“Satisfied?” – Lisa Simpson “Big deal, it’s no different from the basement in Grandpa’s rest home.” – Bart Simpson
Month: October 2009
Sweet Sideshow Bob Painting & More
“Ah very good . . . fabulous . . . oh, even better!” – Professor Lombardo See that rather awesome Sideshow Bob painting to the left? It can be yours for the low price of just $25 provided you live in Toronto and can pick it up. This listing led me to http://www.loverazor.net which is the artist’s blog. There are several other Simpsons paintings on there including a tattooed Homer (note the Stonecutter symbol on the forearm), a tattooed Burns (great dollar sign on his neck), and – my favorite – jack-in-the-box Homer from “Treehouse of Horror II”. There’s a…
Crazy Noises: Treehouse of Horror XX
“Vital organs they are what we’re dressed in/ the family dog is eying Bart’s intestine/ Happy Halloween!” – Simpson Family & Groundskeeper Willie In our continuing mission to bring you only the finest in low class, low brow, and low tech internet Simpsons commentary we’re bringing back our “Crazy Noises” series and applying it to Season 21. Because doing a podcast smacks of effort we’re still using this “chatroom” thing that all the middle schoolers and undercover cops seem to think is so cool. This text has been edited for clarity and spelling (especially on “Halloween”). What a complete waste…
Quote of the Day
“Abortions for all.” – Senator Kang Bob Dole “Boo!” – Crowd “Very well, no abortions for anyone.” – Senator Kang Bob Dole “Boo!” – Crowd “Hmm… abortions for some, miniature American flags for others!” – Senator Kang Bob Dole “Yay!” – Crowd
Our No Longer Misunderstood Friend
“Hi there energy eaters! I’m Smiling Joe Fission your atomic tour guide to the strange and exciting world of nuclear power!” – Smiling Joe Fission There is an absolutely awesome science video from 1953 (produced by General Electric!) about atomic power at boingboing. It features Dr. Atom (at left) in a number of different roles and watching it I couldn’t help but think of Smiling Joe Fission. Videos (or, more likely, film strips) like these used to be a dime a dozen in elementary schools and watching the original from 1953 was really neat in an over the top atomic…
Synergy Resorts to Rote Retellings
Image grabbed from here. “Oh . . . a little sterile, no real insight. What do you think Miss Hoover?” – Principal Skinner “Enh.” – Miss Hoover IGN really phoned it in this week. There are six paragraphs in their review of that reprehensibly dull Halloween episode. There’s an opening full of generic praise, there’s a closing full of generic praise. The four middle paragraphs are dedicated, in order, to simply retelling the story of each of the four segments from the episode, including that tepid little opening. In addition to that, each contains the full title of the segment…
Quote of the Day
“No more questions. I work my butt off to feed you four kids and all you do is… what?” – Homer Simpson “Three. We have three kids, Homer.” – Marge Simpson “Yeah, three nosy kids. And you know what happens to nosy kids who ask too many questions?” – Homer Simpson “No, what happens does something to nosy kids who ask questions what happens tell us huh dad.” – Bart and Lisa Simpson, indistinct
Ortved Publicity Train Keeps Rolling
There’s an entertaining interview with John Ortved at the Arts Beat blog at nytimes.com. (Yes it’s the same blog that thinks it’s Season 20, but it’s a different writer.) Promoting anything involves answering the same questions over and over again and this is no exception so there isn’t too much new content here, but there were two things I wanted to highlight. First this rather grim answer: Q. You make a number of references in the book to the decline in quality of the show. Have you ever heard of Fox or the folks behind the show pulling the plug…
Quote of the Day
Image used under Creative Commons license from Flickr user TheMuuj. “The only way to get Bart back is to kill the head vampire: Mr. Burns!” – Lisa Simpson “Kill my boss? Do I dare to live out the American dream?” – Homer Simpson
Zombie Simpsons Halloween Scores Historically Low
The numbers are in and they are deliciously poor. Last night’s Hitchcock-copy-pasta/zombie-retread/musical-number was only able to bore 8.59 million viewers. That’s an improvement from last week, but it’s well below the high for the season and it’s the first Treehouse of Horror to ever fall below 10 million viewers. I find this encouraging if for no other reason than the Treehouse of Horror episodes are almost always the highest rated of the season. Obviously there’s going to be a lot of twentieth anniversary promotional stuff going on for the rest of the year leading up to Spurlock’s little special on…
Quote of the Day
“Look, I know that to you we Simpsons are a lower order of life. We face that prejudice every day of our lives.” – Lisa Simpson Image from Wikipedia.
