Sasaki Gets Stitches

The Lady Mudlarks struggled through the name-dropping shout-out non-conference portion of their schedule. Rather than leaving it to Mimi to help the girls gel and improve their game, appointed captain Hollis Talley, at the suggestion of teammate and friend(?) Cathy Sasaki, decides to lead by example. The example she uses to lead by is an unscheduled, voluntary practice after practice, followed by a thirst-quenching, electrolyte-restoring round of hot joe at the Coffee Cantina.

Now it’s time to move on to conference* play, where It Just Means More^®. Despite a yeoman effort by the stalwart Landry Carlson – sinking shots while getting tickled under the armpit – Milford loses again, dropping to 1-3, 0-1 on the season. Now what’s a captain to do?

Ignore her rat fink of a bestie, if Hollis’s hand is any indication. It doesn’t take a space cadet to see that the post-practice practice was held with no advance notice, was clearly made optional and, most importantly, was not held with Mimi’s endorsement. Now Cathy’s gonna dime out two girls who weren’t at that practice (Cressa, another stalwart from last season, and the heretofore unmentioned Maddie Bloom) and somehow blame them for the loss? Hopefully Hollis threw that hand up for Cathy to talk to it, rather than as a sign that she’s going to take that info to Mimi to act on… or to act on it herself.

Does the Air Force engage in fragging? Asking for a friend.

*Rubin has been calling it the Valley Conference since time immemorial. What’s this “league” crap? Did he watch The Big Lebowski before cranking out today’s strip?

Stuff this team in the turkey

Headin’ out to San Milfordo
For the Labor Day bonfire show
I got my Hush Puppies on
I guess I never was meant for gymna-volleyball.
And Gildo I didnt know – that I’d be missin you so..

Come Monday, it’ll be all right
Come Monday, we’ll be losin the fight
I spent four lonely days in a hypnotic haze
And I want Spiller out of my sight…

Yes, it’s been quite a summer
Racing cars and golfing pain.
And now you’re off on vacation
Something you can never explain.
And, Gildo since I gotta go
That’s the reason I’m not gonna throw…

Come Monday, it’ll be all right
Come Monday, I’ll be pickin a fight
I spent four freakin days with A. Simpkins from State

and I just want this crap to subside..

“Life Is Good” Only Works on T-shirts

Sometimes a song parody is appropriate. Sometimes a song already has appropriate lyrics. This is one of those times.

The second verse is particularly fitting:

I’ve got a story, ain’t got no moral
Let the bad guy win every once in a while
I’ve got a story, ain’t got no moral
Let the bad guy win every once in a while

Is this the first Gil Thorp story arc in which the bad guy – mustachioed, ill-tempered, clearly antagonistic toward a kid – does not receive his comeuppance? And he’s going to be allowed to continue his antagonism unabated? What fresh hell is this?

Everything’s just gonna be hunky-dory from now on. Zane will show up for dinner at the Britos once a week to eat heaping helpings of white food with a side of belly button fan service while listening to Abel rant about having the library provide any kind of service. He must not have heard about the Boo Radley Memorial Little Free Library; if he had he’d probably have run on a platform of closing the Milford Public Library and using it instead.

Today’s final panel has that freeze-frame, roll credits feel of an arc-ender. Let’s pray that it is. ¡Ay, Dios mio!

Suspension of Disbelief? More Like Expulsion of Disbelief!

Gentle readers, I am no less flabbergasted by this strip since Saturday than you are. The time jumps, the unstated assumptions and the unprecedented presumptuousness on Mimi’s part are so mind-boggling that I barely know where to begin and what assumptions to make. That’s the main reason it’s taken me so long to get this post up today.

Going back to Saturday’s strip: Despite her protestations that she doesn’t want or doesn’t intend to go to college (BTW, her eyes were blue when she made that statement; they’re brown now so since then she’s become full of shit), Corina took the ACT. Taking the ACT costs anywhere from $60-80, so it’s not money easily blown by a family tight on money to begin with. How worried is she about her mother and her family finances then, really? Couldn’t she be mopping floors nightly like Zane Clark if she was really worried?

Now let’s try to figure out what kind of machinations Mimi went through to get us through today. Did she apply to the community college in Syracuse (and why Syracuse? Because all of the out-of-conference games for Milford this season were against Syracuse high schools?) and to Le Moyne (also in Syracuse) on Corina’s behalf? Forge her signature? Write her application essay? How do we know Corina’s community college grades will be good enough to allow her to transfer to Le Moyne? How do we know the Le Moyne players will still need a roommate more than a year from now, when the time comes to transfer? There’s just way too much assumed here for us to suspend disbelief.

In today’s last panel, Mimi’s got Jack Elam eyes. Please tell me Corina slapped her walleyed.

metapost: robmize isn’t the only one who can take off for Myrtle Beach on a whim. yhs isn’t spending any time on a golf course, however. Instead I’ve been hobnobbing with the mascot of Myrtle Beach’s minor league baseball team. (They’re a Cubs affiliate, BTW; rob, did you catch ’em while you were here?)

Paul Mooney Might Have Appreciated It

The world of comedy lost a pointed social critic last month with the passing of Paul Mooney at the age of 79. Younger TWIMers probably know Mooney from his roles on Chapelle’s Show, but the old heads will remember him for his collaborations with Richard Pryor. Pryor gave Mooney his first break in comedy by offering Mooney a job as a writer while Mooney was working as a circus ringmaster. Mooney would go on to write material for Pryor’s standup routines, much of which ended up on several of Pryor’s live albums that were big sellers during the ’70s.

