The Simpsons' Warm Glowing Warming Glow

Or, Dental Plan; Simpsons Fans Need Their Fix.

Some credit is due to whoever was honest enough to tell us that 24-hour Simpsons access will inevitably be bad for our (until now) functioning civilization, leaving us all little choice but to crack each others' heads open and feast on the goo inside. I'd like to say that mainlining Simpsons episodes and being relatively productive in life are not mutually exclusive aims. But, then, I have over twenty years of experience. You might say that I am horrifyingly qualified to thrive in a world in which a Simpsons episode is playing somewhere in the background at all times. But it may be a rough transition for many others.

Simpsons World would come as happier news if over half of the show's now 552 episodes weren't coming from the bleak, post-Golden Age era. But that's a criticism you probably saw coming. Let's try again: those of us who grew up with the show, have seen every episode at least four times, and have the DVD box sets are the ones who'll be most grateful for such a thing. We're also the last people who need it. We can already run entire episodes in our heads and conjure memories of any scene for any reason no reason at all.

Somewhere, there are people sorely in need of this service (I still get sad when someone tells me they weren't allowed to watch The Simpsons as a kid--how do you even have conversations?). But they've had ample time to seek out the show and it seems unlikely to me that Simpsons World will finally make them do it. Maybe if it were bought up by Netflix or Amazon Prime, but even then...

Now, I need to be careful about how I use the first person plural here because I'm not sure to how many people this applies. The Internet makes our numbers appear larger than they are. But conversely, polite company makes us seem fewer than we are. However, there are at least several of us out there. Those of us who were raised by the show; who can quote whole episodes backward and forward; and can peg any freeze frame to a specific episode, naming the proper title of the episode and the season will be the ones embiggening ourselves through this cromulent new service (at one time, I could rattle off a few episode production codes; that's not bragging, it's just a sad, sad fact).

Essentially, Simpsons World acts as a specialized content provider, giving users every episode, along with clips, playlists, etc. Viewers can even construct their own playlists and have episodes and clips suggested for them. Meanwhile, FXX (the availability of which will, like Simpsons World, be dependent on one's cable provider having a deal with the original FX), will have broadcast rights for all episodes, and will likely air lengthier marathons in sync with new episodes being broadcast over on Fox--if an upcoming episode revolves around Krusty, for example, FXX will air a bunch of old Krusty episodes, reminding viewers of a time when they loved Krusty. In celebration of this arrangement, FXX will be running a twelve-day marathon of all 552 episodes.

So, for the cost of also having FXX grafted onto our cable packages (we still need the bundles in order to watch things, apparently), it almost seems more trouble than it's worth. Especially if, as stated, we're prepared to cling to our box sets until physical media dies. However, the playlists might make this thing worth it on their own. Many of us already have themed marathons in our heads; Simpsons World will just make them easier to construct for ourselves and others to watch. That said, I'm not sure what Simpsons fan needs recommendations.

The twelve-day marathon is intriguing, but is really nothing more than an extended version of what Simpsons fans have been doing themselves since the olden days. In those days, "binging" was called "marathoning" and nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. In college, I myself once marathoned season three all the way through solely because I was bored and had no girlfriend; that may have been kind of a chicken-and-the-egg situation. And, anyway, would it be worth sticking around much beyond day three or four, if the episodes are run chronologically? Yes, there's the easy knock again. Sorry, it's a reflex.

But that reflex may prove a point: we can't let it go. The show has entwined itself with our DNA, changing us, like when you stand next to a microwave for too long (I don't know how microwaves work). The show is a part of the way we think and a part of the way we engage with the world. And for the same reason that we can't reflect on either old or new episodes without reflexively adding "too bad the new episodes suck" we cannot turn down Simpsons swag, in whatever form it presents itself. Like moths to flame. Or Lisa to the Corey hotline. So we don't need Simpsons World. But damned if we won't use it.

It's a canny move for a fledgling network (which itself seems wholly unnecessary, but I suppose FX needs more time to show movies with director's commentary). They know we can't won't turn away. Why, once we no longer have to get up to change the discs, it won't be long before we're washing ourselves with rags on sticks.

