“Oh, oh that radio show.” – Bart Simpson
“Yeah, it’s all the kids talk about on Monday at school.” – Lisa Simpson

Lots and lots of people were talking about Super Bowl commercials this week.  In terms of the Simpsons commercial people seemed to fall into two categories, either “Yay!  Simpsons, yay!” or “Fucking rich people, I wish real billionaires went bankrupt”.  It wasn’t that interesting and I managed to whittle them all down to just a single link.  We’ve also got donuts, crappy merchandise, elaborate sneakers, lists, and some excellent (and less so) usage. 

Enjoy.

Homer Simpson Bottle Opener – Krusty Brand Seal of Approval on this one, it’s a talking Homer bottle opener.  Except that to open a bottle you have to stick it up his ass.  I’m not kidding. 

First The Mini Donut Machine, Then the Dialing Wand – There’s even ones with pink frosting in the background!

Best. Gay. Week. Ever. (February 05, 2010) – This is a long discussion about a particular aspect of why CBS sucks (no homosexual characters, apparently).  At the very bottom of the page is this inducement to get you to click to Page 2:

Next page! In the famous words of Lisa Simpson "Grade me! Grade me! Grade me!"

It’s very apt usage (Page 2 is a “power ranking” style chart of gay people on teevee) but that’s two more “Grade me!”s that she actually says.  Here’s the quote:

“Grade me!  Look at me!  Evaluate and rank me!”

So depending on how you want to look at it they got the quote 1/3 correct or totally correct with repetition.  Throw in the fact that it applies well and we’ll call that good usage. 

Simpsons Script Up For Auction – A signed copy of the script for this Sunday’s desperate Olympics related ratings grab is up for auction to benefit USA Curling.  Meh.  On an interesting trivia note if you click the link you can see that (except for the color) the cover of the script remains unchanged from the one that they were using way back in Season 2.

A blast from the past…The Simpsons – Some random quotes and a couple of videos.  That is all.

Badges again – It’s a Dr. Nick button.  Here are some others.

Education – This is an almost dead on exchange between Homer and Marge.  Though I would’ve added the “And how” at the end.  But that’s just me. 

More Snow On the Way – When there is more snow on the way one’s thoughts naturally turn to the man with the jacket.  You know his name. 

Top Ten Bear Stories You Need to Know About – This is just a list of funny bear stories.  It opens with a Homer quote:

“When the sign says, ‘Do Not Feed The Bears’, man, you’d better not feed those bears.” – Homer Simpson

That’s mostly correct.  Instead of “the sign” it’s “a sign” and instead of “those bears” it’s “the bears”, but given how apt it is (the first story is about a drunk guy who climbed into a bear cage), I’m still calling it excellent usage.

Can unconscious brains think? Coma, philosophy of mind, and the media. – A thoughtful discussion about that European study where they put vegetables into an fMRI machine.  It opens by quoting Homer:

“Ok brain. I don’t like you and you don’t like me. Let’s just do this and I can go back to killing you with beer.”  – Homer Simpson

Just like the one above this isn’t quite right.  Here’s the correct quote:

“Alright brain, you don’t like me and I don’t like you.  But let’s just do this and I can get back to killing you with beer.”

So the opening word is wrong, the “you and me” parts are basically transposed, the conjunction’s missing, and the verb is “get” not “go”.  Still very apt though so this also rates as good usage.

Michelle Obama takes on childhood obesity – This is a pretty typical First Lady thing to do but it starts off with a quote from Burns that is dead on:

I don’t like being outdoors, Smithers. For one thing, there are too many fat children.
— Mr. Burns, “The Simpsons,” 1996

Apt and well quoted, excellent usage.

The Simpsons arrive at your shoes Vans – They got a bunch of well respected artists to put Simpsons designs on fancy shoes.  The designs are pretty neat, though €75 is way more than my cheap ass would ever spend on a sneaker. 

Super Bowl ads: Five best and worst – The Zombie Simpsons ad comes in at third worst.  I’ll take that. 

Homer and Marge Simpson, Olympians? – Here’s an odd piece of corporate cross promotion.  This is on espn.com (owned by Disney/ABC) but it’s promoting an upcoming episode of Zombie Simpsons (on FOX) as well as the Winter Games (on NBC/General Electric).  There’s not much here, except that I would like to point out that all of the episodes that are referenced are from Season 10 or earlier.

Hilarious Professor Frink Inventions You’ll Never Get to Use – I probably don’t need to point this out, but I’m going to anyway, the vast majority of these are from the early years.  No shock there.  (via Neatorama)

The M/C Interview: Emily Blunt tames ‘The Wolfman’ – This is an interview Emily Blunt did to promote that werewolf movie that’s coming out this weekend.  It’s long, but in the middle she talks a little bit about being on Zombie Simpsons last year.  What does she remember doing?  Singing the Josh Groban songs.  Funny, that’s all I remember too. 

SI LXIV: Behind the scenes… – This is a YouTube video of a guy’s merchandise collection.  It’s mildly interesting in a shaky cam kind of way.  However, right at the beginning even this hard core Simpsons collector advises against purchasing the craptacular Season 20 DVDs. 

WIN the ultimate The Simpsons prize! – I’m not keen on these kinds of internet promotions.  It’s basically a deal, you give them your contact information and demographic profile, they give you a small chance at a prize with a low cash value.  That said, this particular prize draw (which is only open to UK residents) is giving away Seasons 1-10 on DVD.  They have omitted 11-13.  That was probably due to the constrains of their (probably) shoestring prize acquisition budget, but I like to think it’s because they knew including more seasons would’ve made it less attractive.  Oh and the fine print says that the drawing won’t be held until December 31st of 2010 and that:

Entrants agree that by entering a prize draw their personal details may be stored and otherwise processed by Clash for the purposes of administering the prize draw and for marketing and sending offers and other information. Clash may also pass entrants’ details to selected third parties to use for the same purposes, but always strictly in line with its privacy policy and any opt in boxes that entrants have ticked. Please read the privacy policy carefully to understand how we may use your data and what your rights are.

So, yeah, even if I did live in Britain I wouldn’t fill this out.  But it’s always nice to see Zombie Simpsons getting a little disrespect.  (via Springfield Springfield’s Twitter feed.)

10 fake Simpsons words that belong in the dictionary – Once again no surprises here, all of these originated in the early seasons. 

The Prominent Animators of Our Era – This is a short description of some famous animators including Groening, Parker & Stone, and MacFarlane.  I don’t agree with everything in here but on the whole it’s a pretty good take, especially in its descriptions of the waxing and waning of the Simpsons-South Park-Family Guy triumvirate of popular animation. 

Simpsons Valentines Special – It’s buy one get one free on hand carved Simpsons statues.  Buy Homer and get Marge at no extra charge.  (Hey, that rhymes!) 

Antiquities – And finally I get to end with someone who agrees with us:

I’ve been a faithful Simpsons fan since I was a kid, but… it’s just bad.  The jokes aren’t as funny and they keep stretching for some sort of moral value that they believe they have, but they were funnier when they had no redeeming value.

Stretching, indeed.  Click through for the accompanying cartoon.