“This is so exciting.  Last time I got to go backstage was when Bart ripped his pants at the Christmas play.” – Marge Simpson
“Mom!” – Bart Simpson
“Ha ha.” – Eric “Bobo” Correa

The torrent of new Simpsons merchandise continues this week, and what I’ve noticed isn’t so much the amazing breadth of the products (clothing, ice cube trays, figurines) as the way that every single company describes themselves as “excited” to be selling crappy Simpsons stuff.  They all do it, and the consistency is terrifying.  On the subject of merchandise, they announced the date of the long ago promised Lego crossover episode this week and repetitions of that press release clogged my inbox from better stuff as a result, so this week’s link collection is a little thinner than usual.  However, we do have excellent verbal and visual usage, several people completing projects ranging from computer wallpapers to embroidery, a list of Groening’s favorite episodes from Seasons 1-11, an article about John Swartzwelder, some Bacon Day leftovers, and a new book that mashes up pop culture and classical politics.  

Enjoy.

The reclusive genius behind the funniest episodes of ‘The Simpsons’ – There’s nothing terribly new here, but it’s a nice writeup of Swartzwelder that includes a YouTube of that time he may or may not have been on one of the commentaries.

Richard Hinds on baseball great and Simpsons icon Don Mattingly – Damn hippie:

Even in the US, where “Donnie Baseball’’ is a Yankees’ legend, Mattingly is still reminded about his animated likeness.

“I spent my whole career in New York but when I came to LA I was getting a lot of people saying, ‘Hey Mattingly, shave off those sideburns’,’’ he says.

EXCLUSIVE: We Take A Look Inside ‘The Simpsons’ World – An Australian writer took a trip to the new Simpsons area at Universal Studios and made note of some of the omissions:

- I’m slightly sad that the gift shop has no Bort licence plates – a golden opportunity missed.

- The statue of Jebediah Springfield doesn’t have the plaque with the town’s motto.

- The Flaming Moes on sale look amazing but contain neither alcohol nor cough syrup.

- You can’t get a Krusty Partially Gelatinated Non-Dairy Gum-Based Beverage with your burger (although there are shakes there from memory).

Shakes, you don’t know what you’re getting.

Hands-on: Lego The Simpsons House review – Just what it says, including some more pictures.

Ranking all 24 episodes of The Simpsons, season 3 – Now this is how you do a list:

The third season of The Simpsons is so great that I didn’t even bother eliminating any episodes and instead, I just fit them into categories ranging from “All Time Classics,” “Good Examples of Season 3″ and “Just a Good Ol’ Fashioned Simpsons Episode!”.

“Dear ‘Life in These United States,’ a funny thing happened to me…” | Where in the World is Sideshow Bob? – Lots of people do travel blogs, especially when they do study abroad.  Not once, though, have I seen someone write the blog with Springfield’s favorite attempted murderer at their side though.  Great idea.

Round 100: Separate Vocations vs. Das Bus - Holy crap, round 100!

VIEW: New forecasts, same delusions for Port Mann Bridge – Excellent usage:

I’m old enough to remember the episode of The Simpsons when Homer Simpson, after 22 minutes of serial idiocy, wraps up the show by proudly declaring: “Marge, my friend, I haven’t learned a thing.”

Well, it seems that British Columbia’s transportation officials are now treating The Simpsons as an instruction manual.

LegD’oh! – The big news this week was that the long ago announced Lego episode of Zombie Simpsons will be broadcast on May 4th.  If they fail to include a Star Wars joke I will not be surprised.

Beechdean Group to launch The Simpsons ice cream products – The barrage of merchandising, which is only loosely connected to this December’s upcoming 25th anniversary, continues unabated:

Beechdean Ice Cream Group has signed an exciting new licensing deal with Twentieth Century Fox Consumer Products to become the UK’s ice cream and frozen desserts category partner for The Simpsons and is kicking off with two ice cream split products.

The 85ml products will be produced using Beechdean’s newly acquired lolly machine and moulds, are available in Raspberry and Strawberry flavours with an RRP of 90p.

I’m starting to think that one of the standard clauses in FOX’s merchandising contracts mandates use of the word “excited” or a variation thereof in the announcement:

Andrew Howard, MD, Beechdean Ice Cream Group says: “We are incredibly excited about introducing our next generation of licensed products inspired by The Simpsons.

They all say it.

Special Lego Episode Coming to The Simpsons – See?  Every single time (bold mine):

“We are thrilled to collaborate with Fox during the 25th anniversary year of The Simpsons,” said Jill Wilfert, VP of licensing and entertainment at The LEGO Group states. “We know our fans will love the challenge of building the Simpsons’ family home in great detail and the ability to collect quintessential characters in LEGO minifigure form will let them showcase their love of the show in a whole new way. We are also excited that The Simpsons will be created in LEGO form, truly bringing this partnership to life.“

Gotta be in the contract.

The Simpsons 25th Anniversary 5″ Celebrity Guest Stars Action Figure – Series 02 – Here are some more celebrity figurines.  Meh.

JOYRICH X THE SIMPSONS : SPRING/SUMMER 2014 COLLECTION - Hats and jackets, more more more.

Matt Groening 10 Favorite ‘Simpsons’ Episodes – Happily there’s no Zombie Simpsons.  Unfortunately, that’s because he originally came up with this list during Season 11.

Reality versus fiction: concept of space and time in architecture – Pictures from the real Flintstones and Simpson houses.  Dick Clark clearly had more money to spend on his Bedrock replica than whoever ordered that Simpson home giveaway.

Animated Review: Another Companion To Books From The Simpsons In Alphabetical Order – A French artist likes to alphabetize things from the show.

What Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About Politics – Wisconsin public radio on a new book called “Homer Simpson Ponders Politics” with lots of essays about pop culture’s connection to the art of the possible.  This is an interview with the editors, and the word “Aristotelian” features prominently.

Holiday Film Reviews: The Simpsons – “I Love Lisa” – Both reviewers give it three and a half hearts out of four.

The Dr. Nick ‘coloured-in’ embroidery job – This went up too late for last week’s Bacon Day post, but if this isn’t love, what is?:

So I started seeing a guy called Nick with a PhD in Chemistry. His mates call him “Dr Nick” for fun, so this is what I whacked together for his Christmas present.

Click through for the awesome finished result.

The Simpsons Homer Ice Cube Tray - Hmm:

Only $9.38 from Hot Topic.

Most of what I know about Hot Topic came from the “Ungroundable” episode of South Park, so I’m not really sure what to make of that.

Drunk Texting – Scroll to the bottom for a sweet sketch of Lisa telling off those fucktards at misspelled Chick-Fillet.  (Also, good luck with “The Boy”.)

Simpsons Effect Wallpaper – In other finished fan art, the Simpsonized version of Mass Effect we’ve been linking is done.  Cool.

Random Simpsons Screencap of the Day 2/16/14 – He’s 31 years old!

Footage of Finnish Celebrating Big Win – Heh.

The East Asian Studies Department Tackles Orientalism in Modern Television - Damn Zombie Simpsons:

The event screened two recent episodes of The Simpsons and How I Met your Mother, both of which have stirred controversy in how they depicted the Eastern World, particularly East Asia, as constructs of a Western Orientalist perspective.

Both episodes discussed at the event featured Asians as stereotypes. For example, The Simpsons depicted sexualized Asian women

Are You a 50 Year Old Kiss Virgin? Do You Even Kiss? – Breaking down various kiss types to the point of absurdity, including:

Kiss # Three. The Simpsons Kiss.

Step 1: Pout so hard that not only are you doing the duck face, you are a duck.

Step 2: Find someone who is willing to look as stupidly fowl-like as you.

Step 3: Loudly smack you lips against the outstretched lips of the other person (or duck), as if you’re chastising them for being tardy.

Step 4: Keep going until you die of exhaustion.

Step 5: Or at least until you become yellow.

An Unusual Source of Inspiration – YouTube of Lisa encouraging Homer with crisatunity.

Mini Marge Simpson Cross Stitch – Just what it says.  And it can apparently be done in a single ferry ride.  Bravo.

I DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHY SIMPSONS CLIPS ARE SO HARD TO FIND ON THE INTERNET. – Somebody got a Choo-Choo-Choose valentine, which was nice.  To answer the title, however, you simply need to remember that FOX is run by assholes.  Big ones.

I Choo-choo-choose Mr Pigalina – Here the card finds a happy home on the fridge next to infamous nevernude Tobias.

Choo-Choo-Choose This Printable Valentine – For the belated Bacon Day recipient in your life, or to save for next year.  (Also, that blog is titled The Feminine Miss Geek.  Ha!)

Are refugee advocates out of touch? – Excellent visual Skinner usage.

The 100 Best Classic Simpsons Quotes – The good news: no Zombie Simpsons and all the quotes are subtitled screen grabs.  The bad news: it’s Buzzfeed.

Watch The Simpsons In 7 Different Languages, But Homer Is Still “D’oh!” – Speaking of Buzzfeed, here’s a genuinely clever YouTube video of parts of “Mr. Plow” and “Marge vs. the Monorail” dubbed into six other languages.

Of hardship and heroin – And on the topic of foreign language voices, the guy who does the French Canadian voice of Krusty is in a play in New Zealand as Jean Cocteau.

Everyone is a MUA these days. – Animated .gif of Homer’s makeup shotgun.

The Simpsons Tapped Out- Award For Outstanding Achievement In The Field Of Excellence – And finally, I get to end the way I like, with someone who agrees with us.  From a review of Tapped Out:

Tapped out is the perfect game because it refers back to episodes of The Simpsons that were actually good, although I do have a tendency to become attached to characters and despite of my growing lack of interest will stick through with a show until the bitter end, I gave up on The Simpsons long ago. I understand what is special about it, and it truly is impressive how long it has stayed on the air. It taught me a significant amount of life lessons as I repeatedly watched episodes of it growing up. It still remains one of my most quoted and referenced TV shows, but I gave up probably after season 11.

That was a good time to quit.

“Marge, what does it do?” – Homer Simpson
“It doesn’t do anything.” – Marge Simpson
“Marge, really, what does it do?” – Homer Simpson
“Whatever it does, it’s doing it now.” – Marge Simpson

This week we’ve got two links to serious artists making Simpsons heads.  One is Bart made from old toys and is appropriately creepy, and the other is a series of awesome Krusty drawings that I’m not even going to try to describe.  In addition to that, we’ve got an excellent Ralph t-shirt, Olympic and international cricket usage, a completed Lisa cross stitch, a great first family portrait, several people who agree with us, Lego YouTube, and lots more.

Enjoy.

Animating the Show – Smooth Charlie’s Link of the Week is this detailed breakdown of animating for TV.  I learned stuff today.

UTBNYC Announces The Next Piece In Pez’s “Distroy” Series: “Skrutchy” – A few months ago we had a link to a project by an artist called Pez doing wonderfully elaborate renderings of characters like Homer and Mickey Mouse.  Well, the Homer ones are done and they’ve moved on to create some awesomely creepy Krustys.  Damn cool and well worth the click.

Baby Names I Want to Use From The Simpsons – I’d vote for Hortence or Langdon.

The Simpsons – The show that was a huge part of my growing up yet now I completely ignore, kind of like my family. – Good move:

For me it all ended years ago, I live in a world where they took the Seinfeld route and quit while they were ahead. I look back with only the fondest memories to the earlier seasons. The newer seasons I refuse to acknowledge.

My Top Twenty Favourite Sitcoms Of All Time – From the same blog as the above link, this is a great entry:

1. The Simpsons (Season 1-11)

It makes the top of many people’s lists, but most don’t think to exclude Zombie Simpsons right in the title.  Bravo.

Are you alive? – After you click, scroll to the bottom to see the sweet, sweet photographic evidence:

My dearest friend in the whole wide world had a birthday recently. And, as she invited all of us to celebrate, we all canceled… I told her I had a conference to go to. Then we surprised her with a party anyways! As known die-hard Simpsons fans, naturally the cake was dedicated to “A Whale of a Wife.” We added “and a Super Friend” because, well, we aren’t all married to her.

9 Simpsons Facts to Satisfy the Biggest Fans!! – YouTube – There’s nothing terribly new here, but it’s very lite on Zombie Simpsons and mildly amusing.  (via @dailysimpsons)

Happy 2nd Birthday Tapped Out. – A little reminiscing from the writers of tstogame.com.  I particularly liked Micah’s:

TSTO has been a pleasure. It’s been a pain. It’s been fun, but it’s also been a drain.Rapper Bart
My index finger has become strapping from these past two years of tapping.

Speed skating: U.S. pursuit teams fail, medal hopes over – At least he’s got a sense of humor about it:

The U.S. team had predicted they were capable of winning eight medals prior to the Games but after Saturday’s failings meant all 17 members of the team ended empty handed, Davis offered a blunt assessment.