In Which I Look Awkward on Camera

As part of my partnership with aois21, here is the first of several promotional videos for Nos Populus and The Half-Drunken Scribe. For regular readers, there's not a lot here that's new, but you get to see my t-shirt with its stretched-out collar and hear my Tracey Ullman-era Homer Simpson voice* talking about my writing. And blinking... so much blinking.

My apologies to aois21 for not having prepared for this any better. I could've at least worn a decent shirt. I can't take myself anywhere. If I had prepared more, I would've had more to say, but I'm not all that eloquent when on the spot. I tend to just let syllables fall out of my mouth and hope for the best.

I'll probably definitely think of some more footnotes later but just to start: I was glib in talking about the difficulty of making politics seem more absurd than they are. I'd shudder if I heard that kind of oversimplification coming out of someone else. So if I can be given a chance to explain (which, hey, I have been): Congress is terrible. We all agree? Good, moving on. No, I don't choose difficult targets. But my fear while writing Nos Populus was that transcribing real speeches and documenting real events (which might've been possible in this context) wouldn't have translated and probably would've come off boring, instead of clownish and nauseating. So I decided to amplify the inanity that already was/is, subsequently creating more work for myself.

Second, in an upcoming video, I mention Sinclair Lewis as an influence. For completeness' sake, this is the book that first sparked the idea that would become Nos Populus, an influence I've mentioned before. Sad to say, that book is not one of Lewis' best (there's a reason it was out of print for so many years). Instead, I'd suggest starting with Main Street, a book that got Lewis into some trouble, forcing him to create the fictional city of Zenith, Winnemac, so he could have a setting for his yarns that didn't offend the thin-skinned reading public of the 1920s (we're bigger than that now). 

That's it for now. More videos to come.

*The voice was initially based on Walter Matthau, but it always sounded to me like Matthau talking into a dimwit filter. Which, in a way...

St. Paddy's 2014

I'm susceptible to cultural cringe from any number of directions, but the reinforcin' o' the stereotypes remains particularly galling.

I once said that "if you're the type to hit up an Irish pub on St. Paddy's, you're begging for an underwhelming night (you may also be a tool)." That last bit may have been harsh since, if you've attempted to engage an Irish bar on St. Patrick's Day (or in the preceding weekend, as the calendar has conspired to do this year--we can't all live in Boston), you've suffered enough without being called names.

Why do we require such a thin excuse in order to get plastered? We're adults--if we want to knock back a few at 11am on March 17th, let's go for it. But that's socially unacceptable unless we can peg it to a reason--holidays, weddings, not guilty verdicts, etc. The temperance movement may have lost, but it managed to leave behind acres of bad wiring in our cultural brain. It's a complicated relationship, but that's probably unavoidable. We're talking about a substance that tastes great and makes us feel temporarily invulnerable, before occasionally destroying us. In deference to that, let's acknowledge that hanging our binge drinking urge on a civilization that was partially devastated (and partially saved) by booze may be something like tempting fate. At the very least, and especially if you know you're a lightweight, don't pretend to be Irish while you're coughing up that half-curdled carbomb. It's embarrassing for everyone.

But I don't want to be gloomy on St. Patrick's Day. I really don't. To that end, I was happy to read that Sam Adams, Heineken, and Guinness (along with some local politicians) have pulled out of parades in New York and Boston today on the grounds that the Irish dons' long-standing stonewalling of the LBGT community is disgusting. Which it is. Check out the pious statement from the organizers of the Boston parade: "we must maintain our guidelines to insure the enjoyment and public safety of our spectators." As though anyone has ever enjoyed a parade. Anyway, this basic recognition of human decency seems a small thing, after an historic last few years for gay equality. But after such tidal waves, we may now have to measure these things in the micro-sense. And each one of those small things will be reason enough to hoist a pint. Or three.

I Forgot "Mr. Plow"

The A.V. Club acknowledges up front that no ten episodes can truly summarize The Simpsons. This admission takes some of the sting out of their snubbing of season five. One could nearly summarize the series by picking ten episodes from that season alone. Maybe it was an unadvertised challenge, leaving season five and making a difficult task even harder for no good reason. But then we scroll down and see "$pringfield" and "Bart Gets Famous" hanging out with the honorable mentions, teasing us. Like God teased Moses in the desert.

