There’s a nice menagerie this week. We’ve got the usual random internet crap, a spectacular usage fail, me hating on astrology, Simpsonized skeptics, and an oblique reference to the Miss Universe pageant.
10 Best Father/Son Wisdom Exchanges from TV and Movies – Bart and Homer make the list for Homer’s awesome “You’re not talking about killing anyone, are you?” speech.
Miss Kosovo vs Marge Simpson – You be the judge. – Miss Kosovo (it’s a country now!) lost the Miss Universe pageant to Miss Venezuela last Sunday. In this photo she has a bit of a “up” hair-do. Enh. If you ask me, they’re all winners.
No Grand Slam, but a Triple Crown, maybe – Reviewing the new movie “Bandslam”, Daniel Carey gets a silver star for this almost excellent usage:
THERE’S a great scene in ‘The Simpsons’ where Ralph Wiggum, interviewed by Krusty the Klown on live television, reveals that he loves Lisa Simpson and plans to marry her. A horrified Lisa screams ‘No!’ and admits that she only gave him a Valentine’s Day card because nobody else would. Afterwards, Lisa’s brother Bart plays her back the tape of the show in slow motion, and reveals that ‘you can actually pinpoint the exact second where his heart rips in two!’
He muffs the quote from Bart just a bit (“you can actually pinpoint the second when his heart rips in half!”), but it’s still pretty good.
OFFBEAT: Readers respond to Rick Springfield, along with Paul Anka question – I didn’t know Paul Anka wrote Johnny Carson’s tonight show theme.
Simpsons Top Trumps: Skeptics Edition – Top Trumps is a card game. This is a mockup set with prominent skeptics drawn Simpsons style. I know who about half of these people are, but I’m still damn impressed.
TV’s Homer Simpson to lead Cincinnati dance – This is pretty much what the headline says:
Homer Simpson — or someone dressed like the patriarch of TV’s popular cartoon family — will be out in front of what they call the World’s Largest Chicken Dance, part of the city’s annual Oktoberfest celebration on Sept. 20.
The Fox Network sought the invitation to promote the 20th anniversary of ”The Simpsons.”
Doesn’t this family know any songs that aren’t commercials?
Astro-Homer – It’s an astrological breakdown of the Simpson family. Fun astrology fact: in addition to being complete hokum in general, astrology can’t even get its own signs correct. The calendar dates used to determine what “sign” you are don’t actually correspond with the constellations because of a silly little thing called precession.
5 Things You Didn’t Know About Johnny Unitas – Now here’s something Morgan Spurlock should look into. A commenter attributes Grandpa’s line about setting your watch to his haircut to Hank Hill and is immediately corrected by three different people. Then somebody busts out Unitas’ turn as a spokesman for the Lady Krusty line. That is the pervasiveness of Simpsons.
Minaya has his faults, but shouldn’t be fired – This isn’t so much usage as it is a reference, but it’s a good one:
However, Minaya couldn’t have foreseen a plague of injuries the likes of which hasn’t befallen a team since the “Homer at the Bat” episode of The Simpsons.
Murphy opens up 8pm Sky 1 slot as Simpsons moves – There will be less Simpsons on Sky 1. This is what DVDs and .avi files are for.
Sex Offenders and the Simpsons – Massive usage FAIL here. He’s talking about the fact that sex offender databases are often chock full of people who aren’t really predators. Fine. Then he drops this non-sequitur:
That recent Economist issue argues:
“In fact its (the USA’s) sex-offender laws have grown self-defeatingly harsh … They have been driven by a ratchet effect … Stricter curbs on (pedophiles) win votes. And to sound severe, such curbs must be stronger than the laws in place, which in turn were imposed by politicians who wished to appear tough themselves. Few politicians dare to vote against such laws, because if they do, the attack ads practically write themselves.”
The problem on one level is that it’s mixing in the young and foolish — the Bart Simpsons — with the really bad guys, the dangerous offenders.
The Bart Simpsons? Bart is many things, but a sex offender? Even by the prurient standards of craven state legislatures? No. (Okay, maybe with Arthur and the fireworks.) But wait, there’s more!
Once more, the challenge is close to home. It is not a good image to visualize parents complaining to schools or law enforcement about sex offenders while, perhaps, nobody watches their youngsters on the playground or ensures that persons watching their children at home can be trusted to be alone with them. Usually, it’s not the strangers who are the predators.
