In Which Gil Thorp Finally Acknowledges the Existence of a Virus

No, not that virus, though you gotta admit that social distancing would be a plausible rationale for the seating arrangements in the Milford gym. Today we get a view into the inner workings of the Thorpian Stasi in action.

First, Gil walks in on the aftermath of Kaz shooting up on his desk instead of in what looks to be an Aeron chair but is probably a knockoff. How else do you explain that overdeveloped right arm with veins a-poppin’?

Then we catch Gil repeating the story with his chief informant Mimi. That Gil’s players had begun to show up to support Mimi’s team wasn’t enough for her; in her mind, they should have to do it as a unit. No place for players to sit with their friends on the team and to not sit with guys they wouldn’t hang with outside of football. Gil of course buys into that and decides he needs to get to the heart of the matter. How? Not by actually talking to the two guys who are actually at the heart of the matter, but to put two guys on the hot seat who have been the exact opposite of rivals for the past two seasons.

Finally we find out how Gil “squeezed” the intel out of Macy and Roh: via ungloved prostate exams with zero lube. Why is Gil so angry at these two? Did they not drop trou fast enough for him? Chance and Charlie aren’t the droids you’re looking for, Gilberto, and they’re not the ones who are taking sides in this controversy. EDIT: Alert TWIMer Downpuppy has pointed out that the pair getting reamed out by Gil in P3 are in fact the dueling quarterbacks Rappson and Thayer. Once Gil is finished with his unlubed prostate exams, these two will be singing Kumbayah (h/t hitorque) and playing rock paper scissors for first crack at Corinna. Does Gil know that these two have been actively recruiting teammates to take sides against each other? If not, this is Gil’s problem to solve, not the QBs. By calling them out of class and raking them over the coals, Gil will have sown fear, uncertainty and doubt among every Mudlark football player. That won’t win the Valley but it’ll keep the proles in line and, after all, that’s what the Thorps are all about.

Hip Dysplasia, Something Terrible

Today we get just a tiny glimpse at Mimi’s approach to coaching volleyball. She’s very focused on the arrangement of spectators and prefers all twelve people at the game to sit in a tight group. Beyond that, we’re all still in the dark.

It’s a good thing Gil has sway over everything that everyone at Milford High does and that Mimi can feed him chocolate ice cream and engage him in her seating arrangement dilemma. Of course ol’ Gil’s gonna do something about it. Umm, what the hell is up with Gil and Mimi’s legs in panel one? Their position relative to their respective torsos is insane.

I don’t know who the students in panel 3 are. I don’t know what gender they are. A day in Milford doesn’t go by without somebody doing something terrible. This is probably about seating in the gym, but what do these randos have to do with it?

Going Dutch? No, Going Swiss.

I have tried to keep politics out of my posts here for the most part, with the notable exception of the Padilla siblings basketball arc when I echoed timbuys’ sentiment about the treatment of Puerto Rico after Hurricane Irma. Yet not until robmize’s* post yesterday did it dawn on me that the quarterback controversy aspect of this fall arc could be seen as an allegory of the 2020 US presidential campaign. The Mudlark gridders are roughly split between the steady, unflashy game manager who plays the cards he’s dealt with and the mouthy loose cannon who calls his own shots and comes up bigly as often as not. But enough of that analogy.

How is a high school student like Switzerland? Does he hold on to the lunch money bullies steal from other kids for safekeeping? Does he sell nice watches at recess? Oh, I get it, he’s neutral, as in he sits in his own little clique separate from the quarterback cliques.

Mimi allegedly coaches the Lady Mudlark volleyball team. Have we ever seen her coach them? Not really, but that’s par for the course. It should come as no surprise, then, that she spends as much time scanning the stands to see who’s watching her team as she does actually coaching that team. Watch for Gil to preach unity, not division, in the locker room next week after Mimi rats out his players for sitting in bunches and not in a group. Come to think of it, that’s kind of an allegory for what we saw in US politics tonight.

*Again, I think it’s appropriate to tip our collective hats to robmize for the work he does. We who have no view into the inner workings of the USPS have no idea of the forces that have influenced his ability to do his job. That he’s still able to do it is a testament to him and his fellow postal workers. Thank you, Rob.

It’s Hard Out There For A Thorp

It’s tough to be a Coach Thorp. First we have Mimi trying to facilitate a welcoming atmosphere in volleyball practice without doing any of the heavy lifting. She thought she could count on Becca and Susan to drive the welcome wagon, but they seem to be goofballs. Mimi realizes that she might actually have to talk to Corina if she wants to make sure that Corina feels welcome on the team. Oh, poor Mimi. Sorry you might have to interact with a student.

