Talking Simpsons - Talk To The Audience?!? - April 2026

Episode Date: May 6, 2026

We've reached the end of the month, which means it's time for another episode of our community podcast! This time around, we're celebrating the inception of World Simpsons Day, investigating the possibility of a The Critic reboot, and trying our best to figure out when the next exclusive episode will hit Disney Plus. And, as always, we read and respond to your questions and comments from the last round of podcasts. It's all happening on Talk to the Audience: the podcast with the eye of the tiger AND the mouth of a teamster!

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Ahoy, hoi, everybody, and welcome to talk to the audience where this is always death. I am one of your host, the guy who called in sick for World Simpsons Day Bob Mackey, and who is here with me today, as always. Currently animating my own couch gags to replace them, Henry Gilbert. And yes, welcome to talk to the audience. This is our community podcast. end of the month on the Patreon and the beginning of the month on the free feed. And in this podcast, we go over Simpsons News, our news, and then we respond to questions

and comments from the last round of episodes left on the Patreon. And this is one of the slow news months on Talk to the Audience, because the season wrapped up, they're busy making the movie. Nothing new is really happening. But we're going to make the most of it as we usually do in these slow news months on Talk to the Audience. Yeah, there aren't new episodes to talk about. There aren't teasers for new episodes to talk about.

There hasn't even been in the summer, at least, we would get, oh, it's Comic-Con. So there's going to be some news out of that. That hasn't happened yet. We're just in this new fallow period that exists since Simpson's seasons will seemingly only be from September to February from now on. When did season 37 start? Was it September? No, it might have just been like right before a tree house. I feel like there actually were ones before Treehouse this year.

So I think it was actually like early April or early October. Yeah. Yeah, because now I feel like the fallow period for Simpsons is, now eight months because season 37 began like the last day of September practically. So it's basically October to February, new episodes, then mid-February to late September, nothing. So this is, I guess, kind of unprecedented when it comes to lack of Simpsons content. We're like living in the season one era of The Simpsons when the episodes we have 13 and then we're like, we want more.

What are they coming? We haven't lived like this in 36 years with The Simpsons, have we? Yeah. Hey, the important thing is it saves money with smaller episode counts for Disney. that helps their stockholders. So that's what matters. That's why we're here today, are we folks? And in my notes here, I am reporting on a new episode,

but that episode did not go live because the end of the produced episode, which is called Extreme Makeover Homer Edition, that is going to be a Disney Plus exclusive. That is some news for talk to the audience. So hooray, we found something. But because that news coincided with News of World Simpsons Day, more on that later, I think one outlet might have crossed their wires

and thought, oh, this episode must be going on to Disney Plus on World Simpsons Day. That did not happen. I think it should have happened. There should have been any new content on World Simpsons Day. Again, more on that later. But you might have seen many news articles saying, oh, Extreme Makeover, Homer Edition coming to Disney Plus on World Simpsons Day, April 19th. That did not happen.

Currently, we are at April 23rd. Still no episode on Disney Plus. Yeah, as you put in the notes there, that is the 800th produced episode. And I have fuzzy memories of them saying like they watch. wanted it, the 800th episode they wanted to air was a two-parter. I'm now wondering if did this become a Disney Plus exclusive simply because the Fox Network more than Disney didn't want to give up two half-hour time slots to a Simpsons event

when they'd rather diversify their portfolio of not just showing Disney cartoons on it, I wonder. Yeah, it could be. And I think Disney Plus really likes these two-part exclusives because at least one of the Simpsons Disney Plus exclusives was a two-parter. I think it's, oh, come on all ye faithful. Yeah. Christmas episode from either last year or the year before, I can't remember.

