Last week, “Lisa the Iconoclast” (1996) was up for discussion in my Simpsons class.

(Lisa discovers that the town hero, Jebediah Springfield, was actually Hans Sprungfeld, a pirate who fought George Washington, hated the town he founded, and took credit for taming a “land cow” (buffalo), even though he had simply shot it. No one but Homer believes her, and the town historian actually covers up proof she’s right. When she confronts him, he admits it & is prepared to let her tell the townsfolk. Lisa reconsiders, though, since “the myth of Jebediah has value too.”)

When I last taught the class, in 2019, we had a robust discussion of whether Lisa made the right choice in ultimately keeping Hans’s secrets.

We did this time as well, but we spent more time talking about how this episode would likely be very different if it were written today.

While Miss Hoover calls Lisa a “PC thug . . . who keep[s] the rest of us from landing a husband,” today, Lisa would be derided as “woke.”

I also postulated that our recent grappling of history, specifically the removal of confederate statues, might have changed Lisa’s perspective on preserving a false legacy.

When a student asked why Lisa is okay with abandoning her quest to spread the truth and protect her reputation, it occurred to me that maybe it’s enough that the town historian validates her, especially after he gaslit her. I noted that “gaslighting” wasn’t a common term in 1996 (and that we overuse it now).

I’m not sure exactly what would happen in a cromulent 2024 version of this story, but I’m sure it would embiggen my streaming time.

Yesterday, Norman Lear died, at 101. He’s responsible for many of the best sitcoms of the 1970s, including All in the Family, One Day at a Time, and The Jeffersons. Lear gave us what we hadn’t really had before: working class characters, frank discussion of social issues, and families of color in the spotlight.

Maude featured a married woman who had an abortion; Archie Bunker had to accept that one of his friends was queer well before the famous “coming out” tv episodes of the 1990s.

Naturally, The Simpsons owes Lear a debt, something they acknowledged years ago, when they had Homer and Marge sing the All in the Family theme song:

I am unable to hear Henry Kissinger’s name without picturing him as depicted on The Simpsons, having dropped his glasses into the toilet at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant.

Monty’s Python’s song about him gets stuck in my head too:

If my brain has to keep doing this right now, at least it’s because he’s dead.

Mr. Burns says all he needs to be invigorated is “the blood of a young boy.”

Now there’s a study to back that up: <https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/anti-aging-benefits-could-be-found-in-blood>.

#SimpsonsScience #Simpsonology #TheSimpsons #SimpsonsDidIt

On a recent episode of his podcast, Conan talked about how gross the writers’ room was. You can read about it here.

Denise and I have been to the fabled room: and it was not pretty.

Here’s how the show depicted the room:

We were still thrilled to be there, though, and the writers seemed to enjoy having us, since our presence meant they could stop pretending to write for a while. In fact, we talked about strategies for distracting ourselves from writing. One writer mentioned that in an episode with Lurlene’s father, they watched hambone videos for much of a day, after deciding the character used that style.

One of my favorite stories they told us about the writers’ room related to Conan, though.

Meal times were sacred, as they are for all writers who desperately want to stop writing for a little while, which is all of us.

Some of the writers would work in a building across the street from the writers’ room, and the staff would use an old-fashioned triangle bell to call everyone together.

Conan was into practical jokes. Once, he came in carrying all of the take out containers for a room of salivating coworkers, only to trip and spill absolutely everything.

Luckily, the containers were empty.

My beloved friend, Chris Ledesma, died in mid-December of cancer. Last night, The Simpsons honored him:

Chris started as music editor in 1987, when The Simpsons was just a series of short “bumpers” on The Tracey Ullman Show. Someone working with him said to hang on–that the little yellow family might get their own show. When they did, in 1989, no one expected it to last for more than a few seasons, because so few things did.

Chris ended up being the music editor from 1989 to November 2022.

When Denise and I published our first Simpsons book, Chris was one of the two people affiliated with the show who reached out to us, inviting us down to the studio. Over two trips, he arranged for us to have a tour of the studio, to watch Alf Clausen lead the studio musicians in recording the music for “Flaming Moe” and to watch them record the voices for “The Spy Who Learned Me.”

From the first moment, it was clear that Chris was one of the nicest men on the planet. He introduced us to everyone and gathered autographs and souvenirs for us along the way.

Denise and I have kept in touch with him and his adoring and adored wife, Michelle.

If you’ve heard my phone ring with Homer Simpson cursing my name, that’s because of Chris.

If you’ve heard the story about how the music editor recorded himself asking a question about “Who Wears Short Shorts” and spiritual enlightenment to the writers and producers and them answering, that was Chris.

It hurts that he’s gone. I’m so lucky that I just have to turn my head to the right to see his words:

For those who knew Chris and want to do something in his memory, his wife suggests a contribution to New Symphony West, a local charity supporting childhood music education.

