Watching Simpsons

If one is expecting, someday, for Matt Groening and producers to resolve the Fry and Leela love drama, don’t get your hopes up when it comes to the new Futurama DVD, “The Beast With A Billion Backs.”

The feature length episode treats a number of story arcs with the same theme: love. In the previous straight to DVD release, Bender’s Big Score, the issue of Fry and Leela came off with the standard science fiction time travel complexity. Basically, Leela falls for an older, balder man named Lars. But, as it turns out, Lars was just an older, more mature version of Phillip – the complexity of constant time travel caused for there to be a number of “clones,” each of which were “doomed” in the name of the Universe righting itself.

“The Best With A Billion Backs” basically starts where the previous DVD left off – there’s a tear and the space time continuum, but it abandons it for awhile. Phillip is in a relationship with a new woman, but the new gal pal actually lives with a bunch of other guys that she considers her “boyfriend.” In the end, Fry is crushed, and he decides to end it all by exploring the tear in space. On the other side, he finds an alternate universe, populated by a planet sized being with tentacles. Here’s where it gets a little goofy and convoluted. The being is romantically interested in humanity. And after a couple of “dates” with every member of humanity, the human race is likewise interested. Sound nefarious? Imagine of Lovecraft’s elder gods were actually hen-pecked nerds that used words like “honey-poo.” The rest can be left up for a viewer to decide and/or watch. Lets just that Bender gets jealous from the lack of attention people give him and tries to wreck the relationship.

On the whole: it’s funny, and it’s a new Futurama disc. Realistically speaking, it’s not as good as “Bender’s Big Score” or the episodes that were written towards the end of Futurama’s run. On a more positive note, one doesn’t have to wait a whole year for the third feature to be released.

Futurama, Leela, Fry, Matt Groening

One of the never ending debates, these days, is usually The Family Guy versus The Simpsons. The shows are very similar, and the creative staffs have certainly been competitive, even to the point where the animation of both shows have included both verbal and visual smack downs, Sometimes, the debate online can be ripe – but one thing can be said for Seth McFarlane and his creation: derivative or not, it does bare McFarlane’s unique stamp. For that, The Family Guy has been a rousing success since it was brought back from cancellation – although McFarlane’s other creation, American Dad, hasn’t had close to the level of success.

What’s interesting, however, is that McFarlane has parlayed his current achievements into a new project. McFarlane is going online with a series of animated shorts, and this is all meant as internet-exclusive material under the name Seth McFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy. There are about 50 clips to be distributed to a variety of sites. (It should be noted that, if successful, there probably will be DVDs later).

So what does this have to do with Groening or The Simpsons? In the above linked Wall Street Journal article, there’s further proof that whatever the competition between the two shows, Groening holds nothing personal against McFarlane and actually respects the guy. The following comes from The Wall Street Journal:

Cartoonist Matt Groening, creator of “The Simpsons,” says, “He’s laid the groundwork with this smash hit show and now, with new media opening up and Seth’s specific kind of rapid-fire visual humor, how to exploit it just depends on how ambitious he wants to be.”

At any rate, one does kind of wish that Groening would follow McFarlane online with his own set of clips. Can one imagine a fresh slate of Life In Hell, as internet cartoons? Or fresh Futurama content? Or something completely new? If Groening did, however, I kind of hope it wouldn’t be Simpsons material. There’s enough of that already, and the internet could be a great place for experimentation. At any arate, even if I do like Groening’s material better than McFarlane’s, I still hope the guy succeeds with “Cavalcade.”

Matt Groening, The Simpsons, Internet, Web Cartoons, The Family Guy, Seth McFarlane

Lets see, the possibilities here are both interesting and hard to imagine. David Duchovny, of X-Files fame, hoped that the show would do a cross over with The Simpsons. It’s interesting, because Duchovny’s ambition could not have been ratings motivated – both The Simpsons and The X-Files have – or had, in the case of the X-Files – solid ratings and solid followings. Duchovny thought that resulting episode could have been a “Roger Rabbitt” styles mixture of animation and live action. I’m sure, given the quality of writers both shows have had, over the years, that somebody could have hashed out a fairly credible X-Files script.

