This Is Really Happening

“Molly, do you ever buy bagels from Arjun Khatri on Fridays?” That right there is about the most out of left field thing I’ve ever read in Gil Thorp. As I write these things first thing Monday morning, something like that can really make me question if I’m this is all real or if I’m dreaming.

Now we have school faculty, like Molly Hatcher’s World History teacher, nominating other students to receive the TC challenge coin. Isn’t this grand?

Now that Arjun Khatri has been designated TC for acts of altruism, do we now have to reevaluate those earlier TCFS candidates? Arjun raised $5000 for the food bank, and you have a collection of stuffed hippos? Yeah, look I’ve only got fifty of these and I doubt if I’m going to get the Flirting With Disaster discount again so that’s going to be a hard pass.

Who is Arjun Khatri? The New Jersey high school wrestler? An aspiring Indian filmmaker, or the singer of Poldo Raichha Chhati:

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Yada Yada Yada…You Gonna Finish Those?

The results of the Linda Carr and David Walter Convention are in. Linda is pooped. Sometimes, saying you were tired is just making an excuse for being a real B without admitting that you’ve been a real B. (Why do I hesitate to refer to a fictional teenage girl as a bitch? How about a shrew? Whatevs.)

Linda is tired. Too many activities, too much homework and those loads of carbs from the Bucket will do that to you. Wow, look at the meaty cleft of her palm. Her chin just sinks in there! Does she even need a glove at short?

What was I saying? Oh, yeah. Carbs. The Bucket has them and David Walter, put upon boyfriend will put them away. He runs on carbs. They fire him up!

…and we’re off. Game action. Boys first, naturally. Jay Bhatia has become the opening day starter? He has achieved the goal he set last year. Also, he must have gotten contacts.

What’s this? The Burke Bulldogs are from Charleston, South Carolina, the “Final Destination” of the mysterious Mr. Bakst? Circles in circles, wheels in wheels.

Be sure to try the tasty burgers at SLOPS. SLOPS, our beef will make you see stars.

 

Hello, Ladies

Hey, check out Mimi’s gal pal who’s throwing shade at Marty as his beer foam drips all over her. It’s a middle aged version of Velma from Scooby Doo!

*

I hope she doesn’t lose her glasses, forcing her to crawl around in the puddles of beer and ketchup on the floor of Barney’s!

So Marty needs a minute of Mimi’s time. Whatever for? Does he want to convene an impromptu focus group consisting of Mimi’s circle of friends? He could be fishing around for a new audience niche in the Milford’s media landscape. He must sense that he could be once again in danger of being replaced by younger talent in local sports talk on AM radio. Does Marty have anything to offer middle age women who like wine and chunky earrings (as a media property or just in general)?

 

 

*If you do a google image search for Velma, you get about 10% cartoon images from various Scooby Doo iterations, 20% images of that actress from Freaks & Geeks playing the cute live action Velma from the Scooby Doo movie and the other 70% is women doing totally sexed up Velma cosplay.

In Milford It’s Still December

Now we know why story arcs in this strip run longer than their real-life seasonal counterparts. Check out the calendar on the wall behind Kaz; while we’re more than a week into January, in Milford it’s still December.

That’s not the only evidence that Milford is behind the times, even if it’s not quite the “1959 with cell phones” we often describe it as being.  I mean, look, they’re only on Billboard 3.0?  They haven’t even gotten to Billboard 95 or NT?  The rest of the world has been on Billboard 10 for some time now.  Fifteen-year-old Chevy Monte Carlos still ply the roads, their flanks slowly turning into powder.  (Come to think of it, that’s not out of the ordinary in the Upper Midwest.)  Newspapermen still call their bosses “Chief” Jimmy Olsen style, even while grooming their beards, though unlike Perry White the editors in Milford don’t seem to mind.

Is Kaz showing Gil a photo of Billboard 3.0 Kelly sent him, or has he “called up” robbyreport.com?  As Ned alluded to on Monday, none of us here at TWIM have yet to buy robbyreport.com and direct it here (though GoDaddy would be willing to negotiate to have its owner sell it to you – thanks for the update, Ned :-) ), but that would require effort on our parts.  Maybe we should do a GoFundMe? Let us know in the comments.

