Suffice to say, Cicero she ain’t, but it was a nice try by the creative team to feature a strong female lead. That said, let’s go panel by panel…
P1: Bad touch, Hadley.
P2: Way to dis Milford academics, Hadley.
P3: Ed is pissed he had to put on a suit and tie and come all the way downtown just to be a prop.
Bonus questions:
What are those tomes in P1?
What is on the framed sign in P2?
Neither of Tiki’s parents attended this thing?
“Ladies and gentlemen, members of the school board, my dad, we’ve just heard from Mr. Ballard a rather lurid description of a truly despicable young man.”
“I had to hand it to her. She tossed a lot of sand in their eyes. She talked about how I’d lost my place in the universe. How I was too ordinary to be the perpetrator of fraud the school board made me out to be, how there was some greater scheme at work that the school district had yet to unravel… She told them to look at me, look at me close. That the closer they looked, the less sense it would all make.”
“Look closely at him. This human, this barber. Oops – wrong Tiki.”
“That I wasn’t the kind of guy to game the system, that I was the safety, for Christ’s sake. I was just like them, an ordinary man. Guilty of living in a school district that had no place for me, yeah. Guilty of wanting to be a Mudlark, sure. But not of fraud.”
“But most specifically, this is a safety’s dilemma. For he is modern man.”
“She said I was modern man.”
“He is your reflection.”
“And if they voted to keep me out of Milford, they’d be practically cinching the noose around their own necks. She told them to look not at the facts, but at the meaning of the facts. And then she said the facts had no meaning.”
Here’s hoping Hadley V. does a better job representing Tiki than Freddy did representing Ed.
Gonna cut to the chase– I watch The Peoples Court a lot. Been watching it for years. I remember Judge Wapner presiding for many years, before Ed Koch succeeded him, before he was mayor of New York City. Or was that after? Whatever. Nowadays its Marylyn Million who wears the black robe and instructs as well as entertains the audience in the nuances of law.
Well I remember very recently a case where an apartment tenant moved out without paying the full rent, and the landlord had not even supplied decent living quarters for them, and the judge ruled that since the apartment didnt even have electricity or running water, the tenant wasnt obliged to the landlord for the remainder of the rental fees.
So in this case we have a similar scenario, with the Jansens not meeting the basic requirements for “living” where they were, and thus, they didnt legally live there, and so the head of the school board is feeling he doesnt belong at Milford due to that. Obviously Ed has done his homework (where I dont know) as he chimes in about the simplicity of the Jansens place. Hadley then produces a paper stating Tiki has a host family, which, she thinks, will help her case.
But what if that family also lives in a barn? Now what, HVB??
It looks like we are finally circling back to the letter from the school board informing the Jansens that they are “violating the spirit of the rule”. Will Hadley be able to make hay with the contents of the letter, given the use of the equivocating language in the school board’s official communication? I don’t expect to get a clear answer because this is Gil Thorp.
The Jansens can’t afford to keep paying rent so Mama Jansen seems willing to go along with a scheme for Tiki to live with another family (Introducing The Flemings!) in Milford. That seems rather extreme. Also, what will the school board think of that? Will they want to see some documentation showing that the Flemings are serving as guardians for Tiki?
Is anybody down at the school board aware of the problems at New Thayer, where gangs were pummeling Tiki on the daily? Do they have any interest in addressing that?
None of these questions will be answered because Hadley V. Baxendale is riding in on a white horse (with an aimless NBA player riding behind her) to Clarence Darrow the shit out of this thing.
“No charge, Mrs. Jansen.”
“Don’t you mean pro bono?”
“We’ll have none of that fancy Latin talk around here. Leave that for those St. Fabian’s kids. Besides, I heard enough of that in law school. I said ‘no charge’ and I meant ‘no charge.’ I’ll even throw in my mom’s face to sweeten the deal.”
“Now let’s get to tweakin’.”
“Uh, Ms. Baxendale? You’ve got the wrong strip. Tweaking is more of a Santa Royale thing.”
“I don’t think so. We’re trying to get you to stay in Milford, right? In an apartment?”
“Uh, yeah, but you might have us confused with the Aagards.”
“Hmmm. Jaquan, dear, don’t we have some weight training to do?”
