“The Itchy and Scratchy movie is the defining event of our generation. How would you have liked it if someone told you that you couldn’t watch the moon landing?” – Lisa Simpson “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” – Neil Armstrong ♫“Yummy yummy yummy I got love in my tummy and I feel like loving you.”♫ – Homer Simpson
Tag: Itchy and Scratchy the Movie
Quote of the Day
“I’m thinking of a number between one and fifty.” – Homer Simpson “Is it thirty-seven?” – Marge Simpson “D’oh! . . . I mean, no.” – Homer Simpson
Makeup Quote of the Day
“Bart, are you pulling up the carpet?” – Marge Simpson “Yuh-hunh.” – Bart Simpson “Why are you letting him do this?” – Marge Simpson “I dunno.” – Homer Simpson “Well, punish him!” – Marge Simpson “Alright, alright: Bart, go to your room.” – Homer Simpson “See you in the funny pages.” – Bart Simpson “How could you let this happen?” – Marge Simpson “How could you let this happen?” – Homer Simpson “I wasn’t here!” – Marge Simpson “Oh, how convenient.” – Homer Simpson
Quote of the Day
“Tonight on Eye on Springfield, we meet a man who’s been hiccuping for forty-five years.” – Kent Brockman “Hic – Kill me – hic – kill me…” – Hiccup Guy
Quote of the Day
“Well, well, if it isn’t the tooth fairy.” – Jasper
Quote of the Day
“Bart, did you take out the garbage like I asked?” – Homer Simpson “Indeed I did.” – Bart Simpson “D’oh! Hey, you goats! Get out of here!” – Homer Simpson
Quote of the Day
“But first, let’s take a look back at the year 1928. The year when you might’ve seen Al Capone dancing the Charleston on top of a flagpole.” – Kent Brockman
Quote of the Day
“I really don’t see how this helps Bart.” – Marge Simpson “Just do it!” – Mrs. Krabappel
Quote of the Day
“We don’t usually do this, but we have some witnesses. Come in, Arthur. Now, where did Bart stick the fireworks.” – Mrs. Krabappel
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. Enjoy. D’OH! Eat my shorts! Ha-ha! Don’t have a cow, man! Ay, caramba! – Looking at the long history of the show and its influences on subsequent cartoons. How The Simpsons Co-Creator Sam Simon Is Facing His Own Tragedy – A full blown writeup of Sam Simon’s life in Vanity Fair. It’s chock full of stuff like this: “I’m the best contract negotiator in the world,” he says. “But I had help. I had lawyers and stuff. Relative to the average person Don King negotiates with, I think we were bringing somewhat of an advantage to the situation.” Sam laughs as he recalls a memorable dinner with Don King at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills. “So, I call the lawyer in, and we start talking about a contract to join the stable of fighters that Don King promotes and hopefully to get a shot at the heavyweight championship of the world. We negotiated for three and a half hours, running back and forth, making Xerox copies in the lobby. I just remember how thick the thing was; even though it was only about eight or nine pages, there’s so much sweat from people handing it back and forth and all the scribbling and initialing. Anyway, Don King says, ‘O.K., we have a deal. And I’m going to have my lawyers type up everything that we’ve discussed. So: Here. Sign the bottom of this blank piece of paper. And let me get all three of your signatures. And then I will have everything else typed in above it.’ ” Sam laughs. Hard. Graphs of every word used on The Simpsons (Also: all other TV and movies) – There is a link at the bottom to a tool dedicated to just The Simpsons. Hank Azaria: Simpsons, Ray Donovan Star on His First Time in Variety – An interesting little interview with Azaria about his career. The drawing of him at the top is also pretty cool. 90s Cartoon Party by Makomali – Cool fan made drawing of various 90s cartoon characters. Possibly The Best Simpsons GIF – I don’t know if it’s the best, but an old tape of Homer, Lenny and Carl working is pretty good. The Simpsooooons – Pictures and an account of the Hollywood Bowl show. The Simpsons Take the Bowl at the Hollywood Bowl last night was so amazing – Lots of pictures and video and one gigantic donut. Highlights – Great picture of the start of the…
Quote of the Day
“If you don’t start making more sense we’re gonna have to put you in a home.” – Homer Simpson “You already put me in a home!” – Abe “Grampa” Simpson “Then we’ll put you in the crooked home we saw on 60 Minutes.” – Homer Simpson “I’ll be good.” – Abe “Grampa” Simpson
Behind Us Forever: Four Regrettings And A Funeral
