Land of the Free, Home of the Mud

Two high school girls power tripping on who they get to include and exclude from their clique? One high school girl practically begging to be let into their clique then getting pissy when they don’t let her? Riveting reading!

Just you wait: Linda will have her revenge! She’s gonna tank the season for the Lady Mudlarks. Kind of ironic given that we’re coming up on the centennial of the Black Sox scandal.  Staring into the bleachers is her prearranged signal to Arnold Rothstein that the fix is in (or is it switching her glove from her right to her left hand?). Pity she didn’t time that a little better; that sharply hit ground ball off her toe is gonna ruin her meal ticket out of this tank town.

Without that volleyball scholly to fall back on, Linda will be doomed to stay in Milford and stew about things that happened to her in high school for the rest of her life. Maybe she can spit in the brisket when she’s waiting the mean girls’ tables at Bob’s BBQ.

A rare glimpse of the Milford mascot atop the scoreboard there. Let’s blow it up so we can get a better look.

More like a turkey than a lark, the better to fit this plot.

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I’m Gonna Need To See Your Black List Score

This plot has taken its sweet time to reveal to Molly & Co. that their quest for team unity has taken them down a path to…whatever this is. An endless series of random kids at Milford High are seeking validation from the softball team in the form of a 39 cent pin.

The latest contestant in Tyler, who wrote a screenplay. You’ve probably heard. I’m betting the mostly likely reason you may have heard is that Tyler has been telling people he wrote a screenplay. How else would anybody know? Is is getting buzz in the trades? Has Tyler been shopping it around to all the would be producers in Milford? That is doubtful. My gut says that Tyler is the “I wrote a screenplay” guy at Milford High. I’m afraid Molly is going to have to reject his claim. You just can’t be cool if you have to ask somebody if you’re cool.

Of course “cool” is an illusion, yet another “brand” (ugh) devised by marketing types to sell us stuff that we don’t need. It still works though. Molly bought those stupid buttons, didn’t she? Actually, if she bought fifty of them, the guy at the promotions place probably cleared a healthy ten dollar profit off of her. That will keep the lights on for another day.

In case you’re curious about the post title, it refers to this, a method whereby unrepresented screenwriters submit their work with the hope of becoming represented and maybe even selling their work. If it sounds almost as dubious as teens begging for membership in exclusive clubs, maybe that’s because it is. But if Tyler spends a couple hundred bucks to have some anonymous person (probably another guy with a pile of unsold screenplays) rate his work, maybe it will spare him from spending a fortune pursuing an MFA is screenwriting. He can earn an honest day’s pay down at the Milford Button Works.

 

Not This “Branding” Crap Again!

Okay, so for s & g’s I searched on spirit buttons and 39 cents per seems like a fair deal. The catch is you gotta buy ’em in bulk, at volumes that would ensure every Milford student and their family could have a button with buttons left to spare. The TCFS movement has become less about celebrating softball players’ extracurriculars and more about being cliquish and excluding the one girl on the softball team who cares more about playing softball than the rest of them.

Nancy is perfectly cool with that as she sees being TCFS as a “brand,” a thing that seems to be a thing with kids in Milford (or with a senior citizen who seems to think that branding is a thing with kids). Molly Hatchet seems to have an inkling about that as she and Nancy get brain freezes sucking down their Blastos while they sit on the hood of a… a…  an impossibly drawn clown car with about five planes of perspective and no room for an engine, wheels or passengers.

Added a Swifti Mart tag as I’m surprised we haven’t done that already.

If Everybody’s TCFS, Then Nobody’s TCFS

Gentle Reader: I don’t know what the weather’s been like where you live but here at yhs’ desk it has, until an hour or so ago, been raining almost non-stop since Saturday night. These conditions are often conducive to seeing rainbows. If you’re like me, when you see a rainbow your eyes travel its length, and you try to mentally fill in any gaps in the rainbow to figure out where it begins or ends.

That’s what I’m trying to do with David Walter’s “bloop” single today, which looks to me like it may have been launched from somewhere between the pitcher’s mound and home plate. Of course he may not have hit the ball squarely, putting some kind of spin on it. Anyway I look at it, it looks less like a bloop to me than a misjudged pop-up. Overanalyzing the one panel of baseball action we’ve seen in weeks has entertained me more than putting any thought into analyzing the TCFS phenomenon, which rears its head yet again in today’s last panel.

