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NEWS ROUNDUP

Astro Bot, Harris Katleman, Johnny Carson, George Meyer, Conan O'Brien, Josuke Higashikata, and Joesph Joestar in front of San Diego Comic-Con.

Here’s another roundup of small Simpsons and Simpsons-adjacent news from around the web.

  • There wasn’t any big Simpsons news out of Comic-Con this year. Maybe they’re saving it all for Disney’s D23 Expo on August 14, like whether the upcoming movie will be in Infinity Vision or not. I need to see Homer’s pupils in at least 14 footlamberts!
  • Former Fox Television president Harris Katleman, who was instrumental in getting The Simpsons on the air, died at 97 last month. In his memoir, he tells a story about convincing Oscar-winning director James L. Brooks to jump back to television, which lead to The Tracey Ullman Show and the original Simpsons shorts (though I think the money did most of the convincing). As they were pitching The Simpsons as its own series, Katleman believed Fox network executive Barry Diller would pass, so he secretly screened a presentation for ABC president Bob Iger, who offered to buy the series if Diller passed. Diller was skeptical of greenlighting the show but relented when he heard Iger had made an offer. Sometimes studio executives are good! [Deadline via Talking Simpsons]
  • This official Disney article says Bart’s middle name is JoJo, which was just something voice actress Nancy Cartwright ad-libbed once, but was never actually used in the show. Does this mean it’s canon now???
  • Back in 2024, Disney outsourced its home entertainment business to Sony. In 2025, Sony announced it would cease Blu-ray production, and more recently announced PlayStation will go digital-only. I don’t know what’s going on over there, but it’s not looking great for Simpsons fans who have been waiting patiently for Season 21 on Blu-ray. [PlayStation.Blog]
  • Social Media Watch: Over on Twitter, the reclusive John Swartzwelder has been posting photos from his time on the show, including group shots with guest stars Dr. Joyce Brothers and Johnny Carson standing mere inches from future Tonight Show host Conan O’Brien. Producer and Marvel nerd Al Jean showed off a Spider-Man book autographed by Stan Lee, and the first and last pages of a draft of The Simpsons Movie.
NEWS ROUNDUP

Professor Frink looks at a woman in a bikini and Bart's twin Hugo. Behind them is a word cloud, and the word simpon is the only non-Japanese word.

It seems like everything’s in a death spiral these days: linear television, Twitter, the internet in general, America. Oh, and a little show called The Simpsons.

  • Last Sunday’s episode, “Frinkenstein’s Monster,” suffered a huge drop in the ratings from the previous episode (which aired on Christmas Eve), netting only 0.72 million viewers, making it the least-watched episode of the series… so far. For comparison, the highest rated show in that timeslot was the season premiere of The Equalizer, with 6.32 million viewers. [TV Series Finale]
  • Conservative writer Nick Clairmont has watched every episode up to Season 35, but now he’s dropping the show due to a decline in quality, which is a very funny concept. After a couple years of “THE SIMPSONS IS GOOD AGAIN!!!” articles it feels refreshing to get a dissenting view, even if it’s mostly complaining about Wokeness. [The Critic Magazine]
  • There’s been a noticeable increase in spam bots on Twitter as of late, perfectly crystallized in this moment where a Simpsons meme referencing the phrase “░M░Y░P░ U░S░S░ Y░I░ N░B░I░O ░” used by spammers is replied to by another spammer with “the simpon:”A tweet by ErnieLies consisting of a Simpsons meme. There's a reply by user @Chloe019283244, who has a stock image of a woman in a black bikini as their avatar, that just says 'the simpon.''

    Over on Bluesky, “simpon” was briefly the only English word trending, which users then catapulted to #1. [@ErnieLies]

  • Here’s a nostalgic look at the official Simpsons website over the years. It used to be charming and chock full of information, and now I guess it… doesn’t even exist anymore? There’s a page for the show on FOX.com with some information on the cast, but otherwise it looks like it’s just social media for the franchise now. Grim. [Web Design Museum]
OAKLEY CORRAL

A political cartoon of Bill Oakley looking at a calendar and discovering that the year is 1984.

Former Simpsons producer and fast food expert Bill Oakley was unjustly suspended from Twitter Monday, joining the legions of American patriots who have had their free speech curtailed by unaccountable Silicon Valley overlords.

Twitter CEO and Simpsons guest star Elon Musk recently announced that “legacy” blue checkmarks, a symbol that used to signify the authenticity of notable accounts (i.e. celebrities and businesses), would be removed unless they paid for a Twitter Blue subscription. Many, including LeBron James, have declined to pay the fee. Although Twitter later backtracked by exempting the 10,000 most-followed brands, Musk, who uses Prosecute/Fauci pronouns, had the checkmark removed from the New York Times‘s account after Prosecute learned from a meme that the company would not pay Fauci to keep it.

