A Soggy Start

Baseball season is beginning…in the gym. The team is suited up and ready to get out there and start shagging flies and playing pepper, but the weather isn’t cooperating. Gil and Kaz muse about the team and the tight bonds formed between these young men. The young men, as usual, are talking smack about their own. That’s the way it works.

The first player named this spring is (dun dun DUN!) Kevin Pelwecki. Of course Kevin’s claim to fame is that he was a lineman on the football team with dreams of quarterbacking who eventually played some at fullback. I forgot all about his baseball roots. He first appeared as a backup at second for loudmouth Barry Bader. Now he’s boring his teammates talking about launch angles.

Play ball.

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Vaya con carne, Martín Luna

This has to have gone down as the Gil Thorp arc with the least amount of actual sports action ever. It also has to be near the top of arcs requiring the greatest suspension of disbelief. On top of all we’ve had to choke down around Marty, Pirate Boy and the Milford Pirate Network (does one station constitute a network?), now we’re supposed to believe that WDIG has at least three studios? Couldn’t at least one of them held Marty’s substitute, re-creating the basketball games Ronald Reagan style while Marty was suspended?

Marty played his traditional role of designated heel, between making light of the Padillas’ life situation, the gratuitous Mexican food references (intended to woo a potential sponsor but interpreted as “Puerto Ricans/Mexicans are all alike and their cultures all the same”) and the mispronunciation/pissy over-pronunciation in response to criticism. But really, Gil doesn’t come off as much less of a schmuck either. True, he couldn’t have anticipated the tack the MPN took on covering Milford hoops – nor Marty’s blue response to them – but he did in effect goad them on to goad Marty on. His ham-handed efforts at negotiation showed how little he thinks of Milford girls’ basketball and required us to connect the dots and assume Marty’s suspension would turn into termination if Marty didn’t accede.

Finally, Gil’s little dig at Marty in the last panel (yet another in which characters depart via a doorway), meant to remind Marty of the Boricua culture of which he is so ignorant, comes off a bit dickish as well. I’ll admit I like the idea of Marty as Scooby-Doo villain, but wouldn’t that mean he’s actually somebody else under a rubber mask? My money’s on Dr. Pearl.

Saturday haiku à la Padilla

Marty Moon’s boss is

covering his ass big time

Slow trigger finger?

 

“Imploded” must mean

“using the seven words you

can’t say on TV”

 

Don’t know why Gil Thorp

plays intermediary

to the Padillas

 

Who cares if Marty

is “disgraced, embarrassed and

suspended”? Can him!

 

Paloma gets it

Jorge wants to get along

Milford ain’t Georgia!

 

Marty should offer

A public apology

Over the airwaves

 

Then we can move on

From this disgraceful story

I give it a week

Marty Moon: The Straw That Stirs the Milford Drink

Today’s strip just serves to bring the glaring plot holes, inconsistencies and missed opportunities into stark relief, not unlike Marty’s face in P2.  Without belaboring the obvious – oh, who am I kidding? Let’s belabor the obvious:

1. If an Aagard scores 26 points and there’s no one there to report on it, does it make a sound? Last winter’s saga of Aaron and his opioid-addicted mother ended with his transfer into the protective custody of the Hiatt-Brown family. Rubin brought Aaron back this season, but Big Ken Brown is no longer around to make things happen. Couldn’t those loose ends have been tied up in a panel?
2. Nice use of parallel drinking by the not-broadcasting broadcasters, one with hooch, the other with Yoo-Hoo (or does that just say “Poo”?). The glaring sign behind Marty’s head must be meant to offer a contrast to his apparent sour mood. It also offers a nice segue into a song parody but I fear those days are behind me. The idea that WDIG can’t or won’t run games without Marty to call them borders on the absurd. Absurd doesn’t begin to describe the Milford Pirate Network’s approach to the games. If they’d been up front about why they popped up then played it straight, they’d still be on the air and no one would’ve cared that there was no coverage from Marty and WDIG. But noooo, MPN based its whole schtick on taunting Marty, so no Marty, no MPN. For that matter…
3. … no Marty, no Gil to antagonize or be antagonized by Marty. Hence Gil’s call on Pocket Square Sporting Radio Station Manager to no doubt try to get Marty back on the air. As with his meeting with Marty, Gil’s on neutral ground where drinks are involved but this time it’s only coffee (unless Gil’s secretly making it Irish).

