Until The Fools Get Wise

Mr. Muench says he’s ready to go, but apparently Trainer Rick Scott needs to sign off on this before Gil makes a decision. Sorry, Tom, but you don’t have a gold watch so your opinion is not part of the decision process.

Trainer Rick Scott reads lots of William Blake between appearances so he has a quote ready to go to override Tom Muench in a cryptic fashion. Then Gil gets to show off his education by identifying the source of the quote. They’ve probably been using this schtick since the fifties, or since whenever Captain Picard fell through the wormhole which led to him becoming an athletic trainer for a high school’s sports program. Who are you kidding, Gil? You’re more likely to quote Robert Blake than William Blake and that’s the name of that tune.

Heck, I’d rather binge watch Baretta myself than dive into this stuff:

“Proverbs of Hell”:

In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy. Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead. The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity. He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence. The cut worm forgives the plow. Dip him in the river who loves water. A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees. He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star. Eternity is in love with the productions of time. The busy bee has no time for sorrow. The hours of folly are measur’d by the clock, but of wisdom: no clock can measure. All wholsom food is caught without a net or a trap. Bring out number weight & measure in a year of dearth. No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings. A dead body, revenges not injuries. The most sublime act is to set another before you. If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise. Folly is the cloke of knavery. Shame is Prides cloke. ~ Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion. The pride of the peacock is the glory of God. The lust of the goat is the bounty of God. The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God. The nakedness of woman is the work of God. Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps. The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the    destructive sword, are portions of eternity too great for the eye of man. The fox condemns the trap, not himself. Joys impregnate. Sorrows bring forth. Let man wear the fell of the lion, woman the fleece of the sheep. The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship. The selfish smiling fool, & the sullen frowning fool, shall be both thought wise, that    they may be a rod. What is now proved was once, only imagin’d. The rat, the mouse, the fox, the rabbit: watch the roots; the lion, the tyger, the horse,    the elephant, watch the fruits. The cistern contains; the fountain overflows. One thought, fills immensity. Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you. Every thing possible to be believ’d is an image of truth. The eagle never lost so much time, as when he submitted to learn of the crow. ~ The fox provides for himself, but God provides for the lion. Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night. He who has suffer’d you to impose on him knows you. As the plow follows words, so God rewards prayers. The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction. Expect poison from the standing water. You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough. Listen to the fools reproach! it is a kingly title! The eyes of fire, the nostrils of air, the mouth of water, the beard of earth. The weak in courage is strong in cunning. The apple tree never asks the beech how he shall grow, nor the lion, the horse,    how he shall take his prey. The thankful reciever bears a plentiful harvest. If others had not been foolish, we should be so. The soul of sweet delight, can never be defil’d. When thou seest an Eagle, thou seest a portion of Genius, lift up thy head! As the catterpiller chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest    lays his curse on the fairest joys. To create a little flower is the labour of ages. Damn, braces: Bless relaxes. The best wine is the oldest, the best water the newest. Prayers plow not! Praises reap not! Joys laugh not! Sorrows weep not! ~ The head Sublime, the heart Pathos, the genitals Beauty, the hands &    feet Proportion. As the air to a bird of the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible. The crow wish’d every thing was black, the owl, that every thing was white. Exuberance is Beauty. If the lion was advised by the fox, he would be cunning. Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement,    are roads of Genius. Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires. Where man is not nature is barren. Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believ’d. Enough! or Too much!

Here’s a song by Felt that popped into my head. Maybe Lawrence, the enigmatic singer and lyricist was thinking about Blake, or maybe not. I think he was more into Rimbaud (and smack).

Bye-Bye, VT! GTFO, Milford!

Finally this slog is over and, like so many seasons in Milford, a pair of story arcs holding some promise end not with a bang but with a whimper. So let’s recap.

Milford had a slim chance of winning the Valley but somehow lost it without losing any more games, and we never learned how.* The Valley is apparently in a state where conference runners-up do not make the playdowns. Hence this game meant exactly diddly squat. It wouldn’t have mattered if the Mudlarks won, lost, held hands on the sideline or hissed and clawed at one another like cats.

So why is Rapson acting like Corina somehow saved the season? What exactly did she accomplish with her little insult fest at Casa Karenna pro tempore? Sending two boys home with fistfuls of brownies and sacks full of blue balls? All she did was continue to insult the two of them which, combined somehow with Gil’s dressing down, humbled them into being cheerleaders for the third-stringer-turned-starter. Maybe Rapp took a blow to the head during those last bruising runs to wind down the clock. That would explain his random pointing to the empty bleachers.