Still, as of this writing, it’s kind of hard to think about how exactly such an episode could be pulled off. After all, it’s much easier to animate Mulder and Scully and have them visit Springfield. There are the usual plot devices that could have been used, such as either the episode as a dream sequence or a drug induced fantasy. But then again, that would just be cliché. For the resulting episode to work in an X-File sense, there would have to be some deterioration of the boundaries between dimensional realities. But then again, even that has been done a lot. Plus, the biggest problem, in a proposed cross over, would have been the mismatch in tones. Basically, The Simpsons would, by the very nature of the characters, would have dampened the usual seriousness hanging over Scully and Mulder. So, as has been pointed out, writing such an episode would be a tough challenge. At any rate, it’s purely in the realm of what if, now. Lately, The X-Files had a highly anticipated movie, but there’s no way that the show will make a comeback on TV.

X-Files, The Simpsons, Crossovers, Television, Fox

photo from Reuters

One can really gauge the cultural clout of something by the amount of fan art it inspires. Look, for example, at Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Star Trek. On the internet, there’s plenty of fan fiction based on one of those three. Plus, the there’s always homemade skits and tributes that make it onto YouTube. The Simpsons has seen a little bit that too, especially with the live action version of the intro, or even an Indian clip about “The Singhsons.” The last bit also speaks to the global reach of the show. However, there are some truly wacky things out there. In England, there’s always the neo-pagan chalk outline of Homer in his underpants, holding a donut aloft.

Recently, something just as crafty surfaced in Spain, and it involves counterfeiting money. According to Reuters, a shop keeper recently found a fake Euro coin in his cash register. One side of the coin features something close to the likeness of Homer Simpson’s head, grinning. The original coins, as pictured above, features the face of King Juan Carlos. Usually, when currency features a monarch or head of state, the expression is either somber, serious, or unemotional. In the case of King Juan Carlos, the demeanor is serious.

Of course, pranks such as these are nothing new. If you stick “Bill Clinton” and “Fake dollar” into Google’s image search, you come up with a number of interesting results. Somebody has made a “Hillary Dollar” – not to mention fakes that feature, Gore, Bush, and Bill Clinton. There have always been stories of people trying to spend the fakes too. And while that may be a funny thought, it’s actually a very serious and punishable crime.

The Simpsons, Homer Simpson, Money, Euro, Dollar, Fake Money

Well, The Simpsons Movie has come and gone, and there’s been a multitude of hilarious and strange marketing techniques, whether it’s the Spiderpig balloon, or the Kwik-E Marts that took the place of 7-11 retailers across the country. Somehow, in all of that, I missed this:

Simpsons, Homer, Pagan, Crop Circles, Chalk outlines

Universal Studios Hollywood Debuts their new Simpsons themed ride on May 17. As it may well have been mentioned earlier, the new rollercoaster replaces a well-like “Back to the Future” attraction. Basically, the new attraction could have completely erased “Back to the Future,” but the new ride will have a few acknowledgements of its predecessor. Basically, Doc Brown, voiced by Christopher Lloyd, will make his Springfield debut. Brown was Marty McFly’s crazy scientist friend who invented the time traveling De Lorean car. Brown will also appear with an aptly placed Professor Frink (Hank Azaria). The De Lorean also will be incorporated as part of the new attraction as well. In the end, the ride itself cost Universal Studios roughly 40 million dollars. Also, it’s a simulator, not the more traditional Coney Island styled roller coaster.

You really can sort of measure the pop culture success of something by how much of it makes it into everyday speech. Shakespeare, for example, has given the English language a number of expressions that are still used today. So has The Simpsons. To be clear, however, I’m not necessarily equating the Bard with Groening’s creations. Beyond expressions and sayings, there’s also the ease for which people can use something, like The Simpsons, as a metaphor or explanation for something else. We’ve kind of seen it with The Taurus, recently. Now, however, it seems a Simpsons episode has made explaining Salmon issues a bit easier:

If you’re a Simpsons fan, you may remember an episode in which Lisa inadvertently releases an invasive lizard in the town that eats pigeons.

Everyone is happy, and when someone points out that they’ll soon have a problem with lizards instead of birds, someone dismisses it by saying they’ll release monkeys to eat the lizards and then cold will kill the monkeys. See, there’s no real problem!

It’s meant to be a ridiculous jab at peoples’ short-sightedness, but some days it seems like reality TV. Western states have now taken steps to protect their valuable wild salmon stocks by killing sea lions.