“If I could do a parody from a Simpson’s character, I would pick Comic Book Guy and he would say in these exact words: “WORST OLYMPICS EVER,” Davis told reporters of the long-running U.S. television show about an animated dysfunctional family.

Excellent Olympian reference.

Artist Turns Old Toys into Creepy Faces and Human Forms – Scroll down for an awesome Bart head.  (via It’s Hip)

La famille Simpsons – This is a new Simpsons site based in Quebec that’s cataloging people, places and news from the show.  Those of you who speak or read French better than I will probably get more out of it, but it’s neat nevertheless.

Need – Oh, dear Jebus, yes!  That may be the best Ralph t-shirt design I’ve ever seen.

feeling safer now – Neighborhood watch, indeed.

Round 102: When You Dish Upon a Star vs. Boy-Scoutz ‘n the Hood – Season 5 in a walk:

And it’s only in the context of the tournament that I find flaws with it, but I’ll go into them (hint: it starts with an “H” and ends with “omer is too much of a jerk”) when we see 1F06 again, because…

… the winner is: 1F06, “Boy-Scoutz ‘n the Hood.”

Celebrating The Simpsons’ retired characters – This is a pretty weak list.  They don’t even have Marvin Monroe or Bleeding Gums on here.  (But they were never popular.)

Lisa Cross Stitch Complete! – Just what it says.  Love the eyeroll.

The Simpsons’ Nancy Cartwright coming home to Dayton – Cartwright will be in Central Ohio next weekend:

Cartwright,  a 1976 graduate of Dayton’s Fairmont West High School, will narrate Norton Juster’s classic ”The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics” while conductor Neal Gittleman leads the orchestra playing Robert Xavier Rodriguez’s composition.

The Philharmonic also will play Weber’s “Der Freischütz Overture” and Tchaikovsky’s “Winter Dreams” from “Symphony No. 1.”

Cartwright also promises to conduct “a very special piece of music.” (My guess is that fans of “The Simpsons” hear this musical selection at the start of every show.) Aye carumba!

13 Diddly-Doo Details in the Lego ‘Simpsons’ House Set – Lots of detailed pictures and this YouTube video of the entire 10-hour assembly process sped up to 2 minutes:

Top 5 Feminist Icons in Television – Lisa comes in at a healthy #2.

The Simpsons: Tapped Out – A Nostalgic, Delightful Simulator – A nice review of the game with lots of screen grabs.  Also, this:

For now, I’ll keep saving up money to build Rainier Wolfcastle’s mansion.  Up and at them!

That thing was damned expensive.

Why is Homer Simpson Yellow (And Why It Doesn’t Matter, Kinda)? – This was always part of his charm:

Once the viewer acclimates to his skin tone, she will soon realize that Homer’s design is intentionally unremarkable; he is meant to represent the average middle-aged white collar middle class (as evidenced by his white-collared shirt).

But he’s just an ordinary blue collar slob!

The Accidental Artist – A fan drawn Sideshow Bob by someone who usually can’t draw.  (It’s still much better than I could do.)

Australia doze at wrong moment – Excellent cricket reference:

Unable to find his permission slip to join the rest of Springfield Elementary on their afternoon trip to the chocolate factory, Bart Simpson is consigned to the numbing task of licking envelopes in the office of Principal Skinner. As he does so, the wall clock ticks slowly and tortuously towards 3pm and the end of the school day. Losing momentum with every stroke, it eventually begins to tick backwards.

Something of Bart’s interminable wait ensnared Australia on the second day in Port Elizabeth, as they were frustrated and ultimately brought to heel by a South African side well attuned to playing Test matches at the kind of deliberate pace unfamiliar to, and unloved by, the touring captain Michael Clarke and coach Darren Lehmann.

Pizza Snob: Pies in the Sky – Nice pizza reference:

If you accept what’s implied by the signage near Pizza Snob’s front door, putting more than four toppings on your pie is trés gauche. It’s probably even boorish, the pizza-enthusiast equivalent of Homer Simpson yelling at Bachman Turner Overdrive to skip their new material and go directly to the chorus of “Taking Care of Business.”

Some boots were not made for walking. – The sad tale of a college student who got her car booted.  Smartly, she did not resort to any of Homer’s un-booting methods, but she did include a .gif of them at the link.

Simpsons – Nothing but cats (gif) – Exactly what it says.

Homer Loading Bar – Another excellent .gif.

The Simpsons Can Ward Off Any Bad Spirit – This is definitely true:

If you are looking for a good way to have a chill pill watching a few episodes of The Simpsons is where it’s at. They ward off bad spirits.

The politics of Homer Simpson – Heh.

Random Simpsons Screencap of the Day 2/21/14 – Heh again.

Our first family portrait… – Expectant Mother gets her new family Simpsonized for $5.

The Simpsons x Medicom Toy Bart & Homer Simpson Bearbricks – Conquering Lego wasn’t enough.

Why so many guest stars? – And finally, I get to end the way I like, with someone who agrees with us in an epic anti-guest star rant:

Of course, there’s one thing we have to blame for all this. The veritable army of guest stars is a sign of the end, because the main problem with the show is that the writers can’t make an original episode with a well-written plot anymore without it already having been done before. In this situation, it’s become a lot easier to just slap in more than a few shameless guest appearance.

Indeed it does.

11.  The Simpsons : I’ve seen nearly every episode from Season 1 and love it so much. But the reason it gets number 11 on my list is that I’ve not seen much of the last series to verify how good it is, and the last few series I have watched, there’s been like 4/5 episodes really good out of 20+ episodes, which is disappointing.

Once a legend now a shadow of what it once was. Just put it out to pasture.

Last week I began my journey through every Simpsons episode from the 90s. I was not allowed to watch the Simpsons growing up, and I can only remember seeing part of one episode as a kid. I have never gone back and watched them until now. After only seeing two, I am very, very excited.

Also as I’ve mentioned before, I am a huge fan of cartoons.  Love ‘em.  I don’t get the chance to watch them as often as I used to.  My favorite animated show ever (and my favorite show ever) is The Simpsons.  I still watch it every week, even though the best season was season 8.  This is an inarguable fact.  That was 17 seasons ago.

“This looks like the work of crazy old Sideshow Bob.” – Chief Wiggum
“No, chief, Bob’s innocent!  It’s the truth.” – Lisa Simpson
“The truth, huh?  That sounds like the testimony of crazy old Lisa Simpson.” – Chief Wiggum

Sometimes Zombie Simpsons makes it hard to tell the difference between fan service and one of its regularly craptacular plot zigzags.  Was the fact that Sideshow Bob chased Bart and Lisa to the top of a dam at the end of “The Man Who Grew Too Much” supposed to be a shout out to “Brother From the Same Planet”?  Or was it just the only thing that came to mind when they decided that it had to end with him plummeting to his apparent death and having gills?

Whatever the motivation, they chose an ending with a perfectly superficial resemblance to its predecessor.  To get the basics out of the way quickly, “Brother From Another Series” patiently and steadily built up to that climax.  The dam’s construction is the center of the plot, and it is only at the end that we find out that Cecil is the one behind its imminent collapse.  So when Bob and the children are confronted with their own deaths in and above the dam, we know how they got there and what’s going on.  Zombie Simpsons literally just hopped up there:

Here we see Sideshow Bob demonstrating his “grasshopper thighs” on a public street in downtown Springfield.

The very next shot:

Grasshopperus Bob lands squarely in front of Bart and Lisa on top of a dam very far from downtown Springfield.

And just in case there was any doubt about where they were supposed to be, here’s the zoomed out view from right after he lands:

I coulda swore there was a city around here somewhere.  Huh.  Guess not.

Zombie Simpsons has a lot of long running problems with setting and object permanence, but this is pretty impressive even by their standards.  A genetically engineered supervillain leapt from downtown straight to the top of the dam while Bart and Lisa teleported to the same location.  It’s like listening to a four-year-old tell a story:

Adorable Child: And then Sideshow Bob jumped from the street and landed on the dam!
Patient Parent/Guardian: And were Bart and Lisa on top of the dam too, sweetie?
Adorable Child: Yes!

Beyond the basics of how each episode got to the top of the dam, however, are what Sideshow Bob says and does once he’s up there.  Here is the entirety of Bob’s spoken dialogue at the end of “The Man Who Grew Too Much”:

“Python jaw: unhinge!”

“Who am I kidding?  My only exit is a final one.”

“Farewell, Simpsons, and, Lisa, when you’re older, write an autobiographical novel trashing the rest of them.”

“Oh, right, I gave myself gills.”

By any measure that’s very weak, especially when you remember that part of this is him trying to kill himself because of the horrible genetic freak he’s become.  But it gets worse when you realize that the whole thing, basically the entire ending, contains but a single, solitary stab at humor, having Bob tell Lisa to write a novel that trashes her family.  By contrast, here is just some of Bob’s dialogue from the end of “Brother From Another Series”:

“Lisa, you don’t spend ten years as a homicidal maniac without learning a few things about dynamite.”

“You’ve brought shame to this family, Cecil.  Oh, I don’t relish having to write the Christmas letter this year.”

“You’ll live to regret this!  Oh, thanks a lot, now I look crazy.”

“I’m older, I get the top bunk!”

That’s the Sideshow Bob we know and love.  He’s sarcastic, petty and crazy, but still refined and snooty.  And, look, there’s actual jokes, punchlines and witty asides!  Nary a bizarre plot twist or superpower activation to be seen, and I left out plenty of lines that were interactions with other characters (“Bart, how would you like to do something incredibly noble?”, “Do we have to?”, “Yes.”).

Just as importantly, look at what he does in each episode.  At the end of “Brother From Another Series”, he and Lisa start disarming Cecil’s bomb, then he has to save Bart, then he and Bart try to sacrifice themselves to save the town, then he gets thrown back in prison because Chief Wiggum is a dolt, and then he and Cecil get into a brotherly slap fight over the top bunk.  He has all that stuff to do because there was an actual episode prior to his getting up on the dam.  Cecil needs to be thwarted, Bart needed to be saved, and, because this is television and everything has to go back to the way it was, Bob had to go back to prison.

By contrast, “The Man Who Grew Too Much” didn’t really have Bob do anything.  Once he got done bouncing around on his grasshopper thighs and he’s at the top of the dam, what’s left?  He sort of has a confrontation with the teens, but not really.  Lisa quotes Walt Whitman, which makes him want to kill himself all of a sudden.  He jumps.  The end.  The dam itself has nothing to do with anything.  Bob hadn’t previously been thinking about killing himself, so that one came right the fuck out of left field.  The teens are with Homer and Marge for unknown reasons and have no prior reason to want to fight Bob.  The only part of the end that has anything to do with the rest of the episode is Lisa quoting Whitman, but that has nothing to do with the dam, the teens, or Bob’s superpowers.  It’s maniacal and empty because it’s hollower than the shoddy, embezzlement crippled dam Cecil built.

5.)    AURORA BORREALIS CAN LOCALIZE ENTIRELY WITHIN YOUR KITCHEN!

No TV and No Beer Make Homer Something Something – A blog where the author gives up something each month.  She’s on TV for March:

Reflection so far: Giving up TV is good. I find plenty of ways to entertain myself, and to be honest the only TV shows I’m hanging for once this month is up is Game of Thrones, and Supernatural (which I’m already a season behind on, and am waiting for the DVD…) That’s it. I think I want to keep our growing habit of having the radio on during dinner (and actually eating at the dining table instead of on the couch, for that matter) because we TALK now. Which is good. As much as I enjoy the Simpsons, I don’t need to watch it every day.

I try to watch one every day.  Don’t always succeed, but that’s just how I was raised, damn it!

Homer-Apple – That always was a cool iPhone skin/case/whatever.

Enter GIFGIF – Lisa dancing to the Soul Mass Transit System.

I believe I can fly – We can all relate to this:

I haven’t been able to blog often because of work and, like I said earlier, gym time. Also, from now on please read gym as gime (Homer Simpson style) it’ll make all the times I mention the gym slightly more interesting (did you do it?).

I pretty much always read it as “gime” now.  Once it’s in your head there’s no getting rid of it.

Rotisserie Chicken – they see me rollin’; they hatin’ – Jebus, that looks good, and bonus points for the .gif of Homer rotating his head with the spit.

With Matt Groening, Creator of The Simpsons – Groening has mastered the non-committal-famous-person-in-picture face.

Fashion Spotlight: Moe’s Where Everyone in Springfield Knows Your Name – I might buy one of those if they actually made them.

Homer Simpson is the ‘Yellow King!’ – I’ve still got a few episodes to go, but I will be very surprised if the bad guy turns out to be Dan Castellaneta.

Glennis Presents “The Simpsons Classics” On Facebook! – That San Francisco TV station that agrees with us by deliberately separating out Zombie Simpsons from their rerun pool has a “Programming Coordinator” who looks like she’s got a pretty Simpson heavy office.  They would also like you to like them on Facebook, if that’s your thing.

