Look at those morons. I paid my taxes over a year ago!— Homer
Look at those morons. I paid my taxes over a year ago!— Homer
British television network Channel 4 has apologised for screening an episode of 'The Simpsons' including a song with the lyrics 'New Orleans, stinking, rotten, vomiting, vile' just days after Hurricane Katrina had devastated the city.
The song appears in the episode 'A Streetcar Named Marge', in which the residents of Springfield stage a musical version of the Tennessee Williams play 'A Streetcar Named Desire'.
The song about New Orleans features further insults, with lines claiming it is the "home of pirates, drunks and whores" and "tacky over-priced souvenir stores".
A viewer complained to Ofcom about the scheduling of the episode, on September 7 this year. Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans on August 29, causing widespread flooding and chaos, and resulting the deaths of hundreds of the city's residents.
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The fourth book in the Simpsons Complete Guide series was released recently around the world. This jam-packed guide contains quotes, episode summaries, character stats, jokes you may have missed, couch gags, blackboard lines and more from Seasons 13 and 14 of the show.
If you own the previous three tomes - The Simpsons: A Complete Guide, The Simpsons Forever!, and The Simpsons Beyond Forever - then this is a must-have.
One thing worthy of note is the emphasis on recreated scenes, rather than screenshots taken direct from the episode - in fact, this guide is the first in which some episodes do not have any screenshots at all. It is also one of the few Simpsons books not to have a dedication to Snowball II on the inside from cover - instead there is a dedication to Cookie from "Dude, Where's My Ranch?"
Irregardless, there's no doubting that The Simpsons One Step Beyond Forever : A Complete Guide to Our Favorite Family...Continued Yet Again (yes, it's also the longest-titled book) is a great read.
"I do something most people would do for free," said Mike Reiss, co-creator of "The Simpsons."
Reiss, who writes and creates episodes for the Emmy Award-winning cartoon that has run on Fox for 17 years, was the keynote speaker for the University of Redlands' Homecoming convocation Friday night, to a sparse audience in Memorial Chapel.
Those who were there were treated to rarely seen footage of "The Simpsons," as well as "Queer Duck," a cartoon Reiss created that never got air time.
Reiss said that his first job after graduating college and leaving behind The Harvard Lampoon was writing jokes for the movie "Airplane II" and later for "The Late Show With Johnny Carson."
"When it's your job to write 60 jokes a night, you can't just get writer's block," he joked. "A plumber can't go to your house and decide, I'm sorry, I can't plumb for you, because I have plumber's block. An accountant can't tell you they can't do your taxes because they have H&R Block."
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Catchphrases from television programmes such as The Simpsons are transforming the way we communicate, according to linguists.
'D'oh!': children pick up words from exposure to television
Phrases, such as Homer Simpson's "D'oh!" are being woven into the English language in the same way that Shakespeare's word creations were in the 17th century.
The Simpsons is especially influential because 40 million people in more than 100 countries watch it - even Tony Blair and Bill Clinton have appeared in it - and the use of expressions from such shows has been dubbed "pop-speak".
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"The Simpsons" and "Futurama" can teach you a thing or two about math. The animated shows contain hundreds of references to math in all its forms — addition, subtraction, long division, calculus.
Several of the shows' writers hold advanced math degrees from some of the nation's best universities, and they're not averse to working in a little Pythagorean theorem, if the timing is right.
"We never wrote a joke where we tried to say nobody's going to get that joke" except a mathematician, said Ken Keeler, who got his doctorate in applied mathematics from Harvard University and worked at Bell Laboratories before writing for Fox network shows "The Simpsons" and "Futurama," which now appear in syndication.
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When an Arab satellite TV network, MBC, decided to introduce "The Simpsons" to the Middle East, they knew the family would have to make some fundamental lifestyle changes.
"Omar Shamshoon," as he is called on the show, looks like the same Homer Simpson, but he has given up beer and bacon, which are both against Islam, and he no longer hangs out at "seedy bars with bums and lowlifes." In Arabia, Homer's beer is soda, and his hot dogs are barbequed Egyptian beef sausages. And the donut-shaped snacks he gobbles are the traditional Arab cookies called kahk.
An Arabized "Simpsons" -- called "Al Shamshoon" -- made its debut in the Arab world earlier this month, in time for Ramadan, a time of high TV viewership. It uses the original "Simpsons" animation, but the voices are dubbed into Arabic and the scripts have been adapted to make the show more accessible, and acceptable, to Arab audiences.
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Apu Nahasapeemapetilon is the industrious convenience store-owner and one of the major cast characters, with several episodes revolving entirely around him.
Several American South Asian chaps recently expressed their intense dislike of Apu. For them, Apu personifies every stereotype they wish to shake off. He’s got a thick accent, he spent many years living in the US illegally, works in a cornershop, had an arranged marriage, rips off his customers, is continually the butt of Homer’s jokes about Hinduism and has an unpronounceable long surname.
Brown-skinned Americans, especially those living outside the major cosmopolitan cities, have come to associate Apu with insults – Apu’s catchphrase “Thank you, come again!” is shouted as abuse by thick-headed bigots.
So let me explain why I think Apu is a positive character for Asians – particularly those living outside India...
Full Story: AsiansInMedia.org
TV Guide has announced that they are officially changing the layout and style of the classic guide for the television viwer in all of us. The 52-year old magazine has decided to increase its size and will be full color. The price will also drop from $2.49 to $1.99 and drop to $0.99 till the end of the year. To celebrate the magazine is issuing special edition covers which re-make classic covers. Homer plays a role in re-creating a classic Flinstones cover. You can take a look at the other ones Here. Full Story.
YO, Dude! The Simpsons family are back, bigger and better than ever in another fantastic sticker collection from Panini, The Simpsons School Survival Guidebook.
Why not follow the school antics of Bart and the rest of the gang, as they tell you how to survive classes, win food fights, and come up with the excuses used in Springfield Elementary school run by Principal Skinner.
This fun collection has 64 pages and 240 exclusive stickers. There’s also a message board poster, where brand new chalkboard stickers – stickers you can write on with chalk – are placed! This interactive collection will keep Simpsons fans entertained for hours on end.
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Hey collectors, all those that are starting to make their christmas gift want-list a little early better make sure to add the Season 7 DVD of the Simpsons. That's right, it's been announced that Season 7 will be released on December 13th which is just in time for the holidays. More information on this release is outlined at TVShowsOnDVD.com. The MSRP for the DVD is $49.99 but usually go for $10-15 less when they first come out. We'll keep you updated.