“I regret nothing!” – Doomed Guy in Movie Ticket Line If any of us had been wondering what it would be like if Zombie Simpsons took the unrelated tales from one of their four-part storytelling episodes, jammed them together with a bunch of expository and often unrelated flashbacks, and dropped in a self voiced celebrity, we need wonder no more. Proving that Season 25 can employ all the same flat out lazy shortcuts as Seasons 24, 23 and so on, we had characters telling us exactly how they feel, people wandering in and out of scenes seemingly at random, and a self voiced celebrity introduced by name so we know just who they are. This show has a lot of chronic problems, and this episode featured most of them. Here we go: – The chalkboard and the sad look on Bart’s face is a nice gesture. – The Hobbit opening is kinda fun and all (Irish not welcome at the elf inn), but it doesn’t speak well of the status of the show or the quality of the writing when silent, minute long shorts that retell other people’s stories are the most talked about aspect of the program. – To the surprise of no one, the “major character” to die was a red herring. – And the funeral scene is off to a typically slow start whereby Selma and Marge get into an out loud argument in church that’s mostly exposition and some Family Guy flashbacks, complete with giant Gene Simmons tongue. – This is Homer’s mental dialogue: “I made the worst financial decision of all time. I can’t think about it. I won’t think about it. I don’t want to think about it. Oh, I’m thinking about it.” Castellaneta is a very funny man, but saving that is impossible. – Here’s how you can tell even they know that “Mapple” is weak sauce: they don’t want to use it. – Okay, using Milhouse’s nose as a dick was at least clever. – But now Flanders is trying to put money into tithe baskets that the boys are using as sticks because . . . nevermind. – Burns being nice and incompetent? Never seen that before. – Lazy celebrity introduction alert: “Well, well, well, Rachel Maddow”. – And now, Krusty’s in the woods. – Ralph is there too, of course. – Even the FOX News parodies are basically expository, and they’re mega easy to make fun of. – As if to prove that they can no longer help but repeat themselves, they’re doing a montage of Homer set to “Memories“. The first time they did this it was for Homer’s stomach before he started subliminal weight loss tapes. Now it’s for a bowling ball we’ve never seen before. – Bart, previously way away from Evergreen Terrace, is now floating over the Flanders house. – If Burns’ sweetheart going to die without getting to do much of anything, why did they bother to make her a Buddhist monk? – At least…
Reading Digest: New Year Edition
“Now this is exactly what Bart’s teacher was talking about. Our son did something wrong and you look the other way.” – Marge Simpson “But Marge, look at that hang dog expression; he’s learned his lesson. . . . Lets’ get him a present.” – Homer Simpson As expected, another short week on the internet led to another short Reading Digest. For some reason, people just didn’t want to spend a lot of time between Christmas and New Year’s putting meaningless crap on-line. (Weirdos.) Anyway, we do have some people quoting the show, and talking about the show, and making animated .gifs about the show. We even have two links that agree with us. But first, it’s time for the programming note: *** Seeing has how next week will be the first regular week in the better part of a month, including new Zombie Simpsons on Sunday, I wanted to highlight a couple of comments from the New Year’s Eve post: mcheese 31 December 2012 at 9:51 pm Bring back compare and contrast! Or atleast post some sort of content examining the new episodes. And: ecco6t9 1 January 2013 at 2:01 am What happened here? Lightning hit the transmitter? My original plan for Season 24 was to do Compare & Contrasts for about half the episodes, but Zombie Simpsons has been through eight episodes so far and I’ve only managed to mock two of them. That simply will not do. I wouldn’t call this a New Year’s resolution or anything, but those should be cropping up with more frequency here in 2013. The spinoff took way more of my time last year than I thought it would, but now that it looks like a site you wouldn’t be embarrassed to take your family (it’s even got a Quote of the Day), it should be easier for me to get Compare & Contrasts done. Anyway, here’s to less neglect in the new year. *** Enjoy. Eight Awesome Voice Actors and What They Actually Look Like – This is mostly Futurama and other non-Simpsons shows, but Castellaneta makes an appearance and there is a ton of great YouTube. Maurice LaMarche’s in particular is awesome, in no small part because making fun of William Shatner never gets old. Jokealong: HAMMOCKS – It is possible that Scorpio’s riff on hammocks is the best hammock joke in the English language. The Simpsons and a Dance Party at the 2013 Tucson International Jewish Film Festival – Mike Reiss is going to be in Arizona: Opening night of the festival kicks off at The Loft and features special guest, Mike Reiss, longtime writer/producer of The Simpsons. Reiss will share rare clips and inside stories from one of the longest running shows in T.V. history. He’ll be at the Loft Cinemas next Thursday, January 10th. My boyfriend is an animator on The Simpsons. This is his attempt to entertain future plane-sick passegers on Southwest Airlines. – Heh. Are the new episodes of the simpsons not as funny as…