“Well, let me tell you something, boy, if you don’t stand up for yourself, bullies are gonna be picking on you for the rest of your life.” – Abe “Grampa” Simpson
“Simpson!  Give me your newspaper!” – Jasper
“Why should I?” – Abe “Grampa” Simpson
“I wanna do the crossword puzzle.” – Jasper
“No, I want to do the crossword puzzle.” – Abe “Grampa” Simpson
“I said, give me that puzzle!” – Jasper
“No.” – Abe “Grampa” Simpson
“Gimme!” – Jasper
“No.” – Abe “Grampa” Simpson
“Gimme!” – Jasper
“No . . . Well, I guess I can’t help you.  But I know someone who can.” – Abe “Grampa” Simpson

“The Winter of His Content” is the Zombie Simpsons episode that got eaten by its own B-plot.  Not only did their weirdly literal but still nonsensical take on The Warriors take way too long in and of itself, most of what passed for jokes in it were weird asides rather than parodies of the movie.  It was as though they set out to use a movie plot as dully as possible and added all the comedy attempts as bizarre asides only after they realized how well they’d succeeded.  

Over in the diminutive A-plot, Homer adopted some old people who needed a place to live.  They still live there after the episode ends.  That was kinda it.

- I miss Redd Foxx, god bless his smutty soul.  That wasn’t him, obviously, but I do miss him.

- They can’t even do violations at the retirement home without explaining things as they happen.

- “My lifestyle is my retirement plan.” – Okay, that was funny.  It would’ve been funnier if they hadn’t made Homer act everything out, but at least they resisted the urge to have him pull a Duff and some fatty food out of nowhere.

- This scene with the pile of medicine bottles and Maggie, however, did not resist those urges.  Ditto Homer actually telling us he was going to trip and fall before it happened.

- Nelson is more fun when he’s not weak and sad.

- Count Branula was decent.  Sign gags being one of those things they can still sometimes do.

- The rest of this montage is naked filler, however.

- It’s weird, they think Itchy and Scratchy are funny because they’re gory, not violent.  Also, that did not need to repeat itself and go on for thirty seconds.

- The exposition to this point has only been heavily clunky.  But then they have Lisa drop the big one: “Dad, did it ever occur to you that we’re learning how to take care of you when you’re older by watching the way you treat Grampa.”  

- In addition to being a direct question about exactly what’s going on, I’d also like to point out that in that line, Lisa is implying that Homer is being a jerk to the three old men who have invaded his house, but everything they’ve actually showed us to this point is him doing nice things for them.

- The B-plot is doing it’s part on the exposition front with Nelson explaining exactly where they were.

- Rubberized skin noises while Grampa makes over Homer aren’t even among this show’s moderate problems, but minor as they are, they still would’ve been way, way out of place on anything before Season 10 or so.

- That scene where the old lady proposes a threesome wasn’t weird or dull or out of place at all.

- “Huh, you’re turning into your father.” – Thanks Marge, we never could’ve figured that out.

- Oh, good, now we’ve got Dolph, Jimbo and Kearny expositing a character we haven’t seen yet.

- Whatever this episode was lacking in early and unneeded exposition, it has made up for it in late and unneeded exposition.  Marge just explained in a flashback voiceover exactly what we were seeing as it was happening.

- If you want to do a Warriors thing with the bully summit, fine, it’s a decent enough premise.  Chester’s speech was even kinda funny.  But scene stopping crap like Dolph explaining that he lost his sandal and the bad guy explaining his motivations while it’s going on drains out most of the fun.  

- Case in point: Moe’s scene.

- Cases in point: Moe’s scene and Chief Wiggum’s scene.

- Cases in point: Moe’s scene, Chief Wiggum’s scene, and the old lady getting on the bus.

- Hey, look, the A-plot came back!  It was too late to prevent a filler scene with the glass bottles from acting as more parody killing filler, but it is back.

- And Homer picks up right where he left off by telling us exactly what he’s doing.

- So this ends and Bart’s still a bully, or what?

Anyway, the ratings are long in (sorry about the two day delay in posting this), and they remain historically low.  A mere 4.02 million people wondered how something as campy as Warriors could be turned into something that dull.  That’s not as low as last week’s record setting duo, but it is good for #5 on the all time least watched list.

“Mr. Burns, can you make me thin again?” – Homer Simpson
“I guarantee it. . . . One . . . one! . . . one! . . . Bah, I’ll just pay for the blasted liposuction!” – C.M. Burns
“Woo-hoo!” – Homer Simpson

The Simpsons always had an acknowledged and popular soft touch with big emotions.  For all the craziness going on in the rest of the episode, they could deftly deliver both believably sweet moments and ones that packed real punch.  The same show that has Marge finally snap at Bart’s selfishness and yell that he ruined Thanksgiving could also put Homer in a job he hates staring at his “Do It For Her” wall of Maggie pictures, miserable and happy at the same time.

Even small moments that aren’t pivotal to the plot play well, like Bart thanking his mom for sticking up for him as he runs off with his BB gun to Milhouse’s, or when Lisa and Marge quickly and silently bond over keeping Marge’s cash safe from Homer’s idiotic desire to burn it at Krusty’s stand up performance.  Neither are big, emotional moments that define the story, but they’re still given that little flourish, partly because it makes the scene flow better, partly because that’s just who the characters are, and partly just because it can be funny.

As with so many other things, Zombie Simpsons is utterly tone deaf with small emotional moments.  And since it always repeats something from The Simpsons, it’s easy to see how they can take the same emotion between the same two characters and make it much shabbier.  In the case of “The Winter of His Content”, it’s a scene wherein Marge hesitantly confesses that she’s starting to become less enamored of her husband.

It’s a weak scene in a weak episode, with Marge confiding to Patty & Selma (or at least trying to) about Homer acting like an old man.  The scene, in its entirety, consists of Marge describing things Homer does while we see him do them, then Patty asks her to say she’s no longer attracted to him, to which Marge simply replies “Maybe”.  It’s played as sad, and, as is standard with Zombie Simpsons, it has basically no connection to the rest of the episode.  It’s the first time we see Marge act with real worry and it’s the last time we see Marge at all until the very last scene after everything has worked itself out.

It’s just a quick little emotional moment.  But in addition to being left awkwardly unsupported by the rest of the episode, it also trivializes one of the core elements of the show: Marge’s loving but completely irrational attraction of Homer.  At this point, Homer acting like an old man barely rates a 3.0 on the Captain Wacky Scale and they’ve not only got Marge acting like he’s jeopardizing everything, but they also drop the subject for literally the rest of the plot.  It’s the emotional equivalent of telling someone that you have six months to live and then neither of you asking or offering any more on the subject.  It’s just weird.

You can tell it’s serious because Marge takes up only a small part of the shot and looks slightly gassy.

Compare that to the same sentiment in “King-Size Homer”, when Marge makes it perfectly clear that she’s not playing around by saying: “Con, I’m finding myself less attracted to you physically.”  It’s a much more personal and appropriate line than “Maybe” because it’s the exact kind of thing Marge would say (stern but phased as gently as possible) and it fits with the gravity of what’s being portrayed.

Besides being a much better line, it’s also tied into the rest of the episode, both before and after.  The first time they bring it up is when Homer reveals to Marge his plan to get fat enough for disability and promptly blows off her objections, still too enamored of his plan to listen:

Marge: Have you thought about your health, or your appearance?
Homer: Oh, so that’s it, isn’t it, Marge?  Looks.  I didn’t know you were so shallow.
Marge: Oh, please, I would love you if you weighed one thousand pounds!
Homer: Beautiful!  Good night.

When she brings it up again at her pro and con session in the kitchen, the groundwork for a quick but sincere emotional moment has been done.  She raises the stakes by telling him quite seriously that she’s losing it for him and Homer ups them further by acting defiant instead of feigning ignorance.

Up close and personal, we can see the real doubt and pain on her face.  Shit is getting real.

That buildup works so well that the final time this serious emotion is raised, it doesn’t require a single word of dialogue between the two.  The main plot is fat Homer saving the plant from his own lazy stupidity, and when that’s over and Burns asks if there’s anything Homer wants, Homer and Marge need only share a look.

Even just drawn with simple lines, her face says it all.

In neither episode is this vital emotional risk the key to the story.  But Zombie Simpsons treats it like a single scene afterthought where – wham! – Homer and Marge are back and happy because that’s just how things were always going to go.  The Simpsons, on the other hand, made that risk an important part of the ending without even uttering a word.  It’s the kind of thing you can only do if you take it seriously enough to weave it into the entire episode instead of just tossing it off in a scene that didn’t even need to be there.

“My turn: Kwyjibo, k, w, y, j, i, b, o.  Twenty-two points, plus triple word score, plus fifty points for using all my letters, game’s over, I’m outta here.” – Bart Simpson
“Wait a minute, you little cheater.  You’re not going anywhere until you tell me what a kwyjibo is.” – Homer Simpson
“Kwyjibo, uh, a big, dumb, balding North American ape, with no chin.” – Homer Simpson
“And a short temper.” – Marge Simpson
“I’ll show you a big dumb balding ape!” – Homer Simpson
“Uh-oh, kwyjibo on the loose!” – Bart Simpson

I put this up on Twitter this morning, but it is very much worth bringing up as often as possible.  Hasbro, the company that currently owns Scrabble, is having a Facebook contest to add a new word to the game’s official dictionary.   The leading “like”-getter at the moment is two different entries for “Kwyjibo”, the big, dumb, balding North American ape with no chin and a short temper.  I want this to happen bad enough that I actually logged into the otherwise derelict Facebook page Mad Jon set up like four years ago to promote it.  Sure it’s nice to have all those Simpsons words in the O.E.D., but what most people don’t realize is that the O.E.D. is the garbage dump of words.  Anything that gets used by more than about four people gets put in.  But Scrabble?  That’s the dictionary people actually use, and since it’s beloved of vicious word nerds, it’s much more of coup.  Plus, this raises the possibility, nay, certainty, that at some point in time, somewhere, someone will win a Scrabble game just like Bart did.

In addition to that, we’ve got several great lists this week, a very disturbing collection of images of what Homer would look like as a real person, a chance for you to win ten whole dollars for playing Tapped Out, several .gifs, the return of a couple of watch-em-all series, and lots more.  Enjoy.

Scrabble Dictionary to Gain a New Word through Crowd-Sourcing - The gauntlet has been thrown down:

That’s KWYJIBO for 22 points, plus 50 for using all the letters and triple-word score. At least that’s what Bart Simpson claimed in Episode 2 of Season 1 of The Simpsons, “Bart the Genius.” Now, this word has been nominated for addition to the official dictionary for the word game Scrabble, the game the Simpsons were playing in the episode.

Merriam-Webster’s The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary will be updated with new words for the first time in nine years and Hasbro, maker of the popular word game, is hosting a Facebook contest  ( http://bit.ly/scrabbblenominations!) to allow players and fans of the game to choose one of the words to be added in a contest billed as the Scrabble Word Showdown.

Several fans of the game have nominated KWYJIBO to be added to the dictionary. Among other nominations are: EW, GIGGITY, QUESO, ZOOT

You have to use Facebook (EW, indeed), but the top two suggestions right now are Kwyjibo, and if we can get Kwyjibo in the official Scrabble dictionary, I might finally be able to beat my cousin at it.

An Interview With Ira Brooker – Fantastic:

A few years ago I started writing an inventory of the 100 greatest influences on my sense of humor. I was going call it “Why I laugh?” which is, of course, a Simpsons quote. It eventually wound up being too big and abstract of a project for me to complete, but there was no question that The Simpsons would be in the number one slot. The only possible rival would be David Letterman, but as important as Dave was to my formative years, he never permeated my daily existence to nearly the degree that The Simpsons does even two decades beyond its heyday. I don’t think I could hope to pinpoint how those first eight seasons have influenced me. At this point they’re just woven into my being. It would be like trying to figure out what kind of influence speaking English has had on me.

Much more at the link.

Round 104: Last Exit to Springfield vs. The Cartridge Family – Whoops, I missed a week on these. 

Old Money – Episode #030 – And Ash is back with the “DISCOUNT LION SAFARI!!!!”.

Cross-Blog Contest! Tapper of the Month – It’s telling that the blogs dedicated to Tapped Out are run much better than the game itself.  They’ve got a contest running where all you have to do is send in your Springfield.

Jewish Top 10s: Simpsons Cameos - Excellent list (Nimoy #1!), though two picks from Zombie Simpsons keep it from being completely kosher.  Why not Albert Brooks and Harvey Fierstein?

The Simpsons: 10 Best Mr Burns Moments - This is also a pretty good list, if for no other reason than there are a couple of decent .gifs and no Zombie Simpsons.  But for the love of all that is pageviews, you have to click and load each fucking entry.  I did, of course, but I can’t really recommend it.

