“You know, kids, I’m sure we’d all like to remember actor Dirk Richter for his portrayal of Radioactive Man, and not the sordid details of his final years, so let’s keep the questions tasteful, okay?” – “Close Encounter of the Comic Book Kind” Convention Guy When The Simpsons was still on the air, one of the most remarkable things about it was the sheer joke density of the writing. There were very few lines that weren’t jokes of some kind. Somewhere in the Ortved book, which I don’t have with me at the moment, someone recalls that at a writers’ meeting once they were arguing over a line. They were trying to cram extra gags into a single line so maniacally that whoever was in charge had to call a halt to things and say, “One joke per joke”. The above is a perfect example of that kind of relentless obsession with pitch perfect comic density. All by itself it’s a damn funny line, alluding to all those marvelously salacious stories of what happens to celebrities once the spotlight fades. And putting it into the mouth of a nervous adult who clearly doesn’t want to be discussing such things in front of kids just makes it better. But it’s not even the joke, it’s just a setup. The real joke comes twenty seconds later (twenty seconds of dialog that’s also crammed with punchlines), when Bart asks, “Do you think the ghost of Dirk Richter haunts the bordello where his bullet riddled body was found?” Bam, payoff! Now we know about those “sordid details” and, of course, it leads to Buddy Hodges’ hilarious breakdown where he calls Richter a “beautiful man”.
Tag: Three Men and a Comic Book
Quote of the Day
“Here you go, Apu.” – Bart Simpson “Oh, very good. Would you like the deposit defrayed from the cost of a jumbo cherry Squishee?” – Apu Nahasapeemapetilon “No, not today. I need the dime.” – Bart Simpson “Oh, it is good to see you are learning a trade.” – Apu Nahasapeemapetilon
Reading Digest: Quality(?) Over Quantity Edition
Image used under Creative Commons license from Flickr user Xopher Smith. “Guess what? For a dollar a man sold me thirty-five “Casper”s and a dozen “Lois Lane”s.” – Lisa Simpson I think the total number of links is down this week, but I also think I spent more time on some of them than I usually do. Whether or not this means an increase in quality or an increase in useless bloat is up to you, the reader. There’s an Ortved book review, a great blog (it’s the first link), some fan made art that combines Krusty and vodka, a philosophical question, and lots of usage. Enjoy. Update 5:57pm: The link about the interview with Simpsons alum Bill Oakley doesn’t video, but someone from the show he was on commented and pointed it out on YouTube. I’ve put up a separate post with the interview embedded. Many thanks. my favorite songs from the simpsons – This list is 100% pure Colombian WIN. It’s all classics, it’s got YouTube for all of them (though embedding is disabled on one) and the title of the blog is “lovely entropy”. Mmmmm, lovely entropy. As a special bonus if you click over there – which I strongly recommend you do – check out the graphic on the right hand side of “Links for Sunday”. If you have picked up a Nintendo controller in the last quarter century you will not be disappointed. (Also, she liked Ortved’s book.) BE MORE FUNNY! – This review of Ortved’s book strikes me as rather harsh. He criticizes using the concept of an “oral history” without freshly interviewing many big names but doesn’t mention the fact that getting guys like Simon, Swartzwelder, Meyer or Groening might be impossible. This, in particular, strikes me as rather narrow minded: But hey, we spend lots of time talking to various execs from Fox, and learn all about how the show got on the air–as if that’s the story anybody wants to hear. I wanted to hear that. I really enjoyed learning about how the show first got off the ground, if anything it gave me a fresh appreciation for just how fucking lucky we are that The Simpsons ever existed. The alignment of planets that allowed a show with that much editorial freedom to be so widely distributed at such a ripe moment for cultural satire will very likely never come again. I would also take exception to this: He claims The Simpsons was unique in sitcom history for its caustic worldview, though everything from Sgt. Bilko to Buffalo Bill prove otherwise. He wants us to believe that the show appeared fully-formed in a sea of prime time mediocrity, though its first season was wobbly and the network landscape already included Cheers, Roseanne, The Wonder Years and an early incarnation of Seinfeld. (True, none of these shows were as good as The Simpsons at its best, but they weren’t chopped liver.) Yes shows like “Cheers” and “Roseanne” were very popular and probably…
Quote of the Day
“Well, you know what I think? I think Casper is the ghost of Richie Rich.” – Bart Simpson “Hey, they do look alike!” – Lisa Simpson “Wonder how Richie died…” – Bart Simpson “Perhaps he realized how hollow the pursuit of money really is and took his own life.” – Lisa Simpson “Kids, could you lighten up a little?” – Marge Simpson
Sunday Morning Cartoons
“We worked so hard and now it’s all gone. We ended up with nothing because the three of us can’t share.” – Bart Simpson “What’s your point?” – Milhouse van Houten “Nothing, just kinda ticks me off.” – Bart Simpson That is how you end an episode between Bart and Milhouse. Or, if you need them to reconcile, you can have Bart smash open a Magic 8 Ball on Milhouse’s skull, but it’s a sweet moment because he didn’t use the brick, broken bottle or pair of scissors. Flowers and apologies? Fuck off, Zombie Simpsons.
End the Simpsons #2 – Think of the Children!
“Hey, when I was your age fifty cents was a lot of money.” – Homer Simpson “Really?” – Bart Simpson “Nah.” – Homer Simpson One of the many horrible side effects of the fact that there hasn’t been a genuine Simpsons episode in more than a decade is that we are now raising a generation of Simpsons cripples. Anyone born after the late 1980s didn’t become old enough to really appreciate the show until well after it’d fallen on hard times. These days even the syndication runs are so polluted with Zombie Simpsons and its semi-lifeless forbearers that a decent appreciation of the classics needs to be deliberately sought out or instilled. For example, I have a bunch of nieces and nephews ranging in age from six to thirteen; they all like watching The Simpsons. But they have a hard time distinguishing real Simpsons from Zombie Simpsons. When I get out my laptop at family gatherings and queue up some of the classics they’ll sit there, riveted to the screen, and laugh out loud. They TiVo the syndicated episodes at home, but until I started showing them the original seasons they had hardly seen any of those episodes. To them, The Simpsons is just another television show; there was never a time in their lives when it stood head and shoulders above everything else. Of course, the last thing any kid wants to hear from a grown up is some variation of, “In my day . . . we walked uphill to school/folks was tougher/Simpsons didn’t suck.” I haven’t found a way to break through that; maybe there isn’t one. That would be a pity because it would mean that the existence of Zombie Simpsons not only tarnishes a part of my upbringing, but it spoils what should be a cultural treasure for them as well. I’m not too worried though; as they get older they’ll be able to tell shit from Shinola.