“My old roommates, the nerds! Aww. You working?” – Homer Simpson
“Oh, my, yes, I’m on a secret project that I’m not at liberty to divulge . . . cough, cyborgs.” – Fat Nerd
We’ve got a bunch of news this week about current and former Simpsons staffers: David Silverman got a new job, Harry Shearer is in Wales, Mike Reiss gave a talk at Harvard, and Sam Simon continues to be awesome. (There’s also a Zombie Simpsons writer making an ass of himself, but he doesn’t count.) In addition to that, there’s plenty of video game YouTube, fancy New York musicians, some excellent usage, several good lists, and Family Guy once again following in the profitable footsteps of The Simpsons.
Enjoy.
The Simpsons: 10 Real Unaired Pitches (And What They Could Have Been About) - Smooth Charlie’s Link of the Week is this collection of unaired episodes that appear to all be from the early years. A few of these I’d heard of before because they’re discussed on commentary tracks, others were new to me (and some have more dubious sourcing that others), but it’s worth a look even if it is in an annoying pageview whore click-for-each-one format.
Laughing in Purgatory: Mike Reiss of The Simpsons at the Humanist Hub - Video of a talk Reiss gave to a bunch of people at Harvard. It’s long, but funny throughout:
“Or, as the old joke goes, I’m Jew-ish, and by that I mean that I would never eat a ham sandwich . . . in a synagogue . . . on Yom Kippur . . . if there was anybody watching.”
The Simpsons’ “Lunchlady Doris” is “Lunchlady Dora” now - Apparently the Zombie Simpsons writers finally realized that having Lunchlady Doris still be on the show after Doris Grau died wasn’t a good look for them. In typical Zombie Simpsons fashion, they half assed it by trying to retcon her name but leaving everything else the same. Then, as if to underscore how butthurt and hacktacular they are, one of them took to Twitter in a hapless attempt to paper it all over:
His story there is that they used the same character model, had someone try to do a voice that sounded like Grau’s, and never mentioned the name change for nineteen years, but that they’ve always thought of her as “Dora” in that time, “out of respect”. Sorry, but I gotta call bullshit on that. You guys replaced her voice and used the same character. It was a shitty thing to do, and I’m glad there’s some attempt to rectify it now, but what’s done is done. You can’t go back and pretend you never did the shitty thing in the first place.
Why I caved and had my Springfield hacked. - A thoughtful post on cheating in Tapped Out. I’m kinda surprised that it worked, but EA deserves no sympathy so I say go for it.
Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff - And, since there’s no point having a hundred million dollar cash cow if you can’t copy it directly to try and make a second one, the Family Guy Tapped Out clone will be available next week.
The Simpsons ‘could last 50 years’ - This was making the rounds the last couple of days because Jean said “I can’t see why we wouldn’t go to 30 . . .and why can’t we go to 40 or even 50″. It’s just his usual boilerplate being blown out of proportion by pageview hungry bloggers and columnists who saw a chance for a clickable headline. Ignore it.
What ‘The Simpsons’ Says About Ukraine’s Language Divide - Apparently they stopped broadcasting an official Ukrainian language version five years ago.
Twin Peaks and The Simpsons – together at last? Characters from David Lynch show get a Simpsons makeover – This was floating around this week, and is kinda good, but where’s the unicorn and the traffic light?
Classic Food-Related Simpsons Moments - Great list:
This is a truly inspired culinary invention. It is no less than a block of butter covered in caramel and waffle mix held together with a cocktail stick. A reminder for all to follow your food related fantasies and it might just result in something beautiful.
And no Zombie Simpsons.
An ode to Lisa Simpson - As usual, Lisa is a hero, but this is impressive remote handling:
Growing up with older siblings, especially my brother Patrick, I was exposed to “The Simpsons” at far, far too early an age. We used to sit around the family room almost every night, flipping between two different episodes of the show, which ran at the same time on two different stations. With this method and my brother’s admirable dedication, I had watched hundreds of episodes by age 10
Calculate your total time spent watching TV shows - The Simpsons comes in at 11d:13h:30m, but that’s if you only watch episodes once, which, yeah. (via)
Top 10 Homer Simpson moments - This is also one of those annoying pageview gluttons, but it does have some good YouTube and there’s no Zombie Simpsons.