Then we have Gil dealing with the incessant Milford media, even the one (or only) media representative who isn’t Marty Moon. Marjie wants to know who will start at QB. Gil is evasive, either because he already had to answer one question last week and he’s still recovering from the strain, or because he hasn’t actually figured out how to answer Marjie’s question.

Corina and the Angry Three Inches

I have been compared to several people over the course of my life. When I played baseball I was referred to as “a white Kirby Puckett,” more for my physical dimensions than my batting prowess. On more than one occasion in Philadelphia, I was mistaken for a former Attorney General of Pennsylvania. At a fundraiser for the National Ataxia Foundation and the Bob Allison Ataxia Research Center many years ago, I was mistaken for a certain actor by a couple of drunken attendees and pestered to the point that I signed the actor’s name on a couple of napkins to get them to leave me alone. Until yesterday, however, never have I been compared to Joan Rivers. I was beginning to think of myself as TWIM‘s version of Edwin Jackson – an innings eater. But, okay, fine. If I’m ever half as good at anything as Joan was at comedy, then I will have done well.

On to today’s strip. It wasn’t enough for Rubin to give Corina authority issues; she had to be a general jerk to everyone around her as well. Now we can add “wants to be violent towards people” to her psychological profile. She may also suffer from penis envy a Napoleon complex as she wishes she had Becca’s three additional inches to better inflict harm on her opponents.

I do appreciate the little difference of opinion between Becca and Susan on Corina; hopefully Becca’s take is a sign that Corina’s shtick is getting old. I also appreciate the contortions Mimi’s elbows have to go through to get her forearms parallel to her shirt placket and her palms up at collarbone level.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and Shut Your Piehole

Corina must not have gotten enough free meals out of Milford, so she whipped out Mim’s* business card, punched up those digits, and set up a lunch date at the diner to glom one last one. Wow, that diner table sure is shiny, ain’t it? Looks like Steve Luhm must’ve dropped in and applied his mop skills to it. You sure as shootin’ know Maureen didn’t, since her nosy ass has been spending so much time burning up the phone lines.

This feels like an arc-ender, what with Maureen’s snappy one-liner and the fact that this is the last weekend in August. What, really, have the last couple of months advanced in this strip, besides laying the groundwork for two possible long-term (by Gil Thorp standards) characters? That Milford has its own version of Mary Worth in Maureen? That Mimi’s gonna end up with a decent catcher for the Lady Mudlarks next spring? That Golden Boy True Standish isn’t so golden?

Tune in Monday when we’ll see if Kaz and Rick Scott are attaching face shields behind the Mudlarks’ face masks.

*Not a typo; see Thursday’s strip.

The Jedi Mind Trick As Recruiting Tool

[Insert bow-chicka-wow-wow here]

“Recruit you? No. Groom you? Hmmmmmmmmmmmaybe…”

“Whaddaya mean, ‘groom’?”

“Well, look at that hair of yours. Just yesterday you had a bob, and today you’re rocking a mullet. Besides, the only way to convince players to come play for Milford is to actively encourage them not to come play for Milford.

“No, if I’m recruiting anyone, it’s the guy on my – er, our mound. Say, True, you’ve filled out quite nicely. Bet you could fill up these big boxes. (Seriously, is Whigham ever gonna be able to draw batter’s boxes consistently?) I’ve got an itch that needs scratching – I mean, a pool that needs tending. What’re you doing in your free time this summer?”

“Well, Mrs. Coach Thorp…”

“Call me Mimi.”

“Well, Mrs. Coach Mimi, I was just gonna swing by CVS and pick up my mom’s Zoloft prescription then go back to the country club and get some more pointers from Mr. Coach Thorp. But first I gotta pay Corina here for this catching session.”

“Wait, you’re paying her to catch for you?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Well that settles that. Corian, or whatever your name is, you’ve forfeited your high school eligibility, so you won’t be playing for Milford or anywhere else in the Valley for that matter. Come, True, let’s see how else you’ve grown.”

Hypnocookie!

Suddenly, Mrs. Standish produces a plate of cookies, which symbolizes the comfort and support that Milford offers the mentally ill. She suggests to Corina that Art has been trying to get out of the tank town for years now that True’s high school football career has been over for six years. Ma Standish isn’t budging though. There’s no place like Milford. She offers Corina a cookie in a paper cookie holder (?) and Corina freezes in place, wondering what the heck this woman is talking about, how any of this is going to help her mother, and what the heck is in these cookies.

Phoebe stops by the Thorps’ to tell Mimi that she should talk to Maureen at the diner about an exciting softball catching prospect that may be moving to Milford!