Manual of Mischief review: Bart Simpson’s guide to pranks and gags - A review of a new book they put out.

Stain glass artist to come to Austria - Remember Joseph Cavalieri, the guy who did those amazing Simpsons stained glass pieces?  Well, he’s still at it and he’s headed to Austria to teach people how to do similar stuff.  Congratulations.

One Man’’s Trash Is Another Man’’s Pizza Box Art - Click through for the fan made box with an alternate universe Homer and Bart working at a pizza joint.

Realistic Homer Simpson Is Disgusting [7 Photos] - Things like this are why it’s best the show is a cartoon.  They’re really well done, but very off putting.

Grow your own… heart, limb, or organ - Excellent usage:

In a classic episode of The Simpsons, Homer, ineffectual as usual, tries to steal snacks from a pair of vending machines by reaching his arms inside, only to end up completely stuck. When confronted with the possibility that sawing his arms off might be the only solution, he asks worriedly, “They’ll grow back, right?”

GIFs de la semaine : alors on danse ! – Lots of dancing .gifs, including depressed teenagers and Bart in a wig.

Futurama – The secret behind Philip J Fry – The Brannigan-Hartman-Fry connection spelled out in pictures.

What ‘The Simpsons’ Have Taught Us About Life, Part 2 – Another cromulent list.

Random Simpsons Screencap 3/17/14 – There’s no such thing as Scotchtoberfest!

My Top 8 Movie/TV Show Based Games – Hit & Run makes the list.

What if… – Heh.

Retrospective No. 35 The Simpsons Tapped Out – Somebody hates freemium almost as much as I do.  Well done.

Drunk things to do in Dutch – Scroll to the bottom for a Smarch related heh.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! – A little YouTube for everyone but the gays and the Italians.

Best TV Comedies – And finally, I get to end the way I like, with someone who agrees with us . . . Batman style:

2. The Simpsons

It’s hard to watch what this show has become. It seems The Simpsons could’ve died a hero in 2000/2001, instead of seeing itself live long enough to become the villain that it is now.

Well put.

“Smithers, I’m not going to make it.  I want to dictate my epitaph.” – C.M. Burns
“Go ahead.” – Mr. Smithers
“Charles Montgomery Burns.  American . . . and Patriot.  American Patriot.  Master of the Atom.  Scourge of the Despot.  Oh, tyrant hear his mighty name and quake!  Smithers, I’m back!” – C.M. Burns

We’ve got two links this week where the one, the only Charles Montgomery Burns is held up as all that is soulless and wrong, one about finger tenting being a sign that you might be a villain and the other from the race for Illinois governor.  Other than that, things got shortened this week because of the announcement of new Lego figures.  Everyone with access to Twitter or the internet made mention of it, and there are some pretty neat ones (Maggie with Bobo, for example), but all that noise did obscure other stuff.  We’ve also got a cool interview with Greg Daniels, some great fan art, a sweet Duff t-shirt, a couple of women dressed up like Marge, and Krusty-based insults all tucked away down in Canada.

Enjoy.

Simpsons Writers’ Favorite ‘Itchy & Scratchy’s - Smooth Charlie’s link of the week is Jean talking about old Itchy & Scratchy segments.  There’s quite a bit of Zombie Simpsons, but you can skip those and read things like this:

The short, however, is a self-contained spoof of Steamboat Willie, the black-and-white cartoon that birthed Mickey Mouse. “When the animators were working on it, they called it ‘Steamboat Lawsuit’ because of their fear of legal action by Disney,” Jean recalls. “It’s lifted almost exactly from Steamboat Willie, which itself is a parody of [Buster Keaton’s] Steamboat Bill Jr.”

Worth a look.

Lookin’ Good: Marge Simpson Hair And Makeup IRL - Someone took a model and made her up to look like Marge.  It’s a little creepy.  There’s also YouTube of wig construction and makeup application.

Awesome Cosplay of the Day: 3/25/14 - This is fantastic:

All three of them are just perfect.  Patty & Selma look identical (wouldn’t surprise me if those two really are sisters) and grumpy while Marge is kinda trepidatious about whatever it is that’s eating her sisters.  Bravo!

(Apologies for stealing this image from whoever that copyright holder is at the bottom, but white on white was not a good font choice.)

D’oh: Quinn’s ‘Simpsons’ ad blocked ‘on copyright grounds’ - One of the nice things about not living in Illinois is that you don’t have to care about who the governor of Illinois is, but the residents of the Land of Lincoln were treated to their sitting governor comparing his opponent to Mr. Burns last week, so they got that.

Round 105: I Married Marge vs. New Kid on the Block - Whew, Season 3 vs. Season 4 is tough.

Doh! Ex-Simpsons writer Greg Daniels reveals how he almost missed opportunity to adapt The Office for US - Daniels was in the UK and gave a rundown of his career at a comedy festival.

Proud husbands will make peace on their own - This is a Canadian advice column:

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: My husband has a fringe of long hair like a clown. He wears a hat thinking people won’t notice and they will still think he has flowing locks like he did when he was a rocker and played in a band a decade ago. I don’t say anything about it because I love him and he is beautiful to me, any which way.

Yesterday, a neighbour came over to help my husband change a tire in the driveway and I heard him say, “Hey Krusty, need any help?’ My husband is familiar with The Simpsons and Krusty the Clown. He said something very rude back and the guy sauntered off home shaking his head like my husband was an idiot.

Heh.

Zoella in Homer - More Simpson fashion in the wild.

New in. - An awesome Duff t-shirt, and a few more pics.

Stand-Up Guy - Don’t feel bad, everybody did this:

 In fact, I developed a friendship with a guy in high school largely revolving around one question: “Did you watch The Simpsons last night?” New episode or repeat: it didn’t matter. We’d sit around recalling setups and punch-lines and laugh all over again.

It’s amazing how formative those years are. I still retain Simpsons memories 20 years later, and in fact just two years ago spent the better half of an evening dredging them up with a friend on a restaurant patio.

Philosophers’ Portraits, Simpsons Style - Cool.  (Found via, and no, I couldn’t name them.)

LEGO ‘The Simpsons’ Minifigure Collection - Burns with a plutonium rod and Grampa with the “Old Man Yells At Cloud” newspaper are nice touches.

Looks like ‘The Simpsons’ predicted Facebook’s purchase of Oculus - Not quite, but it’s still pretty funny.  I just want to play virtual darts and virtual pool so I can get in a virtual fight.

The 8 Ball 03.25.14: Top 8 1990s Arcade Games - The arcade game comes in at #3 here.

Muppets Most Wanted: When did finger-tenting, or steepling, become a symbol of evil? - Mr. Burns, for obvious reasons, is the headline example here.

Ten Celebrates The Simpsons 25th Anniversary – With a LIVE Countdown - Aussies get to vote on which episodes will be broadcast for a 25th anniversary celebration.

So which is your all-time, favourite Simpsons episode? - Another link to the same promo.  The actual choices have a lot of Zombie Simpsons, but down in the comments they don’t so much as rate a mention.  Figures.

The 14 Best Simpsons Music Cameo Moments - Only one entry is from Zombie Simpsons, and the post itself agrees with us, plus there’s lots of good YouTube.

If The Simpsons and Farscape collided :) - I think I’ve linked this before, but it’s still pretty neat.

‘Justified’ Showrunner Graham Yost Talks About A Shooting, The Simpsons, And Setting Up The Final Season - This probably qualifies as a Justified spoiler, so ye be warned, says I:

It reminded me of that Simpson’s episode…Mendoza!!!

Mendoza!!! And I think the boat was called “Live Forever.” We talk about that all the time. Rainer Wolfcastle. If you have a character who’s retiring and they get shot you cannot help but be compared to The Simpsons.

Why I Prefer Futurama To The Simpsons - And finally, I get to end with someone who agrees with us, specifically that, as usual, Zombie Simpsons spoils things:

Usually, an episode of The Simpsons follows the family in their every-day lives, with something bizarre happening to them (Bart has to live in a bubble, Lisa becomes a buddhist, Homer accidentally joins the army…), and occasionally they will go somewhere outside of Springfield, wether it be Canada, Africa, or space. It was great at first, and I would watch it every night as a loyal viewer. After a while though, I felt that the episodes just started to become a little thin, less fun and less original.

Indeed they did.

“My old roommates, the nerds!  Aww.  You working?” – Homer Simpson
“Oh, my, yes, I’m on a secret project that I’m not at liberty to divulge . . . cough, cyborgs.” – Fat Nerd 

We’ve got a bunch of news this week about current and former Simpsons staffers: David Silverman got a new job, Harry Shearer is in Wales, Mike Reiss gave a talk at Harvard, and Sam Simon continues to be awesome.  (There’s also a Zombie Simpsons writer making an ass of himself, but he doesn’t count.)  In addition to that, there’s plenty of video game YouTube, fancy New York musicians, some excellent usage, several good lists, and Family Guy once again following in the profitable footsteps of The Simpsons.

Enjoy.

The Simpsons: 10 Real Unaired Pitches (And What They Could Have Been About) - Smooth Charlie’s Link of the Week is this collection of unaired episodes that appear to all be from the early years.  A few of these I’d heard of before because they’re discussed on commentary tracks, others were new to me (and some have more dubious sourcing that others), but it’s worth a look even if it is in an annoying pageview whore click-for-each-one format.

Laughing in Purgatory: Mike Reiss of The Simpsons at the Humanist Hub - Video of a talk Reiss gave to a bunch of people at Harvard.  It’s long, but funny throughout:

“Or, as the old joke goes, I’m Jew-ish, and by that I mean that I would never eat a ham sandwich . . . in a synagogue . . . on Yom Kippur . . . if there was anybody watching.”

The Simpsons’ “Lunchlady Doris” is “Lunchlady Dora” now - Apparently the Zombie Simpsons writers finally realized that having Lunchlady Doris still be on the show after Doris Grau died wasn’t a good look for them.  In typical Zombie Simpsons fashion, they half assed it by trying to retcon her name but leaving everything else the same.  Then, as if to underscore how butthurt and hacktacular they are, one of them took to Twitter in a hapless attempt to paper it all over:

His story there is that they used the same character model, had someone try to do a voice that sounded like Grau’s, and never mentioned the name change for nineteen years, but that they’ve always thought of her as “Dora” in that time, “out of respect”.  Sorry, but I gotta call bullshit on that.  You guys replaced her voice and used the same character.  It was a shitty thing to do, and I’m glad there’s some attempt to rectify it now, but what’s done is done.  You can’t go back and pretend you never did the shitty thing in the first place.

Why I caved and had my Springfield hacked. - A thoughtful post on cheating in Tapped Out.  I’m kinda surprised that it worked, but EA deserves no sympathy so I say go for it.

Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff - And, since there’s no point having a hundred million dollar cash cow if you can’t copy it directly to try and make a second one, the Family Guy Tapped Out clone will be available next week.

The Simpsons ‘could last 50 years’ - This was making the rounds the last couple of days because Jean said “I can’t see why we wouldn’t go to 30 . . .and why can’t we go to 40 or even 50″.  It’s just his usual boilerplate being blown out of proportion by pageview hungry bloggers and columnists who saw a chance for a clickable headline.  Ignore it.

What ‘The Simpsons’ Says About Ukraine’s Language Divide - Apparently they stopped broadcasting an official Ukrainian language version five years ago.

Twin Peaks and The Simpsons – together at last? Characters from David Lynch show get a Simpsons makeover – This was floating around this week, and is kinda good, but where’s the unicorn and the traffic light?

Classic Food-Related Simpsons Moments - Great list:

This is a truly inspired culinary invention. It is no less than a block of butter covered in caramel and waffle mix held together with a cocktail stick. A reminder for all to follow your food related fantasies and it might just result in something beautiful.

And no Zombie Simpsons.

An ode to Lisa Simpson - As usual, Lisa is a hero, but this is impressive remote handling:

Growing up with older siblings, especially my brother Patrick, I was exposed to “The Simpsons” at far, far too early an age. We used to sit around the family room almost every night, flipping between two different episodes of the show, which ran at the same time on two different stations. With this method and my brother’s admirable dedication, I had watched hundreds of episodes by age 10

Calculate your total time spent watching TV shows - The Simpsons comes in at 11d:13h:30m, but that’s if you only watch episodes once, which, yeah.  (via)

Top 10 Homer Simpson moments - This is also one of those annoying pageview gluttons, but it does have some good YouTube and there’s no Zombie Simpsons.

The Simpsons: 20 Annoying Mistakes You Didn’t Notice - Yet more pageview whoring, but this one lists a lot of “mistakes” that are all pretty much problems with Zombie Simpsons.  Funny how that works.

