That’s right. It’s my anniversary with The Simpsons!

25 years ago today, The Simpsons premiered on The Tracey Ullman Show with a little short called “Goodnight, Simpsons.” (See it here: http://www.milkandcookies.com/link/61247/detail/)

I was immediately taken with the family, mostly because Maggie’s reaction to the “Rockabye, Baby” song is the same as mine–the lyrics are f**ked up!

Fox also gets to claim this week as its Silver Anniversary, which it’s doing with a tribute to its first 25 years this upcoming Sunday. My students may not remember a world without Fox, but I do. Remember having to get up to change the channel? Remember when programming for children was a couple of shows on PBS and a few hours on Saturday mornings? Remember when tv actually went off at a certain time of night? Remember tv before reality tv (which COPS to some degree initiated when it first aired in ’89)? Remember when every sitcom had a laugh track–even animated ones like The Flintstones?

On this day in 1987, no one knew that tv would change the way it has or that The Simpsons would be what it has become. I certainly didn’t know that I would be where I am now, teaching a class on The Simpsons, writing this in an office decorated with memorabilia from visiting the studio, having a Simpsons book with my name on it, passing out cards that declare I’m a Simpsonologist . . .

Aside from family members (whom I don’t get to choose), my relationship with The Simpsons is the longest of my life. It’s also certainly one of the most rewarding.

The Simpsons has seen me through puberty, every boyfriend and break-up, four degrees, fourteen years as a college teacher, the birthing and raising of a child who is now a college adult.

I knew The Simpsons before I knew how to drive, how to kiss, how to pick a wine, how to escape the South, how to be a professional geek, how to accept that I was not the ugly duckling I thought I was, how to stand up in front of other people without getting stage fright, how to reign in my temper. Before I knew my best friends (and my best-best soulmate, Denise), before I knew Atwood’s work, before I knew my high school poetry was really bad, before I discovered the strength I now know I have to get through the bad stuff.

With them, I finally saw a character on television that I really related to–a girl who sometimes comes across as too nerdy, too self-righteous. A bookworm and an activist. A young woman trapped between her own aspirations and the more humble future the circumstances of her birth seem to dictate. A girl who doesn’t fit in, sometimes not even in her own family. An imperfect girl in an imperfect family in an imperfect world.

Thank you, The Simpsons, for 25 amazing years.

After staying up way to late with Chaz and Carmen, I woke up so I could meet Courtney to go to the Dr Who Experience! Courtney was hoping there would be some little kids to watch, and there were. We entered a gallery and then moved to the experience–we got to stand in a moving tardis, we got to walk through a valley of Stone Angels, we got to be attacked by giant Daleks, and we got to be called “shoppers” by Matt Smith. As one of the young boys said, it was “sick!” Then there was the museum, with costumes, etc. There was a creepy wax Matt Smith, models of villains so you could see how they’d changed over the decades, etc. Need to get the rest of the pictures from Courtney, but here are the best ones from my camera (more on FB soon). Hit the gift shop, spent too much, even though they didn’t have postcards (is that because it’s impossible to send mail from a Tardis?).

If I weren’t going a bit crazy from a bit too many things on my plate, I would write a loving tribute to Weird Al right now, in celebration of his 52nd birthday. If you really want one, though, checkout my matchflick column from this time last year: http://www.matchflick.com/column/2266.

Of course, if I weren’t going crazy, there would be far more entries here. There have been so many things to write about in the past few months. I always mean to, but then the “must dos” in life take all my time.

I wanted to mention these two shows, however, before time gets away from me again. First, last weekend, Kevin, Nathan, Vanessa, the boy, and I went to see Kevin McDonald and Scott Thompson, of The Kids in the Hall, do stand-up. Unlike most comedians, they alternated taking the stage a few times instead of doing the sets straight through. Kevin did very self-referential comedy, with some wonderful songs. Scott talked about sex, circumcision, racism, and the secret (which Denise and I have long wondered about) to getting him to have sex with you if you’re a woman.

Towards the end of the show, they performed on-stage together, as Scott pretended to be offended by Kevin’s jokes about him.

I was able to get a picture with Scott. When I gushed that this was my fourth time seeing him live, he said the Kids were thinking about touring next year. Fingers crossed (unless you’re using them to crush someone’s head)!