The rest of the article goes into greater detail. Normally, however, in terms of writing, these sort of pop-cultural references usually don’t work. For example, not everybody may be familiar with Robot Chicken, so using it as an explanatory tool may not be too effective. Plus, there’s the ever present problem of dating. In this regard, using an obscure 1980’s comedy could possibly be lost on people. At any rate, since it’s The Simpsons, it largely works, due to the success of the show and most people’s grasp on the characters.

The Simpsons, Nature, Conservation

This is certainly alarming:

More things that have me thinking. A repeat of Family Guy outperformed an original episode of The Simpsons. The Simpsons is still strong in the demo, but that’s not the first time this has happened.

Nielson ratings can be fleeting, and there’s likely a ton of reasons to factor, but any time a rerun beats an original, it does give one pause — especially when The Family Guy is not nearly as a good as The Simpsons.

The news on whether there’s going to be a Simpsons Movie sequel or not is kind of murky at points. Many months ago, Al Jean stated that there was no plans for a sequel. But, then again, in the midst of the writer’s strike, evidence ofsome talk surfaced. Basically, the strike was blamed for development talks not going forward. Now, it seems that there are discussions afoot.

Hank Azaria has gone public, in hopes of influencing how those talks go. In short, he wishes to have a bigger role this time around. Azaria typically does the voices of a lot of minor characters, and with the family solely in the spotlight, and the rest of Springfield stuck in a bubble, Audiences got see little of Moe, Apu, and others. Besides a wish for more screen time, Azaria has another idea, and it’s a good one. He thinks the next Simpsons movie should be a Treehouse of Horror adaptation.

I think that would be an excellent idea. The last time, some fans liked the movie, but had some reservations about it. It seemed a touch too long with a few dull moments. Basically, with an expanded running time, the script sought to go a little deeper into character than what the usual TV episode would allow. A Treehouse of Horror movie would be different in that regard.

If it was done in the way the usual Halloween show goes, then the movie would likely be an anthology of shorter bits. So, this would possibly cut out the need for in depth character development. As for Azaria, this possibly would allow for him, and all the characters that come with him, to be a little bit more visible than last time.

Lately, it seems that Hillary Clinton has been have a rough go of things. She started out her primary campaign positioned as the presumptive “front runner.” She had a lot of money, as well as the media’s presumption of inevitability. Then, along the way, something happened. Barack Obama started gaining steam, and then, basically, Hillary started losing electoral contests, 11 in a row as of this writing. Clinton and her campaign, partly out of desperation, began throwing everything they could at Obama, including charges of “stealing” a phrase or two from Mass. Governor Deval Patrick.

Here’s where it gets a little silly, as well is the needed Simpsons angle. According to Christopher Orr, one of Clinton’s advisors make have bumbling into coming remarkably close to sounding like the drooling aliens from the Treehouse of Horror episodes:

Now, normally I wouldn’t bring this up. But given that the Clinton campaign has made clear its horror of anything that remotely smacks of plagiarism, I feel obligated to point out that the slogan “Forward, Not Back” was stolen from another political campaign. I refer, of course, to the extraterrestrial Kang’s 1996 presidential run on “The Simpsons”:

We must move forward, not backward; upward, not forward; and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom.

The Simpsons, Hillary Clinton, Elections, Primary, Kang, Kodos, Politics

Lifeisajoke.com has a good list of Homer quotes.

# “I’m going to the backseat of my car with the woman I love, and I won’t be back for TEN MINUTES.”
# “Bart, with $10,000, we’d be millionaires! We could buy all kinds of useful things like…love!”
# “Unfortunately, son, we Simpsons sometimes have to bend the rules a little in order to hold our own.”
# “Dear Lord: The gods have been good to me. For the first time in my life, everything is absolutely perfect just the way it is. So here’s the deal:

# You freeze everything the way it is, and I won’t ask for anything more. If that is OK, please give me absolutely no sign. OK, deal. In gratitude, I present you this offering of cookies and milk. If you want me to eat them for you, give me no sign. Thy will be done.” “The strong must protect the sweet”
# “Ah, sweet pity. Where would my love life have been without it?”
# “Son, a woman is like a beer. They smell good, they look good, you’d step over your own mother just to get one! But you can’t stop at one. You wanna drink another woman!”

According to Reuters, Hank Azaria has been busy outside of The Simpsons:

Hank Azaria will play an Eqyptian pharaoh in Ben Stiller’s “Night at the Museum” sequel.

“Night at the Museum 2: Escape from the Smithsonian,” also stars Amy Adams. Shawn Levy will direct the Fox project.