Animated/Live Action ‘Pink Panther’ Film In The Works, Will Focus On Cartoon Character, Not Inspector Clouseau - David Silverman’s going to direct.  I’d watch that.

Simpsons Writer Sam Simon Sponsoring Blackfish Racecar At Talladega - Sam Simon continues to spend money on pretty damn cool things.

Voice of The Simpsons Harry Shearer speaks about Llanelli’s fast-flowing conversation - Harry Shearer goes to Wales and makes nice with the locals.

Video: This cartoon theme song mashup will make you feel nostalgia – A long video of cartoon theme songs put out by Carnegie Hall, of all places:

They don’t play much from each theme, so they pack a ton into just five minutes.  (The Simpsons part is at the 3:00 mark.)

Treading Water – The show relieving inter-generational tension:

I requested The Simpsons for my kids via netflix and the dvds happened to arrive during my mom’s visit. Now I know my mom HATES the Simpsons so I waited until she was asleep to put them on for the kids. But she ended up waking up… standing in the living room and even laughed at a few of the jokes.

Later she says to me, “I used to think The Simpsons was disgraceful, but compared to what’s out there today it’s not so bad.”

In other words… I’m letting my kids watch “disgraceful” programming.

And she’s a liberal, what liberal doesn’t love The Simpsons?

She laughed.  You did good.

WEEKEND RECAP. – An excellent old Simpsons book found at a second hand store.

Classic Intel Ad! – An old Simpsons ad for the Pentium II.  Ha!

Keeping It Cool - His mom says he’s cool.

Happy April Fools! – Call in the Code 8!

Super Soul Simpsons Sunday - Heh.

Kue ulang tahun simpson – DADDY – A pretty awesome Homer birthday cake.

Neither A Review Of “Breaking Bad” Nor Of “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” – Excellent usage:

Marge: We drove around until three in the morning looking for another open all-you-can-eat seafood restaurant.
Lionel Hutz: And when you couldn’t find one?
Marge: [crying] We… went… fishing.
Lionel Hutz: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, do these sound like the actions of a man whose had ALL he could eat?

Does my wife sound like someone who has had all the “Breaking Bad” she could watch?

No!

SAHM (because giving it a natty acronym makes it less painful) – A woman contemplates being at home for the first time:

It was never meant to be easy! I might just have to replace the wine with coffee and take my inspiration from Marge.

Just set the vacuum on dirt patrol.

Simpsons Hit and Run – Speedrun - Have two hours to kill watching a stranger fly through an eleven-year-old video game?  You’re in luck.

Top 5 Simpsons Games - From the same site as the above, a seven minute YouTube video of the best Simpsons games.

Virtual Springfield Gameplay - And our final video game YouTube is that weird encyclopedia type game that they released.

Random Simpsons Screencap of the Day 3/28/14 – I think we should go.

Random Simpsons Screencap of the Day 4/1/14 – Great grab of Homer peeling the duct tape off Bart’s eyes.

Captain’s Log Day #223 – Some magical animal – Heh.

Dissected: The Simpsons by East India Youth – And finally, I get to end as I prefer, with someone who agrees with us, in this case in a long interview about the show with some .gifs and plenty of YouTube:

I think the most important thing to mention here (and you should definitely write this up): I don’t think it’s possible to have that connection to the show anymore, with the new episodes. You know this as well as I do I’d think, but there’s definitely a golden age to that show.

Seasons Two to Nine we’re talking?

EIY: Yeah… And the super fans of the show totally respect that, it’s like an unwritten rule isn’t it? That is the best period.

Well, it’s not unwritten (ahem), but yeah.

“Where is Homer, anyway?” – Selma Bouvier
“It’s so typical of the big doofus to spoil it all.” – Patty Bouvier
“What, Aunt Patty?” – Lisa Simpson
“Oh, nothing, dear, I’m just trashing your father.” – Patty Bouvier
“Well, I wish you wouldn’t.  Because, aside from the fact that he has the same frailties as all human beings, he’s the only father I have.  Therefore he is my model of manhood, and my estimation of him will govern the prospects of my adult relationships.  So I hope you bear in mind that any knock at him is a knock at me, and I am far too young to defend myself against such onslaughts.” – Lisa Simpson
“Mmmhmm, go watch your cartoon show, dear.” – Patty Bouvier 

After I finished watching this episode, I went to the end and began rewinding.  Lucas, the kid who Lisa briefly sorta liked and whose dialogue appeared to be stuff that was rejected from Zach Galifianakis’ part in a draft for Hangover 4, appears in the very last scene.  It had been so long since we saw him that I wasn’t even sure when he’d gone missing.  Reversing, it turns out that he had been gone since literally the halfway mark of the episode.  The show didn’t completely forget him, there was that final, tacked on scene, but he was so pointless and shallow that they literally didn’t need him for most of the second act and all of the third.  Jebus.  The dropouts at Hollywood Upstairs Screenwriting College think that’s sloppy.

Besides a forgettably shallow guest voice, what else did “Luca$” have?  Exposition.  Lots and lots and lots of exposition.  In the B-plot, Snake kept stealing stuff for Bart, which we didn’t see, then he got arrested, which we didn’t see, and then Bart went to get him out of jail, which we did see but which was practically narrated for us, including such sparkling dialogue as:

“But, Chief, we got guns!  He’s got a little wrench.”

“You won’t need to save me a third time.”

“If I get caught, it’s suicide by cop.”

“It means I get you to shoot me.”

The A-plot, meanwhile, suffered from the same repetitive problem, but managed a big swing and a miss on the ending, where they wrapped up the wrong plot thread.  Marge was supposed to be worried about Lisa seeing Homer as a bad example for future romantic partners, but that quickly devolved into Homer being upset with her about it, which meant that the ending was about Homer forgiving Marge, making Lisa’s whole presence something of an afterthought.  That the big gag was that Marge wore a dress from when they drew her into Project Runway didn’t help, nor Jimbo at the bar or the overall weird and creepiness of Homer and Lisa going on a “date”.  The quote above from Season 1 contains basically every idea the A-plot fumbled, and it didn’t forget any characters in the middle either.

- Slapping “Parodies Are Easy” on the couch gag is maybe a bit more revealing than they think.

- Why did Nelson run up the playground in a baseball uniform?

- Repeating the word “Senator” should kill some time.

- Skinner chasing Bart in his car is, uh, somewhat dumber than “The Boy Who Knew Too Much”.

- Milhouse gets an aside to complain about the “fat kid with a dream”.  They really have no idea how to write dialogue anymore.  Even inside the cafeteria what passes for jokes has to come from asides and random breaks in what’s actually happening.

- Nice that this kid just happens to have tupperware full of hot dogs in the cafeteria.

- “Liberated, you mean stolen?” Thanks, exposition Milhouse.

- “Then that makes me the Jackie Robinson of the sport, and you are the racist Philadelphia manager.”/”Quit comparing me to Ben Chapman” – Jokes work so much better when explained beforehand.  It’s comedy 101, everyone knows that.

- “Women marry their fathers, Marge” – In case anyone was unclear what was going on, it has now been explained to us.

- The montage of stolen things ate up some time.

- Is all of Galifianakis’ dialogue going to be him telling us what he’s eating?  (Amusing side note: my spell checker’s only suggestion for his name was “Egalitarianism”.)

- “Careful it’s uncut syrup”, hmmm, haven’t I seen Bart and Milhouse mainline Squishee syrup before?  Nah, this feels too original and believable.

- “You ratted him out!” – And for approximately the fortieth time in just  thirteen minutes of video, things have been explained to the audience yet again.

- Professional freelance writer as an advice authority is kinda funny.  Of course, it’s also one of the few jokes that happen within the dialogue and aren’t about explaining what’s happening, but I’m sure that’s a coincidence.

- “Homer you can’t just do the things you want to do” comes right after Homer tells us what he might do.

- “She might marry someone like me”/”you think that might be bad?” – These just keep coming.  It’s one thing to explain what’s happening, it’s quite another to do is three times in the same scene.

- Nice of Cletus to just be there at the bar without saying anything until now.

- Good Jebus, now Homer is describing what he’s gonna do at the dinner.

- “Hey, I can’t screw this up or Lisa will get stuck with someone like me” – Did you get it yet?  People who fell asleep watching American Dad and just left the TV on could follow this plot by now.

- “We need to have a conversation in loud whispers”, once again, the action you’re about to see before you see it: comedy!

- How about some characters describing their feelings out loud and in public?  ”I felt terrible when you said I felt stuck with you, but then I realized I am stuck with you”.  Ugh.

- “Remember that sewing machine you say I never use, well I sold it and bought this dress” – It’s never going to stop.

- Why is Jimbo at the bar?

- Hey, Lucas is back for the last scene in the episode.  I guess he didn’t choke to death or anything.

- “You’re not competitive eating anymore?”/’No, I realized that was unrealistic”, but his lines are still terrible.

- The whistle version of the theme over the credits was kinda nice, but, then again, I’m a sucker for that song.

Anyway, the ratings are in and while they are up slightly from last week, they remain deep in the toilet.  Last night, just 4.30 million people wondered why they named the episode after a character who wasn’t in the last half of it.  That’s good enough to not be one of the ten least watched episodes ever, the first time that’s happened since January, but is still #14 on the all time least watched list.  Season 25 remains well on pace to be the least watched season ever.

So David Letterman announced that sometime next year he’s going to hang up his mic and ride off into the talk show sunset.  Two years ago, he did a short guest voice for a couch gag on Zombie Simpsons.  That video was freaking everywhere this week, so it’s another shorter than usual Reading Digest.  (It’s worth pointing out, of course, that the family seeing Letterman on the couch was a repeat of the one above from Season 5, but I digress.  Bonus Critic points here.)  Beyond that we’ve got some cool fan art of the amateur and professional varieties, some news about the new FXX syndication deal, some excellent usage, an old Chinese bootleg t-shirt, and a bunch of fake beer.

Enjoy.

Joshua Budich Has The Munchies For Gallery 1988′s Exhibit: “The Subtle Art Of Pop Culture” - Cool drawings of stuff from movie and TV.  There are twelve of them, three are from the show.  Nobody else got more than one.  Just saying.

Tuesday Top 5 – Simpsons Songs - Excellent list, lots of YouTube, and no Zombie Simpsons.

Do You Know These Cartoon Cats? - Snowball II and Scratchy are on here, plus several I know and several more I do not know.

‘The Simpsons’ Paid Tribute To David Letterman By Taking Their Couch Gag Inside The Ed Sullivan Theater - One of those really long filler couch gags from Season 23 was making the rounds this week because David Letterman did a guest voice on it.  I would simply like to point to this couch gag’s entry in Wikipedia:

Similar to the couch gag from the season five’s “The Last Temptation of Homer,” the Simpsons find themselves on the set of The Late Show With David Letterman.

Simpsonize Yourself - Fan made self portrait, including tattoos and a Donnas t-shirt.  Bravo.

I GUESS EVERYBODY REALLY IS PLAYING MAH JONGG! - Cool bootleg t-shirt from the dawn of the show with the family playing mahjong and yelling at each other in what I assume is Chinese.

Your Guide To The 20 Best Fake Beer Brands From Movies And Television - Duff comes in shockingly low at #6.

Bartolo Colon Jiggling His Belly Fat is Frontrunner for MLB GIF of the Year - It’s like a lava lamp.

Mimi Pond sketches an alter ego’s youthful days in ‘Over Easy’ - Pond, who wrote “Simpsons Roasting On an Open Fire”, gas a new book out.

14 Simpsons Look Alike People - Some of those are pretty good.

Nish Kumar plays life like it is as a comedian and confidence trickster - British comedian knows what’s up:

His guiding model in this, he says, is The Simpsons. ”The Simpsons is my favourite-ever show,” he says. ”It never speaks down to the audience; It always assumes the audience is going to catch up but it never [does] in a way that would make you feel stupid if you didn’t. I watch some of those episodes now and wonder: what was I watching when I was 10? But that’s the trick.”

The Simpsons’ Take on Standardized Testing - Heh.  Also, don’t forget “Separate Vocations” from Season 3: “It’s called the Career Aptitude Normalizing Test, or CANT.”

Affliate Post Godzilla, Deadpool, and Jon Snow in detention. - Bart/Jon’s got a lot of writing to do.

Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play Will Make Midwest Premiere at Theater Wit - The play is coming to Chicago early next year, so maybe I’ll finally get to see it.

‘The Tech Sector’: Growing, and growing vaguer - Excellent usage:

Anyone remember when Homer Simpson created “Compu-Global-Hyper-Mega-Net”?  Marge asks him what, exactly, his company does, and he responds, “Eh, this industry moves so fast it’s really hard to tell.”

Of Bikes and Men - Excellent mental reference:

Peter is going to be fine, it turns out, but he is in the hospital for tests and needs his insurance information sent over. Since I am also his neighbor and the keeper of the spare keys, I am the perfect person to solve this problem. Except I am not at home; I am across town. A logistical monkey wrench, but not insurmountable. It’s an hour round trip, tops.