Quote of the Day
“Captain’s log, stardate sixty-fifty-one, had trouble sleeping last night. My hiatal hernia is acting up. The ship is drafty and damp. I complain but, nobody listens.” – Captain Kirk “Star Trek XII: So Very Tired. See the original cast in their latest, greatest adventure.” – TV Announcer “Captain, Klingons off the starboard bow.” – Mr. Sulu “Again with the Klingons. Mr. Scott, give me full power.” – Captain Kirk “It’s no good, captain, I canna reach the control panel.” – Mr. Scott Happy (belated) 20th Anniversary to “Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie”. Original airdate 3 November 1992. (Got lost in the craziness and confusion and mishegoss of the election.)
Quote of the Day
“Dad, I agree that Bart should be punished, but the Itchy and Scratchy movie is the defining event of our generation. How would you have liked it if someone told you that you couldn’t watch the moon landing?” – Lisa Simpson “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” – Neil Armstrong “Yummy yummy yummy I got love in my tummy and I feel like loving you.” – Homer Simpson
Internet History
“But the following year Scratchy was teamed up with a psychotic young mouse named Itchy, and cartoon history was made.” – Kent Brockman A few weeks ago, David Silverman tweeted the following: In case you can’t see the image, it says “Came across first known sighting of "worst episode ever" 11/3/92. This guy HATES ep 9F03 – just hilarious.” Indeed it is. Here’s the wonderfully archaic alt.tv.simpsons post from 4 November 1992 (the “>” on the top two lines are where he’s quoting a previous post): >Wow, what an intense episode. … I didn’t know it was >going to be so cool so I didn’t take notes. Anyway…… Intense? I thought this was easily the worst episode ever. Simply not funny. "Where did he put the firecracker?" I can’t imagine child abuse being funny. Now, somebody being eaten by a gorilla, somebody being hit by lightning, that’s funny. Child abuse is not. The way I interpreted it, this was a reference to a standard technique of using dolls to get physically/ sexually abused children to talk about the abuse incidents. Bart dropping his pants. How many times is this funny? Well, it was funny when we saw it in a previous episode. But I don’t think that Bart’s butt is inherintly funny. Also, we have never actually seen Homer spank Bart, have we? So why does Bart expect it so readily? Bart as a stripper. Really more repulsive than funny. The bad thing about things like this is that I used to disagree with parents who didn’t let their children watch the Simpsons – I no longer disagre with them. I would not have wanted my children (if I had any) to watch that scene. Star Trek. In Living Color has done it. Saturday Night Live has done it. Mad magazine has done it. Local high school talent shows have done it. Now, the Simpsons have done it, and they didn’t do it any better than anyone else. Should have left it alone, and come up with something original. Homer being very familiar with Chief Justices. (BTW, the title is ‘Chief Justice of the United States’, not ‘Chief Justice of the Supreme Court’ – don’t know if this error was intentional or not, it’s not really important.) Once in a while, when Homer throws out something like that, it is funny. Yes, it is out of character for Homer to say anything too intellectual, but I admit one of my favorite Simpson’s moment is when Homer is intervening in an argument between Lisa and the Albanian kid (Adil?) and he says something about ‘the blood of the workers oiling the machinery of capitalism’. But that was just a one time thing. maybe it was something that Homer heard once, and it got stuck somewhere in his brain. But we know that this is an aberration, Homer is simply not a bright guy. I can’t believe he is that familiar with the names of the Supreme court justices. (However, I did…
Quote of the Day
“I’m here live in Korea to give you a first hand look at how American cartoons are made.” – Kent Brockman Happy birthday Phil Roman!
