“I’m sorry Mrs. Simpson but you can’t copyright a drink.” – Lionel Hutz
“Ohhh.” – Homer Simpson
“This all goes back to the Frank Wallbanger case of ‘78. How bout that? I looked something up! These books behind me don’t just make the office look good, they’re filled with useful legal tidbits just like that!” – Lionel Hutz
Wallbanger image via Wikipedia.
What can I say? There’s no bigger chunk of this week’s edition than repeated excellent usage (with dead on citation). There’s also a couple of crappy lists, a lamp that will never be, some printable Simpsons coloring images, and a video that has Simpsons newspaper headlines. Let’s get right to the excellence.
Enjoy.
Tremendous Tom’s Top 10 Episodes of The Simpsons! – There’s only one episode from a single digit season (“Homer the Great”, though it is at #1). Worst top ten list ever? Worst top ten list ever.
THE SIMPSONS INTERACTIVE TOWN HALL MAYOR QUIMBY / 2000 – Krusty Brand Seal of Approval alert. This appears to be little more than a talking Quimby doll.
Simpsons in Avatar, pt. 2 – Last week we had the guy who matched Simpsons with “Avatar: The Last Airbender”. Here’s part 2.
The destructive path of ego-driven leadership – Quoting Burns’ business advice as an example of what not to do. Excellent usage.
Homer Lamp – This is a website of neat ideas that, for whatever reason, will never come to fruition. Here is an awesome idea for a Homer lamp:
A modifed version of the Homing Lamp, the Homer Lamp has a round, yellow lampshade over the top, and whenever it bumps into something, it cries out "D’oh!". It also uses an advanced object recognition software to detect such things as beer, pie, nachos, and Halfbakery Add-an-idea pages. Upon detecting the presence of the first three, it says "Mmm…. [insert subject matter]…." in the voice of Homer Simpson. Upon detecting the presence of the latter object mentioned above, it says "Now remember, in this house, we obey the laaawwws of thermodynamics." in a helpful, cheerful tone.
Yes, I like this site and this idea.
Invictus (Theatrical) – I’ve not seen “Invictus”, nor read the book upon which it’s based, but this is funny:
Mandela´s support of the Springboks is perceptive and controversial; he has to use his inspirational oratory skills to convince an angry committee not to advocate for the disbandment of the team. But as far as a plan goes, "Win the World Cup" echoes the "Simpsons" episode in which manager Mr. Burns cagily instructs slugger Darryl Strawberry to "hit a home run."
Yet more excellent usage.
get this, they call me slow – Linked for two reasons: I always liked that Fry picture and it’s a nice WordPress theme.
Reviews: The Simpsons Season Five and Fringe Season One – Tell it, brother:
This is the peak, the absolute pinnacle of one of the greatest television shows ever produced. Sure, it might have declined in recent years (and not-so-recent; the last good season was nearly a decade ago) but The Simpsons was animated comedy perfection for most of the nineties.
Yes.
Making a Name for Himself, With Just 3 Letters – New York Times article about a real life El Barto.
Keepalive: Back to No Gaming – This guy plays a lot of video games and is disappointed in the relative lack of quality. Which leads him to:
But part of it’s that I’m just too old for all the little disappointments that come with most games. Their shortcomings are so obvious there’s no way QA missed them. They fail to learn from previous titles. Some overreach. Some play it safe. So many developers aren’t competent to develop for PC anymore (or farm the PC versions of their games out to incompetents). Nothing’s worth playing until the patch comes out.
"The good Lord lets us grow old for a reason: to gain the wisdom to find fault with everything He’s made." – Abe ‘Grandpa’ Simpson
"Dad, I love you…but you’re a weird, sore-headed old crank, and nobody likes you." – Homer Simpson
A little from column A and a little from column B.
Triple excellent usage, including at the end there.
Santa’s Little Helper – Inspired by “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire” this woman took a picture of her real life greyhound and put it on a bunch of homemade stuff. Cool.
mom & grandma find a wig shop – Apparently the internet will never run out of new pictures of people dressed as Marge Simpson (scroll down at the link) and I will never tire of posting them. Awesome.
Two Links of Interests – The first is just an image of the Simpsonized Link from Springfield Punx. The second is a sweet YouTube video. I didn’t need any further convincing that we landed on the moon, but it’s cool to see the video with physics equations like that.
Maggie Simpson Coloring Page – This is a printable outline drawing of Maggie so you or your kids can color her in with yellow eyeballs, purple skin and what have you.
Bart Simpson Coloring Page – See above.
Speak Out 12/10/09 – This is from a 77-year-old complaining about various things. Here’s the good part:
WHEN my son was little, I would watch TV with him. I watched "The Simpsons" and thought, "This isn’t nice. This is kids being rude to their parents and parents doing weird things." I quit letting my son watch that. The Muppets were about all he could watch. Parents should check what their children are seeing on television and get them away from the television. They need exercise.
Teacher. Mother. Secret lover.
Flores para los muertos – Tennessee Williams “A Streetcar Named Desire” has been revived in Brooklyn with Cate Blanchett playing the Marge Simpson role. This review gives it about the most glowing praise I can think of:
But the true test of how good this production is? I didn’t think of Marge Simpson once. Which is like hearing "The William Tell Overture" and not thinking of The Lone Ranger.
Indeed.
Live Theatrical Performance of L. Ron Hubbard’s Humorous Science Fiction Story ‘The Automagic Horse’ Announced – Nancy Cartwright and some other people will be putting this on in Hollywood on December 19th.
The 10 Best Political Chalkboard Gags from ‘The Simpsons’ – Meh.
