“Holy moly, nine-thirty! Hello, Marge, sorry I didn’t call, but it’s been a madhouse down here. Yeah, these twelve hour days are killing me.” – Homer Simpson
My apologies, but there won’t be a Reading Digest this week. I am eyeballs deep in my stupid real job. However, there are two things I’d like to note.
First, the radio silence regarding the show being on hiatus continues. I checked a few staff Twitter accounts and haven’t seen peep outside of Jean responding to someone from No Homers that the negotiations are ongoing. (Sadly, Isabel Vega has deleted her Twitter account after her tweets kept popping up here and elsewhere in Simpsons fandom. Sorry, Isabel! Really didn’t want to get you in trouble or anything.) One of the last tweets from Vega was that increasing numbers of staff are being told not to come in and that people around the office are worried:
That moment when a director goes around saying good-bye to the remaining crew saying “See you next season, if there is one…” #TheSimpsons
So we’re about where we were last week: nobody’s saying squat. That is probably for the best, since swirling rumors and ill sourced media speculation don’t have any bearing on the negotiations but do get a lot of people agitated for no reason. My money continues to be on the show getting renewed.
Second, and far more fun, is this fantastic article (that mentions Zombie Simpsons by name) about the unrivaled cultural legacy of the show:
The Simpsons – the Shakespeare of our time?
We’re automatically programmed to know that Dickens was the greatest writer of his day. It’s reasonable to assume that in the 19th century he was just really, really popular. Nobody in that age would have guessed that they would be teaching his work in primary schools a century down the line. The reason they do so is because it was the most accurate satire of Victorian England, much like The Simpsons to the modern West.
I highly recommend the whole thing.