If all this is a pivot towards turning this strip from Gil Thorp into Marty Moon, I could be persuaded to stick around. The travails of a drunken shock jock looking to redeem himself to unwitting victims of his shock doesn’t cover new ground but it has potential.

late metapost: Over lunch I came across this article about Latinos attempting to assimilate in the American South. No one in the story is Puerto Rican, but it touches on an angle Rubin has chosen not to pursue to much extent in this arc.

The Best Part Of Waking Up Is Pouring Half a Pot Of Coffee On The Floor

I’m still a little unclear on Gil’s role in brokering some sort of reproachment between Marty and the Padillas. Since Marty’s gonna be Marty and not own up to his troublesome behavior, what’s it to Gil? He was supposed to have done something before? Okay, I guess he could have paid a little more attention at what was going on at games he was coaching and flexed even the slightest administrative muscle to get the MPN to stop dicking around. But, Marty’s the one who screwed up there and at that point it had nothing to do with the Padillas. The Padillas want a sincere apology. Gil’s just flailing around here delaying the start of baseball season. Where’s Marty? I don’t want to think about this anymore.

So Panel 3 is a fun way to stop sifting through the dregs of this plot and just focus on good old fashioned giant hands and awkward pouring of coffee. Kaz has replaced his right hand with a child’s foot and is using it to kick himself in the head.

Lo siento, no lo siento

Okay, so Gil’s not meeting Marty at his crate shack but on neutral ground. Dunno why Gil acts so surprised: he knows Marty’s a known souse and it’s not like Gil doesn’t knock back a few every now and then, in public, even. Marty’s got his Captain Haddock brows working again and, yeah, he wants Gil to clean up his mess.

That weak-assed excuse for a mea culpa doesn’t fly anymore, if it ever did. Everyone and her brother knows that “I’m sorry you were offended by my actions” is not the same as “I’m sorry for my actions.”  There’s a few dots here that haven’t been connected – like how Marty thinks all of this is the Padillas’ doing – but hey, baseball season is a week old so let’s wrap this thing up, shall we?

Now I guess we just sit back and wait to see what level of public apology from Marty will suffice. An appearance with Pirate Nebbish Boy from MPN seems more than likely.

It Could Happen To You

P1: Thanks for the exposition, Kaz. How much gel does Kaz have to use to get all of his sideburn hairs in parallel do y’all reckon?

P2: Is that even Paloma in the foreground hug with, uh, Karina I guess? Because the brunette in mid-panel looks closer to Paloma. Also, too, wasn’t this whole thing pretty much a Karina/Duncan joint with Jarrell ‘Spielberg’ Atkins directing?

P3: Jeeze, Mimi with a devastating toting the laundry walk by zinger. Meanwhile, Gil looks incredibly constipated as he just cannot deal with it that people keep bringing up this Marty Moon bullshit to him. It’s bad enough he has to show up at the games but he sure as hell didn’t sign up for talking about them for days afterwards.

Minus point: Karina has a terribly advanced case of trigger finger there in P2. Perhaps the Spring arc could help inform us about this potentially crippling condition and the plight of so afflicted high school athletes.

I Had No Idea It Was Sweeps Week In Milford

I feel duty bound to remark on behalf of my esteemed colleague, Rob, that any strip that has two mentions of the Milford Star without a drawing of Marjie Ducey is bullshit. Full stop.

That said, it would seem that, as improbably as we’ve all noted that it would be, the Milford Pirate Network has gone ‘viral’. And, you know what? Props to Pocket Square Sporting Radio Station Manager for being on the ball! This guy sees the needle moving in the wrong direction in the coveted Madison 13-18 year old demographic and he is on top of it.

Minus points: I wrote those last two sentences and then realized that the only reason Pocket Square is vaguely aware of this shit is because he is literally reading about it in a print newspaper… What in the name of Andy Travis is going on around here?