Simpsons executive producer James L. Brooks took to Twitter on Thursday to express his growing concerns about the iPhone search application Siri. Announcing that he was “on the brink of an insight through a troubling plot against us,” Brooks spent the next 45 minutes tweeting observations about the app. Mainly, he suspects Siri reflects our emotions, nothing “I believe that when I was hyper the other day she talked faster.” How, exactly, this proves Siri is plot against mankind is unclear. Nevertheless, Brooks is optimistic “we have a chance against her diabolical programmers” if he heed his warnings.
Facebook Goons Delete Bill Oakley’s Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg and his Facebook goons have apparently deleted Bill Oakley’s Facebook account, effectively rendering the former Simpsons showrunner and current Portlandia producer a non-person in this hyper-connected age. The crack team at Facebook determined that Oakley was illegally impersonating former Simpsons showrunner and current Portlandia producer Bill Oakley, who is the same person, and swiftly deleted his account. Despite being informed his account will not be reactivated “for any reason,” Oakley has taken to the Twitter to bring the issue to as many Facebook employees as possible, as well as popular tech blogs Mashable and the New York Times’ Bits blog. In the eyes of this reporter, it is great to see Facebook allocating its resources on protecting little-known TV producers from impersonation instead of focusing on less important issues, like instituting better privacy safeguards.
Milhouse Could’ve Starred In A Saturday Morning Cartoon
Beloved cartoon character Milhouse Van Houten might have began life as part of an unsuccessful pitch for a Saturday morning cartoon.
In a discussion on Twitter last week, Simpsons superdirector David Silverman clarified some things about Milhouse’s origins, shooting down rumors he’s just a rip-off of Paul Pfeiffer from The Wonder Years (come on dudes, he’s pretty much just Akbar/Jeff with hair and glasses). He also shared a little more behind-the-scenes information about his first appearance. It’s been known that Milhouse first appeared in a pre-series Simpsons Butterfinger commercial – in 2000, Simpsons creator Matt Groening told TV Guide he “needed to give Bart someone to talk to in the school cafeteria” – but until now it was believed he was created specifically for that commercial.
There Is No God: Simpsons Renewed Through Season 25
First things first: The Simpsons, after days of cancellation rumors amidst a fierce contract negotiation between the voice actors and Fox, has been renewed for not only Season 24 (2012 – 2013), but also Season 25 (2013 – 2014), despite those honest, upstanding Fox “anonymous sources” telling every news outlet within earshot they would only renew it for Season 24 “at most.” That’s right: Twenty-Five. Goddamn. Seasons. Five Hundred Fifty-Nine Episodes. Let’s assume everything after Season 8 is bad. That means by the end of Season 25, the good seasons will comprise slightly less than 32% of the entire series. And this season just started two weeks ago, so we have a guaranteed three seasons of atrocious episodes to look forward to. Excuse me while I go stick my head in the oven.
@BARTSIMSON_REAL Hacked?!?
The Twittersphere was in a tizzy today when a series of Tweets from @BARTSIMSON_REAL appeared to indicate the popular Twitter account had been compromised.
For those who don’t know, @BARTSIMSON_REAL aka “BART SIMSON YUGOSLAV” is the official Twitter account for Bart Simpson, who is real and Yugoslavian. Launched less than a month ago, the account has already gained over 3,000 followers and a writeup in the mainstream media (I’m also hearing rumors a book deal may be in the works). His Tweets have captivated the world and regularly burn up the retweet charts. A sampling of his output, for the uninitiated…
There’s A Family Guy MMO Coming Out
Holy crap Lois, they’re making a Family Guy MMO (that’s massively multiplayer online game), for some reason. So if you’re tired of stomping around Warcraft or whatever you can pretend to be a virtual Family Guy character and walk around Quahog making lazy pop culture references with other Family Guy fanatics. Wow!!! It’ll be like TV Tropes and Second Life had a baby, except with over 9,000 times more epic random for the win purple monkey dishwasher. I’m guessing there will be some “game” elements, like, I don’t know, beating up the chicken guy or the evil monkey (remember the time Peter beat up the chicken? Remember?). Will there be gang wars between Simpsons fans and Family Guy fans? Who knows! Nobody knows anything about this thing yet, all we know is there’s a site where you can pre-register for a beta, and if you view the page source, the description says “Sign up for the Family Guy Online today and receive news & events about the upcoming MMO!” So yeah.
Any MMO based on an animated sitcom is going to be horrible, but I gotta wonder why they didn’t do this for The Simpsons first – Springfield is a dense location with lots of places to explore, people are still obsessed with “Simpsonizing” themselves and celebrities (I have never, ever seen anyone on the internet “MacFarlaneize” anything), etc. Maybe they tried and it never came to fruition? Maybe Fox did some studies and discovered “the gaming community” knows The Simpsons is horribly lame now? The world may never know.
Anyway, here’s some funny tweets:
im so happy i get to be to introduce all my followers to the newest addition to the MMORPG "family"……. http://t.co/Vds41Q5
— Big-Tity Honker's (@BikiniBabeLover) June 16, 2011
im not going to break the NDA, but i will say that the family guy online mmo is freakin sweat 😉
— woke weedie (@420WeedLord) June 17, 2011
The first guy who signed up for Family Guy Online gets to be Stewie . the rest of us are Fucked. Thanks Capitalism
— Jackson (@tree_bro) June 16, 2011
@rubbrcatsimp @BikiniBabeLover accepted quest "Freakin' Sweat, Lois" sweat collected 0 of 12 drops
— Just like Bob! (@AlmightyBoob) June 16, 2011
how can you make a family guy mmo? you'll be mid way through a raid and suddenly you'll be in an unfunny 1980s tv reference
— Cool Murray (@ABigBagOfKeys) June 17, 2011
guys lets all sign up for this family guy mmo and then roleplay as simpsons characters and never break character ever
— J. Lesley Feezberg (@satellitehigh) June 17, 2011
Sounds like a plan, y’all. [Family Guy Online]
Internet Randomly Assigns Bart Simpson A Birthday
For some inexplicable reason, the internet randomly decided that yesterday (or today, depending on who you ask) would be Bart Simpsons’s 32nd birthday, if he were capable of aging and also not a made-up character.