The Simpsons: 20 Annoying Mistakes You Didn’t Notice - Yet more pageview whoring, but this one lists a lot of “mistakes” that are all pretty much problems with Zombie Simpsons. Funny how that works.
Animated/Live Action ‘Pink Panther’ Film In The Works, Will Focus On Cartoon Character, Not Inspector Clouseau - David Silverman’s going to direct. I’d watch that.
Simpsons Writer Sam Simon Sponsoring Blackfish Racecar At Talladega - Sam Simon continues to spend money on pretty damn cool things.
Voice of The Simpsons Harry Shearer speaks about Llanelli’s fast-flowing conversation - Harry Shearer goes to Wales and makes nice with the locals.
Video: This cartoon theme song mashup will make you feel nostalgia – A long video of cartoon theme songs put out by Carnegie Hall, of all places:
They don’t play much from each theme, so they pack a ton into just five minutes. (The Simpsons part is at the 3:00 mark.)
Treading Water – The show relieving inter-generational tension:
I requested The Simpsons for my kids via netflix and the dvds happened to arrive during my mom’s visit. Now I know my mom HATES the Simpsons so I waited until she was asleep to put them on for the kids. But she ended up waking up… standing in the living room and even laughed at a few of the jokes.
Later she says to me, “I used to think The Simpsons was disgraceful, but compared to what’s out there today it’s not so bad.”
In other words… I’m letting my kids watch “disgraceful” programming.
And she’s a liberal, what liberal doesn’t love The Simpsons?
She laughed. You did good.
WEEKEND RECAP. – An excellent old Simpsons book found at a second hand store.
Classic Intel Ad! – An old Simpsons ad for the Pentium II. Ha!
Keeping It Cool - His mom says he’s cool.
Happy April Fools! – Call in the Code 8!
Super Soul Simpsons Sunday - Heh.
Kue ulang tahun simpson – DADDY – A pretty awesome Homer birthday cake.
Neither A Review Of “Breaking Bad” Nor Of “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” – Excellent usage:
Marge: We drove around until three in the morning looking for another open all-you-can-eat seafood restaurant.
Lionel Hutz: And when you couldn’t find one?
Marge: [crying] We… went… fishing.
Lionel Hutz: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, do these sound like the actions of a man whose had ALL he could eat?
Does my wife sound like someone who has had all the “Breaking Bad” she could watch?
No!
SAHM (because giving it a natty acronym makes it less painful) – A woman contemplates being at home for the first time:
It was never meant to be easy! I might just have to replace the wine with coffee and take my inspiration from Marge.
Just set the vacuum on dirt patrol.
Simpsons Hit and Run – Speedrun - Have two hours to kill watching a stranger fly through an eleven-year-old video game? You’re in luck.
Top 5 Simpsons Games - From the same site as the above, a seven minute YouTube video of the best Simpsons games.
Virtual Springfield Gameplay - And our final video game YouTube is that weird encyclopedia type game that they released.
Random Simpsons Screencap of the Day 3/28/14 – I think we should go.
Random Simpsons Screencap of the Day 4/1/14 – Great grab of Homer peeling the duct tape off Bart’s eyes.
Captain’s Log Day #223 – Some magical animal – Heh.
Dissected: The Simpsons by East India Youth – And finally, I get to end as I prefer, with someone who agrees with us, in this case in a long interview about the show with some .gifs and plenty of YouTube:
I think the most important thing to mention here (and you should definitely write this up): I don’t think it’s possible to have that connection to the show anymore, with the new episodes. You know this as well as I do I’d think, but there’s definitely a golden age to that show.
Seasons Two to Nine we’re talking?
EIY: Yeah… And the super fans of the show totally respect that, it’s like an unwritten rule isn’t it? That is the best period.
Well, it’s not unwritten (ahem), but yeah.