Linda, who is emphatically not wearing a TC button, is about to confront Nancy about said buttons. Nancy, who is emphatically aware that Linda has not been given a TC button, is about to make an awkward conversation even more awkward. I have no inclination to predict what may happen next but if the recent past is prologue, expect TCFS to be uttered at least once per strip.

‘Scuse me while I whip this up*

Oooh, hubris! Love it!

So when do the too-cool-for-school girls get their comeuppance? When Molly goes on the DL for chemical burns after Milo accidentally on purpose tips her lab experiment over on her?  When fist bumps go wrong and somebody breaks a hand? Or when another rando MHS student fails to look up from his smartphone, slips on the highly polished floors and crashes into Molly, injuring her horribly? Things are going too well for the Lady Mudlarks – and their behavior becoming too arrogant – for this Era of Good Feelings to last.

Today’s bizarre cameos: Ted Cruz as Milo, Señor y Señorita Wences in the Milford infield. Rocki Prado has a Twitter feed but there’s not much gleaned from it. Props to the Chief for giving her lustrous hair to rival Gilchrist-era Aunt Fritzi and earrings that more closely approximate what girls currently wear than what are usually seen in Milford.

 

*Which is what I say to myself every day I write a post here.

Death Of The Cool

Musical inspiration for today’s post title:

So, the clarinet is uncool, eh? Well, let’s see what this nerd person I found via a search for clarinet solos thinks:

Also uncool? Direct democracy.

Minus point: That cafeteria table looks like it was drawn by MC Escher after downing a pint of tequila.

Edited to add the color strip to supplement commentary:

 

I’m Starting To Think There’s Not Enough Too Cool For School To Go Around

It’s Monday and that means more cafeteria repartee with Molly Hatcher and the girl we think is probably Nancy. What Nancy didn’t reveal before was that high five from the rando hallway Mudlark did something really weird to her hand, turning it into  flipper with a racing strip. Now that’s what I call too cool for school.

Before we get into the meat of the conversation, let’s take a closer look at the foreground student with the lunch tray. Wow, that salad is piled high in a very shallow serving bowl. It’s quite fascinating. I wonder if she assembled that thing herself from a salad bar or if the salads at the MHS are premade. (Is there an actual salad bar in the cafeteria?) Either way, the way that salad is constructed is too cool for school (TCFS).

We discover that the softball team’s TCFS trend has spread to the rest of the student body. Now random students are sharing details about themselves to members of the softball team with the hopes of being granted TCFS status. Case in point, Milo Daley.

Milo, as we learn is husky and he plays the clarinet. I might argue that that’s more than enough for TCFS status, but maybe my radar for this is not attuned like Molly’s. Somehow, Milo has computed that he is the second best bowler at MHS and he wants to know if that makes him TCFS. I would personally like to know how this ranking is established before I would make a designation, but again, I’m clearly in the dark about how this status is conferred.

I think Molly and probably Nancy should start a podcast called Too Cool For School where they ask students to tweet their unique hobbies or accomplishments to the TCFS Twitter account. Each week, Molly and Nancy (and maybe special guests) will ruminate on the submissions and decide definitively who is and who isn’t Too Cool For School. It would get more downloads than Marty Moon’s This Is What I’m Drinking podcast.

That’s Six “Too Cool for School”s If You’re Counting

Long day for me and an uncharacteristically late post, mea culpa.  Today’s the day for people on the perpendicular, starting with the first panel’s awkward hallway exchange.  I’m pretty sure when you go to high-five someone you don’t karate chop them across the palm, but then that’s why she’s the athlete and he’s… some rando MHS student.

The ninety-degree approaches continue in the cafeteria, where Molly Hatchet turns her upper torso and dislocates her left shoulder to face high-five girl (Carla? Nancy?) at a right angle. All the better to feign interest in high-five girl’s exasperation at getting attention for being good at sportsball.  I do find her inability to remember who threw the awkward high-five at her confusing, if only because I’m never quite sure how big Milford is.

On to the Saturday cliffhanger, which hinges on that dead horse of a phrase.  Molly (sporting an earring straight out of one of Raven’s progressive matrices) gets ready to drop a bombshell that has something to do with being “too cool for school.” Something tells me her synchronized skating team has been chosen to demonstrate that sport for the next Winter Olympics, and the prep for that will take her away from Milford for the next year-plus.  With Molly gone, morale on the Lady Mudlarks may crumble to the point that a Rally Hippo won’t be able to save the season and the playdowns will be missed just in time for Molly to come back and get a looper’s job at the MCC.

Again, apologies for the late post.