In my head I am hearing my favorite Simpsons clip, from Treehouse of Horror III, where Homer is sold cursed frogurt. Peter was in an accident (ooh, that’s bad); he is going to be fine (that’s good!); but he needs you to get dressed and head across town (that’s bad); though it should only delay your plans by an hour (that’s good!).

Ryan Sadri on music and life as a saxophonist - Isn’t it everybody’s?:

I’ve found that more than any other instrument, the sax helps me get closest to expressing what I feel within. It’s an amazing high. And yes, my favourite sax piece is The Simpsons theme song played by Lisa Simpson.

‘The Simpsons’ Will Debut On FXX With A 12-Day, 522-Episode Marathon - Just what it says.  They’re filling August dead time with eleven days of the show, including day after day of unwatchable Zombie Simpsons crap.  If nothing else, it will serve as a visceral reminder of the decline of the show.  Also, the ratings ought to be interesting . . .

FXX Adds The Simpsons to Syndication and All is Right in the World - See?:

So far, this is panning out to be the longest marathon of a TV show ever. I have no problems with it, now I just have to put in some vacation time and do some serious food shopping.

Scratch that, I definitely won’t be watching the entire marathon, the show was only good until maybe the 9th season.

Best of The Simpsons Part… - Heh.

Silver for The Simpsons - A nice little 25th anniversary treatment that agrees with us both in writing and by only posting screen grabs from single digit seasons.

“Sometimes I think God is teasing me, just like he teased Moses in the desert.” – Homer Simpson

Apologies for missing two consecutive weeks of Compare & Contrasts, but for the second straight week the eyetee gods decided to smite the hell out of me.  Chillingly, both incidents started on Tuesday and weren’t totally cleaned up until Thursday, which means I will be walking on eggshells until at least next Wednesday.  (Also, do not ever do business with Network Solutions “a web.com company”.  They are incompetent, sleazy, hugely overpriced, use phrases like “part of our vertical” without irony or embarrassment, and have atrociously poor security.  That is all.)

In further bad news, this week’s Reading Digest is pretty short because the internet seemed to spend most of the week circle jerking over the upcoming Zombie Simpsons/Lego episode.  All they did was release a promo image and a couple of self-congratulatory quotes about it, but everyone with access to a keyboard seemed to feel the need to write it up.  (It’ll be interesting to see if Lego can budge the ratings.  My guess is no.)  We’ve got one link to all that brouhaha, plus a great video about the recent Sylvain Chomet couch gag, some fan art, several good lists, more fashionable threads, and a couple of people who agree with us.

Enjoy.

Flooby Nooby: Sylvain Chomet’s making of ‘The Simpsons couch gag’ - Smooth Charlie’s Link of the Week is this short and enjoyable YouTube video:

The color was digital, but the drawings were done by hand.  No wonder it looked so good.   Also, watch to the end for Chomet’s joke, it’s funny.

Old Man Yells At Cloud* - Baseball nostalgics are the worst, and this is an enjoyable fisking of one with plenty of (mostly non-Zombie) Simpsons references to boot.

15 Sitcom Characters Who Might Be Broke If They Lived In The Real World - How affordable would all those living rooms with couches be?  It’s a neat graphic, but I don’t know where the hell they got Homer’s monthly income as $6,500.

The First 12 Episodes Of ‘The Simpsons’ To Begin Your Marathon With - An excellent and explicitly non-Zombie Simpsons list.

5 For Friday: The 5 Best TV Moments in The Simpsons’ Universe - Another excellent list, nothing even close to Zombie Simpsons.

25 Years of The Simpsons. And 5 Potential Spin-Offs… - A list of possible new shows that implicitly agrees with us (“I can’t even remember the last time I caught a new episode of The Simpsons”).

Over Easy Author Mimi Pond Interview - No real surprise here:

What was it like writing the very first episode (“Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire”) of The Simpsons?

I don’t feel very good about that. I was friends with Matt Groening, and I’m still friends with Matt Groening. He was starting to have trouble with the producers of the show. I came in and they were having their troubles, and because I was friends with Matt, I wasn’t very welcome. And because I was a girl — it was a total boys’ club — and I wasn’t asked to be on staff. I was thrown off the gravy train and it took a couple of years to figure it out. But if it hadn’t been for that, my life would’ve been very different. I wouldn’t have worked on this book, and this was the book I was meant to write.

She certainly did a hell of a job with her one episode.

Desert Island ‘What TV series would you want stranded with you and a TV” taking you into the weekend - Couldn’t disagree with this:

I want to pose a question. Desert island style. What TV series would you take if trapped on a desert island with only a TV and DVD player. For me this was a no brainer. It’s The Simpsons.

TV Guide Magazine April 21-May 4 2014 – ‘The Simpsons’: Inside their LEGO episode - Want to read a craven, PR fluff job from the magazine that still writes like Time in 1962?  Have at it.

Simpsons and Joblessness - To be fair, it’s not like all those years of modern dance and tap help much either.

D’oh! Naperville Simpsons graffiti suspect caught - Just what it says.  He’ll probably have to clean highways in an orange vest for some number of hours now.  (via @woohootriviaCHI)

Look7in7: Meow, Meow. - Fan art of Kang (or Kodos) and a kitty.

The Simpsons used to nail it. - Heh.

BBQ Invention – Yes, Lisa, a magical animal (pulled bacon) - Mouthwateringly excellent usage:

I thought I’d start with the most exciting thing I’ve done recently, it could be a game-changer in the BBQ game, a dish that Victor Frankenstein may have created if he was into BBQ, I’ve combined a pork technique with a bacon technique…

Homer: “Lisa, honey, are you saying you’re never going to eat any animal again? What about bacon?”
Lisa: “No.”
Homer: “Ham?”
Lisa: “No.”
Homer: “Pork chops?”
Lisa: “Dad! Those all come from the same animal!”
Homer: [chuckling] “Yeah, right, Lisa. A wonderful, magical animal.”

I’ve made…  PULLED BACON

The pig de resistance!

[5RTO] The Simpsons: Tapped Out - Five thoughts on the travails of playing Tapped Out while a parent.  Also, it is indeed very expensive.

The Evolution of Simpsons Games - A brief history of some Simpsons games.

Doing The Dirty Simpsons With Family Guy’s Quest For Stuff - The new Family Guy Tapped Out clone sounds very clone-ish.

Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff is corporate manipulation pretending to be a game - Yup.

“The Simpsons” Fashion Collaboration with Joyrich - More skinny models wearing high fashion Simpsons clothing.

Biggest TV Syndication Deals Besides ‘The Simpsons’ - Unsurprisingly, other shows retail for more per episode, but nobody has nearly as many episodes.

3 cartoon shows that adults can watch - The show comes in at #1, followed by South Park and Futurama.  Ah, it’s nice to see a concise list.

How did The Simpsons get so dumb? - Our old friend Stefan Grasso charts the show’s decline and calls its current state “Rock Bottom”, complete with graphic.

“Hey, you okay, Grimey?” – Homer Simpson
“I’m better than okay.  I’m Homer Simpson!” – Frank Grimes
“Heh, you wish.” – Homer Simpson

Happy birthday Hank Azaria!

“And here, out of the mists of history, the legendary Esquilax, a horse with the head of a rabbit, and the body of a rabbit. . . . Ooh, it’s galloping away!” – Chief Wiggum

The Easter update for Tapped Out has been live for a little less than two weeks, and the complaints are rolling in.  We’ve got three links this week about how the Easter update hasn’t been the greatest, which, having recently re-installed the game, I agree with.  I realize they have to keep releasing updates to keep people who’ve maxed out their levels interested, but some of these really should be optional.  Of course, that would require EA to not suck . . . so, probably not gonna happen.

In other news, I am very ready for this Lego episode to be in the rear view mirror.  They are putting on a full court publicity press and every time they release some new images or someone from Lego says something about the show seemingly everyone with access to the internet links to it.  We’ve got two this week, but both are just entertainment industry fluff jobs.  In addition to all that, there are some cool t-shirts, a Flanders coin, the story of how Harry Shearer met his wife, and some excellent clip show usage, so it’s not all bad.

Enjoy.

Worst Zine Ever - Some excellent Simpsons tattoo designs with links to more.  Funky See Funky Do would be very obscure but very awesome.

Exclusive: Inside The Simpsons’ Very Special LEGO Episode – Today’s News: Our Take - Oh, TV Guide, I’d ask you never to change, but you never do:

Cheekily titled “Brick Like Me” and set almost entirely in a LEGO world, it’s also episode No. 550, a staggering accomplishment for a primetime series. This has left the well-seasoned
wisenheimers on the production team feeling an odd combination of over-the-moon excitement and enough-already boredom.

And let me say a “very special” well done to you cheeky wisenheimers (assuming an algorithm set to 1960s didn’t write that dreck for you).

‘The Simpsons’: See the first image of Lego Homer! - This is an interview with Selman and Brian Kelley, it doesn’t tell you much.  I did like this quote from Jean, though:

And how will this episode stack up against The Lego Movie, which has earned more than $250 million at the box office? “I think it’s just as good and it’s free,” quips executive producer Al Jean, who adds: “If anyone out there has an idea for a new material that the Simpsons can be made out of, please write to us. Cardboard? Yarn? Anything is up for grabs.”

Spoiler alert: it will not be as good as The Lego Movie.

Two by Two, Eggs of Blue - The game is fundamentally exploitative . . .:

Honestly this whole event feels unnecessarily complicated. Why can’t decorations just be in the shop and purchased for cash, do we really need to work hard collecting eggs for fences?

. . . so, yes.

The bait-and-switch of Easter - More discontent in the land of the disembodied finger:

I imagine this is the same for many of you playing, and it’s starting to get frustrating. It should not be this hard to win prizes, but it is.

Donuts aren’t going to help you, not unless you spend $100+ or more on eggs.

Easter Glitch – Trick or Treat? - It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes the glitches actually benefit the players.  So it’s not all bad.

Next Couch Gag Animated by Michal Socha - I’ve mostly enjoyed the new couch gags, but it really doesn’t speak well of Zombie Simpsons that the only part of the show anyone wants to talk about is the part that they farmed out to someone else.

What The Simpsons teaches us about Rob Ford and other mayoral mysteries - Rob Ford: If You Were Running for Mayor He’d Vote for You.

April Fools 2014: Alex Raphael - No list of TV idiots would be complete without Homer.  (Some good YouTube here as well.)

‘Nashville’ to air quirky clip show: 5 more that stand out - Excellent usage at the top of an article about clip shows:

So it’s come to this: A Nashville clip show.

Bonus points for having the Simpsons episode mentioned not be “So It’s Come to This”.

Pop Culture… Coins! - Fan drawn Flanders on a Brazilian coin.  Neat.

Judith Owen reveals how husband Harry Shearer – star of This Is Spinal Tap and The Simpsons – helped her music flourish - Aww:

Owen met Shearer in 1992 while she was resident bar pianist at the Conrad in Chelsea Harbour. “They were trying to make it into a rock’n’roll hotel. I played one of my own songs and heard this incredible applause behind me. I turned around and it was Christopher Guest and Harry with the full facial hair of Derek Smalls. I jumped up and ran over to them. It was truly one of the most surreal, ridiculous moments of my life,” she remembers.

Tee 394 SWW - Simpsons/Star Wars t-shirt.

Photo by trillblazin - And a Rasheed Wallace/Bart shirt (via @treykerby).

Rewinding the Week (4.20.2014) - Even forgiving reviews of last week’s Zombie Simpsons episode didn’t like it:

The episode was titled “Days of Future Future” which made me think that there would be some X-Men references, but sadly there were not.  Instead, the whole thing was set in the future with clones of Homer living for an extended period of time and Bart encountering a Eternal Sunshine-like process.  Kind of weird, but okay.  I think they truly are running out of ideas now.

Best TV Shows of All Time - The show only checks in at #2 here, but it’s entered well:

2. The Simpsons (Seasons 1-9)

Who needs the Kwik E-Mart? - Heh (x2).

The Simpsons Lego Figures - The official one-page brochure.

The Simpsons To Marathon Every Episode, Release New Streetwear [PHOTOS] - This is blatant pageview whoring of the one-page-per-picture variety, but of you want to check out a bunch of new Simpsons clothing you can click through (and click through and click through . . .).

Two Gym Visits… and 2,500 Legos In Between - And finally, I get to end with someone who agrees with us:

One of the big childhood obsessions were Legos. I had tons of them, and at one point, had built an entire town on a folding table in the basement. Then, when I was in high school and college, I became a die-hard, hard-core fan of “The Simpsons.” For a couple years in college, I wrote a weekly “Simpsons”-based newsletter, which grew to have over 5,000 subscribers all over the planet. (For the record, I’m still of a fan of the show, and it will always be one of my favorite shows of all time, although I think the quality of new episodes has really gone downhill.)