Azaria has also joined the cast of Harold Ramis’ biblical comedy “Year One,” playing Abraham. The Columbia Pictures film stars Jack Black and Michael Cera.

Azaria will conclude his Broadway run in “The Farnsworth Invention” on March 2. He also appeared on Broadway in “Monty Python’s Spamalot,” for which he was nominated in 2005 for a Tony Award for best leading role in a musical.

I think this is pretty darn hilarious. Over on webware.com, there’s an interactive map of Springfield that shows the locations of everything, from Snake’s Hideout, “Hickton,” to Burn’s mansion, the Quimby compound. Josh Lowensohn writes:

The map was started in 2001 by Jerry Lema and Terry Hogan. The current version is about four years old (so there are no marks from the dome featured in the recent film). In addition to a quadrant view, designer Adrian Noterdaem has put together a slick Flash-based version that lets you zoom in and out. There’s also a PDF and printed version of the map residing in Harvard’s map collection.

The original can be found here, in much greater detail here. The important thing, however, is what the writers and creators of the this map say:

While the placement of most locations is arbitrary, many are placed according to where they appear in relationship to each other in specific episodes of The Simpsons. In some cases ‘one-time references’ to specific locations have been disregarded in favor of others more often repeated. Due to the many inconsistencies among episodes, the map will never be completely accurate.

In other words, it’s a work of fan fiction. Groening has no relation to this. Still, it’s interesting.

[The Simpsons, Maps, City Maps, Springfield [/tags]

Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpsons and other Simpsons characters, is also a devout Scientologist. Over the past couple of years, Tom Cruise has garnered a lot of headlines for not only his loony behavior, but that he gave The Church of Scientology millions of dollars. According to The First Post, Cartwright has dramatically outdone Cruise in her giving:

…Longtime Scientologist Nancy Cartwright - the voice of Homer Simpson’s son Bart on The Simpsons - last year gave the church $10m to help spread the word of founder L Ron Hubbard. It was all part of Scientology’s Global Salvage effort, which aims to “de-aberrate” Earth - meaning to rid mankind of psychology ills and other “aberrant” behaviour.

Cartwright, 50, forked out twice as much as Cruise, Scientology’s most prominent member, who gave $5m over four years. In acknowledgment of her large gift, which is reportedly twice her annual salary from The Simpsons, Cartwright was awarded Scientology’s Patron Laureate Award at a ceremony in Florida last summer.

Crossovers can be tough, sometimes. In a way, they can be a lot like guest appearances in comic books. Sure, some people would like to see Wolverine beat the living snot out of Superman, or Batman square off against Spawn, partly because some pairings, like those mentioned, are unlikely. Two different characters, two different competing comic book companies – it would be hard to please everybody, including the fans and the business types. Still, the perspective storylines in such crossovers usually end up being tame. The creative types, behind the scene, end up not wanting to offend fans of each character or “universe.”

Still, such pairings makes minds wander. What would be the results of drinking duel, for example, between Homer Simpson and Bender? Fred Flintstone versus Homer? Such arguments often animate the customers of comic book shops and message boards. Still, sometimes, a crossover can make sense. Futurama and The Simpsons, for example, share the same Matt Groening art style, as well as similar senses of humor. In a way, crossing the two the could work out very well. On the other hand, crossing The Simpsons with, say, The Family Guy wouldn’t be interesting, partly because the two shows having been already taking pot-shots at each other for a long time.

Still, for what it’s worth, somebody out on the internet has been thinking of a possible melding of Futurama and The Simpsons. Consider it “fan art” or “fan fiction,” but according to TVsquad.com, somebody has made crossover comic blending the shows together. As for the possibility of the casts of both shows working together, Brad Trechak puts it nicely

It’s not outside the realm of possibility for the two universes to collide since both products are owned by Fox, much as having the Flintstones meet the Jetsons (both owned by Hanna-Barbera). Matt Groening does own the creative rights to Futurama, whatever that means.

However, since they’re now on two separate channels (The Simpsons is on Fox and Futurama will be on Comedy Central), it seems less likely that the two universes would come together on television. Maybe if both were still on Fox, but not now.

I do think it’s funny having Morbo filming next to Kent Brockman. And having Flanders running from the Robot Devil. Or having Miss Crabapple flirting with Zap Brannigan. Hell, it’s all funny.

The Simpsons, Futurama, Homer, Homer Simpson, Bender