Tag Archives: The Simpsons

The Necco Betrayal

Everyone loves a gingerbread house. Even South Park’s hate campaign against the “ginger” couldn’t dull the sugary luster of the beloved cookie-built domicile. You probably remember the first time you saw one, right? Or the first time you smelled one?

How to make me put a ring on it*, chapter one. (*the robot.)

Sometime in the late 1970s, at my local church, I spied and smelled a real, elaborate gingerbread house for the first time. It was during an Advent festival, with apple-cheeked residents of my snowy hometown selling pinecone ornaments and weaving fragrant holiday wreaths budded with hollyberry. Someone had knocked themselves out on the centerpiece, a resplendent dwelling of gingerbread with all the confectionery trimmings, the kind that lured the likes of Hansel and Gretel to their near-doom.

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Filed under Don't Know Don't Care, Eatable Things, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Nostalgic Obsessions, Worst Of All

Tobacky & Me

From BIUL #2.

From BIUL #2.

It’s no secret that I’m an enigma wrapped in a riddle inside a burrito or some such. Wrap your head around this:

I like to smoke. I have a psychotic aversion to burning tobacco.

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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Don't Know Don't Care, Magazine Rack, Worst Of All

Monchhichi

Like the lawn dart, a true line of demarcation between Then and Now is the Thumbsucking Baby. In cartoons and comic strips of the 20th century, if there was a baby, it was depicted with a thumb in its mouth. Maggie Simpson delivered the combo breaker, in the form of a pacifier, doing infants the world over a huge favor.

Suck this.

Suck this.

A pacifier has the advantage of being unattached to a heavy arm, which slowly pulls at the front teeth and palate, resulting in buck teeth. Buck teeth tell the world you suck dick like a champion. Depending on who you are, that can be inconvenient. Most people correct it with braces, to prevent this assumption. Continue reading

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Filed under Bad Influences, Don't Know Don't Care, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Nostalgic Obsessions

Helping Millennials Understand The Simpsons

The world is tough on young people, especially when there are forces trying to control them, often by coddling them. Every awkward feeling teenagers have is commoditized and acknowledged, no matter how insignificant. Their bad moods are notated with special emoticons. Their hormonal bullshit is all validated as worthy expression.

This gag's humor outlived the technology that inspired it.

This gag’s humor outlived the technology that inspired it.

Coincidentally, almost everything sucks.

I make an effort to be unprejudiced about millennials, I really do. I refuse to become the stereotype of the old man screaming at the kids to get off his proverbial lawn. But you have to understand the frustration. 20 years ago, I had to argue with people my age who claimed Quentin Tarantino was God. Now I’m dealing with the children of those people. Continue reading

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Filed under Animation Analysis, Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Late To The Party, Nostalgic Obsessions, Unfairly Maligned

Animation Analysis: The Transformers: The Movie

For the past ten years, one Rhode Island company has made me so deliriously happy, I’ve considered corporate personhood, so I could ask for its hand in marriage.

Hasbro.

They even threw in a rubsign. Hasbro is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

They even threw in a rubsign. Hasbro is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

2006 was the year this little toy company had a subline of their Transformers toys called “Classics”; new figures of favorite characters from the 1984 cartoon. And a funny thing happened- these robots from an old show sold very, very well. Characters like “Bumblebee”, “Megatron” and “Optimus Prime” were familiar to a enviously broad range of people. They had staying power equal to Superman or Batman. The world was on the cusp of finding this out.   Continue reading

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Filed under Animation Analysis, Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, Robot Toy Fetish, Saturday Movie Matinee, Thousand Listen Club, Unfairly Maligned

Yello

BIUL_Yello

30 years ago, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off came out. If you build a time machine and go back to 1986, you might just enjoy that movie.

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Filed under Comix Classic & Current, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, Saturday Movie Matinee, Thousand Listen Club

After The Beep

Answering machines were a form of technology in use before telecommunication was monopolized. At first, they were huge, then they used micro-cassettes, then regular cassettes, then a computer chip, then they went in the garbage. Telephones were not generally mobile prior to the year 2000. The average home had a room where the phone and answering machine resided.

The answering machine was the predecessor to the ringtone, in terms of personal expression through phones. There was even a default recording of a robot intoning “please leave a message after the beep”, which is how you knew your dad or grandpa wasn’t at home. Older relatives were confounded by the damn things, and would require the aid of sons or nephews, just as with smartphones today. A family would retain an answering machine until the tape wore out, meaning that for much of the 1980s, there was a phantasmagoria of wood-paneled plastic boxes, varying in quality. “Wireless” meant “unreliable”, which meant that the telephone station generally resembled an improvised bomb, to 21st century eyeballs.  Continue reading

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Filed under Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Nostalgic Obsessions

Puttin’ On The Hits

I don’t hate karaoke. Really, I don’t.

I don’t do it myself, either, but I don’t equate it with actual performance. Karaoke is for fun; a diversion. Plus, I’m old enough to remember the first karaoke joke on The Simpsons, when the gag was that it was something Japanese people did. It was the successor to the camera strapped around the neck.

puttin1

Now, not only is karaoke available in a home version, but late-night talk show hosts burn air time “lip-syncing” “popular” (corporate-backed) songs. The boring blond from Amos & Andy For Nerds, excuse me, I mean The Big Bang Theory, lip-synced her way through a Ludacris song where almost every other word is “bitch”. The idea being, look at this little white girl act “gangsta”. As long as the star is corporate-backed, this is “empowerment”. What do you imagine happens if someone without a hit show* tries this? Continue reading

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Filed under Don't Know Don't Care, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Worst Of All

Why I Love Jar Jar Binks

As the venerable Star Wars imprint slowly transforms into an empowerment series for little girls who wear costumes and bitter old fanboys, one of my favorite aspects is being scrubbed from the narrative:

Weird, stupid aliens.

He attempts to eat that dead monster.

He attempts to eat that dead Woodring monster.

I’ll never comprehend the segregationist nature of the “Star Wars fan”. Watching the fandom dismiss George Lucas, the creator of everything they care about, has been like observing a schism of zealots. Since general audiences weren’t born in the 80s, when ripoffs of Star Wars abounded, they gladly accepted a ripoff from J.J. Abrams.  Continue reading

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Filed under Bad Influences, Don't Know Don't Care, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, Saturday Movie Matinee, Unfairly Maligned

Bundy Language

The FOX sitcom Married… With Children ran for eleven seasons, five of them good, from 1987 to 1997. It was created by Ron Leavitt and Michael G. Moye, who were inspired by the Norman Lear classic All In The Family. On the surface, the two shows appear similar; a middle-aged ignoramus, his obnoxious yet well-meaning family, contemporary social topics. But since these kind of programs invariably get into hot water for their dialogue, they share a more subtle connection.

Not only do they really look like a family, but Kelly takes after Al, and Bud takes after Peg. That's either serendipity or super-human casting.

Not only do they resemble a real family, but Kelly looks vaguely like Al, and Bud looks like Peg. That’s either serendipity or super-human casting.

During All In The Family‘s run (1971-79), “lovable bigot*” Archie Bunker, played by the great Carroll O’Connor, would go upstairs and flush the toilet to portray his disapproval. Bathroom noise on television was verboten before this. As you know, the home of the titular family on The Brady Bunch lacked a water closet, even though the father was an architect by trade. Early in television’s lifespan, it was believed that the sounds related to using the restroom would trigger the urge to defecate in viewers, driving them from the screen to the loo.  Continue reading

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Filed under Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Girls of BIUL, Idiot's Delight, Nostalgic Obsessions