This weekend, Kevin, Vanessa, April, and Peter and I headed to SF to see Richard III with Kevin Spacey. (Gemma Jones as Margaret was a surprising bonus!) The production was awesome. It was set in modern costume to good effect. New music (mostly drums) enhanced the mood without being too distracting (with only momentary exceptions). Spacey brought out the comic potential in Richard, while also showing how charismatic he would have to have become to overcome his physical deformities. His hunched back, leg brace, and end position all looked very uncomfortable, but Spacey made it seem that Richard had long grown accustomed to bearing the burden of his own body. The long, standing ovations were well-deserved. (Dinner after also provided some of the best pork I’ve ever had, so despite all the crazy hours I’ve been working, it’s been a damn awesome week.)

Today is one of The Simpsons‘s anniversaries. I say “one of” because while this is not the day the full-length show first aired in 1989, it is the day the family first appeared on The Tracey Ullman Show in 1987.

I was there. I saw it. I was hooked.

I’ve written a lot already about the cultural impact of the show, so for today, I’ll focus on another aspect of the show: its prescience.

Somehow, all of the things I love, Margaret Atwood, Science Fiction, The Simpsons, etc. are great at seeing where our cultural trends are going to go.

The Simpsons has both commented on and anticipated many aspects of American culture. Our current political season is reflected eerily in Season 11’s “Bart to the Future.”

In the episode, Bart sees a vision of his future. He’s a loser, but Lisa is President. The beginning of her administration is plagued by a debt: “As you know, we’ve inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump.”

At the time, the line was funny–of course we would never be so stupid as to elect the Don. Now, the line evokes a sick feeling in my stomach as candidate Trump illustrates his lack of genius by siding with the birthers. A reality TV star courting the lowest common denominator? And winning? Yes, it could happen.

Lisa has to raise taxes to balance the budget, but doesn’t want to say that that’s what she’s going to do. Milhouse, her advisor, says that if she wants to “out and out lie,” she could call the “painful emergency tax” a “temporary refund adjustment.”

Doublespeak in politics is nothing new, but Jon Stewart was struck by Obama’s doublespeake last week enough to comment on it. Specifically, raising taxes (or, rather, allowing some tax breaks on the super rich to expire [did you know the richest 400 households pay 17% while I pay 30 something %?]) was “spending reductions in the tax code.”

This is why I love The Simpsons; they are us!

Happy 24th!

I’m sure you’ve seen the news that some countries, like Germany, are refusing to air reruns of The Simpsons that feature problems at Mr. Burns’s nuclear power plant. This is supposed to be a sensitive response to what’s happening in Japan.

The Simpsons people have said that this decision is fine with them. I’m fine with it if they are, but I can’t really see the need for it.

Might someone watching The Simpsons be reminded of the sadness of Japan? Yes. But viewers of The Simpsons know where Homer works already. And The Simpsons isn’t making light of the potential for disaster. In fact, The Simpsons has long been one of the few reminders in popular media about the dangers that this type of power pose, especially when combined with corporate greed. Many of the problems with Mr. Burns’s plant occur because he won’t spend the money to ensure safety (an emergency exit is merely painted on the wall, for example). The company that owns the plant in Japan has been hesistant to use seawater to cool down the plant for one simple reason–it means more money in repair costs afterwards (if I’m remembering correctly, that company is American).

So what are we supposed to do? Wait until this crisis is over, when we’ve all gone back to being complacent about the inherent problems that arise when safety and profit butt heads to see a cartoon satire of nuclear power?

Fine, but I’m still bothered by the censorship for two reasons.

One, the focus is narrowed in a strange way. When I watch The Simpsons, I am likely to see alcoholism, car accidents, and other common traumas. Am I so fragile that I expect the government or television stations should make sure that I don’t have to see these things? After all, in any given day, my life is likely to be ruined by a car accident. The legacy of many people’s alcoholism is ever present in my life–must I be protected from reminders about reality?

Second, if we censor for a certain amount of time, the implication is that there will be a time when we are over the crisis. After 9/11, many stations refused to show “Homer vs. The City of New York” because the twin towers are visible in the episode. The episode wasn’t about terrorism or death, but some felt that the factual depiction of what had been in that space at that time was something people couldn’t/shouldn’t be expected to deal with. It’s ten years later. I still think of 9/11 when I see that episode. I still like that episode.

While the wound isn’t as new and raw, it’s still there.

When the twin towers were referenced in a recent episode of The Simpsons, “Homer the Father,” there probably wasn’t a single viewer who didn’t think about 9/11, who didn’t gasp a little bit at the towers being mentioned (in a moment that reminded us they were gone now), and who didn’t wonder, “too soon?”

