“I’m not some dizzy starlet who can’t string two words together!” – C.M. Burns It is my great relief to announce a project that has been the better part of a year in the making: “Zombie Simpsons: How the Best Show Ever Became the Broadcasting Undead”. It’s a mini-book (~22,000 words) that is as close as I can come to a definitive statement on how The Simpsons became Zombie Simpsons. Table of contents: Part I – Putting the Spring in Springfield 1 – What Is Zombie Simpsons? 2 – The Terrible World of 1980s Television 3 – The Most Anti-Authority…
Tag: The Critic
Sorry Everyone, The Banksy Thing Is Lame
Fifteen years ago, when The Simpsons was still on the air, The Critic had a scene set in the “Oliver Twist Preschool”. Skip to the 4:30 mark: For anyone who can’t get the video, here’s the important part: Adorable Child Laborer: Sir, have we made enough Simpsons merchandise yet? Cruel Workhouse Guy: Never! Never, indeed. Three years before that, The Simpsons itself made fun of its own production process: Again, for anyone who can’t see the video (or in case it gets pulled): Kent Brockman: I’m here live in Korea to give you a first hand look at how American…
Phil Hartman Videos
The humane but determined boys down at No Pun Intended have put up a fantastic Phil Hartman tribute that is chock full of video, with everything from Simpsons to Saturday Night Live to Newsradio. Many of these are famous, but some of them are quite obscure. Sadly, Hulu does not have one of my all time favorite Hartman as Clinton skits, Real Stories of the Arkansas Highway Patrol. COPS has become such a part of the culture that we now call men’s undershirts “wifebeaters”, but back then it was all new. Seeing Hartman as the abused husband, in a wifebeater,…
Zombie Simpsons and Zombie Doris
“I can feel death’s clammy hand on my shoulder! Wait, that’s my hand.” – Abe “Grandpa” Simpson This list is a pretty impressive display of Simpsons trivia. It’s real deaths of real people that changed the way The Simpsons went. Doris Grau and Phil Hartman I knew about, but the other four were news to me. Go read the whole thing, it’s quite good. This deserves special notice as a further illustration of how horrifyingly soulless Zombie Simpsons truly is: Doris Grau died from lung cancer (who could have guessed?) on December 30, 1995, a scant eight days before the…