Boy we have a lot to get to here so lets get crackin–
Most girls dont wear torn-sleeve muscle shirts. Guys do, like me. Keri is a girl as far as I know.
How does Keri already know how to drive? Isnt she a freshman? (I already related how only seniors could drive at my school.)
Its ok to like Iggy Pop but who the hell is that on her T-shirt?
The way the window/door is in the background indicates the room is not Keri’s bedroom but likely the living room. If so, why the hell is Iggy Pop on the wall in the living room? Gil put that there? Egads!
I thought Jami was older then Keri. And HE needs a ride?
Whoever the hell Meemaw Debbie is, why does Jamie have to make a deal like that? Mimi should only accept a yes or no answer. And its wrong for Mimi to accept that deal. Apparently Meemaw Debbie only plays right after school. Otherwise why cant one of the parents drive Jami to Lukes house? Good Lord.
And now Gil is concerned about Luke being a bad influence on Jami. Cripes, my parents wern’t saying stuff like that when I needed a ride somewhere. They trusted that my friends were ok.
Mimi, whats better, a bad friend or no friend? Apparently she doesnt care. Hey, hang around with a drug dealer for all I care. You need to make friends dude!!
Well folks I dont know if Im wantin to analyze this strip as its apparently about some issue that was covered 19 years ago; talk about recycled panels. well we’ve got recycled storylines as well. Hopefully next week we’ll be covering something like football, or maybe Gil will take up pickleball as I’ve heard all the old geysers are doing. In the meantime here’s an old classic from Paul Carrack that I used to listen to when I was working at the news agency on the midnight shift.
Here we go again, but it’s not a dispute as to whether sportsball should take precedence over non-sportsball extracurriculars but the modern problem of remembering what pronouns people choose to identify themselves. Today, Toby née Tabatha identifies as he/him, Keri identifies as they/them, and Gil identifies as coach/Coach.
Now why are these three having this little confab at The Bucket of all places? (And why are they having coffee? Don’t they know there’s a cantina in town for that?) Are they here to pick up them after their postgame dinner? Are they serving as their chaperones for said dinner? Is it time for a jangle-off as Mel and Mimi see who can rattle their jewelry the loudest? Winner gets Gil – if she wants him, that is.
The unspoken tension here is so thick you could cut it with a butter knife, not unlike the one Mimi’s twisting into Mel as she deadnames Toby. Clearly she hasn’t forgotten that Mel wanted to be her at one time. Meanwhile Gil, still aware of that history and that Mimi is unhappy in the marriage, tries to play the supportive husband by throwing out a patronizing “sweetie.” Will Mimi have the divorce papers served publicly to Gil right here in The Bucket, the way Jason Sudeikis had Olivia Wilde served with custody papers while she was presenting at CinemaCon?
One thing is clear: despite Mel’s claim, in Milford, nothing is the same as it was.
edit: Oops! I forgot to identify the players from the Dolphins’ No-name Defense I posted this past Saturday!
Front, reclining: Lloyd Mumphord, CB
Front row, left to right: Bob Matheson, LB; Bill Stanfill, DE; Bob Heinz, DT; Manny Fernandez, DT; Vern Den Herder, DE
Center: Nick Buoniconti, LB
Back row, left to right: Dick Anderson, SS; Curtis Johnson, CB; Mike Kolen, LB; Doug Swift, LB; Tim Foley, CB; Jake Scott, FS
“I want a concerted effort to come out of a strip that isn’t an up-tempo strip about fapping into a damned death dedication!” Here I am set up to spike some snark after Gil played setter yesterday and all I can think of after reading today’s installment is Casey Kasem’s infamous ranting outtake.
Well that puts a damper on my catty remarks about how sick Mimi’s mother really was, how far away (and how close to a beach) from Milford she was living, and how old Cami Ochoa is.* It’s taken me the better part of today to decide which is the bigger bombshell: that Mimi’s mother is terminally ill or that Mimi had an aspiring professional golf career we hadn’t heard about until today.
