Like many people, I love the Simpsons. Seriously. I have seasons 2 – 11 on VHS tape because my mother said when I was in 7th grade, “You should tape the episodes if you like the show because its going to be canceled any day now.” That statement was made in the year 1990. In case you don’t have a calendar, 17 years have passed.
Along with Seinfeld, the Simpsons constitute the core of what I believe humor to be and while the show’s quality has dipped in recent years, I still and always will love Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, Maggie, Santa’s Little Helper, Snowball I, Snowball II, the entire Flanders family, Comic Book Guy, Dr. Marvin Monroe, Kent Brockman, Troy McClure, Barney, Moe, Disco Stu, Snake, Professor Frink, Carl, Lenny, Nelson, Mr. Burns, Smithers, Principal Skinner, Super Nintendo Chalmers, Kang, Kodos, etc. I basically can go on forever because all of the characters are important but I’ll just stop there so that this doesn’t become a 10,000 word post.
I have been putting this off for way too long now but as the movie is opening this coming Friday, I am running out of time to collect all things Simpsons into one massive post. If you haven’t noticed the Simpsons paraphernalia in the media lately, you are blind, deaf and dumb because yellow is in and it’s everywhere. Therefore, here is a run-down of all the cool stuff that has been going on for the past month or so:
1) Springfield, VT won a nationwide contest to see which Springfield would debut the movie. It’s video beat out Springfield, Illinois by only 1,000 votes (15k to 14k) but the party which was held last weekend wasn’t even close. For the debut, Page McConnell of Phish was there to play the Simpsons theme song, Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream debuted a special one-time one-day only flavor called Duff & D’oh-Nuts and renamed “Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough” to “Chocolate Chip Cookie D’oh” for the day. Last but certainly not least, Magic Hat Brewery made a special batch of Duff Beer.
2) Certain 7-Elevens nationwide have turned themselves into Kwik-E-Marts. This bit of product placement is way cooler than GM doing all the cars in the Transformers movie. Below is a photo from a Flickr photo set of the Kwik-E-Mart, I mean 7-Eleven, in Times Square.
3) The Simpsons Movie web site is pretty cool. Not only can you explore all things Springfield but the site allows you to make your own Simpsons avatar who lives there. Mine I named Double Jays and you can see him below along with a screen shot of Double Jays hanging in Moe’s Tavern:
4) Burger King has a viral site called Simpsonsize Me where you can upload a photo and see what it looks like when you’ve been Simpsonized. My pic, which looks nothing like me, is posted below:
5) ESPN has a great article about the classic “Homer at the Bat” episode. Yes, I can sing all the words of the “Talkin Baseball” parody and yes, I do on occasion shout “Mattingly, shave those sideburns!” during key moments of Yankee games just for shits and giggles. This is one of many episodes I have on tape complete with circa 1990 commercials. Hysterical, always and forever.
I cannot wait for Friday!
One thought on “Simpsons Simpsons Simpsons!”
Ha–
I love your mom’s quote: “because this show will be canceled any day now”
It’s amazing what our mom can make us do.
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When I was 7, I wanted to play computer games. My mom said, “Well, if you want to play computer games, you should go write my own.” So I did.
What I learned from these game writing is that I have no interest in those games–but the process of writing them was great fun.
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When I was 12, I wanted to play with the 286 my dad bought. My mom said, “If you want to use the computer, you should read the manuals thoroughly.”
Well, the manuals that shipped with the computer happened to be the MS-DOS user guide and MS-DOS reference. I read both manuals cover to cover and til this day I still know the prompts by heart.
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After I got my hands onto the PC, my dad bought Wordstar and I wanted to play with it. My mom said, “Well, you don’t need Wordstar, what do you need it for?” I don’t even know what kind of features it had and I said, I guess, just word-processing. My mom said, well, you can write that, right? So 5,000 lines of BASIC code later, I had my own word-processor. Ugh.
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When I was 14, I wanted to play Monopoly, but my mom thinks that it’s not an ‘educational’ board game and refuse to buy it for me. She said, “If you want to play Monopoly, you should make it yourself.”
My mom took me to the library and I got the book, “The Encyclopedia of Monopoly”. I read that cover to cover and studied all the rules. Before embarking on my Monopoly factory production, I made sure my sister would at least play that set with me for ten times. I spent the next two weeks using *color pencils* and created the board, all the cards. My sister only played that with me once 🙁
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I love my mom now because she has put me in the seat of creation every time there’s a problem. Back then, on the other hand, I hated her–I never crafted my model boat out of wood. And as I learned from architecture classes in college, it’s not all that easy!
Cheers,
See-ming