If it wasn’t okay to air depictions of the towers ten years ago, it’s not now, which is why I think it’s okay at all times, especially in comedy.

I know that I tend to be over-protective of free speech issues in comedy, but it’s because I know that comedy is what saves us, what keeps us whole, what allows us to get through the bad times. I don’t want the bad times to be what ruins comedy.

As many of you know, I don’t have a twitter page, but Denise, social goddess that she is, made one for our book, The Simpsons in the Classroom–you can follow us under Simpsonology. It is through this apparently fabulous entity that we got in contact with some of the heavy hitters at THE SIMPSONS: David Silverman, animator & director; Josh Weinstein, producer & show runner & writer; and Chris Ledesma, music editor. The latter invited us to see a recording of the music for the show if we were ever in LA. This year’s MLA happened to be in LA, so down we went last weekend.

Walking on to the Fox lot, we were nervous. As Denise had explained to our friend Kathy, our excitement was extraordinary because the circumstances were. How many people have loved one thing and been obsessed with one thing, since 1987? How many people then teach it and write about it? How do you expect people to react when they get to meet their obsession after over twenty years? (I think we held ourselves together very well, all things considered.)

Getting our passes from the guard seemed surreal; I think we were both expecting to be turned away, like it was all some sort of mistake, but the passes were given and we set off down a fake street that they use on BONES and HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER toward the FUTURAMA trailer to meet up with Josh. Josh used to work on THE SIMPSONS, but now is on FUTURAMA, which Comedy Central will hopefully renew (it’s been really good lately–check it out!). The two nice people in reception were expecting us, and Josh was summoned.

We started with a tour of the Futurama building–his office, the revision room, etc. Josh offered us some Matt Groening doodles that were on post-its in the revision room. Apparently, Groening can’t sit down without doodling something and we now have our own proof of that.

Then Josh took us on a brief tour of relevant parts of the lot. The recording stages in one building are named after three famous Hollywood women–Jane Russell, Marilyn Monroe, and Marge Simpson. We couldn’t access Marge’s studio because they were doing some dubbing for BONES. “You mean Angel from BUFFY might be in there?” quipped Denise.

The old SIMPSONS‘s building itself looked like a motel–it was small and two stories and all of the rooms were accessible by the outside. When you look straight on to it, you see a fountain with koi (and netting to unsuccessfully keep feral cats out) and bathrooms. Groening’s office is behind a nondescript door to the right of the bathroom doors.

Along the way, we met Ian Maxtone-Graham (who wrote, among other things, “24 Minutes” and who is very tall), Rob LaZebnik (“Homer vs. Dignity”), and Michael Nobori (“To Surveil with Love”). Due to Denise’s description of my love for Weird Al Yankovic, Mr. Nobori has probably banned me from the lot from now on.

Josh then took us for coffee at Moe’s Bar on the lot. We talked about working with his old writing partner, his brief stint on SIT DOWN, SHUT UP, Groening, and the behind the scenes stories of some episodes.

By this time, it was 11; we’d been there for an hour. Josh had to hand us over to Chris, which is where I’ll continue with the next post.

(Relevant pictures are being uploaded to Facebook; I can’t get them to post here . . .)

Neither the boy or I slept particularly well last night, but we dragged ourselves up and went down to have our British breakfast and then headed over to the British Museum, where we actually live when we’re in London. He copied down Japanese symbols while I waited for headache medicine to kick in.

Which it did–just in time for Afzal to join us for the special exhibit on The Book of the Dead. Beautiful examples of the book–including the longest ever found (at 37 metres). We also learned many spells, including ones for chasing away beetles, crocodiles, and snakes. My favorite, though, is the spell that keeps you from having to subsist only on feces and urine in the afterlife. I’m glad someone thought of that. There are 42 deity names to memorize–you explain to each deity that you haven’t committed a particular sin–“Oh, X, please note that I haven’t poked a badger with a spoon and thus should live on.” You have to memorize the names of six cows to get to eat them in the afterlife, etc. etc.

Life, apparently, was just prepping for this really really big exam. The Book of the Dead was your cheat sheet, which is why you wanted to pay a lot to have it done well (and on new and not recycled papyrus). Many rich people had additional spells inserted from the standard ones–for extra perks I guess.