And what exactly did Corina accomplish for herself? She went out for the volleyball team, played liberal, and managed to get some of the football players to come watch the team play – which is more than we TWIMers can say as all of the volleyball game strips (save one panel on September 30) actually just showed the football players sitting in the bleachers. Was there any more character development for her after Phoebe showed her around Milford in the summer and nosy-ass Maureen the waitress set her on a course to True Standish’s mom, who somehow convinced Corina that her mom could get mental health support in Milford? Didn’t think so. Corina’s sole purpose in this arc was to serve as some kind of prize for the two quarterbacks and then as some kind of peacemaker to help them accept their sorry lot on the Milford bench. I’d call that yet another Bechdel fail in an endless string of Bechdel fails.

So is everybody all peace, love and understanding now? Are they all gonna go to The Bucket and trade one-liners over fries and milkshakes? Nah. Corina, sporting those hand-me-down Isotoner gloves Dan Marino gave her mom BITD, throws a tribute to former Mudlark hooper Chris Schuring by singing one word of Schuring’s new school’s alma mater.

See you all here on Monday. Don’t get your hopes up for a realistic plot.

* With the 19-13 loss to Jefferson played in a deluge it’s hard to point a finger at any one event that caused the loss. In the 42-37 loss to Madison, Thayer’s overthrow of a wide-open Tom Muench sealed the Mudlarks’ fate but completely overlooked in the post-game analysis was the fact that Milford blew a two-touchdown lead. Why wasn’t Gil’s sieve of a defense ever a bone of contention this season?

A Shot in the Dark

Oh geez, here we go again with the volleyball girls who finish each other’s sentences. This schtick is getting old, just like everything else in this fall arc. (Don’t try getting your left hand and wrist that close to your face at that angle like the dark-haired girl in P2. We don’t have any chiropractors on staff here.) So what’s with the tiny crack in Corina’s “What football team? I don’t care about the football team” veneer? Does the idea of guys fighting get her all tingly and stuff?

Now for the mildly interesting cliffhanger that might answer that question. It’s been established that Corinna has zero interest in the quarterback boys. So why the h-e-double-hockey sticks is she inviting Rapp over to her place on a school night? Time for a “shot” to impress mama Karenna by sitting in on a hot game of Uno? Or is mama Karenna off to therapy and Rapp’s “shot” is to steal as many bases as possible off the catcher? Oh, it’s high ribaldry at its best! And it’s about to start – let’s watch!

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.

Oh.

Time for everybody’s favorite game, Monday Morning Saturday Night Quarterback.

Previously on TWIM, the consensus was that Gil was completely in the right for punishing Rapson for ignoring his play calls not once, but twice. In fact, many TWIMers thought that this punishment is too light – that Rapson should see the bench permanently if not be kicked off the team altogether. Instead, Gil’s just giving him a bit more in the way of conditioning.

Gil’s laid out his reasons and they’re sound ones, but let’s play Marty Moon for a minute, though, and poke some holes in that Thorpian logic.

Going back to Tuesday, there was 2:49 left (very precise of Rubin, no?) in the fourth quarter after Rapp’s TD pass put the Mudlarks up 28-13. Thursday before last they were up 21-6 when Thayer muffed the exchange. The Ballard Bruins marched right down the field to make it an eight-point game, 21-13, sometime in the fourth. How much time was left in the game when Ballard scored? There must have been enough for them to believe they’d get the ball back at least once, hence not going for two.

The Milford offense goes back on the field with Rapson under center and directions to get “a couple of first downs, and then… head to The Bucket.” Why did Gil yank his starting QB with his team only up by one score? Nice vote of confidence there, Gildeaux; one miscue and you’re on the bench. As for the “ball security” angle, if you’ve been doing nothing but running the ball all night, doesn’t that make your offense extremely predictable? The Bruins could load up the box, stuff the run, get the ball back and march down the field on the Mudlark defense once again. We didn’t hear anything about that sieve.

First play, Rapson calls his audible and Dallas George’s number on an end-around (which is NOT the same thing as a reverse, Gil!). If Gil’s so quick on the trigger with his signal callers, why didn’t he bench Rapp right then and there? I get that you want to keep things vanilla in the non-conference part of your schedule, but does Gil really have only one trick play? The excuse that you’re saving your trick play for a conference game makes about as much sense as not putting miles on your car so you’ll get more money when it comes time to trade it in, or as not having sex with your wife so that there aren’t as many miles on her for her next husband. Did it ever dawn on him that he could still use that play as a decoy later in the season, for example faking the end-around and running a draw or play-action pass?

