Alexa, What’s The French Word For Boredom?

The first “actual action” of the basketball season is the Lady Mudlarks!  It’s this season’s breakout star, Alexa Watson, swatting away shots like nobody’s business. 1-0! We’re off to a terrific start.

Now for the drive back from Austintown, (part of the Youngstown-Warren-Boardman, OH-PA Metropolitan Statistical Area), Alexa is hitting the books hard. She might be finished with French and be ready to move on to German given the long drive back from the home town of the celebrated Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini*.

The really do illuminate the insides of those school buses.

Chris Schuring and the boys team are headed for Springfield (which one? we’ll never know). Chris has decided to go the David Puddy route and just stare for the ride of indeterminable length. He might have a book on tape, designed to take up the travel time. Is it Hop on Pop, or Infinite Jest? Curious onlooking Mudlarks would like to know.

Hopefully, all the TWIM readers get where they need to go safely to spend time with their loved ones for the holidays. Merry Christmas, all.

*Just as I can’t think of Youngstown, Ohio without thinking of Ray Mancini, I can’t think of Ray Mancini without thinking of the song, Boom Boom Mancini by the late, great Warren Zevon. Here’s a video of Zevon performing the song in a Boston train station in 1995:

 

The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Paint

By now we here at TWIM (and the strip itself) have made the point on more than one occasion that Gil and the Mudlarks would never have won the state football championship back in ’14 had True Standish not transferred to Milford.  Naturally we’ve used that point as a bludgeon to beat home the point that Gil isn’t capable of coaching his competitive teams up to the next level.  A wise man once said “You can’t make chicken salad out of chicken something else,” and even WDIG’s station manager was able to discern the difference.  The fact that Gil has managed to put competitive teams on the field/court/diamond may very well be a testimony to his ability to make chicken salad out of chicken something else.

Case in point: this bunch of yobbos.  Their “loophole” is not to “not harm, threaten, insult or breathe on” B/Robby but to deface the billboard he’s had put up.  First of course they have to figure out how to get up onto the billboard.  If they’d thought a ladder was necessary, wouldn’t they have noticed they didn’t have one before they set off on their journey?  It’s not like any ladder taller than a stepladder would fit in their cars’ trunks.  What about shimmying up the center pole or giving one another a boost up on their shoulders?  The way they’ve been playing, getting vertical is obviously a challenge to them. Clearly they should’ve gotten Joe Bolek and his crew on the job. They know a little something about painting things in public.

Observant TWIMers may be wondering why I pulled the “Where is Milford?” tag.  I did it because of the tag – the license tag, that is.  Milford is in, well, Milford – unless it’s in one of those one-plate states and the front plate is either a city plate topper like they used to have in North Carolina or a Milford Mudlarks plate from that one time the booster club held a fundraiser to get the teams some practice uniforms.  They don’t have practice uniforms, you say?

 

Ok now I’ve had it.

 

Well this tops it all.

A student at a a high school- is being pulled out of a class he is planning to attend to ostensibly learn something in said class — by an assistant football coach–

And ordered to walk OUTSIDE— to tell said football coach —

 

 

WHERE

 

 
HE

 

 

LIVES.

 

 

 

Jesus. Oh yeah I said that yesterday.

Good thing theyre walking on Gods green earth because thats the level of bafflement I’m feeling.

Are you fuckin fuckin kiddin me?

You know what? People say there is other life out there, that we arent the only ones, that there are other solar systems, other planets, other people, other beings, other ecosystems, other whatever.. and I dont really believe that but you can believe what you want. I maintain we’re the only ones, that we must have a perfect distance between us and the sun to survive, etc., and the other planets are either too hot or too cold. Maybe there’s more out there but we’ll never have time to find it.

There exists no planet — none  — that would have this going on.

Not here, not there, not nowhere. Never before, never after. Never period.

And I know that as sure as I’m sitting here with my mouth drooling from being so wide open for 10 minutes.