Zombie Simpsons Abandons Precedent
“Please Lis, they prefer to be called the ‘living impaired’.” – Bart Simpson Typically there are three segments to a Treehouse of Horror episode. (Discounting the opening with the monsters at the Halloween party, which was pointless filler if ever there was such a thing.) The first segment was basically a chase scene that had no jokes. The second segment was another zombie segment (that also had a chase scene that had no jokes). The third segment was a bizarre musical theater number that had, quite literally, nothing to do with Halloween with the exception of Kang and Kodos being…
DHS Editorial: Monty Burns for NYC Mayor
“Get off your soapbox Simpson! Do you realize what it costs to run for office? More than any honest man can afford!” – C.M. Burns Both the current mayor of New York City and his predecessor attempted to stay in office for a third term. Rudy Giuliani was thwarted in his attempt, Michael Bloomberg had the foresight to change the rules well in advance and now looks set to hold his job past what terms limit laws originally dictated. As five time voters for Mayor “Diamond” Joe Quimby, The Dead Homer Society is, quite obviously, opposed to term limits…
Quote of the Day
“Hey Simpson! I’m feeling a mite peckish. Mind if I chew your ear?” – Zombie Flanders *gunshot* “Dad, you killed the Zombie Flanders!” – Bart Simpson “He was a zombie?” – Homer Simpson Halloween Zombie Simpsons tonight, brace yourselves and grab your shotguns.
Page to Screen
One of the consistently puzzling aspects of Zombie Simpsons, for me anyway, is trying to imagine how anyone, in a writers room, at a table read, really at any point in the creation of the show, could’ve found some of this stuff funny. Was it really a laugh riot in the studio when they were discussing different things for Marge to spell out with the rhythmic gymnastics ribbon? Did somebody mention old Rodney Dangerfield movies and everyone just started cutting up? It’s pretty hard to picture. The examples above are from Season 21, but this interview with George Meyer (which…
Quote of the Day
Image used under Creative Commons license from Flicker user Roger Lancefield. “Aah! OK, don’t panic — remember the advice your father gave you on your wedding day.” – Homer Simpson “If you ever travel back in time, don’t step on anything because even the tiniest change can alter the future in ways you can’t imagine.” – Memory of Abe Simpson
A Very Minor Thing That’s Been Annoying Me
Arts Beat blog at nytimes.com: If this is the 20th season of “The Simpsons,” then it must be time for “Treehouse of Horror XX” (Fox, 8 p.m. Sunday). Krusty and Mel are both responsible for deadly foodstuffs. No, this is not the 20th season. It is the 21st season. All that promotional crap FOX has been spewing all over the place with that 20 logo of Homer chocking Bart (like on the DVD box) has confused the shit out of a lot of people who should know better. I’ve seen this referred to as the 20th season in more places…
Friday Link Dump – Shutup and Start Masturbating Edition
“I told you she was soft on full frontal nudity.” – Maude Flanders Since we’re very lazy around here we have Google Alerts do most of our web research for us. Unfortunately when something like, oh, say, Marge being drawn into Playboy happens, it means that all of a sudden 95% of the on-line mentions of the Simpsons are about the exact same thing. What’s worse, and I’ll admit I didn’t notice until about the tenth time I saw it, is that everyone uses the word “posing”, as though a cartoon character can “pose” for anything. Anyway, out of the…
Quote of the Day
Image used under Creative Commons license from Flickr user Casey Serin. “Remember class, the worse you do on this standardized test the more funding the school gets, so don’t knock yourselves out.” – Mrs. Krabappel
Synergy Works at Conde Nast Too
Yesterday I finished reading our free(!) copy of John Ortved’s new book “The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History”. Given that I am a long winded bastard and that there’s a lot to cover (for Simpsons fans and loathers of Zombie Simpsons) we’ll probably have some lengthy posts about it coming up. The short verdict is that it’s mostly awesome and was a very fun read. For today though we’re going to take a look at some of the synergistic on-line publicity the book has started to garner. First up is The New Yorker which fills its word count by blathering…