Lots more blog links than news links this week, not really sure why.  But there’s some good usage and another blogger who thinks Zombie Simpsons is shitty.

The Trampoline Conundrum – Roger Catlin of the Hartford Courant got a trampoline for his kid.  Like a well seasoned professional writer he then wrings a short article out of it by talking about the time Homer got a trampoline.  Also, there’s a YouTubed Hulu video.

Number Six and Gaius Baltar – io9 had some Simpsonized drawings of characters from Battlestar Galactica.  I tried to get into that show a couple of times and I just couldn’t do it.  Then again, as you can tell from the rest of this site, I’m pretty picky about what I watch on teevee.  (via)

How the Simpsons Animate Us – A Time magazine retrospective on 20 years of The Simpsons.  There’s nothing here you don’t already know, but it’s a decent enough read.  One funny thing though, it just glances over the idea that the show isn’t what it once was (to say the least), but it also switches back and forth between talking about the show in the past tense and the present tense.  Maybe it’s just sloppy editing, or maybe we’ve got someone on the inside . . . (via).

Top Ten Movies For the Fourth – Did you know there’s a 1957 movie version of Johnny Tremain?  They should call that movie Johnny Deformed.

The Democratic Base (Ten) – Apparently some people are worried that the metric system might be making a comeback because the Democrats are back in power.  This guy quotes Grandpa to put them in their place.  (It sounds more like Grandpa says “that’s the way I likes it” rather than “like it”, but I don’t want to quibble.  Hmmm, maybe I just did.)

Abraham Simpson from The Simpsons (1989-) – It’s a new blog with brief biographies of fictional characters.  So far it’s just a bunch of NBC sitcom characters, Cartman and Grandpa.  The Grandpa quotes aren’t all dead on accurate, but they are funny and for our purposes it’s close enough.

I had a cat named Snowball. She died, she died… – A very Simpsons heavy Michael Jackson remembrance post.  Well done.

Famous Beer Quotes – When searching for Simpsons links I often come across lists of beer quotes, many of them are straight copy and paste jobs, and they almost always include Homer’s classic, “cause of and solution to” line.  This one does too (though it screws it up slightly).  But it has two redeeming qualities.  First, it’s a blog to help people brew their own beer at home, which is awesome.  Second, they quote Homer twice instead of the standard once and the second one they included is dead on correct:

I would kill everyone in this room for a drop of sweet beer. – Homer Simpson

Homer said that at a Tupperware party Patty and Selma were throwing, but whatever the specific circumstances it’s a feeling nearly everyone has sooner or later.

Fashion Ump: The greatest Ken Griffey Jr. t-shirt ever – It’s a Mariners t-shirt with Ken Griffy Jr drawn as he appeared on The Simpsons.  No further comment is needed.

Panetta Was Half-Right – I very rarely give a shit when someone says something “controversial”.  I figure that people have been saying dumb shit since the dawn of time and the only difference now is that we have cameras and microphones everywhere and so the dumb shit is more likely to get recorded and thus allow other people to comment on it.  That said, anyone who wants to make fun of Glenn Beck and Michael Scheuer for fantasizing about nuclear terrorism by using the Simpsons is okay with me.  Excellent usage.

Top five free Android games – This is a review of some games for Google’s Android operating system.  It contains this very puzzling sentence when discussing a version of Battleship:

If you can play this game without hearing the “you sank my battleship” line from The Simpsons, we’ll be very impressed indeed.

I’ve never really thought of that as a Simpsons joke.  I mean, it was a repeated joke in an episode in Season 10, but this guy knows that it was the tag-line for the game before that, right?

The Simpsons Intro – And finally, yet another blogger who thinks Zombie Simpsons sucks.  Regeene thinks it was still good until a couple of years ago, which is more than I give it, but we certainly agree on this:

But what I can’t get over now though is the poor writing that has replaced the used-to-be hilarious plots & gags of which we’ve always known. What happened to the writing staff?

Well, that’s all folks.  Remember to celebrate your country’s independence by blowing up a small part of it.