I’ve made occasional reference to the This Week in Milford blog, which takes a snarky, sarcastic approach to the serial comic strip Gil Thorp, which is ostensibly based around a fictional Milford high school (Which has, historically, been semi-based in either Milford, CT or Milford, MI depending on who’s writing it at the time) coached by one Gil Thorp. I say “ostensibly” because there tend to be long stretches where the namesake of the strip simply disappears from the storyline.
In any event, today’s strip (Which is actually the second one from the bottom) has a particularly high “HUH?!” factor for a couple reasons. Honestly, context really only increases this factor (Contrary to “being the enemy” in terms of ha-ha-larity, I’d argue that context actually makes it even funnier), but suffice to say that what’s going on here is that the manager of the Kalamazoo Kings (An actual independent-level baseball team, by the way) have an opening in marketing for someone bilingual. Okay, no big deal there. The perfect candidate to fill the position: A monolingual, teenaged, illegal alien who has just realized he’s not all that good at baseball. Um, what?
My personal favorite part is actually the final panel, though. In an attempt to be funny, Elmer Vargas (The monolingual, teenaged, illegal alien who has just realized he’s not all that good at baseball in question) tells his boss “Um…if!” I don’t know if it was just a limitation of the font or not, but those of you that recall your high-school level Spanish will know that there is a significant difference in the translations of “si” (if) vs. “sí” (yes, and what was presumably intended here).
Yeah, weird stuff all around.
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I didn’t realize anyone actually read Gil Thorp. It’s one of those parts of the paper your brain is programmed to ignore.
Also: looks like your favorite political enemy, Liberman is again ticking people off by changing political parties. He reminds me a bit of the Emperor from Star Wars, not just because he’s turning to the dark side but also because every year he looks 15 years older! I expect a “politicaleye” rant soon ;)
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I’m not even sure how I came upon This Week in Milford, though I do know that the Republican-American has occasionally run a fluff piece on the actual Gil Thorp comic strip (Likely owing to its Milford, CT roots). Contrary to ignoring it, it was one of those things I read for a long while out of habit because it was on the comics page (I’ll confess that it was generally unmemorable enough then that I never noticed when it was dropped from the Rep-Am, though I may also have been away at school at the time).
As for Lieberman…he’s Lieberman. That’s all I’ll say on that.
I don’t think I ever read Gil Thorp, even when I was reading the comics on a regular basis (most “real” looking comics are boring: Prince Valiant, Mary Worth, etc). I’m amazed it’s still around in any capacity.
[…] but actually try following one for a few weeks and you’ll more than likely see what I mean. In the past, I’ve discussed Gil Thorp as one such example, but today I’d like to show you another […]