“I want to get off.” – Bart Simpson “You can’t get off, we have five more continents to visit.” – Selma Bouvier Between Comic-Con and the fact that FOX opened up the animation department to a bunch of reporters a couple of weeks ago, there has been a flurry of news-ish reports in my inbox of late. Most of these are fluff and contain nothing in the way of real news for the already plugged-in Simpsons fan. However, a few interesting tidbits did slip out, and it’s worth taking a look at the available production, calendar and contract information to…
Category: Rumor Control
Even Their Apologies Suck
Via springfieldx2 on Twitter I see that Zombie Simpsons made a halfhearted stab at apologizing to Kristen Schaal for misspelling her name last week. Schaal herself even posted a screen grab of it: At first I thought that was nice of them but, as with everything Zombie Simpsons, they have to make it more complicated than it otherwise should be. After thinking about it for a second, it dawned on me that I probably would remember seeing that, and I didn’t. Indeed, the version I saw didn’t have that on the chalkboard at all. As of this writing, neither does…
Rehashing the “Bart Show” Myth
“Homer, I’d like you to remember Matthew 7:26, the foolish man who built his house on sand.” – Rev. Lovejoy “And you remember . . . Matthew . . . 21:17.” – Homer Simpson “‘And he left them and went out of the city into Bethany and he lodged there.’?” – Rev. Lovejoy “Yeah, think about it.” – Homer Simpson I greatly enjoyed Splitsider’s “Classic Simpsons Week” series. On the whole, it was a nice look back that didn’t sugarcoat just how far the series has fallen from grace. I didn’t agree with every opinion presented, but such is the…
Simpsons History: There Never Was a Shift to Homer
Last summer, I wrote a post demonstrating that the idea that The Simpsons had once been Bart centric and then became Homer centric was nothing more than a myth. I went through Seasons 1 and 2 and tallied the episodes as either Bart centered, Homer centered, or centered around neither or both of them. Obviously such categorizations reflect my opinion, but you’d be hard pressed to tilt more than an episode or two this way or that. Take “Principal Charming” for example. I counted it as Both/Neither because while Homer has to search for a man for Selma, Bart’s the…
Reading Digest: “We’re All Gonna Die!” Edition
“You have joined the sacred order of the Stonecutters, who since ancient times have split the rocks of ignorance that obscure the light of knowledge and truth. Now let’s all get drunk and play ping pong!” – Number One The conspiracy loons are shitting themselves in their various dark corners of the internet this week because of that idiotic video I mentioned last night. This week, we’ve got two more equally nutty links related to it, and it’s picking up steam. As of this writing, the video has ninety thousand views on YouTube, it was at fifty-four thousand when I…
Conspiracy Nuts Think Zombie Simpsons Predicts Nuclear Holocaust on Saturday
“Scary, no? And this guy’s head of the Spaceology Department at the Correspondence College of Tampa!” – Bart Simpson Ladies and gentlemen, hold on to your tinfoil hats, because YouTube user “truthwillfindyoubru” is about to avert a nuclear holocaust this Saturday! I found it on a blog called “2012 THE AWAKENING”, the url of which is “ascendingstarseed”, so you know this is completely legitimate and above board. Feast your Stonecutter-Illuminati-Black Ops-Freemason-Cult of Darius-CIA/MI6/007 eyes on this: Or, you know, don’t. Really. Don’t. But I did, all ten minutes and forty-four idiotic seconds of it. The basic premise here is that…
Troy McClure’s Filmography (Sort Of)
This rather goofy image of many Troy McClure titles has been making the rounds the last couple of days. It’s on Reddit, Huffington Post, College Humor, and I’ve seen others link to it as well: I know it’s a little small (click to embiggen), but you’ll notice right away that there are a lot of unfamiliar titles. SNPP tells me that at least some of them are from Simpsons comics (with which I am unfamiliar), but others seem to have been pulled out of thin air. “Saturnforce000” and “Pinch Me, I’m in Boise” don’t ring a bell, and didn’t produce…
So Much For That Theory
“Why are you guys jumping to such ridiculous conclusions? Haven’t you ever heard of Occam’s razor? The simplest explanation is probably the correct one.” – Lisa Simpson Last week, I speculated that FOX might have a dual purpose in trying out their new animated show “Bob’s Burgers” in the fall, before they had to make a decision on whether or not to bring back Zombie Simpsons for 2011-2012. Not so much: Expect a new animated comedy titled “Bob’s Burgers” during the midseason (which won’t be a success, I can tell you that now). “Bob’s Burgers” won’t be showing up until…
Will There Be a Season 23?