I’ve been thinking all day about what I would put in the book of the dead. I mean, I would like to not eat feces and urine, but what would I eat in paradise? What animals would I chase away and which ones would I draw near? What games would I take with me? Whom would I want buried with me?

After all these uplifting things, we headed out for Turkish food. Then the boy and I skulked around for a bit before heading over to the other end of town for a play. Alex was turning his nose up at the food offerings, but luckily I saw a certain Portuguese rooster and thus Nando’s saved us from despair.

The play was Joseph K, a revised Kafka piece. It was dark and funny and terribly surreal at the end. The theatre was small, but the audience was engaged. The acting was superb and I’m still thinking about some of the choices–like the use of between scene music and radio clips–so I’m happy.

Back at the hotel before another big day tomorrow.

It was colder today and only promises to become more so. I don’t like this aspect of things, especially since it’s so warm inside all the buildings that I have to strip off (almost) all the layers and then carry them around. Still, I’d rather be cold here than warm in most other places.

Last night I saw MacHomer for the third time. It was at the California Shakespeare Theatre in Orinda. We headed up for a picnic before the show, which was interrupted briefly as I went to talk to a documentary crew about the show–they’re apparently producing a DVD version of the show to be used in schools and I was called upon to talk about the educational potential of the show, as the Simpsonologist I am.

I had gotten front row seats, only to find that two of those seats had been accorded to the DVD crew; the solution ended up being to move all of the seats down by two.

Rick Miller’s performance was, as usual, amazing. The show is fascinating and funny. Most people have heard that it’s a Simpsonizing of Macbeth, but not everyone knows that it’s full of other popular culture references, self-referentiality, and even political jokes (the newspapers have Quebec separatist jokes). The show routinely incorporates that week’s news and local names as well.

It demonstrates Rick’s mastery of voice work, body work (each character he portrays in the one man show has a distinctive body posture), art work (he does all the music and art for his shows), understanding of the Bard and The Simpsons and theatre conventions, and rapid wit.

Was going to add a picture of Rick and I, but I can’t get the uploader to work . . .

Let’s get the morbid ones out of the way–Alexander is now the age I was when I had him. I am now the age my father was when he died. Neither of us will be replicating those behaviors, but it’s on my mind.

Had a wonderful birthday–got to see many friends, the btp made me dinner, and even the boy said happy birthday (from a different room than the one I was in . . .). It was especially nice because I’d finished grading the day before and that means that I have a few weeks off now. I get to finish the very last of the unpacking, get that to-do list pared down, and get organized (my desk still has that “end of the quarter” look). Am also going to watch a lot of movies because I simply can.

I’m also going to try to get out and see some shows–I’ve already seen Paula Poundstone (who was very funny–I’ve always admired her ability to work a room and to do the audience engagement stuff that most comics can’t do); I’ve done my own stand-up set at Luna’s; I will see MACHOMER at CalShakes tomorrow; I saw Al on Sunday.

Al was amazing, by the way. He performed for two and a half hours. There were props and costume changes, and he did six songs that I’ve never seen him do live before. I got a starter pack of Al trading cards and now I want more (that’s the whole point, right?). I wish it hadn’t been at the fair, though, because I don’t like fairs (unless they’re Renaissance, cause I’m white & nerdy), and I wish the lady beside me hadn’t taken up half my seat in addition to hers–it meant I left with a neck crick.

In other news, Proposition 8 has been declared unconstitutional because it, um, is. The whole reason we have a bill of rights is so that a biased/prejudiced majority can’t deny rights to a minority. Jefferson wouldn’t sign without that bill because he knew what we were like–he knew what we would do. For example, I would like to deny bigots the right to procreate. They tend to raise children who are accepting of a “bigoted lifestyle.”

The hysterical right keeps bringing up the same old points. That these are special, not equal rights. That this is a threat to marriage. Well, I have to say that I managed to have two failed marriages before I was thirty. That’s because I made bad choices; it’s not because my homosexual friends were having more successful relationships than I’ve ever managed to. And my current desire to not marry nor to cohabitate has nothing to do with gay people, except for the knowledge that if I could turn gay (like the hysterical right thinks I can), I maybe could cohabitate successful with a woman, as Courtney’s presence seems to indicate that it’s the heterosexual roommate pairing that doesn’t work for me (unless the other person is my son, who theoretically has to do what I say).

It’s also nice that California is now once again keeping up with places like Iowa and Argentina–because it was embarrassing when we weren’t.