“And now the parade has entered Bumtown! Oh, it’s all just so exciting, Dave!” – Suzanne Somers
“This certainly seems to be a poorly planned parade route.” – Not David Brinkley
Dead Homer Society
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16 responses to “Quote of the Day”
Pfft, amateurs. If Mr. Burns (aka the Real Mr. Burns) was running this parade route, he’d be lining up armed men and SWAT teamsters all the way and making sure the bums behave.
True, but then we’d never have Bart and Milhouse meeting Chester Lampwick, leading to the downfall of Itchy and Scratchy Studios, and then sudden resurrection, all pointing to the eventual matchup of Lester and Eliza vs. Bart and Lisa…
I do love that certain cameo by Charlie Chaplin with his bowler hat and umbrella in the middle background. Sneaky reference put in by the animators? I do notice someone on the SNPP/SimpsonArchive listing for this ep. already spotted this.
Seeing as this was a Swartzwelder ep, he probably wrote it in. But who knows.
Nah, I was thinking this would be something the animators would do, and not John Swartzwelder exactly. This is actually a pretty small appearance, almost like an easter egg, and I don’t think something this small would be specifically specified in the script. So I’m going with animation easter egg.
‘Course, we won’t truly know unless we get an actual copy of the script itself (hint hint)…
The Tramp also made a cameo appearance as one of Herb’s bum companions in “Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes?” (another Swartzwelder-scripted story).
What a strange episode. If Lampwick produced the first Itchy cartoon in 1919, he probably would have been in his 90s when he met Bart. Do penniless bums live that long?
‘Course, folks were tougher back then…
That always bugges me, but then again Mr. Burns is 104 in “Who Shot Mr. Burns”, and while he’s certainly weak he doesn’t look THAT old…
Of course, he was originally written as someone in his early eighties rather than early hundreds explaining why he doesn’t look that old from a design standpoint.
But Groening’s art style isn’t very expressive… The Lisa and Bart from “Lisa’s Sax”‘s flashback scenes are just smaller versions of themselves. Same with younger Milhouse. The opposite can be seen in some of “Lisa’s Wedding”‘s future characters (with a few exceptions).
Not to mention that I always thought that most of the teens on this show look like short adults rather than teens.
They took that fact to its logical conclusion with Kearney (the bald bully who looks as if he’s wearing a punk or metal version of Homer’s white shirt and blue pants), who, despite looking like he’s 16 or 17 years old and Nancy Cartwright (his voice actor) saying that he’s actually 14, Kearney was established in “Lisa the Iconoclast” to be somewhere in his 20s or 30s (yet he’s still in elementary school), because he was old enough to remember Watergate and the Bicentennial (remember, “Lisa the Iconoclast” was a 1990s episode, so the 20 to 30 age range would be appropriate).
Initially, I thought Kearney taking on adult responsibilities (such as car ownership, going to prison, caring for a young child following a divorce) despite being fairly young was commentary about how kids grow up too fast and the most immature of men seem to be fathers before they’re truly ready, but I don’t think the writers are that smart to come up with social commentary like that. Plus, I think everything they did to come up with that seemed like a bunch of mistakes they didn’t bother to fix or retcon.
I thought he was just so dumb he couldn’t finish elementary school, hence why he was shaving, remembering Watergate and the bicentennial, and raising his young son (who sleeps in a drawer! I love that line). I’d not heard his age being given as fourteen, but it could easily be labelled as a mistake down the line when pretty much the entire writing staff has turned over, forgetting various (relatively “throwaway”) lines that point to him being much older. And I don’t really blame Nancy Cartwright for thinking he was 14 since she probably PLAYS him as though he was fourteen, and (again) just plain forgot the older lines, since that’s the kind of absurdity that the old show had in spades, while the new show goes for more visual and physical absurdity.
I’ve often thought that Lampwick’s comment about how until he came along, “All cartoon animals did was play the ukulele,” was kind of weird. At the time he made Scratchy, which was 1919, a lot of cartoons were pretty zany. (Seriously, watch some of those “Out of the Inkwell” by the Fleischer brothers if you have no clue what I mean.) I’d say that cartoons really didn’t become a bit blander and tamer until the Motion Picture Production Code became more strictly enforced in the mid-thirties. But I guess Lampwick’s comment was more in reference to how bland Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies were until Tex Avery started working with Warner Bros. and Porky Pig became a star. I guess the writers didn’t have much knowledge or access to references to stuff other than Disney and WB when writing this episode. The Internet really seems to have helped kindle interest golden age cartoons that weren’t made by either Disney or WB.
They have the internet on computers now?