December 2010
8 posts
2 tags
Eight Times The Simpsons Have Made Me Cry
The Simpsons is the funniest show of all time, but it’s also one of the most tragic. Think about it: Homer is an overweight drunk who hates his job; Marge gave up her dreams for her husband; Bart is “underachiever and proud of it,” meaning he’s already stopped trying, even in elementary school; Lisa is a clinically depressed eight-year-old; and Maggie is only a toddler and she’s already shot...
3 tags
Finally, Comedy in Viewmaster Form
You remember the Viewmaster, right? That old-school way of seeing 3D images? Well, it’s never been used as a comedic medium…until now. Former Daily Show and current Colbert Report writer Eric Drysdale has created The Man with F.E.E.E.T., a “set of 3 View-Master reels with 21 photographs in eye-popping 3D, accompanied by a 12-page read-along storybook.”
If you want one, it...
4 tags
Watching The Simpsons From Its Tracey Ullman...
Long before every kid I knew wore “Don’t have a cow man!” or “Eat my shorts!” t-shirts –- the unofficial grade school uniform years 1989-1993 that would cause a great ruckus within PTAs nationwide — my parents had already introduced me to The Simpsons, back when the cartoon was no more than a series of 30-second sketches during HBO’sThe Tracey Ullman Show.
On one hand, it’s impossible for me to...
The Grammy nominations are out, and among them are those for the categories of Best Comedy Album and Best Spoken Word Album. Some of the nominated include Flight of the Conchords, The Daily Show writers, Sarah Silverman and, of course, Kathy Griffin. At this point the Grammys are about as relevant as the Kids’ Choice Awards, but still, congrats to all involved.
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Why Are There So Many Simpsons Video Games?
As fans of comedy, we often forget — or try to forget — that The Simpsons is a franchise as much as it is a source of humor. Bart dolls that say, “Eat my shorts!” don’t really explore the human condition and the Simpsons comforter I had on my bed under my Spider-Man pillow was less early postmodernism and more childhood commercialism.
Which is why it’s so hard to discuss The Simpsons video...
The Finally Screenings: I Just Saw When Harry Met...
In The Finally Screenings, Alden Ford is watching comedy classics that, because he grew up in a cave in Alaska, he’s never seen before. These are his takes on movies everyone else has seen before.
A good barometer for whether or not a comedy makes it onto this list is the volume at which the word “NEVER” is shouted in the sentence, “You’ve NEVER seen that?” The higher the volume, the more likely...