Gil was completely in the right for punishing Rapson for ignoring his play calls not once, but twice. In fact, many TWIMers thought that this punishment is too light – that Rapson should see the bench permanently if not be kicked off the team altogether. Instead, Gil’s just giving him a bit more in the way of conditioning.

Gil’s laid out his reasons and they’re sound ones, but let’s play Marty Moon for a minute, though, and poke some holes in that Thorpian logic.

Going back to Tuesday, there was 2:49 left (very precise of Rubin, no?) in the fourth quarter after Rapp’s TD pass put the Mudlarks up 28-13. Thursday before last they were up 21-6 when Thayer muffed the exchange. The Ballard Bruins marched right down the field to make it an eight-point game, 21-13, sometime in the fourth. How much time was left in the game when Ballard scored? There must have been enough for them to believe they’d get the ball back at least once, hence not going for two.

The Milford offense goes back on the field with Rapson under center and directions to get “a couple of first downs, and then… head to The Bucket.” Why did Gil yank his starting QB with his team only up by one score? Nice vote of confidence there, Gildeaux; one miscue and you’re on the bench. As for the “ball security” angle, if you’ve been doing nothing but running the ball all night, doesn’t that make your offense extremely predictable? The Bruins could load up the box, stuff the run, get the ball back and march down the field on the Mudlark defense once again. We didn’t hear anything about that sieve.

First play, Rapson calls his audible and Dallas George’s number on an end-around (which is NOT the same thing as a reverse, Gil!). If Gil’s so quick on the trigger with his signal callers, why didn’t he bench Rapp right then and there? I get that you want to keep things vanilla in the non-conference part of your schedule, but does Gil really have only one trick play? The excuse that you’re saving your trick play for a conference game makes about as much sense as not putting miles on your car so you’ll get more money when it comes time to trade it in, or as not having sex with your wife so that there aren’t as many miles on her for her next husband. Did it ever dawn on him that he could still use that play as a decoy later in the season, for example faking the end-around and running a draw or play-action pass?

Let’s move on to the next play. The Mudlarks picked up a first down and ran some time off the clock. We only know in hindsight that there were probably more than three minutes left in the game. We have no idea where the line of scrimmage was when Rapson threw the pass, nor do we know how many timeouts each team had. Giving Gil a little credit for restating the obvious, Curtis Charles scores the touchdown because the Bruin defender slipped (and Curtis danced a little jig over his body). Why does Gil assume that the pass would’ve been incomplete or picked off if the defender hadn’t slipped? Look at P1 in that last linked strip. Charles is bigger and taller than the Ballard player and has gotten inside of him. Who’s to say Charles doesn’t make the catch and bull over the Bruin into the end zone? Even if he makes the catch and gets tackled immediately, it’s still another first down and time to start taking knees. Who’s to say if Charlie Roh had run it up the gut again, he wouldn’t have gotten stuffed or stripped of the ball? The play worked, but it might not have, and if my aunt had balls she’d be my uncle.

So have at it in the comments, TWIMers. Let’s enjoy the pissiest of pissy Gil faces we’ve seen in some time and hope that smug look on his face doesn’t cause him to trip over that coffee mug he set down behind himself. Gil has made it clear he calls the shots, but what he doesn’t do is instill confidence in his players.

Alternative Facts Come to the Milford Locker Room

Well, not necessarily alternative, nor revised. Let’s just call them edited and leave it at that.

Of course lineman boy and whoever else was dressed out for the game knows Gil was gonna cut Terry a new one when he called audibles not once but twice. What did he expect Rapson to say? That Gil recognized his inherent superiority over Thayer and intended to make him the permanent starter? If it’s hot gossip he wants, he should just go to the diner and hit up Maureen.

Speaking of Thayer, he’s pretty quiet there on the bench next to lineman boy. Basking in the knowledge that the starting job is his to lose for the rest of the season, and the only snaps Rapson’s gonna see are the ones at the receiving end of his teammates’ towels as he collects them for the laundry Gil will be making him do as punishment? Or plotting out his next smooth lines to lay on Corina and snappy comebacks to her inevitable wiseassery? Let’s go to The Bucket and find out. Corina’s not gonna be happy when she finds out the food there ain’t free, that’s for sure.

They Might Be Quarterbacks

Back to football and a pending transition to Mouseketeer Roll Call. Kaz practices his Carol Burnett Tarzan yell tells the guys to wrap it up with some cals. Back in my day we started practice with cals to loosen up, then ended it with wind sprints or a couple laps around the field. Then again we also had salt tablets and Gatorade was just a new fad, so what do I know?

Will Thayer is “an experienced criminal defense and family law attorney at Momkus LLC.” Charlie Rapson is a New Zealand schoolboy athlete, or a one-shot British actor. Here in Milford they are both gym rats, or one-uppers, or one-upper gym rats. Their jersey numbers suggest they might be quarterbacks, so we might be in for a competition a la Jarrod Hale and True Standish, only closer. Enough speculation; hope you TWIMers enjoy the rest of your Labor Day weekend.

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.

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.

The Jedi Mind Trick As Recruiting Tool

[Insert bow-chicka-wow-wow here]

“Recruit you? No. Groom you? Hmmmmmmmmmmmaybe…”

“Whaddaya mean, ‘groom’?”

“Well, look at that hair of yours. Just yesterday you had a bob, and today you’re rocking a mullet. Besides, the only way to convince players to come play for Milford is to actively encourage them not to come play for Milford.

“No, if I’m recruiting anyone, it’s the guy on my – er, our mound. Say, True, you’ve filled out quite nicely. Bet you could fill up these big boxes. (Seriously, is Whigham ever gonna be able to draw batter’s boxes consistently?) I’ve got an itch that needs scratching – I mean, a pool that needs tending. What’re you doing in your free time this summer?”

“Well, Mrs. Coach Thorp…”

“Call me Mimi.”

“Well, Mrs. Coach Mimi, I was just gonna swing by CVS and pick up my mom’s Zoloft prescription then go back to the country club and get some more pointers from Mr. Coach Thorp. But first I gotta pay Corina here for this catching session.”

“Wait, you’re paying her to catch for you?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Well that settles that. Corian, or whatever your name is, you’ve forfeited your high school eligibility, so you won’t be playing for Milford or anywhere else in the Valley for that matter. Come, True, let’s see how else you’ve grown.”