The freak hands are better.

OMG – filling in for Teenchy today as he’s on a long day trip. Chris produces a full page stat sheet that I’m sure is available on both the internet and your local bathroom wall at a sports bar. Nothing like perusing those 4 for 9 stats while taking a leak next to some dude who’s 3 sheets to the wind, pissing for 10 minutes. . Multi-tasking at its finest. I go to Hooters every now and then and they have the sports page on the wall above the urinals, so this aint far-fetched.

Chris’ teammate points out (literally) that he’s better served dishing the rock for assists, even though the only points we saw the big guy score were after Schuring got faced on a layup attempt. Chris looks like one of those small guards who would be wise to stay out of the paint, as otherwise any big guy would shove the ball down his throat.

Then we see P3 and he’s actually TALLER then the center?? Hey Gil— your lineup needs work buddy.  Chris must have zero vertical leap if he’s blocked by someone who then allows the real Shorty to get the put-back.

Playing offense in your head?? How about playing it on the court? Methinks that’ll work better. Team of duffusses, these guys. At least they have great hands.

 

All Suited Up and No Place to Go

Well butter my ass and call me a biscuit.  Gil Thorp is actually doing something tantamount to coaching today, but could he go about it any more awkwardly?

I mean really.  He pulls the kid out of class, makes him suit up in his game uniform, then makes him come back into his office to stand in front of his enormous window while he lectures him.  What sort of bizarre power trip/sexual peccadillo is at work here, I leave to the mind of the reader.  Talk amongst yourselves.

With that out of the way, let’s figure out how this weird scene advances the plot.  Schuring doesn’t mind taking the shots in practice against his crappy teammates, but hesitates to shoot against actual competition.  Now, at Gil’s direction, he’ll take more shots during games.  He’ll miss his share and, when he does, Teddy DeMarco will get into his head.  Good guy Chris will pretend not to care until he actually does, and his academics will suffer in turn.  Meanwhile Chris’ caring teammates will duct tape DeMarco into a locker until Teddy whines about his bad home life or whatever bullshit excuse bullies use for being bullies.  Everybody kisses and makes up and Milford still misses the playdowns.  Someone makes a lame joke and everyone exits, stage left, through a hallway.

What about all that valedictorian drama? That’ll have to wait until after spring sports are over and the school year ends, sometime around the Fourth of July.

 

 

Putting Mussels on Our Ears

Welcome to the year 2020, where Dippin’ Dots are still The Ice Cream of the Future, the halls of Milford High are still as shiny as ever and girls in Milford are still wearing huge earrings.  Alexa and her sidekick appear to have made theirs from mussel shells.

Sidekick there seems to have forgotten that athletic prowess and academic ranking aren’t exactly correlated.  Dropping one’s field goal percentage doesn’t drop one from valedictorian to salutatorian.  Conversely, wishing athletic success to one’s academic competition doesn’t raise one’s class rank, either.  If that were the case, wishing academic failure on one’s competition would lower one’s class rank even further.  Schadenfreude is not a good look on anybody but one, I expect, we’ll see with increasing frequency throughout this arc.

Now Alexa’s off to the MHS Medical Center where she’ll visit a freshly hammered Teddy DeMarco.  Wait, what?  It’s the MHS Media Center?  Cool.  She can listen to the musical inspiration for today’s post title.

 

 

Gil is a dumb coach, right?

I have no idea why Gil is talking About Chris instead of To Chris, when he’s in the damn huddle.!  Is that the only way he responds? Like being a fly on a wall only he speaks and walks. Hey Fly- you know we’re talking about you, but you wont listen any other way, so we’ll tell another player to tell you what to do. What happened to drawing up a play on a whiteboard and addressing the WHOLE TEAM?

We just go from one shitfest to another. And whoopee, we scored a basket to take the lead. How many days does it take to play this damn game? It may take a week to get home.

I thought the last bunch was weird. This dude here; he may be a species all his own. He even shoots a layup like a jumpshot– with his eyes closed!

 

Nothing Like a Roast for the Holidays

knock-kneed (/ˌnäkˈnēd/), adj. 1. (of a person) having legs that curve inwards so that the feet are apart when the knees are touching. “The patient had a distinctly knock-kneed gait.” 2. Teddy DeMarco Teddy DeMarco’s stooge (see edit below).

