And what happened, then? Well, in Milford they say – that Karina’s small nose grew three sizes that day. And then – the true meaning of Milford came through, and Karina found strength of *ten* Marties, plus two!†
Come on, Chief, stay on model! Saturday’s cliffhanger leaves us wondering how the Lady Mudlarks will protest Marty Moon at the Milford boys’ game and how of-of-sync with today’s realities that protest will be. Rather than speculate on that, I’ll focus on the little details that keep us coming back for more:
P1: Paloma’s super freaky giant left hand (no wonder that phone looked so tiny when she held it) is par for the course, but I must say I appreciate how Whigham has drawn the girls’ hair. Such shine and volume! Breck Girl Darwin would be proud.
P2: Karina comes not only with a giant schnozz but also with pre-skinned knuckles.
P3: We never saw the end of the Milford @ Jefferson game but we know now that the Mudlarks lost. No burritos for Jorge, then? That might explain the fridge raid and the fridge-side pizza menu.
PP2-3: Karina’s and Paloma’s upper lips remind me of the top half of the old Hartford Whalers logo. Gives me a great excuse to fire up some “Brass Bonanza.”
I think the only hurricanes Marty’s been exposed to are the ones at Pat O’Brien’s, amirite? That would have required him to travel to New Orleans and, judging by his tone-deaf pronunciation of Jorge’s first name, he’s probably never left his mom’s basement the Valley. Then again, ask a New Orleanian to pronounce “Chartres” and you may think otherwise.
Equally tone-deaf is Marty’s assessment of the impact of Hurricane Maria on Jorge’s life. I’m willing to bet Paloma heard Marty, or someone from the Milford High Token Libertarians Club heard him and will tell Paloma about it over an enchilada burger at The Bucket. If this leads to Paloma starting a campaign to get Marty fired, I’m all in. Odds are it’ll only lead to Gil shaming Marty into an on-air apology to the Padillas. Wonder if we’ll see Jorge’s name spelled out phonetically when that happens (“Whore-hay”)?
Meanwhile, as further proof of his cultural assimilation, Jorge’s transitioning into the Aaaaron Aaaagard Woody Woodpecker ‘do (or is it the Andre frohawk?). Try not to stare at his freakishly large right hand too long.
metapost (a bit after 3pm EST): I see over at the ‘mudgeon (again, folks, I don’t look at the CC before I post, honest!) a good bit of outrage at Marty’s tone-deafness and an alleged response from Rubin himself, to the effect that Rubin has put these words in Marty’s mouth to make an example of him. We’ll see how Neal makes Marty eat them.
Much discussion of the life and death of Roberto Clemente in our comments today as well. I make no attempts to disguise my age through my commentary, but I am really going to age myself now by admitting that I saw Clemente play. Granted, my age was in the single digits, but I saw him play nonetheless. I remember being shocked and grief-stricken when he was lost, not unlike what I felt when Thurman Munson was killed several years later but made even more tragic by the humanitarian effort Clemente was trying to carry out. Here’s an image of Clemente on his 1960 Topps baseball card, looking unamused at being referred to as “Bob.”
A couple of years ago, when we were wrapping up up the True Standish/Addison “Boo, but not the ‘Boo’ from To Kill a Mockingbird” Radley arc, I made mention of the old Washington Senators outfielder Carlos Paula. The article I linked to about Paula noted that the Washington Post used to quote Paula using “misspelled words to emphasize his accent (‘Cooba’) and a Tarzan-like sentence structure: ‘Me happy. Me no show. Me smile inside but face no pretty. Me just ugly.’” Meanwhile the Washington Afro-American used “conventional, grammatically correct English” to quote him.
The patronizing, borderline racist convention the Post used to quote Carlos Paula and other Cuban baseball players* extended to its coverage of Southerners as well. Senators players from the South were quoted using dialogue that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Li’l Abner strip of the day. This treatment extended to Washington’s star shortstop Cecil Travis, who hailed from Riverdale, Georgia and was quoted as saying, “Why, Ah always was a shortstop until one day they needed a third baseman at Chattanooga. To tell the truth, Ah never did cotton to third base.”
Rubin does not stoop to using similar conventions for the siblings Padilla this winter… yet. Unfortunately he doesn’t give us any other clues (figures of speech, for example) to let us know how they sound, so we just have to be told repeatedly that Jorge has a Georgia accent. If Jorge told us he was fixin’ to get a chili steak and an FO, ring one, we’d know for sure, but Whigham has him drinking a Yoo-Hoo, Yogi’s beverage of choice. On the other hand, we just now learn that not only does his sister Paloma not have the same accent, she goes out of her way to not to. I can imagine future convos around her getting awkward, like the old SNL skit where Jimmy Smits joins the NBC News team. I can also imagine this arc turning to the age-old conflict between assimilation and maintaining one’s culture, with some sibling strife thrown in for good measure. Given the current state of affairs between Puerto Rico and the US government, I can imagine that turning nearly as awkward as the convo in the SNL skit.