Oakley, who still had a blue check, seized the opportunity and impersonated the newspaper by changing his display name to “The New York Times” and changing his avatar to match theirs. He then posted a series of satirical tweets, including one referencing the famous “Steamed Hams” segment he wrote for a 1996 Simpsons episode:

A screenshot of a tweet by Bill Oakley posing as The New York Times. Text: A six-year Pulitzer Prize-winning NYT investigation has revealed that Seymour Skinner was not actually cooking a roast that was ruined but in fact was baking a ham.

Musk had declared “Comedy is now legal on Twitter” last October, but much like Principal Skinner’s claims that aurora borealis had manifested entirely in his kitchen, it was a lie. Musk’s goons moved swiftly to annihilate Oakley’s account, reverting his display name and removing his avatar. Oakley confirmed he had been banned using his assistant’s account. With this move, Oakley joins an ever-growing contingent of free-thinkers, including such luminaries as Rep. Lauren Boebert, Ye, and @catturd2, who have had their God-given right to post suppressed by the Big Tech regime in coordination with The Swamp and the Mainstream Media, an Orwellian hellstew of censorship not seen since the days of Joe McCarthy.

Oakley’s account is still viewable, which makes me assume it’s a temporary suspension and not a permanent ban, although who knows for sure. In the meantime, Oakley’s thoughts can be viewed on Instagram or by signing up for his Steamed Hams Society & Food Discovery Club. For now.

JEAN MACHINE

An image of two masked hackers from the Simpsons episode Lisa the Boy Scout.

Simpsons showrunner Al Jean’s Twitter account was hijacked last night by a nefarious cyberscoundrel or perhaps a rogue nation-state. The verified account was edited to impersonate Art Blocks, an NFT art project that has sold millions. Here’s a screenshot of what it looked like earlier, courtesy of comedian Friz Frizzle:

A screenshot of Al Jean's Twitter account impersonating an NFT account.

When contacted outside of Twitter, Jean confirmed the hijacking, saying “I got a text notification and it was gone,” and urged people to update their passwords.

The impostor Al Jean retweeted several artists involved with Art Blocks and the actual Art Blocks Twitter account, before announcing that a collection of digital squiggles by the artist “Snowfro” was now live. Eventually the avatar was removed, the display name was changed back to “Al Jean,” and the account was turned private. The account follows me, so I’m still able to see the impostor’s tweets, which as of this writing have yet to be deleted.

A screenshot of a tweet shilling an NFT collection.

The sudden shift in Jean’s posting style from hyping upcoming episodes to hawking crypto art did not go unnoticed. Former showrunner Bill Oakley quoted a tweet about it and added “what the hell.” “al jean got h4cked by some nft shitheads :/” tweeted Spiker Monster, a fanartist who recently had his designs featured in a couch gag. Others have noted that there doesn’t appear to be an easy way to report a hijacked account to Twitter.

We’ve had some fun with Al Jean’s tweeting in the past, but he’s a nice guy who regularly engages with fans and shares peeks at upcoming Simpsons stuff, so it’s dismaying to see him join the 37% of Americans who have had their social media profiles hacked (at least according to NordVPN).

Unfortunately, this might be the worst possible time to get hacked on Twitter (well, not that there’s a good time, mind you) as things appear to be chaotic at the social media giantess. Newly minted conquistador Elon Musk is said to be firing 50% of the company’s employees very soon, which presumably includes people on the security team. Furthermore, Musk plans to start charging famous people and organizations for the blue checkmark symbol that indicates their accounts have been verified as being the genuine article, which has already led to phishing campaigns. Non-notable people who pony up $8 a month for a Twitter Blue subscription plan will also get the coveted blue checkmark without the hassle of getting their identities authenticated, which defeats the original purpose of the checkmark and will almost certainly sow more confusion and impersonation scams down the line.

Luckily for Jean, Musk guest starred in a Simpsons episode back in 2015, so maybe he can get ahold of him directly.

ANNOYED GRUNTS, WEB-WATCH

Simpsons writer Broti Gupta, who joined the show last year, was hounded on Twitter for insufficient loyalty to Vice President Kamala Harris.

Gupta had committed the grave sin of making a joke about one of the most powerful people on planet Earth:

In recent months, Harris has made a few verbal flubs, like saying “work together” multiple times in the span of thirty seconds, or her remarks in Highland Park that “we’ve got to take this stuff seriously, as seriously as you are because you have been forced to take this seriously.” It’s fairly innocuous stuff that wouldn’t be out of place in a page-a-day George W. Bushisms calendar from the early 2000s, but that context was ignored by the KHive (described by the Los Angeles Times as “Harris’ extensive, loose-knit and fiercely loyal fan base, which celebrates and defends the vice president with equal fervor”), which egregiously mischaracterized Gupta’s light joshing as a misogynistic and racist attack on their queen, and went into battle mode.
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THOSE CLOWNS IN CONGRESS

Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer, who scored The Simpsons Movie and whose company Bleeding Fingers provides the music for the show, recently tweeted what is perhaps the most deranged, Boomer-brained take on the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade:

That’s right: the elimination of the constitutional right to obtain an abortion by an illegitimate, unelected and unaccountable council of elders running a train on 50 years of precedent is just a mere distraction from the January 6 Capitol riot hearings, no doubt orchestrated by none other than Vladimir Putin himself. Stop protesting your loss of bodily autonomy and turn on the TV! You can only care about one thing at a time, everything else is a distraction.