The Jansen’s are in a real pickle here. The School Board is having none of their residential ruse to keep Tiki from his daily ass poundings at the hands of New Thayer thugs. If I were the Jansens, I’d get an attorney to look at that letter from the School Board. I’m no lawyer, but I would think that an official letter seeking to codify “the spirit” of a rule is an open invitation to litigation.
Gee, I wonder if there’s a hot shot lawyer around whose firm told her to take it easy after winning a big case and who might not be willing to offer up a little pro bono representation to a fellow Mudlark. Keep in mind, a hot shot lawyer might suggest that any family that’s willing to pay rent on an apartment just to bend the rules might sufficient resources to pay for legal services to make sure the rules stay bent.
You know, I may have a history of using the Freak Hands tag here liberally, just to point out an overemphasis on hands. In Panel 2, for instance, hands are prominent and fill the panel, but they are well proportioned and not very freaky. However, Panel 3 is what I focused on today. Look at Mama Jansen holding that letter. It looks like the bottom of the piece of paper is resting in the crook of her thumb while the tip of her thumb is about a half to two thirds of the way up the page. Now that is freaky.
Time for Tiki!
Maybe it’s also time for
A haiku redux?
Sure, why the hell not?
Must maintain interest as
We tread trodden trails
(Also, it helped that
teenchy rewatched Yojimbo
But not with Bolek )
Still in New Thayer
Lives the Manson family
– Oops, I meant Jansen
They still rent the flat
That let Tiki play football
When Gil felt like it
Milford School Board is
Hip to the Jansens’ charade
Sent “Dear Thomas” letter
Or New Thayer. Just pick one
But you can’t do both”
You think maybe we’ll
Finally see his sister?
Wouldn’t bet on it
Picking up a few of the pieces of the meet-cute backstory from yesterday. TWIM old-timers, you may want to fast-forward through this (or read this kinda summary from two summers ago).
In 2005 Jaquan Case, then playing for Bishop Tardy, was under pressure to turn pro straight out of high school. The pressure was coming from his Uncle Rudy, who was Jaquan’s guardian after the death of both of his parents, and from the sporting goods company Tronix (which would rear its head years later by sponsoring a football camp for college prospects). Meanwhile Hadley V. Baxendale, spawn of lawyers, was making her case that the Lady Mudlarks weren’t getting the perks and attention that the boys’ team was getting. Gil shot Hadley’s demands down whilst manspreading, except the one for letting the girls have the gym on a Friday night because the boys wouldn’t be using it.
After meeting Jaquan in Gil’s office (where he ducked his handler to study), Hadley decided that she needed to help Case make his case to postpone his NBA plans and go to college. With then-boyfriend Steve Luhm’s help, Hadley arranged a meeting between Jaquan, Gil, and Hadley’s lawyer father, Ed (what is it with lawyers named Ed in the comics?) who confirmed that Jaquan’s dealings with Tronix wouldn’t harm his college eligibility. Turned out Rudy could fail and Jaquan could go to college.
As a way of thanking Hadley for helping him make his case, Jaquan pulled some strings and had Tronix send new practice jerseys and game unis to the Lady Mudlarks, who proceeded to work their way through the playdowns against several teams from the Philly suburbs. What Jaquan still thought he owed Hadley is best left to the imagination.
Hello, TWIM readers. We’ve come to the point in this post where those who didn’t read through all of this will have to stand up, or sit down and scroll down the page. In fairness to those readers, we’ll now take a few seconds before we begin side two.
Thank you. Here’s side two.
Once again Gil reminds us that Milford is a man’s man’s man’s world. He can’t be bothered by such trivia as wedding dates and locations, knit hats, rally hippos, merit badges, and winning ball teams. Those spatula-shaped second-degree burns on the back of his hand might bother him, though.
Oh look, another old character pops in this summer to make us forget about golf. This time we don’t have to go back a decade and half but only a few months to revisit the tale of Tiki Jansen. You’ll recall Tiki was a New Thayer football player who wanted out of New Thayer because he was being bullied there, so his fam rented an apartment in Milford to give him a fake address and let him play there. Looks like the Jansens are keeping up this charade but the MHS School Board has no interest. How do these plot lines come together? Probably by letting Hadley get in some pro bono work.
jasbeattie
nedryerson
robmize2013
tdrewhardin
teenchy
timbuys