Indeed it has.

“Gotcha!  It’s April Fool’s for two more minutes.” – Homer Simpson
“Dad, it’s May 16th.” – Bart Simpson
“You were in that coma for seven weeks.” – Lisa Simpson

This week’s pile of horseshit starts with Bart’s chalkboard saying “You Can’t Play April Fool’s Jokes on April 27th”, which is their way of telling the audience that even they recognized this one as a wretched and unwatchable entry.  Homer and Bart serenade a horse in a cheap, wannabe Les Miserables parody, but that’s after Bart gets a bunch of people pregnant with voodoo, which was itself after they fell back on referencing as many comic geek franchises as they could (again).  The thing was such a mess that they had to tack on a fake beer commercial sketch at the end that had nothing to do with the rest of the episode.  Also, in this April Fool’s reality, horses can operate stereos.  Comedy genius, that.

- Great couch gag, and not only because it was a full minute long, shaving many precious seconds of stupidity off the rest of the episode.  Can they farm these out every week?  It’s really the only good part of the show.

- At least the bartender meeting didn’t take long.  We had to get right to the naked begging for geek approval of putting the characters in superhero costumes.

- Funding from Canal+ was a nice quick sign gag.

- Kirk getting sucked into a vacuum hose was pretty pointless.

- So, Willy’s naked in front of ten-year-olds?  They are asking us to just roll with a lot of shit this week.

- Oh, look, one of Bart’s many ex-girlfriends, and who is also apparently Chamlers’ daughter.

- And more creepy kissing.  I was really hoping that was behind us.

- So, are we gonna come back to the missing ingredient in the voodoo curse?  I have doubts.

- “So, your boy’s got magic knock-up powers, huh?” – Glad we cleared that up.

- Nice of Lenny to explain the joke before he complimented Homer on his virility.  Jokes that need to be explained first to work always land.

- You can tell how slapdash these stories are from the little things: That couple driving onto a baseball diamond for no reason, Homer just happening to walk past Bart’s voodoo show, Homer choking Bart in front of a two strangers who just sit there, the complete absence of Lisa, etcetera.

- Bart is now sitting at Moe’s with Homer.

- Homer’s lack of wallet thing was pure filler.

- Remember when Fat Tony had good lines instead of crap like “How would you like a cast over your face?”.

- “How is this my fault?” “I wouldn’t be here if you were more of a role model.” - Aww, they’re trying to make this about Homer and Bart’s relationship.  It’s like George Meyer left “how to write Simpsons episodes” instructions before he gave up on them and subpoint 2-3.b is “have an emotional connection between family members”.

- A horse just turned on a boombox to play “It’s Raining Men” so it could dance around for ten seconds.  I’d say the show has reached a new low, but we all know that isn’t true.

- And, after following a horse that casually walked out of its stall, we’re in a flashback montage.

- Homer is singing to horses to get them to fuck.  This is really bad, even by their standards.

- And then Homer gets kicked by a horse at the end.  How else could you wrap up that masterpiece?

- Hey, look, they’re aping the opening of Modern Family, a show that’s much better than this one.

- And we’re ending with a horse testifying at a trial in a random, SNL-at-its-worst comedy sketch.  Seems appropriate.

Woof, what a mess of an episode (and yet another total waste of Fat Tony).  That song was just brutal, and what the hell did any of that have to do with Les Miserables?  They long ago lost the ability to tell a story, but when they don’t have a b-plot and everything has to ride on one story it’s usually a bigger trainwreck, and this week was no exception.  I knew we were in trouble when Fat Tony kidnapped them with 8 minutes to go, but I didn’t expect things to get that desperate.  Yeesh.

Anyway, the ratings are in and they are worthy of that hacktacular crapterpiece.  Last night just 3.38 million people wondered whether or not that really was an ill timed April Fool’s joke.  That’s good for second place on the all time least watched list, replacing “Days of Future Future” which held the spot for only two weeks (and no other new episodes).  Eight of the ten least watched episodes of all time, including spots 1-7, are from Season 25.  Presumably the Lego episode next week won’t bomb quite this bad, but Season 25 is already locked into being the least watched season ever.

“Everyone is saying Gabbo this and Gabbo that!  But no one is saying worship this and Jericho that!” – Reverend Lovejoy
“What’s this about Gabbo?” – Jasper 

Yet another clipped Reading Digest this week because there are two idiotic pieces of public relations sucking up the internet’s attention.  Firstly, they released a trailer for this week’s much hyped Lego episode.  For the record, I quite liked The Lego Movie and it would be a welcome and pleasant surprise if Sunday’s episode was even half as entertaining.  But I do not have my hopes up.

Secondly, Jean, a practiced hand at managing PR stunts, compared whatever that upcoming “major character” death is to Game of Thrones, a show that (despite being on premium cable) is watched by far more people than Zombie Simpson.  He called it the “Yellow Wedding”, and pageview desperate bloggers and magazines swooned at being able to tap people’s insatiable need to click on anything Game of Thrones related.  My money remains on it being a total head fake nothingburger, with the “death” being a reincarnated Dr. Nick or something else that won’t affect the show at all.  Remember when they ran that big contest to have people create a character and then killed him five seconds after they introduced him?  This looks an awful lot like that.

What we do have though is quite a few very solid links, including cool fan art, an internet retelling of “Cape Feare”, Poochie used to lampoon How I Met Your Mother, a couple of cromulent lists, and a nightmare inducing fan made Mr. Burns mask.  Also, there are several factually incorrect links about the low ratings of the show.

Enjoy.

6 Fictional Beers you’d love to drink - Smooth Charlie’s Link of the Week is this list of fake beers (with plenty of YouTube), half of which are from The Simpsons.

48 reasons ‘Cape Feare’ might be the greatest episode of The Simpsons - The whole story of “Cape Feare” told in .gifs and screen grabs.  Outstanding.

A Chat with the Cast and Crew of ‘The Simpsons’ - A writeup of a panel discussion Groening, Jean and some of the other big names did:

At one point in the panel they are asked if they’re ever worried about running out of story ideas and Matt admits that they really aren’t. More often, “we find ourselves wondering if we’ve already done a joke.”

That was in 2003.  Jebus.

“The Simpsons” Movie Poster Parodies - More fake movie posters.  Some I’ve linked before, but “Re-Hominator” is new (I think).

Animated sitcoms punching up arcade’s past – The Simpsons - A writeup of the arcade game, and worth the click for the Japanese promotional flyer at the top.  (Also, “World 1-1″ is a great blog name.)

Sweet 17 Syrup and Cinnamon Cake - Cool Simpsons birthday cake:

If a list of TV shows that summed up our early years together were in existence, The Simpsons would be pretty near the top, so I’ve tried to incorporate a resemblance to the classic Simpsons donut. It kinda works.. but the icing is white because I didn’t have pink food colouring and nobody’s perfect.

Bet it was good, though.

DUFF BEER BATH - That is one happy looking wooden Bender.

Complete Collection Of Celebrity ‘Simpsons’ Couch Gags - Lots of YouTube of the only thing on the show anyone talks about.

9 TV Roles From Hank Azaria’s Early Days You Might Have Missed - Azaria had guest spots on such classics as Family Ties and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

Cartoons that made me feel something (Spoilers) - “And Maggie Makes Three” and “Mother Simpson” both make the list here.

‘How I Met Your Mother’ Finale: Poochie Edit - Heh:

Immortalizing Mr. Burns - A creepy looking Mr. Burns ceramic mask and charcoal painting.

Major ‘Simpsons’ death will be a ‘bigger deal’ than Game of Thrones’ Purple Wedding, show producer Al Jean says - There were a lot of these this week.  This is one of them.  No, there is no actual news.  The closest thing to news is Jean saying that whoever dies may still come back in future episodes, but we already knew that.

Is Bart Simpson an Anarchist? – Audio - Say what you will about the impracticalities of anarchism, but at least they don’t get flustered about using copyrighted stuff on their posters.

Best Episodes of The Simpsons - Excellent list, nothing from even close to Zombie Simpsons.  Plus there’s a poll.

My 6 Favorite Episodes of The Simpsons - Another explicitly non-Zombie Simpsons list:

But we were hooked from that very first episode, and I have been a lifelong fan of The Simpsons ever since.
Even if I haven’t seen a new episode in years…

Good move.

Best TV Episodes of All Time - “Cape Feare” comes in at #4 here.

5 Timeless Cartoons - The show comes in handily at #1.

I’m All Tapped Out - On deleting a deliberately addictive app:

It was a great move deciding to play Simpsons Tapped Out at the start of the year. I’m not joking here, I played that game every single day from the day I downloaded it, to yesterday evening. It controlled my life. I wouldn’t sleep until certain characters tasks were done and I was constantly tapping away. It’s absolutely for the best that I deleted the app.

Nancy Cartwright Talks ‘Simpsons’ Lego Episode, Charity Poker Tournament & More - The publicity for that music live show they’re doing at the Hollywood Bowl this summer is getting started.

Springfield bar scene offers craft beers to broaden patrons’ palates - Excellent reference from Springfield, IL:

On a tour of Duff Brewery, Homer Simpson discovers that Duff, Duff Light and Duff Dry all come from the same vat. The joke is that the different varieties of beer are indistinguishable by taste. For craft beer lovers, it spoke to what they believe is a larger truth — that the popular beers from domestic mega breweries don’t taste like much at all.
If Homer were to venture outside of Moe’s and visit the real Springfield, he would discover a cornucopia of beers that vary greatly in taste and style.

The Simpsons play Mr Burns is coming to London’s Almeida Theatre - The post apocalypse play is crossing the Atlantic.

The Simpsons Lego Episode Could Be the Show’s Best in Years - Low bar, very low bar.  (The trailer they released is there, too, if you haven’t seen it.)

Check Out The Simpsons Lego Episode Poster - Also, there is a poster.  Too bad they don’t put this much care into writing the episodes.

The Simpsons ‘ratings crisis’: Matt Groening favourite pulls in all-time low with just 3.4 million viewers - This is from Britain’s Mirror, so the scare quote in the headline (‘ratings crisis’) isn’t anywhere in the article and they get their lead fact wrong:

It looks like the magic of The Simpsons could be over.

The animated adventure following the Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie and the residents of Springfield achieved its lowest ever ratings last night in America.
Just 3.4 million viewers tuned in to watch What To Expect When Bart’s Expecting on Fox in the US, signalling an all-time low for the long-running series which is in its 25th year.

It wasn’t an all-time low, it was second.  More importantly, the show is already renewed for another season and its demographic numbers hold up a lot better than the awful topline number would indicate.  So there is a lot of slapdash lazy journalism there.  And yet . . . I’ve long maintained that the only way they’ll cancel Zombie Simpsons is if the ratings get bad enough that they become embarrassing to the far more important merchandising brand.  Replicated enough times in other mainstream publications, headlines and articles like that (missed facts, made up scare quotes and all) could bring enough public embarrassment that the monkeys who run FOX might start thinking that the world doesn’t really need that full 27th season.

‘The Simpsons’ falls to all-time ratings d’oh! - No, Entertainment Weekly, it didn’t, but thanks for furthering the impression.

‘The Simpsons’ Hits All-Time Ratings Low - The same goes for you, Splitsider.  Jebus, the entertainment press is wretched.

Last night’s Simpsons episode set an all-time ratings low - Not sure where the A.V. Club is getting its facts:

Given that The Simpsons has been long been on the decline in the eyes of critics and fans, it’s only logical that it will routinely set new records for all-time low ratings as it carries on. Season 22’s “The Great Simpsina” last held the title, but last night’s episode, “What To Expect When Bart’s Expecting,” dropped ratings to a new low, nabbing only 3.4 million viewers in the show’s Sunday night slot.

At 5.00 million viewers, “The Great Simpsina” would be a certified hit by today’s standards.  I’ve got it at #31 all time on my list.

Batman: “Pure West” - Excellent shakycam YouTube.

2faced homer - Neat fan made image.

Council clears way for gigabit Internet service - Nice reference:

City Council members have OK’d a contract that helps clear the way for AT&T to begin installing gigabit-speed Internet service in some parts of Durham sometime in 2015.
The 5-0 decision didn’t come without some skepticism, expressed most forcefully by Councilman Don Moffitt.
“All of this is vaporware until we start seeing connections,” he said, adding he was “reminded of ‘The Simpsons’ episode where they came in and sold the town a monorail.”

Cartoons of a Generation - And finally, I get to end with someone who very efficiently agrees with us:

Anyone who, like myself, grew up as a child during this era would be aware that there were some epic cartoon adventures that just aren’t matched these days.

[...]

(the best of) The Simpsons

What could possibly match it?