If there’s a heaven, I know Chris is playing music with the angels now. Chris, old friend, lead them in a song about short shorts for me.

I’m still not feeling safe enough to go to a museum, which is awful, because I love them. Even the bad ones. (Sometimes especially the bad ones.)

And it’s International Museums Day!

To celebrate, I’m going to Springfield, USA, which features over 20 museums, including the Civil War Prison and Museum of Sideburns, Fort Sensible, and the Museum of Generational Wealth.

Last week definitely had more ups than downs. This week, not so much.

The bad:

Both the boy and I had to deal with medical b.s. Mine included driving all the way to Sacramento with a migraine, to see my TMJ specialist, only to be told that my appointment had completely disappeared from their system.

I’m also prepping for some facet injections in my back. The pain clinic and I are sort of at a stand-still. I don’t respond well enough to the treatments we’re trying, and they’re also a little dangerous (since I’m so young, I shouldn’t have frequent disc injections). They want to burn the nerves in my lumbar spine, but I’m unconvinced, both because nerve pain isn’t the only thing going on and because I’ve had a nerve burn done in my neck, and it backfired. Instead of my brain saying, “we’re not getting pain signals from her neck anymore, so let’s not make her feel pain,” my brain said, “holy fucking shit! They BURNED HER NERVES! Let’s send the regular pain signals and the pain one should feel after being burned!”

The facet injections are a compromise, basically. They’re hoping to show me, through it, that a nerve burn would work there.

Anubis decided that two family members having health problems wasn’t enough, so his urethra got blocked. Now we’re monitoring his pee, and Dante has to help him keep is clean (Anubis’s surgery to widen his urethra has helped, but not quite enough.)

We didn’t get to really celebrate St. Urho’s Day, due to the chaos.

In other news, I took a break from celebrating getting out of medical and consumer debt to check on how those student loans were coming.

Borrowed: 133,733

Paid back so far: 88,744

With interest, what I owed Tuesday: $154,213

My laptop’s keyboard is starting to have sticky keys. Apparently, it’s a known issue, and they should fix it for free, but the fixers say I have to be prepared to be without it for a couple of weeks. My desktop can’t yet do Zoom, so I’ve had to order a web cam with mic before I can get the laptop into the shop.

The meh:

My 300th college course began this week! It’s an intro to lit class at SCC; unfortunately, it’s an 8 week class. And while I got rid of a few units (postmodernism, the Southern Gothic, and fairy tales), it’s still a challenge to do a semester course in half a semester.

5 of the 26 enrolled students didn’t respond to emails or log on to Canvas the first week. Half of the rest are already failing because they haven’t turned in the homework. I’ve reached out to everyone, and most are telling me they just didn’t think the course would be time consuming. When I explain that they would have physically been in a room with me for 6 hours and 40 minutes each week if we were in person, and that they should therefore be prepared to do at least that much (which is much less than the Carnegie expectation of 20 hours/week for this class), they are shocked.

I’m not shocked that they’re shocked, but I’m disheartened.

Many of my students are working full time and also taking a full load of courses, which an 8-week course isn’t compatible with.

Half of the students hated “Hills Like White Elephants,” and I had fun reading their interpretations of what the “operation” was. The most creative was that the American wanted Jig to join a prostitution ring. I also included “Bullet Points” by Jericho Brown in this first week, to show them that poetry isn’t just dead white guys writing about daffodils. Most of the students loved it; the one who wants to be a cop found it offensive.

Next week, we do plays: Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune and Mr Burns: A Post-Electric Play. It’s my first time teaching the latter; I’m cautiously optimistic. Am I having them watch the “Cape Feare” episode of The Simpsons first? Of course!

I finished my four Winter courses, and I got the syllabi and Canvas pages up for my three Davis Spring courses, which was quite a feat. There were a couple of days, including yesterday, when my brain broke.

The good:

I got to see the Sklar Brothers and Grep Proops perform virtual shows.

Spring came.

I took The New Yorker‘s recommendation to watch The Bureau, which is excellent.

I had many students thank me for my work last quarter. A few of them realizing how much time I spend writing to them and talking to them is the only thing that makes it worth it. One student wrote this:

“I have never had another teacher like you before. You terrified me for all of the right reasons. I kept feeling called out in the beginning. I used to write papers for the grader instead of the purpose because of their biased writing styles. In fact, I used to do everything to please other people because I thought that is how life works. I know now how incorrect that way of living is. Maybe this wasn’t your intention, but I understand how I want to live my life from now on. You taught the class with humor, honesty, and empathy: three characteristics I strive to perfect one day. There was never any bullshit, and for that, I am so thankful. You taught the class not only how to become better writers, but also how to be better people.”

I’m pretty sure “[terrifying] for all of the right reasons” should be on my tombstone.

Here’s the second part of the podcast we appeared on. Thanks to Best Darn Diddly: we make a groin-grabbingly good team!