Quote of the Day
Image used under Creative Commons license from Flickr user denverkid. “Now, what were we talking about, boy?” – Homer Simpson “Uh, we were talking about the time you beat jury duty.” – Bart Simpson “Oh yeah, the trick is to say you’re prejudiced against all races.” – Homer Simpson
Quote of the Day
“Bart, come quick, there’s an Itchy & Scratchy movie!” – Lisa Simpson “If you want suspense . . . romance . . . you’ll find it at the Itchy & Scratchy movie, coming soon to a theater near you. Fifty-three percent new footage.” – TV Announcer Happy Birthday Phil Roman!
Compare & Contrast: Disney, The Simpsons, & Zombie Simpsons
“Yeah, I used to be rich. I owned Mickey Mouse Massage Parlors, then those Disney sleazeballs shut me down. I said, ‘Look, I’ll change the logo, put Mickey’s pants back on!’ Pfft, some guys you just can’t reason with.” – Railroad Bridge Bum Walter Elias Disney is an inescapable presence in American animation. Whether or not you like him, his work, or the giant company he spawned, when it comes to animation you are living in a world he did a great deal to shape. The Simpsons always had some fun with this, enough that SNPP has an entire page dedicated to the show’s various Disney references and parodies. Zombie Simpsons occasionally attempts to do this as well and, as with so much of Zombie Simpsons, falls haplessly short. In “How Munched Is That Birdie in the Window”, Zombie Simpsons had what passed for an Itchy & Scratchy segment that was loosely based off of an old Disney cartoon called “Pluto’s Judgement Day”. I mentioned this in Crazy Noises, but the animation here is really peculiar and I wanted to highlight it with examples. Look at the startling contrast between Itchy and the background here: The two things that jump out are the coloring and the crispness. The cave walls in the background and the podium in the foreground are both colored in various hues and shades. The background especially gets darker to give the impression of a deep recess in the cave. By contrast, Itchy is flat and monochromatic. Every part of his face is the same color; his gavel, clothes and gloves also remain the exact same color and shade no matter what he does: Itchy has gone from far away from the camera to right into the lens, and yet the only thing that changes is the shape of his various parts and objects, nothing in the coloring gives any hint that he’s moved at all. The dramatic lighting of the background is similarly ignored. Itchy got bigger, but there’s nothing other than size to indicate that he’s actually gestured forward. The precision of the lines on Itchy compared with the background is even more jarring. Look at the awkward juxtaposition of his sharp hand against the fuzzy podium. Now compare that to the gavel and the background behind it. The two are identical – sharp lines vs fuzzy ones – which makes the overall image even more awkward because his hand is supposed to be physically on the podium and the gavel is supposed to be far in front of the cave walls. The entire image is muddled because all of the tricks that give depth to the podium and the walls are ignored for Itchy. Now take a look at the Disney original (please forgive the lower resolution, I had to grab this from YouTube): The backgrounds are very similar in that they’re a little fuzzy and make a lot of use of color to both make the podium look tall and the walls look…