In my favorite Simpsons episode may lie part of the answer to how community involvement might help bring the proper focus to this issue. In this episode, Lisa is being bullied at school and Marge at first just basically says, “be a good girl and put up with it.” Then mother-bear Marge reconsiders, and with righteous anger drives to school and strongly urges Lisa to stand up for herself.
First of all, the Simspon citation doesn’t make any sense in context. Second, and as always take this with the caveat that there are Zombie Simpsons episodes I haven’t suffered through, I’m guessing he’s referring to “Moaning Lisa” here. But that is a pretty poor description of the plot. Lisa isn’t exactly “bullied” and when Marge snaps and picks Lisa up she tells her to be herself, not stand up for herself.
I don’t see how anything in this piece has anything to do with The Simpsons, other than as an ingenious way to drive pageviews, which I just aided.
Believe It Or Not, Here’s An Amazing Season 20 Simpsons Episode – “Best Week Ever” is shallow and pointless even by the inch deep standards of popular culture. Their website, believe it or not, is even worse. Nevertheless, this cannot go without vehement disagreement:
As a diehard Simpsons fan and occasional masochist, I take it upon myself to try to keep up with recent Simpsons seasons because, contrary to popular widespread lazy anger, like SNL, the Simpsons doesn’t just “suck” now; granted, about 40% of the episodes do straight-up suck (especially any “three stories” episodes or “travel to some country” episodes), while about 40% are funny but have absurd plots, and a select handful of episodes each year really do earn the right to be called “great episodes.”
Where to begin? Our anger is indeed popular and widespread, but it certainly isn’t lazy. SNL is and always has been cyclical. It’s funny for a while, the funny people leave, it sucks for a while, a new core of funny people comes in and the circle is complete. This has happened to SNL like five times now. The Simpsons, on the other hand, was great and now sucks. It’s sucked for about a decade and hasn’t shown any signs of life in the meantime. And no the absurd plots do not make things funny. And no, nothing in Season 20 has earned the right to be called anything other than flaming donkey shit.
If you care, and I suspect you don’t, the two episodes he thought were good were “The Good, The Sad, and the Drugly” (the one where Bart is nice for the fifth grade girl and Lisa’s subplot consists almost entirely of smiley faces covering the screen, kind of like a screen saver from 1993) and “Eeny Teeny Maya Moe” (the one where Moe dates the dwarf lady and Maggie has the bizarre playground subplot). Maybe he just likes episodes that are transparent retellings of older episodes?
Liveblogging “One Life To Live”: The Fish hits the fan – People live blog soap operas? I love the internet. Here’s why this is semi-relevant:
It looks to be a busy episode for Oliver, as he and MCBAAAAAAAAIN! (please tell me I’m not the only one who automatically thinks of The Simpsons when they see John‘s last name) get closer to the secret of the drug ring, and Layla finally puts all of the pieces of Oliver’s secret together.
I just can’t believe Stark would stoop to that, and right in the middle of Montana and Dakota’s wedding.
6 Bullshit Facts About Psychology That Everyone Believes – This is a long, actually kinda interesting article though it suffers from “Myth Busters” syndrome in that about half of these are things I didn’t think anyone actually believed.
You always hear people talk about how “cathartic” an experience was and how much better they feel, or you’ll hear them say things like, “If you keep your anger bottled up, one day you’ll just snap!”
In fact the “about to go crazy because he can’t express anger” character is a mainstay in television and movies (see that Simpsons episode where Ned Flanders finally loses it, and every movie where a renegade cop fires his gun into the air instead of unloading on the bad guy who just killed his wife).
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I find releasing my Zombie Simpsons anger on this blog to be extremely cathartic. And that is going to be doubly true once Zombie Simpsons starts back up in a month.
Hugh Hefner Makes Disturbing Announcement – This has been kicking around the internet for a couple of days now and much as I think it’s going to be a complete waste of time I suppose we have to mention it. From Hugh Hefner’s Twitter feed:
Marge Simpson has a surprise for her fans in the November issue of Playboy.
Meh. Thanks to Jezebel for the direct twitter link.
The Bacon Mile – This is about a guy who jogs and likes bacon. (I like one of those two things, see if you can guess which.) It has almost nothing to do with The Simpsons except that he quotes Homer at the beginning. Excellent usage.
charliesweatpants.com
(The crotch really does wear out too fast.)
Dead Homer Society 
The Bart Simpsons? Bart is many things, but a sex offender? Even by the prurient standards of craven state legislatures? No. (Okay, maybe with Arthur and the fireworks.)
And the naked skateboarding in the movie.