As far as I can tell from Google’s incredibly imprecise realtime search, the news of Bart’s mortality appears to have originated from the Twitter account of record label Moodgadget, which got more than a hundred “retweets.” Soon, “Bart Simpson” became a “Trending Topic” on Twitter for quite a while and news of his birthday spread like a funny cat video through Facebook and the rest of the internet.
The date isn’t based on any premiere date (as every Simpsons fan knows, The Simpsons first appeared on The Tracey Ullman Show on April 19, 1987; the Christmas special aired on December 17, 1989; and the series proper premiered on January 14, 1990), any explicit date given in the series, nor the birthdates of his voice actress, Nancy Cartwright (October 25th), or would-be namesake, creator Matt Groening (February 15th).
So, when is Bart’s birthday? The good people over at the Simpsons Archive already determined it years ago. According to the 1992 episode “Lisa’s First Word,” Lisa was born during the 1984 Summer Olympics. Specifically, Marge started going into labor during the women’s 100 meter butterfly, which was scheduled on August 2nd. In the 1997 episode “My Sister, My Sitter,” Bart exclaims that he is “two years and thirty-eight days” older than Lisa, which would put Bart’s birthday on or around June 25th.
Simps Scribe Pans Puns
Looking at a list of "Mad" movie parodies. Vomit is a constant theme: "Throw Up", "Guess Who's Coming To Throw Up Dinner", etc.
— Tim Long (@mrtimlong) February 9, 2011
Some Mad parodies = very gentle. "The Post-Graduate"? "Blue-Eyed Kook"? "Midnight Wowboy"?
— Tim Long (@mrtimlong) February 9, 2011
Biggest Mad parody reach? My vote goes to the spoof of Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, called (get ready) "Boob & Carnal & Tad & Alas". Tad!
— Tim Long (@mrtimlong) February 9, 2011
Mr. Long is the writer of the Simpsons episodes New Kids on the Bleech, Million Dollar Abie, Elementary School Musical, and Brake My Wife, Please. [Twitter]
Simpsons Momentarily Subversive
If you were one of the people watching The Simpsons last night (sucker), you may have noticed something a little different about the opening sequence!
The “couch gag,” if one could call it that, was storyboarded and directed by the pseudonymous Britain street artist known as Banksy, whose distinctive graffiti has shown up across the UK and the US, and whose work has been auctioned off for millions of dollars to limousine liberal luminaries like Brangelina.
Showrunner-for-life Al Jean told the New York Times he seeked out the ostensibly underground (despite having a publicist) “art terrorist” and asked him, via a series of messengers, if he’d do the opening, later receiving the storyboards without ever meeting the mystery man. Although 5% was cut out by request of Fox Broadcast & Standards, Jean insists the final product was as close as possible to Banksy’s original intention.
The response has been enormous – Banksy became a “Trending Topic” on Twitter last night (which is, like, super-important and stuff) and there are currently hundreds of news stories about it – which I’m sure makes up for the 29% decline in ratings from last week. It’s to quantify these things, but I think it’s safe to presume this will get more attention than other recent Simpsons “viral” stunts, from the godawful Ke$ha thing to the Itchy & Scratchy parody of Koyaanisqatsi (in the old days, The Simpsons usually generated buzz with actual episodes instead of context-free YouTube clips, but I guess that’s the way things are now in the New Media Landscape).
Egg Council Emergency
Here’s a classic scene from “Homer the Great,” where Homer attempts to save Lenny’s life by stomping on an egg sandwich, in order to get into the Stonecutters:
Homer: I saved your life! That egg sandwich could have killed you by cholesterol.
Lenny: Pfft, forget it, Homer. While it has been established that eggs contain cholesterol, it has not yet been proven conclusively that they actually raise the level of serum cholesterol in the human blood stream.
Homer: So one of those Egg Council creeps got to you too, huh?
Lenny: Aw, you’ve got it all wrong, Homer. It’s not like that.
A man in an egg costume creeps, then runs, away.
Homer: You’d better run, egg!
The Simpsons Archive explains the reference:
+ California Egg Council commercial {ert}
– some humorous TV ads put out by the Council depict eggs in prison running off with glee when they’re set free
I have a very, very vague memory of a commercial with people in egg costumes, so I searched for it on YouTube, home of a million old commercials for those of us whose memories have been hijacked by Madison Avenue madmen. Thus far I have been unsuccessful in locating it. But I refuse to admit defeat.
That’s why I’m enlisting you, hypothetical reader, to go forth and find these commercials, so that the world will know that the Egg Council is a real threat. Here’s what I’ve managed to learn from five minutes of AltaVista-searching:
- I have no idea if these commercials aired nationally or just in California. Did you non-Californians get those stupid “California: It’s The Cheese” commercials?
- The Egg Council is still around, apparently, and still making commercials.
- There is also a California Egg Commission. How deep does the rabbit hole go?
- In “Burns’ Heir,” Mr. Burns calls it the Egg Advisory Council. Same thing, right? How many Egg Councils can there be?
- Here is some helpful information on egg