Still, it's not a bad list. It's not as though any of the ten episodes chosen by A.V. Club contributor Kyle Ryan fail to meet the criteria; "most quintessential" is easily conflated with "best" but is not the same. If I were allowed to list the thirty most quintessential episodes, I would surely hit all ten of Ryan's choices; and that would be thirty out of the 248 pre-fan fiction era episodes. That Ryan considered all 24 seasons for inclusion makes the job... well, marginally more difficult, anyway (his list includes the season eleven finale, "Behind the Laughter," while season fifteen's "The Regina Monologues" is among the also-rans). And that I agree with just four of his top ten has as much to do with the fact that the series is difficult to encapsulate as it does with the fact that Ryan is a stupid moron with an ugly face and big butt and his butt smells and he likes to kiss his own butt. 

This is a difficult task and it's probable that no two lists would look exactly alike. But that's the point of lists. You see someone compile a list of the greatest albums of all time and they put Nevermind at 18, while Led Zeppelin IV languishes at 69. Now you have to make your own goddamn list because that'll show 'em! Then you get stuck, because you know that London Calling and Born to Run both belong in the top five, but one of them has to give and, Jesus, this is hard, but at least it'll be better than that other list!

I had narrowed this list down to about thirty entries when it began to get hard. Ten cuts later, it got heartbreaking. That's why God gave us honorable mentions. It helped to remember that this is not a list of best or favorite episodes (still, cutting "Homer Goes to College" really hurt).

• "Treehouse of Horror" - Included here as a stand-in for all the "Treehouses" that followed. As the show went to hell, you could usually expect good things from these, even when they were airing closer to Thanksgiving.
• "The Way We Was" - Ryan chooses this one for its indispensable Simpsons mythology. And while it wasn't the best flashback episode they'd do (that would be "Lisa's First Word"), it did make the rest possible.
• "Marge vs. the Monorail" - The Simpsons does singing and dancing better than the original musicals it parodies. Of course, it helps when you have Phil Hartman. 
• "I Love Lisa" - Lisa gets an unfair rap from fans, oblivious to how important pathos is to comedy. And this episode has that in spades. And some prime Krusty material to boot.
• "Last Exit to Springfield" - Call and response time: "Dental Plan..."
• "Cape Feare" - You want to know how wrong Ryan's list was? No Sideshow Bob. On a list of the most quintessential Simpsons episodes, Bart's second mortal enemy goes unlisted. No stepping on rakes, no Die Bart Die, no H.M.S. Pinafore, no "Hello, Mr. Thompson." For shame, Ryan. I Kill You Scum.
• "Rosebud" - While "Last Exit" provides a decent dosage of Mr. Burns, no such list is complete without the full Monty.
• "Bart's Inner Child" - Two things: 1, Albert Brooks. 2, Springfield's easily provoked mob mentality, displayed more beautifully here than in perhaps any other episode. 
• "Bart Sells His Soul" - The Simpsons did religion/spirituality better than anyone before or since and this one toes the line of spiritual crisis without spilling into melodrama, something the subject often seems prone to. The sheer volume of Milhouse doesn't hurt, either. Plus, you know, ALF. In pog form.
• "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show" - There, but for the Grace of God... 

Comic Book Guy: Last night's Itchy & Scratchy was, without a doubt, the worst episode ever. Rest assured that I was on the Internet within minutes, registering my disgust throughout the world. 

Bart: Hey, I know it wasn't great, but what right do you have to complain? 

Comic Book Guy: As a loyal viewer, I feel they owe me. 

Bart: What? They're giving you thousands of hours of entertainment for free. What could they possibly owe you? If anything, you owe them. 

Comic Book Guy: *pause* Worst episode ever.

Also ran:

• "Homer at the Bat"
• "Homer the Heretic"
• "Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie"- Possibly the first to ever to be dubbed "worst episode ever"
• "Lisa's First Word"
• "Homer Goes To College"
• "The Boy Who Knew Too Much"
• "Itchy & Scratchy Land"
• "You Only Move Twice"
• "Homer vs. the Eighteenth Amendment"
• "Behind the Laughter"

(Picture courtesy Simpsons quotes that nobody gets anymore)

David Petraeus (Ret.), Reality TV Star

I feel like I'm supposed to care about the Petraeus thing. I tried, too. Nothing's clicking for me on this one.