LAPD To Get New Hires After All – It seems Los Angeles is having budget problems just like everyone else. The LAPD was told it couldn’t hire new cops because there was no money. After people complained the City Council told them to go ahead and hire the cadets, but pay for it your own damn selves. That prompted this piece of excellent usage:
When Homer Simpson ran for sanitation commissioner of Springfield, he came up with the slogan, "Can’t Someone Else Do It?" We think it’s apt in L.A. too.
The Odyssey of Homer Simpson – This is a song loosely based off of The Odyssey but with Homer Simpson in place of Odysseus. You can listen to it on that page or download an mp3. Best lyric:
Well the sirens make his senses tingle;
By singing and singing the Duff beer jingle.
Tee hee.
The Simpsons Back Tattoo – Sweet. Click for picture.
MUGEN: Homer Simpson Meets World of Warcraft – This is Homer fighting two characters from World of Warcraft in a 2D fighting game style. It’s kinda boring but I did chuckle at the end when he vanquished the Orc Warrior (spoiler!) and did the “I Am Evil Homer” dance.
A Wrap-Up Of The Third & Final McChrystal/Eikenberry Hearing – Even if you’re a reporter covering Capitol Hill I don’t think you’re supposed to watch the entirety of a Congressional hearing. Even in small doses it’s bad for your sanity. Still, this is very good usage:
Like Homer Simpson after eating 64 slices of individually wrapped American cheese, I think I’m blind.
Toss Snowballs at Homer Simpson, Fringe Stars – FOX has a stupid little flash game up where you can throw snowballs at their characters. It’s bad. I didn’t make it more than ten seconds before I got bored and turned it off.
newspaper headlines from the simpsons – And finally, how about a little long form YouTube? This video is just various Newspaper headlines from the show:
Very little Zombie Simpsons, and the Mozart is a nice touch.
Dead Homer Society 
6 responses to “Reading Digest: Lots of Excellent Usage Edition”
That “Tremendous Tom’s” list was just fuckin’ depressing. As were the comments to the list. There goes my bubbly optimism and zest for life today.
Cassidy: “That “Tremendous Tom’s” list was just fuckin’ depressing. As were the comments to the list.”
Indeed. Not only does Tremendous Tom’s Top 10 list consist almost entirely of steaming turds (that would make any self-respecting Simpsons fan’s “10 Worst Episodes” list), but he follows up with comments like “I’m not a big fan of the older episodes” and “The “Lisa needs braces” episode is so outdated now, I think thanks to a certain “DENTAL PLAN!” It has lost its novelty to me.”
As a guilt-ridden liberal, I try to respect people’s rights to hold whatever opinions they want, but geez, I hope Tremendous Tom doesn’t operate machinery, vote in elections or have a job of any kind of importance.
“newspaper headlines from the simpsons – And finally, how about a little long form YouTube? This video is just various Newspaper headlines from the show:”
I thought they’d forgotten “Awful school is awful rich,” but then – – bam! – – at 7:35…
I like how Tom says that he isn’t a fan of older episodes, then states that the first airdate for D’oh-in in the Wind was April 2003. Maybe it took that long for the episode to reach him in his broken down shack, but I do remember it first showing in 1998.
Aside from Homer the Great, which actually does own hard and deserves any and all number one spots people wish to give it, the rest of Tremendous Tom’s list goes like this:
10) A mixture of blah and depressing alcoholism jokes. On the plus side, the gay stereotypes weren’t as bad as they have been in later episodes. That’s not much of a plus, though. Also, of all the tenuous reasons for Homer and Marge’s marriage to be in fake trouble, this must be one of the most tenuous.
9) Blah. Also, why is everyone in town drinking organic carrot drinks now? Surely not everyone would. I’m sure Barney wouldn’t, this was before the episode where he got clean. And P. Piggly is right – Wikipedia tells me this one aired November 1998.
8) Blah. The stuff with “Mapple” wasn’t funny, and despite what Tom seems to think, I’m quite sure the show has talked many times about xenophobia as a general concept. Not about Muslims, though, I suppose, and it is nice that they’d come to a liberal conclusion. But it’s not like it was unprecedented or unexpected.
7) Blah. Tom does seem to like episodes I can’t be bothered to commit to memory that hard. I didn’t know John Goodman was in that one, though. But I still don’t really care.
6) I haven’t actually seen this one, since other parts of the internet informed me it was shit. It sounds a mixture of blah and “white man’s burden”. I think this is the one where “Jeebus” comes from.
5) Blah. If I were more familiar with The Prisoner, I might have liked it better, but it just didn’t grab me. Tom seems to like how this makes fun of conspiracy theorists, but I forgot all of that until I read his summary.
4) A mix of blah and buttock-clenching embarrassment. Also the internet told me that nobody loves Raymond.
3) This one kind of freaked me out. I don’t want apocalyptic nightmares in my non Halloween Simpsons episodes. Tom likes this one for his thing about conspiracy theorists too. Jesus on the swings is the highest point of this episode.
2) I’m one of the few that doesn’t mind musical episodes that hard, but there were some plot things here. Surely Lisa would actually read a contract she’d been given. And wouldn’t the removal of music, art and sport from the school upset the various teachers who’d be losing their jobs? It also ended in quite an unsatisfying way.
Obviously, as I say, (1) is Homer the Great which owns hard. But Tremendous Tom seems an odd character. Maybe it’s just me that doesn’t understand comedy. I am a miserable fuck after all.
“Tremendous Tom seems an odd character.”
He’d be especially odd if he insists that friends and family refer to him as “Tremendous Tom.”
And while my first reaction to Tom’s praise of shite episodes/dismissal of the earlier episodes was one of shock, in hindsight it actually makes sense. It’s baffling to me how anyone who loves the classic era of The Simpsons could continue to praise the show in its zombie era. At least with Tom you know where he stands.