Reading Digest: Letterman Retires Edition

So David Letterman announced that sometime next year he’s going to hang up his mic and ride off into the talk show sunset.  Two years ago, he did a short guest voice for a couch gag on Zombie Simpsons.  That video was freaking everywhere this week, so it’s another shorter than usual Reading Digest.  (It’s worth pointing out, of course, that the family seeing Letterman on the couch was a repeat of the one above from Season 5, but I digress.  Bonus Critic points here.)  Beyond that we’ve got some cool fan art of the amateur and professional varieties, some news about the new FXX syndication deal, some excellent usage, an old Chinese bootleg t-shirt, and a bunch of fake beer.

Enjoy.

Joshua Budich Has The Munchies For Gallery 1988′s Exhibit: “The Subtle Art Of Pop Culture” – Cool drawings of stuff from movie and TV.  There are twelve of them, three are from the show.  Nobody else got more than one.  Just saying.

Tuesday Top 5 – Simpsons Songs – Excellent list, lots of YouTube, and no Zombie Simpsons.

Do You Know These Cartoon Cats? – Snowball II and Scratchy are on here, plus several I know and several more I do not know.

‘The Simpsons’ Paid Tribute To David Letterman By Taking Their Couch Gag Inside The Ed Sullivan Theater – One of those really long filler couch gags from Season 23 was making the rounds this week because David Letterman did a guest voice on it.  I would simply like to point to this couch gag’s entry in Wikipedia:

Similar to the couch gag from the season five’s “The Last Temptation of Homer,” the Simpsons find themselves on the set of The Late Show With David Letterman.

Simpsonize Yourself – Fan made self portrait, including tattoos and a Donnas t-shirt.  Bravo.

I GUESS EVERYBODY REALLY IS PLAYING MAH JONGG! – Cool bootleg t-shirt from the dawn of the show with the family playing mahjong and yelling at each other in what I assume is Chinese.

Your Guide To The 20 Best Fake Beer Brands From Movies And Television – Duff comes in shockingly low at #6.

Bartolo Colon Jiggling His Belly Fat is Frontrunner for MLB GIF of the Year – It’s like a lava lamp.

Mimi Pond sketches an alter ego’s youthful days in ‘Over Easy’ – Pond, who wrote “Simpsons Roasting On an Open Fire”, gas a new book out.

14 Simpsons Look Alike People – Some of those are pretty good.

Nish Kumar plays life like it is as a comedian and confidence trickster – British comedian knows what’s up:

His guiding model in this, he says, is The Simpsons. ”The Simpsons is my favourite-ever show,” he says. ”It never speaks down to the audience; It always assumes the audience is going to catch up but it never [does] in a way that would make you feel stupid if you didn’t. I watch some of those episodes now and wonder: what was I watching when I was 10? But that’s the trick.”

The Simpsons’ Take on Standardized Testing – Heh.  Also, don’t forget “Separate Vocations” from Season 3: “It’s called the Career Aptitude Normalizing Test, or CANT.”

Affliate Post Godzilla, Deadpool, and Jon Snow in detention. – Bart/Jon’s got a lot of writing to do.

Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play Will Make Midwest Premiere at Theater Wit – The play is coming to Chicago early next year, so maybe I’ll finally get to see it.

‘The Tech Sector’: Growing, and growing vaguer – Excellent usage:

Anyone remember when Homer Simpson created “Compu-Global-Hyper-Mega-Net”?  Marge asks him what, exactly, his company does, and he responds, “Eh, this industry moves so fast it’s really hard to tell.”

Of Bikes and Men – Excellent mental reference:

Peter is going to be fine, it turns out, but he is in the hospital for tests and needs his insurance information sent over. Since I am also his neighbor and the keeper of the spare keys, I am the perfect person to solve this problem. Except I am not at home; I am across town. A logistical monkey wrench, but not insurmountable. It’s an hour round trip, tops.

In my head I am hearing my favorite Simpsons clip, from Treehouse of Horror III, where Homer is sold cursed frogurt. Peter was in an accident (ooh, that’s bad); he is going to be fine (that’s good!); but he needs you to get dressed and head across town (that’s bad); though it should only delay your plans by an hour (that’s good!).

Ryan Sadri on music and life as a saxophonist – Isn’t it everybody’s?:

I’ve found that more than any other instrument, the sax helps me get closest to expressing what I feel within. It’s an amazing high. And yes, my favourite sax piece is The Simpsons theme song played by Lisa Simpson.

‘The Simpsons’ Will Debut On FXX With A 12-Day, 522-Episode Marathon – Just what it says.  They’re filling August dead time with eleven days of the show, including day after day of unwatchable Zombie Simpsons crap.  If nothing else, it will serve as a visceral reminder of the decline of the show.  Also, the ratings ought to be interesting . . .

FXX Adds The Simpsons to Syndication and All is Right in the World – See?:

So far, this is panning out to be the longest marathon of a TV show ever. I have no problems with it, now I just have to put in some vacation time and do some serious food shopping.

Scratch that, I definitely won’t be watching the entire marathon, the show was only good until maybe the 9th season.

Best of The Simpsons Part… – Heh.

Silver for The Simpsons – A nice little 25th anniversary treatment that agrees with us both in writing and by only posting screen grabs from single digit seasons.