“Now, each one of you take a floor and get started.” – Marge Simpson “I call the basement!” – Homer Simpson “Fine.” – Marge, Bart & Lisa Simpson “D’oh? . . . D’oh!” – Homer Simpson With Christmas and New Year’s falling on Thursdays this year, the last two weeks have been somewhat disorienting. With two of the biggest holidays of the year in the middle of the week, I’ve had to constantly remind myself what day it is. And so, this morning, it dawned on me that not only was it Friday, but that I hadn’t put up a…
Category: Reading Digest
Reading Digest: Everyone Loves “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire” Edition
♫”Then all the reindeer loved him/ And they shouted out with glee/ Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer/ You’ll go down in history!”♫ – The Simpson Family “Like Attila the Hun!” – Bart Simpson Simpsons Day was on Wednesday this week, and with it being a (relatively) big number, 25 years and all, it got more than the usual attention. So we’ve got a lot of lists and retrospectives mixed in with some usage, a bit of fan art, one hapless defense of Zombie Simpsons, a couple of Hutz tributes, a pre-Simpsons David Silverman project, and several people who used the…
Reading Digest: Xi’an Bart Edition
“Look at how disciplined they are. They’re just like the terra-cotta warriors of Xi’an.” – Lisa Simpson “They sure are.” – Homer Simpson First off, apologies for no Compare & Contrast this week. I’ve got an unfinished draft that I promise I will finish next week, but this week my stupid real job got in the way. For links this week, we’ve got a terra-cotta Bart Simpson, a Bonestorm blanket, some excellent references, a teaser for a Weinstein interview, a couple of lists, quite a bit of YouTube, and a chance to win a copy of the Mr. Burns play.…
Reading Digest: RIP, Real Life Bumblebee Man
“Dos huevos, por favor. Oh, que lastima.” – Bumblebee Man “I gotta steal that bit.” – Krusty the Klown Late last week, it was announced that Chesperito, a/k/a Roberto Gómez Bolaños, a/k/a the inspiration for Bumblebee Man had died at the age of 85. Reader Alex from Chile, writes in: He and his characters were loved in all Latin America and it’s easy to compare his shows rise and fall with the Simpsons, being the 70s the golden years of “El Chavo del Ocho” and “El Chapulin Colorado” and then from the 80s until now having nothing but the zombification of…
Reading Digest: Passing Time
“Egad, man! How are we supposed to pass the time?” – C.M. Burns “Best bet is to stake yourself out a good spot at the starin’ window.” – Abe “Grampa” Simpson It’s another short Reading Digest this week. As always we’ve got some good stuff, including an insane Lego video, the magical touch of Harry Shearer’s Twitter account, a sexually unusual farm animal, more clothing, and several great pieces of usage, but overall volume remains pretty low. Not sure why. Anyway . . . Enjoy. Fast Food Formations: Homer Simpson Built From Junk Food – Some crazy geniuses constructed a life size…
Reading Digest: Futurama Crossover Reviews, Edition
“Say, let’s bring him back to life by using technology!” – Future Guy “Aye caramba!” – Bart Simpson “Yay!” – Future Crowd Unsurprisingly, there were a boatload of crossover reviews this week, everything from big publications to regular ole bloggers who just wanted to chip in their two cents. We’ve got a bunch below, but having read even more of them than I linked, this appears to be the general consensus: 1. It was better than the Family Guy crossover. Outside of that, opinions diverged. Some people really loved it, others thought it was just plain bad. More than a few people…
Reading Digest: Ranking ToH Segments Edition
“What kind of show you got for us, Mr. Burns?” – Reporter “Well, the ape’s going to stand around for three hours or so. Then we’ll close with the ethnic comedy of Dugan and Dershowitz.” – C.M. Burns “Sensational!” – Reporter Happy Halloween, everybody! This week we’ve got a bunch of Treehouse of Horror related links, include quite a few to people who decided to list individual segments. As always, some are better than others and Zombie Simpsons only gets the occasional pity mention (if that). In addition we’ve got some live sightings of Simpsons clothing, video game ideas, cool…
Reading Digest: Hopeless Lawsuit Edition
“I’m going to write a figure on this piece of paper. It’s not quite as large as the last one, but I think you’ll find it fair.” – C.M. Burns “I think we should take it.” – Lionel Hutz There were two big Simpsons news stories this week. First, the “Simpsons World” app/website finally launched. I took a quick look, but it spent lots of time buffering and seemed to be struggling under launch-day loads, so I’ll come back to that next week. (We do have quite a few links about it, however.) The second was that an actor who…
Reading Digest: Local Boys Make Good Edition
“The challenger learned how to fight in the notorious projects of Capital City, and honed his skills while serving time for aggravated assault and manslaughter in Springfield Prison.” – Boxing Announcer “Alright, a local boy!” – Barney Gumble With the hoopla around the premier and the crossover now safely in the rear view mirror, and Halloween stuff not yet ramping up to full volume, it’s a pretty short Reading Digest this week. We do have hometown articles about both Al Jean and Mike Reiss, however. In addition to those, we’ve got some excellent fan art, a couple of interesting lists,…
Reading Digest: Mr. Burns Play Spreads
“I want the whole world to hear the story of my harrowing struggle with hypohemia.” – C.M. Burns The post-apocalyptic Mr. Burns play continues to spread. Local theater companies in both Arizona and Colorado are putting it on the next couple of weeks, and we have links to both. At this rate, the play itself might survive the apocalypse. In more regular links, we also have a couple more unhappy reviews of the crossover, some excellent usage, several .gifs, an in-depth look at the varieties of Duff on sale in Florida, and the relentless filler of Zombie Simpsons demonstrated in…
