Don’t Worry, Luhm, Zane Isn’t Horning In on Your Turf

Okay, so the young lady with the tendrils hanging down isn’t a teacher but a fellow student, Priya (no last name yet), and this isn’t an academic class but a senior class meeting. I don’t recall what gets done in these meetings: cap and gown ordering, picking a class song or theme, deciding who’s “most likely to succeed” or “wittiest” or some other “superlative,” choosing a class trip and a prom theme, etc., usw. Really, just a bunch of stuff to pad your resume when applying to colleges, and there’s always that kid who takes it just a little too seriously and makes it uncomfortable for most everyone else involved. Here, Priya is that kid.

Among the suddenly dumped upon us exposition is that Zane has somehow managed to get himself elected senior class vice president. With everything that’s going on at home it’s hard to imagine how he would’ve run for and, if he won, agreed to serve in that role. Maybe that it serves as another form of therapy is what kept Zane from going all General Sherman on the Milford High Class of 2021.

Obviously Katy Brito doesn’t care if Priya’s nose is out of joint. Nor does Zane for that matter. Only When Abel Brito Charlie Delta sticks his nose in will things get truly snippy.

Two Douches and a Four-speed and a 389

What have we learned today, TWIMers?

1. Doug Guthrie’s favorite NASCAR racing family? The Pettys.
2. Vic Doucette was seen by drove a Plymouth Satellite faster than the speed of light.
3. When it comes to teaching your kids how to drive, Doug’s dad got it all wrong. Kid sits on dad’s lap, steers and shifts while dad works the pedals and takes hold of the steering wheel as necessary.
4. Thanks to #3, Gil Thorp is the strip that has come the closest to a depiction of road head since For Better or for Worse introduced the bizarre term “going roadside.”
5. A girl rejecting a guy for his grandpa van? Bad. Said guy catcalling said girl? A-OK!

I guess this wack-ass approach to putting Vic behind the wheel of a cool ride is cheaper than pimping out Vic’s van or fitting hand controls to Doug’s GTO. Style points to Whigham for getting the ’66 Goat interior close to correct, adding a column-mounted tach even if he defaulted to the cliched 8-ball gearshift knob.

Honestly this strip doesn’t feel like any kind of arc-ender, much as we might want it to be. If it is, a metapost might be in order.

meta: Well I’ll be darned; it is the arc-ender. Can you say “anticlimactic”? Sure, I knew you could. The post title is, of course, an homage to the second line of “Little GTO.”

Drive By lunacy

As the pieces of this puzzle start coming together we find Vic driving Dougs car by the girls as they pose for a team piture outside the school. Of course Doug arranged the whole thing so Vic could look cool for Tessi, which is like telling a horse you love it after it shits on you while youre washing it.

If Tessi is impressed with THAT, she’s even more of a moron then either of these 2 dufusses, who again dont know when to quit doing stupid stuff to impress a girl. Good thing there didnt Happen to be any traffic on the road, as a screeching pullaway from 0 to 65 in 2 seconds could easily result in a collision with some old fart driving 5 mph under the speed limit on his way to the barber.

Yes I peeked at the Saturday strip, and by golly we find out how Vic pulled this off. If thats what he’s gotta do to impress Tessi, well, suffice it to say, he didnt get what he deserved.

Mayor Tessi? We’re all in

More questions from Vic about Tessi to Doug, and he supplies more nonsense as he infers that a high school girl who plays hoops is the mayor of Milford. I think a while back I made a list of ‘mayors’.. Harry Carey of Rush Street, Hank Sauer of Wrigley Field, etc. (if I find the link I’ll insert it later) but those people had some chops. Tessi?? A mayor?? Of ‘That town’? Doug musta breathed too many exhaust fumes lately and its affecting his cognitive thinking.

So if Doug is saying Vic is not shallow, or as shallow, he’s saying that Tessi IS shallow. So how is she also a mayor? I thought mayors were… deep. Meaning, having enough leadership skills to influence people. How the hell would you elect a shallow mayor? I wanna say Tessi is closer to a dumb blond then any kind of mayor, but Doug knows her better then I do, so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt, but suffice it to say this situation is just overblown. And P2 gives us another plot angle that we dont need. Just spit it out Doug– if she dont like him, thats that. Pour your coffee and move on to someone else– there’s plenty of others.

P3 gives us a phrase that has been said by the following people:

1. A player in Texas Hold Em who is putting all his chips on one hand to either stay in the game or be eliminated. He either has a cant miss hand or he’s down to so few chips he must play them. I know the feeling.
2. A bar owner on an episode of Bar Rescue who mismanaged his bar so badly that he wound up quitting the job before the bar could be rescued. His pet phrase was “All In”. John Taffer was so sick of hearing All In he said he would walk out if it was said again.
3. Illinois governor JB Pritzker, who came up with the phrase to emphasize his stay at home order early in the pandemic. He said “We’re all in in Illinois.” Meaning everyone was inside, all the time. Which was nonsense. Like most of what else he said.

So we wait to find out what the girls mean by the phrase. Those who have peeked at the Saturday strip may have an idea.

Baby you can drive my car

***THIS IS THE FRIDAY POST****

So is a car a deal breaker? As the plot slogs along, we find out that the only good reason Tessi wont go out with Vic “I’m more like Jason Benneti then Dick Vitale” Doucette is his unappealing wheels. (Besides the fact that MAYBE she JUST doesnt care for him??)