The one where Ned lost all of his confidence in Christ. Yeah, that great episode, or that pretty good episode for 36. But yeah, this double one, I mean, what was it going to be like? Extreme Makeover, I assume it's going to be like a parody of house or makeup shows reality series, I would guess, is what the parody would be. It is going to be like a two-parter trilogy episode. So I think the title may be referring to something that is only one segment of the episode or perhaps a theme running. throughout them, but it's basically going to be like a double-length three-hast-of-horror, but not

horror-focused. Interesting. I mean, hey, trilogies always work for them and they try to find a new angle on it. So a two-parter trilogy making it like, I guess in runtime, three 15-minute segments, I guess, 15-minute-ish segments. That

makes it, because they always say in their trilogies, especially in like the big mega-classics of the first 10 years, like the Halloween episodes, they always had to cut too much stuff. They always ran out of time. So maybe this, you know, they'll find some more interesting things to do with a trilogy with double length in it. I don't know. Well, double length just means there's double the segments because all of the segments are still eight minutes long.

I'm looking at the little released information about the episode right now that's on the Simpsons Wiki based on just like existing interview quotes. So we don't know the premise really. We just know like a few jokes that'll be in it. There's going to be a special couch gag for this episode. And yes. So a bunch of segments about various things. It really does not feel like we're a year-ish away from a new Simpsons movie. I mean, compared to 20-ish years ago when it was, you know, 06 in the run-up to the 07 movie, I don't know, I was checking the Internet less than. It was before I had a Twitter account, but it felt like there was more often news or teases about

Simpsons movie than there is now about the sequel. Well, I think World Simpsons Day could be a gearing up towards the movie. movie more coming with the 40th anniversary of the Simpsons than the 39th as we're experiencing this year. Again, more on that later. There's a few things to cover here because our bitter rivals at the four-finger discount podcast, by the way, we have no opinion on them. They're fine.

Actually, I've never heard their podcast. I'm sure they're doing great, except for those accents, guys. What are you going to do with those? Yes, it's rare to listen to other people who do the thing you do just out of like, I don't think I would rip them off, but it's like, why do I want to hear the other thing? I like doing my thing, you know. Yeah, yeah. and this is my job. I don't want to be doing extra homework

by listening to other Simpsons podcasts on the side. But they scored an interview with Matt Salman, so congrats to them. And he reviewed a few things like the fact that this episode, which we already knew about, by the way, he revealed that it was going to be a Disney Plus exclusive. So that's where the news came from. That's also when World Simpsons Day news broke. So again, the

wires were crossed, not the fault of this other podcast. And because of this interview and a quote from Selman, many places were reporting, it's the end of couch gags. Couchags going away, says Simpson's showrunner. Well, if you are a listener to our show, if you watch videos by the Real Jims, if you're watching the

Simpsons, you might have realized that for the past couple of years, or at least I don't know what the span of time was, but they've really pulled back on couch gags to the point where there's basically been like four a year in recent years. And if you watch the Real Jim's video called Couchaggag Chaos on YouTube, he has expertly

charted just the decline in couch gags over the years to the point where we are getting very few, and the obvious answer is they're getting less time because once again, the shareholders. If we give the show more time, the shareholders lose profit. Yes. Real Jim's research

and his like graphs, I do not doubt them at all. He does such a great job with them. And yeah, just over time, they just did fewer and fewer of them. We lived through like 10-ish or more years ago. It was so many, like the only times you hear about a couch gag is a guest animated one,

like the Rick and Morty one and so on. But now I think I'd seen Selma, and say this in other interviews before two, but one of his points is that, like, you lose story time. They need more commercials than ever before, and by they, I mean the broadcaster, not the creators. And so you're going to have, like, even a 20-second couch gag, like, that is an ad. Like, that actually equals money. Yeah, and a couch, sorry, not couchboard, chalkboard gags have also been on the decline. It's just like any sort of extra joke has had to go because of the decreasing

runtime of the episode itself. So, yeah, I think season 37 had one, had one chalkboard gag. That's it. Right. Yes. And couch gag's pretty rare, too. Usually if they were only meant for to be something momentous or for the broadcasted 800th episode, they had the couch gag about Homer reacting to being run over by Marge, which it wasn't even actually, no, why am I even saying that? It didn't broadcast on Fox. It was only on Disney Plus that one. Right. Because the whole thing we talked about. Only Disney Plus had the time to show that to us. Oh, man, it's like yes. Again, and Selman says that the choice for him is not convinced Disney to give him more broadcast time or convince Fox to give more broadcast time.