During the 1975 television season, a new live sketch comedy show, Saturday Night, was flagging in the ratings and needed a boost. Producer Lorne Michaels thought Pryor was just the man to do it and approached him to guest-host an episode of the show. Pryor agreed but only if certain demands were met, including having Gil Scott-Heron as the musical guest and that he bring his own writer – Paul Mooney – to write his sketches. The story, possibly apocryphal, that Chevy Chase approached Mooney to write him into a sketch with Pryor who, also possibly apocryphal, didn’t care much for Chase, led to the infamous “Word Association” sketch that put SNL on the map and created the seven-second delay.

By all appearances the Milford Library Board panel interview has the look of sliding into a similar word association game. I leave it to you gentle readers to offer your own word associations, none of which I hope will be as controversial and potentially offensive as the one Paul Mooney wrote for Richard Pryor and Chevy Chase.

A couple of minor points of observation:

a. When would a high school student ever have the need to do a user survey?

2. Who said anything about a bookmobile? Is Abel looking for something else to fill his ample free time besides complain about the library budget?

iii. How is the goateed Library Board member holding his vape pen, exactly? His thumb doesn’t extend out far enough to support it from behind.

This links to the only clip I could find of Gil Scott-Heron from that SNL appearance. I used to be able to drop clips into posts, but apparently I now have to “upgrade [my] plan to use this premium block.” We here at TWIM will have to figure out if we can afford such luxury. It might even cost as much as a computer at a public library.

Whatever Happened to Teenagers Rebelling Against Their Parents?

Late in the day so I know y’all have seen this so what more can I say? A repeat mea culpa from me for painting Katy as a sympathetic character when Zane was channeling Nixon’s head in a jar. I really bungled that one. Since Katy’s now all so down on supporting the disadvantaged, why hasn’t she been a complete snot to Corina Karenna yet?

Zane didn’t ask Katy to do jack squat, and repeatedly saying he asked her to doesn’t make it true. She knows the bad hand he’s been dealt, knows that keeping the library as it is currently is all that’s helping him keep up with school, knows that her old man wants to take that away from him and anyone else who might need it, knows that Zane’s only doing this to keep her old man from doing that, and somehow she feels the needs to take her old man’s side in all this? Surprised that Zane doesn’t actually say that to her, instead slipping into his Jefferson Smith soliloquy a few minutes early.

Looks like we’re getting set up to sit through a week of no sports action and a lot of lecturing before Papa Brito and Baby Brito get their comeuppance. Grab your popcorn benzodiazepines No-Doz and settle in for the duration.

Give Him a Loose Enough Tie to Hang Himself

Hey y’all, look! It’s the return of Herk the Mauler! No? Okay, it’s at least the return of Ed Asner, right? Huh? Oh, alright. It’s just another Milford Library Board member who could pass for Ed Asner. But hey, he’s got pie!

And what’s this? Marty Moon is there to cover the Library Board action? Say it ain’t so! Of course it ain’t so. The Library Board has its own goatee wearer and, besides, Marty’s presence would violate a sacred tenet of Gil Thorp: that there can be only one bad guy with facial hair per strip. (Or is that Mark Trail I’m thinking of?) Since Abel Brito Charlie Delta Echo has that spot covered, this can’t be Marty.

Looks like we’re gonna get that Mr. Smith Goes to Washington scenario I predicted on Saturday. Like most Milfordians, the Library Board is self-important, craves attention, and believes any publicity is good publicity. What better way to get even more fannies in the stacks then to put the two guys who’ve been sniping each other in print on public display? Mama Brito’s troubled head bobble is indication enough that Abel’s humiliation will be the family’s, as it plays out in slower motion than Boo Radley’s car crash.

Now all we have to anticipate is how Mimi ex machina will grease the skids for Corina to get into State U on a softball scholly.

He’s Not Wrong

Wherever you’re reading this, faithful TWIMers, I hope the weather is better than it is here. Forty-eight degrees and raining is not what I expect to wake up to on the last weekend in May. The better to remember that the true meaning of Memorial Day is not to hit the beaches or the mountains and fire up the grill. So what if we have to spend it out in the cold?

Speaking of out in the cold, that’s where Zane Clark is today. Nothing he says in today’s strip is factually wrong in context (and also serves to answer one of our nagging questions of how Milford Library Board members are chosen) and yet he now finds “that cute girl he makes out with in the history section” may be history to him. Katy knows Zane’s situation, knows her old man’s hard-on against the library, knows what might happen if her old man gets the job, yet still gets pissy when she finds out her boyfriend actively tries to prevent all that from happening? Better off without her, bruh, or at least that’s what Gonzo Aceves is hinting to him.

Can we talk? Can I digress for a moment? I just want to point out the sudden improvement in uniform accuracy on the part of the Chief. From all appearances it looks like Zane and Gonzo are throwing a bullpen session in practice and are actually dressed as if they’re practicing – that is unless Gil’s broken out gamers with shorts like the Bill Veeck-era White Sox. Nice to see a Milford team practicing in actual practice unis for once.

Back to the main plot arc: What are the odds the Milford Library Board selection hinges on oratory, and Zane gives one that puts Jefferson Smith to shame? Something’s gotta make Katy see the error of her ways, dunnit? By that time Zane will have moved on to that snoopy librarian or poor Landry Carlson, who’s always getting hit on this spring.

It’s gotten very quiet here; the rain’s finally stopped pounding against my roof. Time to contemplate the true meaning of Memorial Day once again. Enjoy the rest of your weekend, gentle readers, and we’ll see you back here next week.