Let’s start with the first one. When Mimi took the Thorplets to the beach and/or to see her mother, we were under the impression that Grandma Clover didn’t exactly live around the corner. Now we’re told Mimi’s gone “to take care of her mom up north” only to find them at Milford Adult Care LLC? Either Milford is about the size of Sitka, Alaska, or Mimi went up north and brought her mom closer, well, to die.
A slightly meta digression is in order. In the time that I’ve been part of the TWIM rotation, I’ve lost both my parents: father of teenchy in July 2014 and mother of teenchy in November 2016. When my father died, I don’t think I missed a regularly scheduled post; however when my mother died I took a leave of absence from TWIM that lasted until late January 2017. In hindsight I think the main difference was that my mother died very suddenly and somewhat unexpectedly, whereas my father had been terminally ill for over a year and his passing was not so much a matter of if, but when. It also didn’t help matters that I became the sole surviving member of my family after my mother passed and had to deal with the material consequences of that. That’s also why I spent a fair part of 2017 in Bakst country.
What’s my point? My point is that when you know with some certainty that a loved one has a limited time remaining, you are allowed an opportunity to prepare for that eventuality. In Mimi’s case, it appears that includes not only bringing her mom closer to her for the time she has left** but also preparing to pursue a golf dream that’s been on hold for as long as I’ve been reading this strip if not longer. I suppose next we’ll find out that Kaz has gone off on a spiritual trek to Nepal and Silent John Pascoe has returned to help Gil coach the football team.
*How many years of a time jump did Barajas make when he took the super soph from six months ago and made her a high school sports coach? Is there a fountain of youth in Casa Thorp that kept Keri and Jami from aging while Cami did the reverse Benjamin Button? If so, maybe they better give a glass or two to Mimi’s mom. Just sayin’.
**Not sure how Mimi’s mom can say with such certainty that she’s dying in six months and not tonight. Does she have a physician-assisted suicide penciled into her calendar for that date? Does she know that Mimi’s going to carefully wheel her into Milford Adult Care LLC and not do something else with her? There’s a string of morbid jokes as long as my arm I could roll out here but good taste (and maybe my earlier aside) won’t let me do that. Instead I’ll refrain and leave that for the commenters.
I don’t know why it is only striking me now that Lukey and Fran Martinez have coordinated their golf attire. I think in the initial reveal of Fran, I was probably focusing more on the length of Fran’s skirt, which seemed quite short. The panel one shading and perspective definitely gives the Martinez’s a more twinsie look and the skirt seems to have lengthened a bit.
Attire aside, Fran is giving us some background on Lukey. It’s a little confusing. Martinez was a stay at home dad but established and maintained credentials for coaching in schools. I guess there’s a way to do that. The point is that Coach Luke was instrumental in raising Pedro and an indeterminant number of other boys. That’s Mimi’s takeaway, at least. Being there to tuck the kids into bed gives Mimi a special feeling in her golf jorts and she’s not shy about letting Gil know.
I do dig the shock to Gil’s system as Mimi subverts his expectation and overlooks all of Coach Luke’s loutishness to focus on his parenting. Of course, Martinez might be as full of crap about this as everything else.
A few random thoughts: Does Pedro still wet the bed??
I was today years old when I learned that “winning the chip” is a reference to championships. Cool, Luke, cool.
The past week’s action at the MCC was setting up to be a 21st-century version of Caddyshack, with Gil and Mimi as the Smails and the Martinezes (well, at least Luke) as some kind of Al Czervik. Sra. Martinez (a/k/a Fran) was looking to fall into the Czervik mold, with huge earrings huger and chunky bracelets chunkier than any heretofore seen in Milford. So when Fran replies to Mimi’s quintessential American question, you can literally hear the mic drop in print.