As far as I can tell, there's no deep national security significance, at least not given that Petraeus has resigned and the biography's been written (unethical, maybe, but that's more on Broadwell than Petraeus) and that he's still available for any questions we might have. Sure, it could mean the guy's ego was so huge that he thought no one could take him down. But it's just as likely that the guy was humble enough to know that he needed to step back. All character hypotheticals are moot now that he's gone, anyway. At worst, this thing makes him the last in a line of 2000s-era War on Terror guys to to have the bear eat them, rather than the other way 'round. Probably not great for national morale, but what from the Bush II years is? I say junk the whole lot of it. Forward, etc.

And this is the CIA, for Christ's sake. When did morality become a standard for judging anyone over there? You don't have to be an adultery apologist to see the disconnect of priorities here. Drone warfare? Shit, what's that? Powerful guy consensually boning two separate women who aren't his wife? Raging media hard-on. Sure, it's slimy, but come on.

It doesn't matter how long ago graduation was, we're all stuck in high school. And where do semi-powerful, emotionally-stunted-at-high-school, semi-powerful adults best fit in? That's right: reality TV. I've seen several people comment that the entire embarassment would make for some ripping good melodrama. That should be a sad observation, but I say let it be done. At least there, it'll be relegated to a realm I don't have to pay attention to. Put them out there and let them play in the sandbox of their making, wallowing in the precise amount of dignity they've earned for themselves. And we'll watch them, chortling and groaning in equal measure, because TV's bottomless chum bucket has claimed Vanessa Redgrave respected, high level government officials.

Moving

Few things compare to the emotional, psychological, and physical toll of having half of one's life consigned to boxes, with the other half still to be boxed. There are worse fates, of course; petty, unjust imprisonment, for one. But among life's more banal hardships, moving remains the king of White People Problems Mountain.

I've moved something over a half dozen times in my life (not counting in-and-out-of college dorms, which should never count). One trick I've learned to stave off the spiritual costs of moving is to have beloved television shows provide background noise for the packing marathon. Unfortunately, our DVDs were among the first things that were packed--I sure hope someone got fired for that blunder--depriving us of the first eleven seasons of The Simpsons (I consider anything after that to be fan fiction, at best). But Netflix streaming has sufficed. We started with Archer (you can add season three anytime, Netflix), before moving onto Parks and Recreation, which we're now through for the third or fourth time. Turns out Bob's Burgers is available for streaming, so that'll probably be next. We could shotgun Arrested Development again, but I seems a waste to stream a show I already have on DVD, even if the discs are presently confined to a box at the bottom of a mountain of boxes. It'd be nice if Party Down were still available; almost as nice as if Party Down had never gotten canceled

It'd be nicer still if my laptop's backlight hadn't given out, leaving me without a portable method with which to reach Netflix. My wife has a working laptop, of course, but she's been using it to feed her mild addiction to Bar Rescue (a show that's inspired a few thoughts, some of which may end up here soon).

I suppose I could watch the Republican National Convention while I finish packing (or the DNC, for the unpacking), but I don't hate myself that much. Sure, it means passing up a few scraps of semi-decent blog material, pried from the sickly muck of over-cooked tripe. And, yes, it means missing out on the handful of short-lived, shorter-traveled memes that will spring from the accidental belch of one professional bloviator or another during the otherwise uber-choreographed circle jerk. But, again, the required level of disregard for my basic well-being is a little beyond my reach at the moment. I'd like to be able to live to see my next apartment.

This is all longhand for saying that there may not be a lot of updates round here for a few more days. Enjoy the last weeks of summer, children. Fall will not be so kind.

Now, Rex, Don't You Eat That Pie

The New York Jets bring Jesus in to challenge for the starting QB job and promptly experience breakouts of fisticuffs.  Mixing religious fervor and a sport designed around violence.  Truly no one could've foreseen this outcome. 