Reading Digest: Crossover Fallout Edition
“Bart, we can’t let Bob steal the spotlight. We’re gonna have to stoop to the lowest common denominator.” – Lisa Simpson “I can do that.” – Bart Simpson Seemingly everyone with an internet connection weighed in on the Family Guy crossover this week. I couldn’t possibly read or link them all, so the below is by no means a definitive, or even a representative, sample, but broadly reactions seemed to fall into two categories. There were people who hated it and there were people who liked it. The difference is that the people who hated it, really hated it, while the people who…
Reading Digest: Flock of Vultures and Parasites Edition
“Is it true you attempted suicide when you heard the news?” – Vulture #1 “Are you and Princess Di just friends?” – Vulture #2 “You people make me sick! You’re vultures! Where were you when I sang at Farm Aid? Out of my way, you parasites! I said out of my way!” – Krusty the Klown This week we’ve got four (count’ em four!) links to Vulture, which is doing yeoman’s work to promote the new season of Zombie Simpsons, which starts, ugh, on Sunday. The first one is by far the most interesting, but all of them have their moments,…
Reading Digest: Everybody Else Went to the Show Edition
“How was it?” – Bart Simpson “It wasn’t that great.” – Lisa Simpson “Be honest.” – Bart Simpson “It was the greatest movie I’ve ever seen in my life!” – Lisa Simpson This week we’ve got lots of links to those lucky bastards who got to see the Hollywood Bowl show last week, many of them with cool pictures. Sure, YouTube is better than nothing, but it’s a poor substitute for the real thing. In addition to that, we’ve got a bunch of .gifs, Duffman in the big leagues, a couple of disappointing lists, and a huge Sam Simon profile.…
Reading Digest: Live Concert Edition
“Devilishiously satirical! I wonder if anyone else got that?” – Dr. Hibbert “We’re out of here!” – Homer Simpson That very cool Hollywood Bowl show is this weekend. I won’t be able to attend, but if any of you fine Simpsons fans out there make the trip, please let us know. (I’d be happy to post pictures, an account, what have you.) In more provincial news, I saw my first Halloween display in a store this week, and I thought, “wow, that’s pretty early”, then when I was going through WordPress tags for this week’s post I came across tons of…
Reading Digest: Weak Defenses of Zombie Simpsons Edition
“I think Lisa needs to feel a little special tonight. How about letting her ride up front too?” – Marge Simpson “Eh, I tried.” – Homer Simpson As was inevitable as soon as FXX decided to run the marathon consecutively, instead of something more humanitarian like banishing Zombie Simpsons to the unemployable alcoholic angry loner hours, there have been some defenses of Zombie Simpsons cropping up in the last few days. To start things off, we’ve got three of those, followed by another overflowing pile of other great stuff. We’ve got several links to fan art, lots of people reminiscing…
Reading Digest: The Hell With It Edition
“There. Finished.” – Homer Simpson “You are?” – Lisa Simpson “Well, it’s a quick job, but it’s shelter.” – Homer Simpson “It is?” – Marge Simpson Just like last week, this is by necessity incomplete. I just can’t keep up, but there is a ton of good stuff below. My inbox is also a mess, and I know I owe like half a dozen people e-mails, so hopefully I get to that and then fill in many of the links I didn’t have time to get to. In the meantime: enjoy. Not Allowed In The Deep End: Ralph Wiggum’s Finest…
Reading Digest: FXX Is *Really* Bad At TV Edition
“But those shows all look so crummy.” – Homer Simpson “We could dress it up a bit. We could bring a fern, and a folding chair from the garage, and the most decorative thing of all: the truth.” – Marge Simpson FXX got a lot of good press out of this Simpsons marathon thing. Then they went and stretched the image in a way so dumb that I initially didn’t even consider it a possibility: Oof. As plenty of people on Twitter have pointed out, that looks atrocious. Maybe you don’t want to just have black bars on either side,…
Reading Digest: FXX Marketing Shifts Into High Gear Edition
“Were you on my roof last night, stealing my weather vane?” – Ned Flanders “This interview is over!” – Homer Simpson The big 12 day marathon on a channel neither I nor millions of other people get will begin next Thursday morning. This week we’ve got several links about it, including the full transcript of a conference call interview Al Jean did earlier this week (there’s actual news for once!) and some very cool posters. In addition to that, we’ve got more of the fan made Lego Springfield, an unveiling date for the building sized mural in Oregon, Harry Shearer…
Reading Digest: Spreading Stupidity Edition
“Now for operation Strike Make Go Longer. . . . You know, I heard Skinner say the teachers will crack any minute.” – Bart Simpson “Skinner said the teachers will crack any minute, purple monkey dishwasher.” – Teacher “Well, we’ll show him! Especially for that purple monkey dishwasher remark.” – Mrs. Krabappel Sorry for the later than usual posting, but that Uproxx/Warming Glow thing was just too damn dumb to be dealt with in a snarky sentence or two. (That it came on a blog named after a Simpsons joke is just aggravazing.) As you’ll see, the stupid has already…
Reading Digest: Crossover Reaction Edition
“Fans reacted to these slapdash episodes with yawns, angry yawns.” – Behind the Laughter Announcer The big news this week was a five minute preview video of the upcoming Family Guy crossover, and it was everywhere. There were so many links from random sites that one was in Cyrillic, but outside of fawning headlines from radio stations and other teevee industry marketing appendages, the reaction was overwhelming negative, and we’ve got several links to prove it. You can see the video at a couple of them, but I wouldn’t recommend it. I made it two minutes in and gave up on about…