History is very long, mind you. I was in Buffalo last weekend for the Bears game, and I had time to visit Niagara Falls, and there was a display showing the evolution of the falls, and it started before humans were around.  Millions of years ago.

And we could take those years and double them, and still– there would not be a single day– not only on this earth but on any earth you may feel exists, in your mind or in reality– that the above strip would ever occur– in real life.

And then— after the question is asked of said student– and student answers with not a NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS but with a real answer, a location on GPS, said football coach

ASKS THE SAME QUESTION AGAIN!!

Its complicated?  Thats where we’re at on November 9, 2 months after the season has started, after student (private) records have been filed in the computer system, after practices, games, more practices, more games, and now playoff football in every other stratosphere except– this one.

Gang, we’re now farther away from resolving this matter then we were when we had punter issues.

I could go on forever, but — forever would not be long enough to have this situation – in this strip above me– happen again.

Your turn folks!

 

 

 

 

 

These Are All Terrible People, Even The Kids

P1: A story from TimP’s own life: Person A did me wrong some time ago. Person B, an erstwhile associate of Person A, learned of this and, while he couldn’t undo the wrong, mitigated some of it. Some weeks later Person B called me up out of the blue and told me all of the terrible things that had lately happened to Person A, thinking I would enjoy hearing about it. I did not. It was all rather sad when taking all of the circumstances into consideration.

P2: Fear of failure can be a hell of a motivator. The problem is that it motivates all kinds of bad behavior. Gil is almost being a good coach by asking an open ended question to such a shitty thing to say.

P3: Feeling like you have to perform especially well because you have to ‘prove’ yourself after getting jobbed can be a hell of a motivator. The problem is…

Cripes, what is in the water in Milford? [Checks notes.] Milford is most likely in the Midwest, probably Central Michigan or Northwest Ohio, so lead. Lead is in the water in Milford. This is why Gil drinks naught but distilled rotgut. He may be stupid, but he’ll be damned if he’s going to get much stupider.

Edited to add: I can’t believe I went back and looked this up but the Milford in Ohio is near Cincinnati, a town I once almost lived in but then got lucky and didn’t. Also, there is a real life Milford Country Club. It is in the vicinity of Boston and has a nine hole par 3 course. Although I’ve visited Boston many times, I’ve never had the opportunity to live there. The last time I visited, it was zero degrees Fahrenheit with 45 mile per hour winds seemingly coming from every direction.

No Time For Duck Jokes

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.

Someone To Be Nervous With

Panel 1: I would love to see what McMansionHell would have to say about the Soto’s swank suburban Milford abode.

Panel 2: Dubai is somewhere around 9-10 hours ahead of the time depending on the time of year and where Milford is actually located, so let’s hope Pop’s Soto didn’t tie one on the night before.

Panel 3: I suppose I could try to parse the dialog here, but I’d rather point out that the Big Brother and his Little Sister here are both walking through who knows how many oil and grease patches in the parking lot.

Marty Prays For A Toad-Strangler

This is about as cutting a remark as we can hope for from Marty Moon, even though technically a heavy rain storm wouldn’t end the game early unless there’s some byzantine rules in the Valley Conference about weather conditions coupled with blowout scores. Note that Marty uses the colloquial term “gully washer”. Here’s an interesting look at some other regional variations (see “a heavy rain”). I didn’t quite find the definitive guide to the abbreviations used by that site, but if I’m reading that right, the term gully washer is in widespread use, excluding New England. Is this a clue to the location of Milford? Are we so deep in the weeds of this story line that things like this are commanding my attention? What if Marty had prayed for a turd-floater?

Moving beyond Regional English and Geography, we’ve got an awkward handshake with Tilden’s coach. It looks like Chris is really admiring Gil’s knuckles. Then Gil promises his team they’ll figure out what went wrong. That sounds like some sort of coaching. Good luck, Gil. At least we can look forward to Madison Time. If you want to practice, here’s a tutorial.

Even At The Half!

So, we’re in Winston-Salem? Sure, why not?

Ah, the playdowns!™ Remember those? Who knows what dreams may come true?