Now, my sources tell me that--despite some previous public words to the contrary--QB Mark Sanchez resented having his starting spot challenged by someone even more mediocre than he.  To underscore this, the former GQ cover-man ripped the head off Tim Tebow's Mr. Honeybunny doll.  Tim, still completely unaware how douchey many people find his schtick, cheerfully countered that Mr. Honeybunny was actually Mark's cherished childhood toy.  Mark eventually relented and agreed to leave the locker room, but on his way he'd be, quote "doing this"--here beginning to windmill his arms around and around--and warned that "if anyone got hit, it would be their own fault."  Tim replied in kind and said he would "start kicking air like this" and is rumored to have said that if anyone got hit, it would be Satan's their own fault.  The Jets locker room was then suddenly full of swinging arms and kicking legs slowly advancing on one another, revealing a previously unknown locker room split over Mr. Honeybunny the starting QB position. 

As coaches made their way toward the brawling players, someone remembered to scold Head Coach Rex Ryan not to, quote, "eat that pie."  I'm still awaiting word on how exactly Coach Ryan received the concussion that landed him in a nearby medical facility, but the NFL has promised to look into all pie-related injuries. 

Life In Hell

"Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, trapping you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come."
-- Matt Groening

Matt Groening ended his Life in Hell last week.

No, wait.  Sorry.  He ended his long-running comic strip Life in Hell last week.  I never read a lot of the strip, outside of the stuff I found in the collected editions in the kind of bookstores that never would've sold LIH had its creator not also been the co-creator of The Simpsons.  Indeed, if not for The Simpsons, I never would've known about it at all.  I was raised too far away (in both time and space) from the epicenters of the alt-weeklies that provided an understanding home for Binky, Bongo, Sheba, and Akbar and Jeff.  Even if I had been an adolescent/early-adult in the eighties in a town like Chicago or Seattle or L.A., I still probably wouldn't have been with-it enough to delve into them much.  Unless perhaps I stumbled upon them in some dusty comic book shop.  But who knows how long I would've stuck with them without a regular, pointed fix?  It's only now, as the age of those physical stores passes, that huge numbers of us are able to absorb this kind of darkly incisive and borderline subversive work as easily as we do (time and space are not excuses anymore).  And let us not forget how lucky we are for that. 

That's the beauty of the Internet, satisfying niches with large enough demand to make them shine for a brief, effervescent moment but are so small as to be unappealing to the publishers and producers that ran an ancient media era (and tenuously cling to their control still) and would therefore have hardly existed.  Life in Hell would go over just as well today as a web-comic as it did in the alt-weeklies 34 years ago.  The Oatmeals and the XKCDs that owe no small credit to Groening's sensibilities and influences would be endlessly compared to LIH, sometimes positively, sometimes not.  But LIH was accessible only to a few and at that time, that meant a kind of quality control you would never expect from mass-seen works, even if you sometimes got it.  If James L. Brooks hadn't been living and working in L.A. in the eighties (though I'm not sure where else an acclaimed film producer would be living), he probably never would have seen LIH.  In which case, he never would've called Groening in to pitch a TV show.  And without that pitch, we never would have gotten LIH's greatest legacy: the institution to which modern television and Internet humor in general owe their greatest debts. 

I have a lot to say about The Simpsons.  No, really, a lot.  That formless, word dump of a post about a hypothetical Justice League movie?  That was nothing compared to what I could write about the show that partly raised me (the first Tracy Ullman shorts aired just months after I was born).  There are very few topics you can throw at me that I can't somehow relate to one Simpsons moment or another.  I've established close, long-lasting friendships on an initial foundation of Simpsons quote-fests. The Golden Age--that's seasons 4 through 8--still informs sizable chunks of my philosophies on politics, religion, morality, writing, comedy, pop culture, and loads of other things I probably don't even realize.  And it's sad decline over the last decade-plus taught me the pitfalls of hero-worship and (along with the Cubs) how to love something while not letting that thing wholly define me, how to accept the imperfection of the things I love.  That probably sounds sad to people who weren't raised on The Simpsons.  And that's fine.  I'm sure whatever icon they were raised on is almost as good as mine. 

Those are thoughts better saved for their own post or posts.  There will always be more time for a show that's primed to go for a few seasons more, making for a psychologically satisfying 25... and no end in sight.  That's nine fewer than LIH had in its run.  I suppose that's something to think about, when I complain about how long The Simpsons has stretched itself.  But if I thought that the final episode of The Simpsons could buck the trend of the last ten seasons or so and be as true (and, therefore, poignant) to its original incarnation as the last edition of LIH was, then I probably wouldn't have a lot of reason to complain.