I leave you all with this nice little piece of nostalgia that used to put yhs teenchy to bed in days gone by.
*For another example of the writing used to capture the pidgin English of the Cuban players, scroll down just a little bit from that Travis quote I linked to and read how the WaPo quoted Roberto Estalella.
Wow – Jorge scores 2 points in his debut and on Groundhog Day its cause for a celebration. He gets invited to Andre Ruffins house for a party, and also can bring his sister Paloma. Wonder how long the party will last; I bet all next week. Only in this strip can a Groundhog Day event take a week, just like the movie. Then they ask a question about their differing accents and I wonder – if shes there, why not ask her?? Evidently shes not at the party. Oh well. Time will tell.
Again we’re reminded of the extremely slow pace of the basketball season. Theyve played 2 games each?? On Feb 2. Hey, hoops out here start with Thanksgiving tourneys and full skeds in December, then holiday tourneys over Christmas break, twice a week in January, and another month of games in February before March Madness playoffs. Should have 20 games in the books by now, more then enough to figure out if these 2 newbies are the real deal or not. Instead we dick around till the lawnmower is getting more exercise then the nets in the gym; playing football on Christmas for chrissake. They dont worry about concussions at Milford; they worry about frostbite. (Oh shut up Gary)
Panel 2 features Jorge’s receding hair on his scalp; did they double check his ID when he came over to make sure his age is 17 and not 71? We may need that discount double check guy.
Wow, Rick Soto must’ve grown a foot and gained 100 pounds since he took that knee to the helmet. He looks like he could be selling Niblets. Again, there’s nothing in this strip that would hip the novice Gil Thorp reader to the dynamics at work here. Convos like this are no doubt playing out all over this land of ours on a regular basis, but in most cases I’d venture “your mother and I” ≠ “your mother, my milquetoast sister and I, your creeper uncle who wants to make a buck off you.”
December 9, 2017
I’d been waiting to throw today’s title out ever since Richard Soto, Sr. got his backstory, but at this point I don’t know if we’ll ever see him in person so I figured since he’s referenced today I might as well use it now.* It’s almost as though Rubin invested so much effort into making Uncle Gary the evil father substitute that he forgot he had written in an actual father for Rick. Hence this quick-dump, poor excuse of a throwaway line to Andre to keep from having to develop that character, or have him behave as an actual father might when he learned about all that’s gone down this fall.
In the forest of hands found in today’s strip Rick Scott’s speaks the loudest, as it tells pissy Uncle Gary to talk to it. We could have fun all day coming up with witty retorts to Uncle Gary’s question but I think Rick does well enough making the point that he needs to stfu when grown folks is talkin’.
Meanwhile I dunno what Connie Soto’s doing with hers: checking out the results of her facial/wax job, maybe. She’s managed to pop her ear out from under her hairdo, giving her that Middle Earth look that pops up in Milford from time to time.
After seeing the snazz Mudlark blackout unis on Friday I decided to post the color version again today and boy howdy, was I not disappointed. What a jumble of day into night, sky above then sky below, then sky in the middle of a guy’s chest, then sky above again. Of course you’re gonna fumble multiple times when your game ball has been replaced with a jumbo size Idaho Spud bar. You think that’s nuts? Check out The Secret Pelwecki’s gloves with fingernails!
That’s about all I’ve got for today except for another grammatical fumble.
Oh, Uncle Gary. You’re unrelenting in your disdain of football. Don’t let the Millard West Wildcats hear your dismissive jabs, or they’ll drive up(?) from Omaha, Nebraska show you what it’s like! Sit over there with your coffee cup and your barbs, we’ve got other things of import to untangle here today.
What the hell? Coach Kaz went and got a black/blue dye job? (Okay, so this is why I used the color strip today. I kind of feel like colorist mistakes are maybe the easiest and most painfully obvious things to snark on, but on some most Mondays, I’ll take just about anything I can get.) Well, Kaz, what can we say? It looks great on you. Combined with the backwards clergy collar/black tee, it’s a bold new look for you. I guess the rest of the coaching brain trust (Coach Shaw! Steve Boone! Gilbot 3000!) is too absorbed in game video to take in your bold new choices. I predict Kaz will go and rinse that color out of his hair in time for his next appearance.
So we began with a goateed a-hole and now we end with the OG goateed a-hole, Marty Moon. Marty is doing his usual, the journalistic equivalent of stepping on a gardening rake. He lobs a presumptive question at Gil. In this cliffhanger style presentation, Gil gets a whole day to formulate a snarky and insultingly dismissive answer.
