This Week in Milford

May 4, 2026

Two 1-man teams

They say beggars cant be choosers, so us golf snobs who know the rules of golf inside out cant be too displeased with 3 panels of golf (or what passes for it) in lieu of the Isis/missing dad story. But there’s plenty of bogeys in todays strip.

P1 – we already know the artist doesnt know a green from a fairway. I know its only early May but with the rain we’ve had out here, the grass is lush and green. Not so in Milfordland. All we see is a vast expanse of land with a small hole. The player is putting cross handed.

P2 – Coach Gonads celebrates Estradas par with an overreaction. Dude, there’s 2 teams out there all over the course, all playing simultaneously. How on earth he can see one player, making one putt, is nigh impossible. What vantage point does a golf coach have while a match is going on? He only has 2 eyes. And that hideous outfit only makes him look more ridiculous.

P3 – Milford 1-man team Martin hits a pitch shot on the green with a touch thats impossible for a beginner. We have another misspelled golf term (Saturday it was bogie instead of bogey) as the word should be ‘puts’ one to about 12 feet, not ‘putts’ which of course is a putt, not a pitch. Again Barajas trying to show how smart he is, winds up tripping over his own feet.

Martin even said it wasnt his day already after missing a par putt. Goddammit Barajas, a beginner wouldnt have a par putt for at least 2 years in real life, and how many ‘days’ has Martin had if he just tried golf last month on this team? Which he somehow made without ever picking up a club? The nonsense just multiplies, like Martins scores would be if he was really a beginner.

May 2, 2026

Forgetting about sports? Par for the course.

Today we have another strip worthy of the Mopped Up Thorp treatment.

Heilig-Meyers was a retail furniture store chain founded in Goldsboro, North Carolina, in 1913 by two Lithuanian immigrants, W. A. Heilig and J. M. Meyers. Its corporate headquarters was in Richmond, Virginia. The chain grew to become the largest furniture retailer in the United States in the 1990s, ultimately having over 1,000 stores nationwide (including Puerto Rico). Its over-expansion—by purchasing over 100 McMahan’s Furniture stores based in Carlsbad, California, in 1993, as well as other stores and chains in the West—contributed to its failure. The company also bought the L. Fish furniture chain in the Chicago area; those stores were closed in 1999. Heilig-Meyers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on August 17, 2000, and subsequently announced the liquidation of its inventory, with all of their stores closing by mid-2001.Wikipedia

For the record, here’s a store display image of the Heilig-Meyers mascot.

And now today’s original strip.

Besides the implausibility of opposing golf coaches standing shoulder-to-shoulder on the course, I reckon there’s a bigger takeaway we’re supposed to get from yesterday’s and today’s strips. Gil is so distracted and shaken by his trip to the ICE detention center that he’s forgetting how to describe not only Gerads’ antics but also the actual game being played in front of him.

Then again, Gil might find golf as boring as everyone else involved, including the writer. He’s canonically bad at it, remember? Gil, that is. Canonically bad at golf. The writer is not canonically bad at golf. Or writing. At least not yet.

April 4, 2026

A lie told often enough becomes the truth… except in a legacy comic strip, where readers have long memories.

Sometimes I hate it when I’m right. This is one of those times. Here we are again in the “lather, rinse, repeat cycle of Milford v. Goshen v. Valley Tech in which all three schools have one person head coaching all the teams and the head coaches of the latter two live only to defeat the coach of the former.” Today Merrill takes the conceit even further, challenging herself to draw Gerads increasingly grotesquely as he sinks deeper into Gil loathing. Pity she couldn’t accept the challenge of drawing a convincing pair of binoculars.

Where I’m stuck here is with this incessant repetition of “Gil is bad at golf.” I’ve been following this strip for a number of years and tbh, I’m not finding where this has been shown to be true. Where we have seen Gil and golf intersect is at the Milford Country Club where, at least during the Rubin Era, he coached the junior program. Here are some highlights:

July 2010: Gil starts coaching the junior program at the MCC, makes kids run laps. Kind of expected for a noob who heretofore has only coached sportsball. https://gilthorp.wordpress.com/2010/07/14/theres-no-running-in-golf/

July 2013: Gil shares coaching duties with Steve Boone during The Summer of Herk the Mauler. https://gilthorp.wordpress.com/2013/07/23/gopher-cam-action/