“We’re through the looking glass here people.” – Milhouse van Houten A little more than a year ago, news broke that Zombie Simpsons had been renewed for two more years, through Season 22. It wasn’t news that there was going to be a Season 21. The old contract may have only run through Season 20 but, given the lag between production and broadcast, if Season 20 was going to be the end they’d have shut down production long before last year. Plus, sites like http://www.epgudies.com already had listings for Season 21. What made the renewal news so unfortunate was that…
EXCLUSIVE: Zombie Simpsons Couch Gag Preview! (Updated)
“Marge, I have always carried myself with a certain quiet dignity, tonight you robbed me of it.” – Homer Simpson Only at Dead Homer Society, you can see the exclusive, sneak peak, first look, WORLD PREMIER of the couch gag for the May 2 Zombie Simpsons episode “To Surveil, With Love”: Presumably they will animate it before it airs. I wish I were kidding, but this morning reader Alex wrote in and tipped us off to this latest Zombie Simpsons nadir. Behold, the press release from hell: Don’t miss a note of “FOX Rocks,” a week of music-themed episodes kicking…
Does Seth MacFarlane have feelings?
I’ll give the writers of Zombie Simpsons credit where credit is due: when they want to go out on a formulaic note, they don’t hold back. To say that Sunday’s ending was supremely schmaltzy is an understatement, as Krusty and Penelope lovingly floated away on the Seine under a starry sky to an acoustic version of “Moon River.” As if that weren’t enough, the writers took an additional opportunity to blanket the audience with warm fuzzies in the form of a passive aggressive “fuck you” to the haters (i.e., us.): Right. Ignoring the self-delusion in the second line, it’s interesting…
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…
Previous Naked Money Grabs Considered Insufficient
I held off on posting this yesterday because it’s a rumor I really didn’t want to be true, but Simpsons Channel says it’s happening (there’s already box art) so I guess it’s time to move on to Stage 2: Anger. Season fucking 20 is heading to an optical drive near you this year, as in before Christmas. And just a few months after I thought I was done with 20 for a long time. Anyway, they’re using the fact that some of Season 20 was broadcast in HD as an excuse to release this simultaneously on both DVD and Blu-ray.…
Spurlock Non-Update: No Sequel
Yesterday, at the Mipcom thing we mentioned a little while back, Groening himself said that there would be no sequel to the movie so long as the show was on the air. AceShowbiz: There won’t be a sequel to "The Simpsons Movie" until the TV series finally wraps. In an interview at the Mipcom sales mart for a creative keynote event, creator Matt Groening told director Morgan Spurlock that the second movie is far from happening because making the series and producing the movie was so exhausting. That’s followed up by yet another ‘I dunno’ from Al Jean on the…
Still Careful About What I Wish For
“You’ll be the captain; you’ll be the delivery boy; and you’ll be the alcoholic, foul mouthed-oh god, you’re alive! I mean, thank god you’re alive! Sorry, check back in three days, a week at the most.” – Prof. Farnsworth This is fresh in from the Rockin’ Rumor Department, but it looks as if FOX is at least thinking about recasting Futurama. Phil LaMarr’s Facebook page says this: Phil LaMarr is happy for my friends at Family Guy (Emmy nomination!) and very unhappy for my friends at Futurama (replacing the cast!) Forces of Geek has a full casting notice for Fry,…
The Simpsons Do Not Make People Smoke (Duh)
“Just ask this scientician.” – Troy McClure There was a brief media explosion a couple of weeks ago over a study out of Australia that purports to show a link between watching The Simpsons and taking up cigarette smoking. It’s a terrific piece of media bait, it’s got name recognition and it seems newsworthy. However, the survey is flimsy, even to an untrained eye. Basically what they did was take this list of instances of smoking on the show and then rate them as “positive”, “negative” or “neutral”: Just over a third of instances of smoking (275; 35%) reflected smoking…
Simpsons History: The Bart Years Never Actually Happened
There is a general and widespread misperception out there that in the early days of The Simpsons the show focused mainly on Bart before becoming more Homer-centric. It’s an idea one sees often on message boards and in general conversation about the show. Here, for example, is the DVDfanatic.com review of Season 3: I am not an ultra Simpsons fanatic, so forgive me if I am incorrect, but I remember Season Three being the season where the stories change focus from Bart as the main character to Homer. I feel this transition has made the show the mainstay that it…
A Lesson in Internet Reading Comprehension
“After breakfast me and Milhouse are going down to the ravine. We got a tip from a six year old that there’s a dead martian down there.” – Bart Simpson I saw goofy little stories like this one and this one and this one on-line last week. They amount to nothing that could be called news and I didn’t even include them in the Friday Link Dump. Then I check in on Simpsons Channel this morning and what do I see? Barack Obama on The Simpsons? Sigh. All of the above links can be traced to this post on the website of…