“Is it true you attempted suicide when you heard the news?” – Vulture #1
“Are you and Princess Di just friends?” – Vulture #2
“You people make me sick! You’re vultures! Where were you when I sang at Farm Aid? Out of my way, you parasites! I said out of my way!” – Krusty the Klown
This week we’ve got four (count’ em four!) links to Vulture, which is doing yeoman’s work to promote the new season of Zombie Simpsons, which starts, ugh, on Sunday. The first one is by far the most interesting, but all of them have their moments, even if those moments serve as yet more evidence that nobody cares about Zombie Simpsons.
Other than that, this is a pretty short Reading Digest because the ever obsequious entertainment press is pimping both the Family Guy crossover and this goofy stunt about a character dying as hard as they possibly can. There’s no point to any of it, so I didn’t link any of it. There are some other lists and .gifs and the usual what-have-you, of course, but the marketing machine was at full power this week and that always screws up the signal-to-noise ratio.
Enjoy.
David Silverman on 8 Early Simpsons Sketches – Smooth Charlie’s Link of the Week is this guided tour of some very early sketches, including from “Bart the Genius”, “Life on the Fast Lane”, and a Butterfinger commercial. Really cool.
Simpsons Showrunners on the ‘Classic Era’ Myth – The headline for this interview with Jean, Mirkin and Selman is a little misleading in that they only mention their “myth” a little near the end. As per usual, the Soviet fiction of “the show is still good” is officially maintained while almost all the examples they cite are from single digit seasons. The intro even contains this:
Matt Selman is arguably the greatest Simpsons writer of the latter seasons, and many of the newer episodes on our list of the 100 best were written or co-showrun by him.
Talk about damning with faint praise!
28 Simpsons Quotes Every Fan Must Know – Our next Vulture link pretty much proves what I’m talking about above. There are 28 quotes. One (1) is from Zombie Simpsons (and it’s Season 16, which ain’t exactly recent in its own right).
Hank Azaria on 5 of His Many Simpsons Voices – And our final link from them is Azaria talking about some of the voices he does. There’s nothing really new here, but it’s kinda neat, and he repeats what he’s said before about how he really has no new voices to do, whereas he used to do tons of new ones.
“Land of Chocolate” by Alf Clausen – Fear Alf Clausen’s terrible gaze:
Hank Azaria As Chief Wiggum Sings “Let It Go” – Azaria went on the Conan O’Brien show and they talked about the Hollywood Bowl thing.
Miley Cyrus Wears Her Love Of ‘The Simpsons’ On Her Sleeve—You Can, Too – I feel dirty just for linking to this, but it’s an MTV link about a (probably paid promotional) celebrity selfie to flog Itchy & Scratchy pajamas. MTV is so naked about their sales job that they actually wrote this:
Drop Dead has developed a boutique Itchy & Scratchy Show collection in conjunction with Twentieth Century Fox Consumer Products featuring iconic Simpsons characters.
The name “MTV News” has never been synonymous with high journalistic standards (or really, any journalistic standards), but I find it hilarious that they actually bothered to use the full name “Twentieth Century Fox Consumer Products”. Did they copy and paste it directly from the press e-mail they got?
Kevin Cuneo: Golden age of ‘Simpsons’ flew by – A columnist old enough to have kids in their 20s laments the death of the show. Please refer to this the next time someone tells you people outgrew the show and that’s why they say it sucks now. This guy was an adult from start to finish, and he can see how crappy the new ones are.
‘The Simpsons’ Outfit Grids by Bryan Espritu – Nice touch giving Barney his jumbo thong bikini.
The City of New York Vs. Homer Simpson, 17 Years Later: Gothamist – A quick look back at the Twin Towers episode that morons pulled from syndication for a few years.
10 of Our Favorite Quotes from ‘The Simpsons’ – Nary a trace of Zombie Simpsons, and plenty of good YouTube.
Our 10 Favorite Simpsons Moments – From the same site as the above, there is a Zombie Simpsons one in here, but it’s surrounded by the acknowledgement that it was a “bad era”.
The Simpsons Family Book Comes Out Next Week! – There is a new reference book. That is all.
Round 127: Love, Springfieldian Style vs. Homer Goes to College – First up, Nebel’s exclusive interview with the Pope.
New trending GIF tagged the simpsons homer simpson… – A reversed one of Homer’s attempt at breakfast catching fire.
New trending GIF tagged the simpsons money make… – Money fight!
New trending GIF tagged the simpsons surprised homer… – The suckers’ll think it’s beer nuts.
Culture Shock Part II: The things you watch – I learned something today:
While consuming my regular intake of The Simpsons (Les Simpsons) I noticed another thing that brought up some questions about French broadcasting. The good ole’ Duff beer Homer J. Simpson was enjoying was blurred out! What the Duff!? After raising the question of why, I was informed that in France there is no alcohol promotion allowed whatsoever.
The Simpsons Took the Bowl – And finally, one last recap of the Hollywood Bowl show, one that happens to agree with us:
I was fairly worried that if they were trying to encapsulate the last 25 years of the show, I might be bored during the numbers I didn’t know, but if there was a song created on the show in the last ten years, I didn’t hear it. What I did hear were most of the greats over the show’s early run.
No, I’m not still jealous, why do you ask?
