Turn and Grunt

We got a lot of good exposition from the TWIM hive mind yesterday.  Trey Davis and Jaquan Case are back after a decade plus and looking very little like their teenaged selves* (change in artists notwithstanding).  Like many if not most young adults, they look to be shedding some of their teenage personas as well.  Yeah, a lot of folks wouldn’t want to be called “The Don” these days, and that’s all I have to say about that.

Speaking of weird handshakes, is it considered impolite to leave your gloves on to shake the hand of someone who is barehanded?  Opinions appear to differ.   Heather’s cankles are looking mighty thick today. Wonder if she taped them herself. I’m sure we’ll learn more about her future as Trey and Jaquan fill in their backstories in the coming days.

*I’d link more but Gocomics went down as I was composing this post.

An old Case for a new plot

Well lookie here, it IS Jaquan ‘The Don’ Case and his merry man, Trey Davis. Good job whoever opined who these 2 new characters were. Oh for the old days, before I had t this weekly gig and all I did was read the shit. I dont remember when the Don was in his heyday, but I’m guessing 2008. Thats 9 years ago. If Pelweki is 17 or 18 now, that would make him 8 or 9 when the Don was in this strip. I wasnt watching high school sports or Any sports, until I was 12. So who knows whether Kevin is blowing smoke up the Dons ass or if he really was attending high school hoops games at an age when his attention span was roughly 27 seconds.

OK I looked around for an old The Don strip in  action but I cant find one. So the editor team will have that job – it was a fun plot, and the old days are all some of us have going at this point. These last few storys have been like piles of manure, each one smelling a little worse then the last. Welcome back Don!!

 

 

Shredded Wheet!

The Secret Pelwecki’s not-so-secret project to convert himself into a fullback has gotten someone’s attention, but not Gil’s. (I’m sure we’ll see him knocking back Long Island Iced Teas on the porch before long.)  These big galoots* who just happened to be working out at the football field have gotten sucked into the project as well.  Eventually Heather will have turned Pelwecki into Milford’s version of Tom Sawyer’s fence.

“Thanks, guys. Y’know, you look familiar.”

“So does your hair. I think I saw it on some girl sitting in a dugout last week.”

Hurray for continuity!

 

*Hey, if Heather’s calling them “gents,” I can use some outdated slang too.

The door into Milford summer

 

Sorry gang I was too busy yesterday to get to this but here’s a double dip today. Looks like the plot is drawing to a close with the 2 main characters talking about life lessons learned, albeit from a teacher who should be on strike for forced July labor. (And there’s still one game left!!)

Of course its perfectly ok for Dafne to just walk in the dugout after the game while the team is presumable cleaning up and exiting the premises etc. And whens the last time these two spoke alone anyway? What happens with the other boy-girl combo – do they sit in the girls dugout to even it out? Will Dafne graduate before another issue of the Trumpet comes out? Will Marty melt in his wooden coffin of a booth?

At any rate, Milford summer is now close at hand, at last. How about an excellent cover of a Monkees song to close out the week?

There’s No Veering in Baseball!

Well that whole journalism thing was awkward, wasn’t it?  Made me feel stupid for thinking there might be some point to it.  Let’s get back to what this strip does best: putting Milford’s girls in the orbit of Milford’s boys. After all, boys won’t watch girls play unless they’re interested in one of the players but girls will watch the boys play just because, amirite?

So to wrap the spring* plot up we’re gonna see if Ryan has indeed practiced his anger management after he gets another bad call from a crappy Valley ump and his teammates flub away a lead on him.  Marty’s mom has told him to take out the trash, so he quickly makes the Mudlarks a Fielding Three and rolls a 14 for the Tilden batter.  As with most Gil Thorp arcs, all of this would come off as a lot less contrived if the plot had been better paced. Then again, the phrase “it’s a marathon, not a sprint” is probably wasted on someone who holds track and field in such contempt.

*Feels funny calling it that in the middle of July, doesn’t it?

That’s “Dafne.” “Hello” is my kitty’s name.

I will refrain from falling back on my go-to “Who saw that coming?” from Black Dynamite except to say, well, I saw that coming.

Now that that’s out of the way, hey, sports! Well, sorta. Not only did laissez-faire Mimi let Daffy back onto the field after that fiasco, she let her take infield. Some of the other Lady Mudlarks must have run off from practice after being distracted by something or other.

I notice Drafty has a soccer ball in her room. Maybe Heather Burns left it behind for her. Anyhoo, while we await a week of hand-waving at Milford losses and Dafonte’s print mea culpa, we can at least have fun speculating on what misogynistic fun and games await us for the next eight weeks thereafter.

 

Worlds Heaviest Pole- Vaulter

So the black eye opens up a whole new can of worms, just what we need right? Now everything else is forgotten until the whodunnit on the B.E. is solved. I dont even think Jimmy knows what happened. And he’s apologizing for her maybe shoving him or whatever. I think he ran into a food tray to be honest. Looking at his expanding girth, he’s obviously been living in the school cafeteria all summer. Right now he couldnt vault over a Bozo Bucket.

 

I know I’m supposed to have original thoughts on this c**p, but saw this commentary on the GoComics site and decided to break with TWIM tradition and have a guest contribute to my contribution.  So introducing my guest speaker for today – Wilbur Floppenheimer!!

1. 

   Wilbur Floppenheimer about 8 hours ago

   P1: “Are you saying that you shoved Jimmy?”

   “All 250 pounds of him? No, but I may have pushed him. At 250 pounds, he gets stuck on the hurdles and sometimes needs a helping hand to make it over. That Bucket gut flops around like Jello if he’s not wearing his hurdler girdle. It’s a common problem. Donovan wrote a song about it, “The Hurdler Girdle Man.”

   P2: Double D ditches her books and interrogates Jimmy, adopting the standard Wonder Woman “hands on hips” pose. Jimmy instinctively uses his books to cover his manhood in case Double D launches one of those Size 13s his way. Jimmy displays the first signs of “Stockholm Syndrome” and begins to attempt to ingratiate himself with Double D.

   P3: “I’m sorry. Please punish me.”

   “Good. Come to my house at 4:15, and not a minute later. I have a very busy afternoon, and my schedule is very tight.”

   P4: 4:15 arrives.

   3 replies

The Hits Keep Coming

July 5, 2017

July 6, 2017

Shot Putter Jimmy Caruso better be glad that Milford ain’t old school Westview, else he’d be getting shot at for mouthing off at a hall monitor like that. How plausible is Jimmy’s defense, anyway? If we look at Tuesday’s strip we can see a dark object with a protruding right angle at Jimmy’s face height, but that angle is about level with his shoulders. Chekhov’s cabinet door…

…or Chekhov’s black eye?  Whichever, they fall into place for the logical conclusion of this arc. Braying Daftpunk, flashing her best Biting Pear of Salamanca leer, chooses her words carelessly. Anybody with an ear could draw the conclusion that she intended to hit Jimmy and, even if she didn’t, that she moved past him with such force that he fell into Chekhov’s cabinet door. And you know what? Anybody will. Daffy will soon find herself in Ryan Van Halen’s shoes, which will lead her begging to Ms. Rizk to be let back on to the Trumpet staff to defend herself and Ryan. Lessons learned, fade to silhouettes, walk through a doorway and we’ll see you on the Thorps’ back porch.

Think we’ll ever see any sports being played in this arc again? Maybe that Van Halen kid will play some chin music on some Central batters and cow them into being no-hit. Then he can get killed off like the last Milford pitcher who threw a no-hitter.