So when dude with the roadrunner fade (who turns out to be Teddy DeMarco; thanks Tim for pointing that out) and Captain Marvel shirt challenges Teddy stooge to “go old school,” that means “walk up to a kid in the cafeteria and roast him.”  Ohhh-kayyy.  Shouldn’t the roast be at least fully baked?  Without the punctuation of a high-five, would anyone have known that was the punchline?  If the roastee is already engaging in self-deprecation, doesn’t that kind of take the edge off the roast?  It’d be easy enough for Chris to come back with something like “Yeah, I know, but basketball’s not my main sport. I was the starting quarterback on the football team, in case you hadn’t noticed.”  Easier still to escalate into a roast battle: “Oh, I guess you were too busy holding that aspirin between your knees to notice. You shouldn’t have bothered; it’s not like anybody wants to go between your knees anyway.  And what’s with your pal there? Coyote after you?”

The apparently good-natured Chris Schuring doesn’t seem to be aware that Teddy just tried to roast him or, for that matter, that Teddy doesn’t even like him, something Alexa alluded to recently.  He may not be the golden child that True Standish was but so far we don’t see that he has any negative qualities.  Something tells me he will serve as the mirror which will reflect Teddy and Alexa’s shortcomings back on them.

*metapost: Edited to reflect which character is actually Teddy.

He also invented Donkey Kong

Chris Shuring  https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/author/chris-schuring/#gref

is a former Atari employee. Atari was as many of us who grew up in the 70’s and 80’s  know, the king of video games back in the 80’s. I spent many hours after school playing Space Invaders, PacMan, and many other video games that at the time were state of the art, but now look pre-historic.

So I guess Alexa worked for Nintendo, the main rival of Atari that featured Mike Tysons Punchout, amoung many others. Hopefully down the road we’ll see the 2 butt heads in a video game competition. But most likely theyre battling for #1 in class rank. Much more boring.

 

The green green grass of December

Whoopee- back to football now that Chet Chit Chat has received his comeuppance, and although the fans in the stands are dressed for near-winter the grass on the gridiron shows no signs of turning brown like every other Midwest-based grass does when the warm air turns cold and the sunlight is much more minimal. Sunlight is very underrated when it comes to grass appearance. In the summer the sun is up  for about 14 – 15 hours a day, plus the light is more direct with its  path starting due east and going directly overhead at noon, providing much more intensity even though its actually farther from the earth in summer then winter. Then it majestically sets due west, taking its time and sqeeezing every bit of its daylight out before dissappearing. Even then its light lingers for a while, and sunset-watching is a fine way to spend a summer evening. By the time its completely dark out, its almost bedtime.

By winter the sun is rising in the southeast, and takes a much more angled approach in the sky as it peaks at just-above- eye level before hurrying down to set in the northwest, its extreme angle explaining why it gets dark so quick this time of year. One minute its broad daylight, then bam- dark. No twilight in December to speak of. I deliver the mail outside in a truck, and believe me, when its 4 o clock I can feel the light just fading away almost immediately and the temperature drop, and my dome light is needed almost every day now. Daylight is our friend these days, because it doesnt stay long.

So the grass feeds off the warm sun and temps, and when those resources dissapate around November,  it loses its green hue and turns brown, preparing itself to survive the cold and dark winter in a frozen ground caused by the much colder night temps; so it can grow again in spring when the warmer air re-awakens its roots. Nature is fun to watch if you pay attention.

So in Milford-land the grass stays green all year round, and the Mudlarks are still celebrating beating tomato cans like Valley Tech, and heading to the Bucket to toast Charlie and Chance for being the 2-headed monster the offense needs in the backfield. Huzzah!!

This storylines’ a real turkey

The story drags on with Marty basically jumping off Ballards ship, much like Clarence Boddicker and Dick Jones partnership fell apart in RoboCop after Clarence involved Jones in his criminal doings.

Hopefully Chet will only go to jail and not wind up fired like Dick Jones in the end– maybe Chief Lind will do the honors this time.