I’ve learned in my 40 dateable years of knowing women that they will flirt a little with you without necessarily wanting any more attention. And here is another one who is just playin hard to get. Vic should figure out if he asked twice and she declined twice, hey dude the partys over. But he shouldnt take any more attention from her, so it has to work both ways. When a guy and girl both dig each other, everything runs so smoothly. When its like this, you can cut the tension with a knife, everywhere. Everyone knows when a relationship is strained, no matter what their rank in school is. I know that uncomfortable feeling of realizing someone I liked didnt feel the same about me, even though they did for a good while, and no matter what I did to turn the ship around, my fate was sealed.

But apparently the girls dont care for her reason for not liking Vic: and guess who has a cool car that she may love to ride in? Yep– our buddy Doug. If she now starts to show interest in him. whose to say Vic doesnt get jealous of that turn of events and start using some nicknames on him that may have negative connotations, so to speak.

But if her teammates turn on her for a decision that is none of their business really, (hey, if they all like Vic so much because he strokes their egos with fancy nicknames, why not just ask him out themselves?) its yet another unnecessary distraction on the team, and dont get me started on how Mimi will or will not deal with this.

In closing, since the Boss recently had to go to court over a bottle of tequila found in his possesion and wound up settling for $540 including court fees,https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/2021/02/24/bruce-springsteen-dwi-court-appearance/4572548001/ ( for what he makes a year I’d expect him to not only pay that in cash but also tip the bailiff a hundo) please enjoy this video from back in the day about a car I’m sure Tessi would love:

We’re the Mudlarks, Not the Cougars

Good: Vic Doucette shifting away from providing advice on motorsports careers and back to what he does best: falling back on Bermanisms for Milford hoopsters since he’s run out of NBA PA guys to emulate. Glad he used Tessi’s nickname else we wouldn’t have known if this was a girls’ or boys’ game.

Not so good: some rando Mudlark mom giving Vic the bad touch* while grooming heaping praise on him. Timing couldn’t be much worse given the current headlines about [insert politician/women’s gymnastics coach/team doctor name here]. Doubt the Chief gave that much thought while he was drawing this, unlike the additional details he added to Mudlark mom’s blouse in closeup. I’m imagining an unseen P4 zooming in further to show the stitchwork in the blouse and the unplucked hair in her mustache.

Who are these people? Who is handsy Mudlark mom’s daughter? Tessi? Corina? Becca Ramirez? Or some as yet identified player named Robinson?

Retcon alert: Did we ever hear a rotating parent do PA work for Milford before? After Vic, will we ever hear another Mudlark PA announcer again?

*This was my tentative title for today’s post until I realized I used it about a year ago. Didn’t link to the video then, suppose I could do it now.

Wrenching to Conclusions

Tonight I feel like the Rolling Stones going on after James Brown and the Famous Flames at The T.A.M.I. Show. Here goes nothing.

Like a well-executed heel-and-toe shift of your favorite manual gearbox, you expected a segue of Quick Vic Doucette coming over to Doug Guthrie to ask for pointers on making time with Tessi Milton. Instead, like the sickening sound of an over-rev and bent pushrods after a missed shift, you got Vic unloading a barrage of automotive references on an only slightly nonplussed Doug. You’d feel dinged up between the ears, too, if your hair kept changing back and forth between blond and brunette at random. (Now I remember why I usually stick to the B&W version of the strip.)

Things only get worse from there. In a tank town like Milford, it doesn’t take much to connect the dots from Tom and Doug being late for practice because Doug got pulled over, to Gil making Tom and Doug run laps for being late for practice, to Tom spraining his knee while running laps for being late for practice, to Doug feeling guilty because if he hadn’t gotten pulled over neither Tom nor he would’ve been late for practice and Gil wouldn’t have made them run laps. If Doug hadn’t mentioned it before now, maybe Tom did. Or maybe Rick Scott. Or maybe it’s just one of those things that leaked out of the locker room, like a bad case of jock itch.

What doesn’t naturally follow is Vic’s assumption that, rather than feeling guilty about Tom’s injury, Doug now fears he too will get injured. Neither does it follow that that fear extends to Doug’s not being able to race his kart. Doug’s blowing off a race for the Oakwood game suggests that karting isn’t gonna be a stepping stone in his career; we’ve never seen mention of any success of his behind the wheel. I now have no idea how Rubin’s gonna tie the Guthrie part of this arc together. I’m just glad we haven’t seen Co-co-rina in this strip since February 9, though I suspect that streak will come to an end soon.

Tessi’s booked

Tessi’s got a friend

You know she’s got a good friend of mine.

And lately somethings changed

It aint hard to define

Tessi’s got herself a friend and I wanna make him mine.

Cause she’s watching him with those eyes

And she’s dissing him with that family I just know it.

And I’m holding a wrench in my arms late late at night.

I know she dicks my friend cause she’s a girl

He wants her to give him a whirl

Where can you find a jacket like that??

Gil plays around with my charade

That doesnt seem to be a reason to change.

You know I feel so dirty when I play with my wheels

I wanna tell him I cant play hoops but the point is I’m a fool

Vic is watching her with his eyes

And his nicknames man are just cruddy I just know it

And he’s holding that mic in his arms during the fight.

You know he wants to have that Tessi girl

He wants to have that Tessi girl

Where can he find a nickname like that?