Look how gobsmacked Mimi is. You can almost hear the Locust Valley Lockjaw and see the privilege explode out of her eyes. That someone who looks and sounds like Fran could be a heart surgeon? Mind. Blown. That a heart surgeon could be married to such an obvious boor as Luke? Mind. Blowner.
Know what? Mimi’s mind is nowhere near as blown as mine when she introduces herself as a “stay-at-home-mom.” What happened to her basketball-softball-volleyball-PE coaching job at Milford? Is that why there was no girls’ sports arc this past spring? Will that ellipsis explain it all come Monday? This retcon train has been rolling for the past seven weeks; now it’s in danger of jumping the tracks.
Gil and Mimi are hitting the links. Mimi wanted some more Coach Gil At Home time, but time on the course alone with Gil should be considered quality time. Golf is a very social game, with plenty of opportunity to chat and catch up with your companion(s) and Gil and Mimi are taking advantage of this. (I assume they are not participating in the other activities common to group golf outings, drinking and gambling.)
Gil and Mimi are catching each other up on what’s happening with the kids and that is obviously an integral part of Gil and Mimi Time. We do pick up on the fact that this is still summer despite what our calendars say. Gil asks if Jami might want to play in the Junior League this summer, so that is still ahead of them. According to Mimi, what Jami has ahead of him is hours and hours of screen time. That sounds about right.
In our final panel, we get a one-two punch. First, Henry Barajas gives a nod to all his readers (who he has commendably been very engaged with, at least those of us who devote portions, perhaps unhealthy portions, of our screen time to Gil Thorp and Gil Thorp related online activities). Gil’s line acknowledges that the Thorp children have been MIA from the strip for ages. But before we have too much time to savor the meta nature of this line, an out of frame voice identifies Gil to a companion loudly and with an expletive thrown in.
Is it Coach Luke?! Does he have a lady that he squires around the golf course on his summer break? Do we have room for another blowhard gunning for Gil? We’ll see, but the smart money is on Coach Luke. I can’t wait to see his “Baby”!
On the topic of Gil Thorp and golf, I recently went back to the beginning of the available Gil Thorp strips on the GoComics site. The strips there start in the Spring of 2001, in the middle of a baseball season featuring Jarvis White, who was using steroids, Marty DeJong, who came back for a bitter cameo later and a healthy dose of Marty Moon and his then ex-fiancée Peaches. When this plot resolves, a summer golf plot starts.
In the Summer of 2001, Gil plans to compete in a tournament, but his game is really rusty. Mimi is also going to play in the ladies’ division of the tournament, but she’s at the top of her game. Gil is determined to improve his game so he doesn’t embarrass himself. In one of the LOL funniest strips of the story, Gil sneaks onto the golf course at night to sneak in some practice and face plants climbing over the fence.
Gil is driving well but his short game is a mess, so he has Mimi help him out in the back yard, where he breaks the neighbor’s window. Eventually Gil straightens out his game and he and Mimi both win their respective divisions. The kids even make an appearance or two! If you want a load of golf, go back and check out that summer.
In 2001, Gil Thorp was written by Jerry Jenkins and the artwork was by Frank McLaughlin. The GoComics site is just really bad at acknowledging and honoring the creator, Jack Berrill, and all of the contributing writers and artists who have been a part of Gil Thorp over the years. I took a deep dive trying to establish a definitive timeline of the changes in writers and artists, but it’s rather fuzzy. I don’t have time to get into it on this post as it’s already into tl;dr territory. I will share what I have found and what is missing or unclear. Look for that in a future rambling post. Maybe we can piece this together.
The post title is a nod to the Slim Harpo blues tune, Got Love If You Want It. There are not performance clips of Slim Harpo playing this. As is the case with most of guys of Slim Harpo’s, the original bluemen’s songs were popularized by white kids (and mostly white kids from the UK). In that spirit, here’s a clip of some Irish white kids (and I mean kids) called the Strypes doing the Slim Harpo song. I don’t know if they’re still around. The trail is kind of cold.
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This Week in Milford 