I’m sure the J6 committee is doing hard, necessary work, and recently-revealed details like former/future President Trump allegedly throwing a plate at the wall and trying to wrestle control of a car from the Secret Service are funny. That said, it’s a little hard to care because, well, nothing will actually come of it. The chairman said they’re not making any criminal referrals, leaving it up to the Justice Department. Does anyone actually think they’re going slap handcuffs on ol’ Donny Drumpf and frogmarch him into the hoosegow? I’d be happy to be proven wrong, but never underestimate his ability to wriggle out of jams. Meanwhile, the erosion of civil liberties is something that, y’know, directly affects people. That coup was a success.

GROEN DRAIN

An image of Milhouse surrounded by unused child designs.

Back in 2011, during a Twitter discussion about whether Milhouse’s design was inspired by Wonder Years actor Josh Saviano, Simpsons superdirector David Silverman dismissed that theory, mentioning Milhouse had originated from an unproduced Saturday morning cartoon Matt Groening had pitched to a network in the 80s, and his design was recycled for a Butterfinger commercial. I wrote about it at the time.

Silverman mentioned that cartoon again recently (the Wonder Years thing just won’t die!), and this time some more details have emerged.
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GENERAL SWARTZ-WATCH

An image of a statue of John Swartzwelder in The Simpsons.

John Swartzwelder has given his first-ever interview with The New Yorker, where the legendary Simpsons writer talks at length about his past and reflects upon his work.

This is a huge surprise, because Swartzwelder has a reputation as a mysterious, eccentric guy. As John Ortved wrote in his book, “Swartzwelder is an enigma. No one I interviewed knows much about the man, and unlike [George] Meyer, he has never given an interview or spoken publicly about himself or his work.” Fellow Simpsons writer Matt Selman blogged, “John Swartzwelder is immensely private. He would not want to be blogged about.” The only time his voice has been heard publicly is when showrunner Mike Scully called him during a DVD commentary (in an interview with the podcast Talking Simpsons, Scully says he had to give him an animation cel to get him to sign a release form). Amazingly, he still holds the record for most episodes written, even though he left the show nearly two decades ago.

In the interview, which writer Mike Sacks says was “in the works for over a year,” Swartzwelder reflects on his time in advertising and Saturday Night Live, offers some great writing advice, clarifies some misperceptions about the diner booth he installed in his home, shares his thoughts on the deification of the Simpsons writers’ room (“I know some people think of us as gods, and maybe we are. I’m not saying we’re not gods.”) and the word “Swartzweldian” (“about the most awkward-sounding word in the English language”), reveals his favorite season, and confirms the mostly-promotional Twitter account @JJSwartzwelder is him. He also mentions a cartoon he drew for George Meyer’s cult zine Army Man featuring “some nicely drawn chickens” with perfect beaks (you be the judge).

The whole thing is oozing with great jokes and is very much worth your time.

[The New Yorker]

READING DIGEST

did u ever know that ur my hero

Back in 1994, there were plans for a spinoff of The Simpsons centered around Krusty the Clown moving to Los Angeles and becoming a talk show host. The twist is that the show would’ve been live-action, with Dan Castellaneta, the voice of Krusty, starring as the character. Creator Matt Groening, who co-wrote a pilot script with The King of Queens creator Michael Weithorn, was quoted in a 1999 Entertainment Weekly article reflecting on the challenges of working in live-action:

We had this running joke in the script that Krusty was living in a house on stilts and there were beavers gnawing their way through the stilts. But somebody at the network pointed out how expensive it was to hire trained beavers — and an equally prohibitive cost would be to get mechanical beavers — so I said, “If we animated this, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.”

And that was absolutely everything we ever knew about the project… until now!

Simpsons expert @ThatGuy3002, known for his deep dives into scripts on Twitter, found out a lot more about the ill-fated spinoff, and shared his findings in a tweet thread:

Click through to read the whole thread, which reveals plot details about the surprisingly death-heavy pilot episode, how another Fox show about an alcoholic clown may have poisoned the well for clown-related entertainment, and what really killed the spinoff (spoiler: money). I have my doubts about the quality levels of what sounds like a Larry Sanders rip-off mixed with the 1992 Boris and Natasha movie, but I’m nevertheless fascinated by this odd footnote in Simpsons history. It doesn’t sound like production ever went any further than the script, but if any photographic evidence of Dan Castellaneta in full-blown Krusty makeup exists, please please please share it with the world.

VOICE BOX

Negotiations with Harry Shearer appear to have hit a wee bit of a snag, as the longtime Simpsons cast member has apparently announced he’s leaving the show.

Shearer made the announcement on Twitter late last night, quoting an imaginary press release from James L. Brooks’s Lawyer, for some reason. Take a look:

Then he seized the opportunity to plug his new comedy song about cops. Hey, why not?

burning bridge

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