 

 

Billbored

Maybe Bobby calls Skyborne Advertising to move forward with his next billboard. Steve at Skyborne will get his crew on it Thursday.

Kaz swings by Joan Anderson Travel to visit Kelly. She’s not busy, as usual, because nobody uses travel agents anymore. (Or do they? Click for lame article.) Maybe Kaz needs Kelly to book him a flight or maybe he has some other needs that internet ninja Kelly can meet.

Kelly saw the new billboard! It’s different but still strange. Whigham didn’t use a computer font on this one since he wanted to achieve a view with perspective so he had to go with hand lettering. It looks better. But what is Maybe Bobby driving at? Stay tuned.

I think I might want to visit Paris! Should I? What does Jonathan Richman think?

Meet Skip Tracy, née Bob Kazinski

Here we go again

Kaz plays detective because

He can’t coach for shit

 

Pine Trace landlord is

Quick to give the deets about

Tiki’s apartment

 

Like a Motel 6

Maybe Kaz should work for ICE

Where’s “Rick” Soto now?

 

Next, Kaz is calling

The Microsoft campus. Why?

Oh, it’s COACH Redmond!

 

Is he at New Thayer?

Must be. Why the hell else would

Kaz be calling him?

 

New Thayer must have

A real crappy school system

To leave for Milford

 

Why else would you move

Into a dumpy place on

The poor side of town?

 

The missing subtext:

The Valley’s full of income

Inequality

 

Bonding Over Bondo

Let’s get to know the team from the inside. We have a guy with an unfortunate, early onset bald spot holding a mysterious object. It looks like an overinflated remote control, but maybe it’s a shoe? Then there’s a shirtless guy who doesn’t really care.

We have return guest Andre Ruffin, who is rocking a very beautifully manicured Mohawk. Then there’s newcomer Tiki Jansen. See, he’s not Hawaiian at all. He’s T.K. Jansen, get it? That’s interesting character development!

The real substance of this character reveal is that Andre is very observant as to what kind of wheels people have and he has spotted Tiki rolling up in one of these*:

I can vaguely remember some mild car shaming happening back in high school, but I think I was in the same boat as most kids in that I took whatever I could get and was happy to not have to bum rides. In this case, Tiki has an 18 year old standard American made shitbox and he’s damned proud of its poor cosmetic condition.

*I wanted to use a contemporary picture of a 2000 Breeze still in the wild. The one pictured here is on sale in New Jersey if anyone is interested.

These Are All Terrible People, Even The Kids

P1: A story from TimP’s own life: Person A did me wrong some time ago. Person B, an erstwhile associate of Person A, learned of this and, while he couldn’t undo the wrong, mitigated some of it. Some weeks later Person B called me up out of the blue and told me all of the terrible things that had lately happened to Person A, thinking I would enjoy hearing about it. I did not. It was all rather sad when taking all of the circumstances into consideration.

P2: Fear of failure can be a hell of a motivator. The problem is that it motivates all kinds of bad behavior. Gil is almost being a good coach by asking an open ended question to such a shitty thing to say.

P3: Feeling like you have to perform especially well because you have to ‘prove’ yourself after getting jobbed can be a hell of a motivator. The problem is…

Cripes, what is in the water in Milford? [Checks notes.] Milford is most likely in the Midwest, probably Central Michigan or Northwest Ohio, so lead. Lead is in the water in Milford. This is why Gil drinks naught but distilled rotgut. He may be stupid, but he’ll be damned if he’s going to get much stupider.

Edited to add: I can’t believe I went back and looked this up but the Milford in Ohio is near Cincinnati, a town I once almost lived in but then got lucky and didn’t. Also, there is a real life Milford Country Club. It is in the vicinity of Boston and has a nine hole par 3 course. Although I’ve visited Boston many times, I’ve never had the opportunity to live there. The last time I visited, it was zero degrees Fahrenheit with 45 mile per hour winds seemingly coming from every direction.