“Okay, that was the sand movie.  Now it’ll just take me a second to set up our next movie.” – Miss Hoover 

A couple of weeks ago, the guy in Britain who does the giant Simpsons drawings in sand e-mailed in with some pictures of his latest creation: a giant Homer Easter Bunny on the banks of the Thames.  Behold:

You can see more pictures at his site. including a completely different giant Easter Homer and one of Bender.  Thanks, Martin!

“George Carlin on three.” – Miss Pennycandy
“Yeah?  Lawsuit?  Oh, come on!  My seven words you can’t say on TV bit was entirely different from your seven words you can’t say on TV bit.  So I’m a thief, am I?  Well, excuse me! . . . Give him ten grand.” – Krusty the Klown
“Steve Martin on four.” – Miss Pennycandy
“Ten grand.” – Krusty the Klown

Let’s get this out of the way first: this is the best they can do and they know it.  If the PR machine is to be believed, this episode took two years to make and was very expensive to animate.  They bragged about how careful the writing was and how they went the extra mile for this one.  They hyped it for weeks and made it their big May sweeps premier.  And, indeed, it is better and more memorable than most Zombie Simpsons, but that’s a low bar, and the only really memorable thing about it was the animation.

To be fair, the animation was pretty impressive and the episode looked very cool in places.  But the writing and execution would’ve been awful even if the vastly superior The Lego Movie wasn’t looming over every terrible line.  That movie was written and directed by the guys who did Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 1, 21 Jump Street and the unjustly cancelled Clone High.  This episode was written by a guy who started writing for Zombie Simpsons in Season 13 and whose only other IMDb credits in that time are for the justly cancelled Joey.  It shows.

- And we get right into things with fake self deprecation “It’s not selling out, it’s co-branding!  Co-branding!”.

- Give them this, it does look nice.

- The sign gags are pretty lazy, though: “Brick-E-Mart”, “H&R Brick”, “First Brick of Springfield”, “Brick, Block & Beyond”.

- “Hey, these are the monkey’s legs”.  Gee, I sure like being told what I’m seeing.

- “Hmm, what do you know, I enjoyed playing with you.”  Ah, nothing brings us back to the regular reality of Zombie Simpsons faster than characters telling us exactly how they feel.

- And now Homer and Lisa are having an expository talk during a flashback.  It’s crappy writing within a weak plot device within crappy writing within a weak plot gimmick.

- Marge and Homer are sitting at home on the bed and Marge reminds us again that in this world “everything fits with everything else and nobody ever gets hurt”.  That’s about the third or fourth time they’ve explained that.

- “Oh, brick me!” – Just tallying the “brick” puns is exhausting.

- Okay, the increasing sized items on the Love Tester are okay.  Not hilarious or anything, but at least they only used the word “brick” once.

- So, Bart rebuilt the school and then described everything we saw in it with voiceover.

- Lovejoy’s sermon about the beginning of the world is kinda funny (goes on too long, of course, but that’s standard).

- This time it’s Flanders: “everything fits together and no one gets hurt”.  Jebus, we get it already.

- Homer just re-explained everything again before touching the toy box.  Also, Marge was just standing there, so that was a Zombie Simpsons twofer.

- Woof, this scene with Lisa and the other girls expositing about the, ugh, “Survival Games” is really going on too long.  I like how each of them explained why they were there.

- And, just because it deserves its own bullet point: “Survival Games” is incredibly lazy.

- Now Lisa is explaining why she wants to do something.

- And now, because this is Zombie Simpsons, Homer and Marge are having a conversation about Lisa right in front of Lisa’s open bedroom door.  As usual, their contempt for object permanence or even just basic social sense shines through.

- Hey, how about another one: “everything fits together and no one gets hurt”.  Thanks, Homer!

- Jebus, writing this bad wouldn’t have survived in a first draft of The Lego Movie.  First, Comic Book Guy explained to everyone what we just saw, then Marge actually says this, “One of the main questions I have about that is why?”.  That leads to more expositing from Comic Book Guy.

- Hey, another “brick” pun on the Jebediah statue.  How many of these can they do?

- I’m tired of transcribing them, but Marge and Homer just re-re-re-re-re-stated the premise and explained the plot again, in case anyone missed it.

- And now he’s doing it again at a tea party with Lisa, “I’ve created a perfect world with no PG-13 movies to take you away from me.”  We.  Fucking.  Know.

- Pop quiz: brick Homer realizes he can’t stay in his paradise.  Do we see him living life and growing tired of it, or does he stand still and explain everything in a speech while doing nothing?  You get two guesses, but you’re only going to need one.

- Then, directly after, we see him reiterate the speech he just gave to Marge.

- Comic Book Guy: “But you’ve discovered the joy of living in a world made of toys where nothing bad can ever happen.”  That phrase may account for 10% of the total words here.

- Now Comic Book Guy is explaining who he is.

- The giant Bart robot is kinda cool.  It’s not funny or anything, but it’s the first thing that’s reminded me of The Lego Movie in a good way instead of a bad one.

- Well, at least they know they’re a pale imitation of the movie.

- Nice of Homer to tell us all what he learned this week.  Knowing is half the battle.

- Having Lovejoy’s description of the universe be true at the end was an actual nice touch that didn’t take too long.  Weird.

- But the episode ran waaaay short despite repeating itself over and over again, so it’s time for a “Survival Games” sketch to get us to the finish line.

What a waste of an episode.  Neat, innovative animation like that shouldn’t be locked into the ordinary mess of a Zombie Simpsons story.

Anyway, the ratings are in and all that publicity did not do them much good.  Last night, just 4.29 million people wished The Lego Movie had already come out on home video.  That’s the highest number they’ve had in a month and it’s still good for #16 on the all time least watched list.  Hear that, crappy entertainment industry publications?  Keep writing stories about how nobody watches anymore.

“Marge, I’m going to look for the kids.” – Homer Simpson

The Lego episode is now five days in the past and the internet is starting to move onto other things, but this week’s links are still a little thin from that deluge of marketing.  Amusingly enough, though this is just my informal observation, there were a lot more links (on commercial publications and personal blogs) before the episode aired than after.  Prior to broadcast, my news feeds and Google Alerts were inundated with people posting links to images and that trailer video.  Afterwards there were quite a few reviews, mostly of the “it was pretty good” variety, but far far less overall chatter than there’d been for the build up.

Anyway, we do have a nice smattering of fan made stuff this week, including two professional artists, some Simpsons inspired heavy metal, a Lego Homer car, and an excellent modification to a couple of those recently released Lego characters.  In addition to that, we’ve got some excellent usage, a new makeup merchandising tie in, more on Bartkira, and two people doing some grilling, because it is now that time of year.

Enjoy.

Custom Lego Zombie Simpsons Homer Marge Treehouse Horror Glow Dark Minifigures - Someone took the Lego versions of Homer and Marge and detailed them to look like zombies.  Excellent.

The Simpsons at 25: Satire in serious times - A nice writeup of the show and what made it great that is, nevertheless, curiously absent examples from the last fifteen years or so.  I wonder why?

“Simpsons Doom” band Dr. Colossus release debut EP for streaming - Awesome:

So… do you like… stuff?

“Imagine if we started the heaviest band in the world, like real doomy, Sabbathy kinda stuff. What would we call it…what’s huge?…’Colossus’?…”
“…Or like Dr. Colossus from the Simpsons…
Why don’t we just make a doom band where all the songs are based on episodes of the Simpsons?”

That’s a basic summary of Melbourne duo Dr. Colossus. It’s the doomy riffs of Black Sabbath and Kyuss meeting The Simpsons’ funniest quotes re-written into lyrics. And the duo have released their debut EP – simply titled “IV” – for streaming on SoundCloud.

The dental plan riff has never sounded so heavy.

Amazon.com: Homer Economicus: The Simpsons and Economics eBook: Joshua Hall - It isn’t being officially released until next week, but there’s a new book that attempts to explain economics through Simpsons.

The Art Of ‘Bartkira’ At Portland’s Floating World Comics - The Bartkira project rolls forward.  You can now buy a 96-page “exhibition book” for $15.

See Every ‘The Simpsons’ Character In LEGO Form - The fine young folks at Uproxx seem to have about the right take on “Brick Like Me”:

was it worth the hype? As a novelty episode of television from a show in its 25th season, yes; otherwise, not really.

For the curious, they’ve got screen grabs of what each character looked like in Lego.

Welcome To Springfield – The Simpsons and MAC Collaboration for Fall 2014 - The 25th anniversary marketing barrage continues, this time with cosmetics.

Rare NEW Fire King Stacking Mug Cup Simpsons 25th Anniversary Made in JAPAN - Further down the merchandising totem pole, plastic cups from Japan.

Homer Simpson Is ‘El Chapo’ In Prophetic Drug War Art Series - An Italian artist created some simple drawings of Homer as a couple of famous drug lords and Barack Obama selling weed to Bart.

Jaimie Warren: ‘That’s What Friends Are For’ - And speaking of art, here’s dueling self portraits, one as Boy George and one as Ralph Wiggum.  Click through for the pictures.

Woolies launching Duff Beer at Moe’s Tavern pop-up in Sydney - Aussies will soon be able to buy Duff legally, but this was just a totally blown marketing opportunity:

Kingham said that while the beer has “good novelty value”, the liquid itself will not disappoint.
“We needed to make sure the beer would stack up. It’s a perfectly good lager,” he said.

Don’t call it “perfectly good”, call it “perfectly cromulent”!

‘Simpsons’ Lego episode: Behind the writers’ favorite inside jokes - There’s some decent stuff in here, but an awful lot of it is “brick” puns.

29 Things You May Have Missed in the ‘Simpsons’ Lego Episode - And speaking of brick puns, here’s a list of them.  The duck was a nice touch and I actually didn’t notice #26, the “Lego brick separator”, but that’s because I pry those things apart with my teeth and fingernails like a civilized Lego user.

Ill-Fated Simpsons Car “The Homer” Built Out Of LEGOs - Cool:

Now that LEGO is producing sets based on The Simpsons, LEGO enthusiast Brain Williams has taken it upon himself to build an incredible replica of The Homer. You can see the model in person at Brickworld or head over to Williams’ Flickr account, loaded with pictures of plenty of awesome LEGO creations.

The link has pictures as well.  Bravo.

The Beaten Path: Aaron Pico Is the Future King of Fighting - Excellent usage:

During one episode of The Simpsons, they catch Bart committing some schoolyard prank, and he must meet his principal for disciplinary activities at 4:30 in the morning.
His response to the punishment: “There’s a 4:30 in the morning now?”
Indeed there is, even if most kids (and adults) aren’t overly familiar with it. This drives to the heart of what makes Aaron Pico so unusual. He knows 4:30 in the morning like the back of his hand

Cue the Opening Theme - YouTube of some famous TV show openings which obviously includes The Simpsons.  It’s also nice to see Looney Tunes included.  Their opening is just as iconic, but it’s not a typical montage, so it’s rarely on lists like this.

The Gusface Traveller Chilli Con Carne - The chili looks incredibly good, but while you can’t eat it through the internet, there’s a great .gif of Bart’s time for chili hat that you can see.

‘The Simpsons’ Get Better Ratings In LEGO Form - I imagine that tepid spin like this was not the big publicity bump they thought it would be:

amidst a national epidemic of LEGO fever, The Simpsons fared about 20% than usual last night with its LEGO episode. Now, I’m sure with the expense and marketing behind it, the producers were hoping for/expecting a higher number, but with the show getting some of its worst ratings in history these days, any upward movement is welcome.

That sounds like the last thing someone says before a plane crash.

Game of Thrones – Via Text - This is mostly about the most recent Game of Thrones episode, but there is a delightful .gif of Burns laughing at that crippled Irishman.

Sorry, Moe - Apparently, ogling the ladies in the Sears catalog isn’t as shameful as it used to be.  Heh.

Scientists reverse aging in mice by giving them young blood - You can’t steal blood from the young and give it to the old without referencing “Blood Feud”.

Hank Azaria Settle on the Upper West Side in $9.2 Million Co-op - Azaria is moving from one massively expensive New York City apartment to another one.  That is all.

Hank Azaria on Late Night with Conan O’Brien (Simpsons Voices) - Speaking of Azaria, this is from a few years ago and Azaria does some voices and is generally charming, including a story about an Indian guy who yelled at him for doing Apu.  Near the end, they briefly discuss the origins of Jub-Jub.

The Simpsons: Television Royalty - There’s nothing here that your typical Simpsons fan doesn’t already know, but it’s a nice little love letter to the show.

Eat My Shorts! - First hand review of the Lego figures complete with detailed images.

#019 COM: Elizabeth and Ezekiel - Cool fan made drawing.

Help it’s Allergy season! - Oh, man, Milhouse would not last long there.

Tonight we’re grilling beef! - Is that an officially licensed Simpsons grill or a decal?  I can’t quite tell.  The color is nice, though.