July 2017: Gil still at it when Jaquan and 8 Arms do their training thing. https://gilthorp.wordpress.com/2017/07/26/the-little-girl-is-just-standing-there-hands-on-her-hips-getting-increasingly-cheesed-at-gil/

July 2021: Gil seems to spend his time at the MCC setting up Heather Burns with a low-paying assistant football coaching job while Carter Hendricks scams people on the links. https://gilthorp.wordpress.com/2021/07/12/break-out-your-jorts/

July 2023: In the Barajas Era, Gil spends his summer coaching the juvie football team. Junior golf no more. https://gilthorp.wordpress.com/2023/07/07/stop-making-sense/

If one of you gentle readers could point me to specific strips in which Gil has been shown to be bad at golf, especially strips that have been published since the inception of TWIM, I will gladly revise the title of my post and revisit its premise. In the meantime I will treat this plot device as so much revisionist history, like the scrubbing of references to slavery from national historic sites.

Monday edit: Faithful TWIMers Downpuppy and (erstwhile TWIM SID) billytheskink as well as my fellow blogger Rob did the work to show us that the “Gil is bad at golf” trope originated in the summer of 2001. In the comments below, and in Rob’s well-researched post today, you’ll see that Gil somehow went 100-90-80-71 over the course of a tournament. It is implied that the tutelage of his then-wife is a factor. All that aside, why then is Gil allowed to coach the juniors every summer for nearly a quarter of a century after that? Did everyone else better than him, including said then-wife, have better things to do?

March 4, 2026

If only there was some Johnnie Walker to put on it

Oblivious to his past, unrepentant blowhard Mitch Gerads continues his narcissistic rant on Marty’s radio show. Moon’s not-so-subtle reminder that Gil & co. helped him when he was down gets spun into more self-aggrandizement and the continuing assumption that Milford is this giant city with multiple high schools. To top it all off, Gerads spills his sippy cup into Marty’s console, knocking WDIG off the air and rendering the rest of Marty’s program moot. Marty is so shocked by this development that he briefly transmogrifies into Gerads’ Hedgehog-like assistant and makeup artist Darby.

This is just prelude, window dressing for the shoe Marty drops. We’ve been expecting this one ever since the Pillar family showed up not speaking English, with their speech balloons in brackets. As if that wasn’t telegraphed enough, Barajas had to give their daughter a name ripped off from a terrorist organization. Finally the cherry on top: he made the daughter transgender, his favorite plot device.

All that remains is for us to see how heavy a hand B&M use on this plot, and how we TWIMers dance around it. In a world where all our social media activity is being scrutinized by the government, it may be easier said than done. Some of us may feel like this subject should be approached with a scalpel rather than with a machete. For others, if their only tool is a hammer, then every problem is a nail. I expect all of us have opinions on what’s been happening IRL that would fill the toolbox.

How we go about this is going to be a challenge for the foreseeable future. To paraphrase Bette Davis, “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s gonna be a bumpy ride.”

meta: I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the passing of Dr. Pearl’s original face model. At least Whig drew her consistently.

February 10, 2026

Love stinks too!

Rachel is back at the controls and she decides 2 panels is enough, as P1 and P2 are identical, save for the tree branch on the left. Even the smoke coming out of Gerads and his ass. (Yes his ass.) mouth is the same. How does his ass know there were 3 perps? Why does it matter? Are they gonna punish each perp equally? Back a couple days, and the lesson should be – “2 wrongs dont make a right.” Just because someone else acts like an ass (there’s that word again) doesnt mean you act like one. You be better. You be the adult your school is ostensibly teaching you to be. And now Gerads is declaring war just like the Milford contingent was. So we’re just sinking deeper and deeper into the muck.

I recall the movie Slapshot, where the hired goons on Paul Newmans hockey team were in the middle of another fight, but the one player just sat on the bench and watched it all, saying basically he wasnt gonna even get involved. He was above it all. He didnt care that he was the oddball of the bunch. He was there to play hockey, not fight just to gain attention for the team. Thats what we need to see out of SOMEBODY in this strip. Instead its Quienes Mas Macho, a Spanish phrase for Whos the toughest. Nobody cares about sporstmanship here. And ol Gil is just letting it all fall off his back.