Let’s move on to the next play. The Mudlarks picked up a first down and ran some time off the clock. We only know in hindsight that there were probably more than three minutes left in the game. We have no idea where the line of scrimmage was when Rapson threw the pass, nor do we know how many timeouts each team had. Giving Gil a little credit for restating the obvious, Curtis Charles scores the touchdown because the Bruin defender slipped (and Curtis danced a little jig over his body). Why does Gil assume that the pass would’ve been incomplete or picked off if the defender hadn’t slipped? Look at P1 in that last linked strip. Charles is bigger and taller than the Ballard player and has gotten inside of him. Who’s to say Charles doesn’t make the catch and bull over the Bruin into the end zone? Even if he makes the catch and gets tackled immediately, it’s still another first down and time to start taking knees. Who’s to say if Charlie Roh had run it up the gut again, he wouldn’t have gotten stuffed or stripped of the ball? The play worked, but it might not have, and if my aunt had balls she’d be my uncle.

So have at it in the comments, TWIMers. Let’s enjoy the pissiest of pissy Gil faces we’ve seen in some time and hope that smug look on his face doesn’t cause him to trip over that coffee mug he set down behind himself. Gil has made it clear he calls the shots, but what he doesn’t do is instill confidence in his players.

I Thought Only Steve Luhm Handled the Mops in Milford

Hey everybody! Joan Rivers here for robmize. Can we talk?

Seriously, I don’t know what Rapson’s beef is here. The game plan with him under center is no different than the game plan with Thayer under center. What did he expect Gil to do, let him air it out and run up the score? The Mudlarks aren’t Steve Spurrier’s Florida Gators, fuhcripessake. It’s already been established that Milford’s gonna be The Chance and Charlie Show this fall.

Rapp’s probably upset that Gil wasn’t making eye contact with him when he was giving him his marching orders. Wearing mime makeup under your helmet is bound to be a bit disquieting to even the most stoic of coaches, Terry. Then again, he might’ve been taking Gil at his word a bit too literally and is miffed that Gil didn’t let him drive the Milford activity bus back from Oakwood. (Who drives that bus, anyway?)

Terry just needs to relax on the ride home and get ready to see his quarterbacking rival get shot down by Corina at The Bucket. What, you weren’t missing another strip of Corina being a jerk to everyone? Yeah, me neither.

metapost: Like robmize, I will actually be away this weekend too. Hoping Ned, tdrew or maybe even the sorely missed timbuys will step up and take my Saturday post. Okay? Okay!

Low-mileage Arm, High-mileage Character

Note to Corina: if you’re on the clock, it doesn’t matter if you’re catching balls or not. So relax.

Note to True: if you’re paying your catcher by the hour, you might want to have her actually catch rather than stand around and listen to your spiel.

Note to Gil: Don’t you have some hooch to drink kids to teach golf? Stop wasting True’s and Corina’s time.

True throws heat, fans a lot but give up a lot of taters. So who does he turn into in the future? Robin Roberts? Max Scherzer? Aroldis Chapman? The guy dropping your Amazon package off on your doorstep? Lay minister at Milford First Baptist? He’s pretty good at eulogies and, after all, he is a Deacon. >rimshot<

metapost: It’s been a little over a month since my mishap in the mountains and, after follow-ups this past week with my GP and cardiologist, I’ve been given a clean bill of health – at least as far as the mishap is concerned. Still got a long row to hoe to get back in shape and I’ve gotta remember that I’m no spring chicken. My thanks to all you TWIMers for the kind thoughts and words. Here’s hoping I’m around for a few more seasons to come.

That’s No Catcher’s Mitt, That’s Our Waitress

Alright TWIMers, I think we can start connecting some dots here. Corina has been casing set her sights on Milford as a place to go commit crimes to school next year. If that happens, she’ll end up another in a long line of talented Mudlark athletes the Coaches Thorp didn’t have to coach to end up that way. The fact that she’s doing this opens things up for a lot of exposition that we may or may not get. Is going to Valley Mod a sentence that a student has to serve, and that student is free to go to whatever school in the Valley s/he chooses once time has been served?

She’s already trying to fit in by donning the Milford uniform of chunky bracelets and huge earrings – the same earrings as her waitress, Maureen – after sporting demure studs previously. She’s also trying to fit in by eating mass quantities of greasy diner food. I mean, look at the size of that burger! Wait, that’s not a burger but a catcher’s mitt? Who puts a catcher’s mitt on the table they’re gonna be eating from? And why, if she’s talking about said catcher’s mitt, is Miss Pointy Fingers Phoebe pointing to her left and not down and in front of her where the catcher’s mitt is sitting?  Maureen’s fourth wall-breaking glance says it all. Nobody expects waiting tables at a diner in Milford to be glamorous, but she certainly didn’t sign up for this kind of insult. I mean, come on! She may not be very pretty now, but she was someone’s baby once.

I’d be much more interested in learning about the path Maureen took to end up waiting on Corina and Phoebe. Something tells me she’s been around the Valley a time or two.