These kids should take some time to watch the winter Olympics. The US mixed doubles curling team just got the silver medal after a close loss to Sweden in the gold medal game. They were all class afterwards, and they said they wanted to inspire some youngsters to someday be on the biggest stage as well, and to dream big. Thats a noble goal. Not to outgraffiti another school. Say what you want about how oversized the Olympics have become through the years, but it still remains a good benchmark for showing sportsmanship despite defeat. Thats one of many reasons I like watching. Yes, cheer on your country (and the country of your ancestors if you want) but always remember the spirit of the Games. If you try your best and lose, thats better then not trying at all. Every one of these sad characters in this strip could learn to get up, shake hands with their foe whether conquered or not, and acknowledge that their mere presence in their lives makes the competition on the field that much better, and ultimately makes the kids better citizens. Thats what the schools mission should be about.

January 19, 2026

Jim Cornelison wasnt available.

Ah, another holiday strip. Seems like I get a bunch of em with this Monday gig. What have we here, a national anthem before the VT/Goshen game? Looks like a sparse crowd but its girls basketball, maybe. The way these coaches do everything, who knows until tomorrow? Sure looks like Gil in P2 with Mimi eh? Did the guest artist forget Gil isnt with Mimi anymore? Thats a pretty basic error. Gonads is playing a back-to-back so he needed extra hairspray. The singer needs a T on her top. The song is fine but there are apostrophes in places not needed.

Guess we need to watch Gonads try to beat Gils ex-wife. How long will he shake her hand after this tussle?

Of course the post title is a salute to the well known Chicago singer. Im sure you heard him last night if you watched the Bears game.

January 17, 2026

This sure isnt Johnson and LaFleur

Filed under: Coach Gonads, Gil Thorp, Goshen, nose hair, oversize objects, Pissy faced Gil — robmize2013 @ 11:01 am

Ah the postgame coaches handshake. Its been getting way too much attention lately, with the Bears and Packers playing each other 3 times in a month, the Bears coming out on top in 2 of them. Ben Johnson and Matt Lefleur have seen each other more often then most of us see our dentist. Ben has made no secret of his general dislike for the longtime Packers coach, whose team had the Bears number for ages until this season, and since Johnson worked for the Lions the last few years, said in his first Bears press conference that he was gonna enjoy beating Lefleur twice a year. Their handshakes after the 3 contests have been so brief, LeFleur finally called Johnson out on it, and Im sure you know that I think the whole issue is ridiculous. Who cares how long the handshake is after such a long game? The game and the result is what matters. Of course since Ben won the playoff game, he can do whatever he wants as far as that goes. Lafleur came out looking like an ass, and there was even speculation he would lose his job after his team wound up losing their last 5. Which would be ironic since he wouldnt have another chance to hold onto Bens hand a little longer next time, at least with the Packers. Im glad they will get another chance to reconnect next year, and the cameras will be all over it, with a handshake timer in the corner.

Speaking of holding a hand too long, we have Gonads. Looks like its the complete opposite of the above scenario, as he wont let go of his conquerors hand and comes off looking even more like an ass as the Packers coach, only for a completely different reason. He again wont take losing a high school game like the sport he needs to be as an example for his kids, instead reminding Gil again that he will be back with a vengenge next time, going so far as to whisper in Gils ear the same rhetoric he’s been spewing since he took over the Goshen job(s) of coaching all the teams.

Just us watch. Right. Words are not actions. Hey, I actually wouldnt mind if he came out on top if it would shut him up already. Then Gil could miss his hand completely. We should all be so lucky.

January 14, 2026

Misdirected Energy

All sports action today (yay!) so let’s break it down.

P1: Ball-busting powers notwithstanding, Gerads is nothing without his jheri curls. Bill the zebra needs to feed him a chill pill.

P2: Any guess as to why Keri randomly shouts out “Collier” mid shot? Yours is as good as mine.

P3: Gerads oughta be telling this to his players and not his assistant. Still don’t understand why these two and Gil are coaching the girls’ teams and not the boys’. Reckon Henry didn’t give those deets to Guest Artist Jason Margos, or forgot that he already had Ochoa coaching the Lady Mudlarks. I’m sure he’ll have some excuse for not following his own canon. Bizarre Cameos Dept.: The role of Goshen assistant coach Darby is being played today by a pre-heart attack Kevin Smith.

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