The choice is if you give 20 seconds to a couch gag or even some of the intro, like they skip the intro most episodes entirely. If you lose that, then it comes out of your story. It comes out of the plot of the episode. You don't get free time. We grew up in the air which you'd get a couch gag, a chalkboard gag, and then the full circus intro. Yes, two whole minutes. Two whole minutes would be covered by that. And I mean, even Al Jean on Twitter replied to posts about it saying like, yeah, everybody knows this.

Al Jean presided over like multiple years of barely any couch gags. Like this, he even is like, why are news outlets treating this like news? Yes. So that's basically what came out of that. Four Finger Discount Podcast. Please check it out. Sure, they did a great job. And yeah, that's just an interview that came out around the time of all of the Simpsons to do in the month of April, because April 19th was officially declared World Simpsons Day. And it felt like they had about a week to prepare for this, because this is a

Disney initiative, by the way. And they're celebrating the 39th anniversary of the Simpsons debut on the Tracy Allman Show, even though they and Fox never formally released those shorts. So I want to cover that first. They're cheating by counting 1987 as the beginning of the Simpsons. That is true. But I feel like it's a cheat because if that's truly the beginnings, Disney and you own all the Simpsons, give us the shorts. We've been saying this for almost 11 years of this podcast. Where are they? Whoever owns The Simpsons has the money and legal power to release these shorts.

These are important to Simpsons fans as the Disney shorts are to Disney fans. And we deserve to see them in high quality. They're all out there, but they're out there because people recorded the Tracy Allman show in the 80s or in the 90s when they were rerun on Lifetime or Comedy Central. So all I'm saying is if you're going to celebrate the Simpsons, starting with the shorts, we deserve to see those. Now that the Simpsons is nearly officially 40 years old and they're going to celebrate these things, like we should consider it like Steamboat Willie or, you know, all of these like Disney classics that they do. Not every, obviously, not every Mickey cartoon is on Disney Plus. In fact, they could do with a lot of them. But very important ones are like I want every Simpson short in there.

at the very least can't have the very first one other than if you have to tell people like, well, pull it up the 138th episode spectacular. That's the only way you can watch it on Disney Plus. Yeah, it's just crazy to me, The Simpsons, this historic show, groundbreaking comedy, one of those most popular long-running shows of all time. Every time you talk about The Simpsons,

you have to mention, of course, it started on the Tracy Allman show, and of course you're never allowed to see those. Never. Yes. I think we, back when we interviewed David Silverman a while back, I think we had like inconclusive answers from him of why they're unavailable. I know like I have seen recent interviews where he loves talking about those shorts.

Like he wants to celebrate those shorts. And I again am left with the thought of like it, I think it's one of two things. One, Macraining really doesn't want people to see them or he just thinks they're not good enough or too raw. But second, I now am more way of thinking is that after Tracy Holman sued Fox that either Fox and or Gracie film slash James L. Brooks simply don't want to give her whatever money would come from airing Tracy Olin content by sharing the shorts. Yeah, it could be, but I feel like Disney can force some hands.

It's the only, one of the few advantages to being a gigantic evil corporation is that maybe they can give us these shorts and, hey, maybe that's what they're gearing up to do for the 40th anniversary to finally release these. Because I think this 39th anniversary, the beginning of World Simpsons Day, is just to get us ready for 40, and then who knows if we'll be sold celebrating it after that, but I feel like we can't just start with 40. We have to have like the prelude to 40. And then when 40 comes around, we'll have like the reissues of certain things, the release of the shorts,

potentially news about the movie, the first trailer, things like that. It all feels like we are getting ready for April 19th of 2027. That's what this April 19th was. Yeah, yeah, I think you're right there. It's just, this is part of the long rollout of PR. Like in general with Disney, Disney loves to celebrate anniversaries. If you go to any of their theme parks, every year is some anniversary. Like if it's not just like one of the like multiples of five anniversaries at Walt Disney World, like, oh, this is the 70th of Disneyland.

Then if it's not one of those, then they just go like, well, this one ride is now 50 year. Or it's Walt Disney's 100th birthday or whatever. They love the press department of Disney. Love the anniversaries like that. I am on a retro video game podcast and I have been for 15 years. I love anniversaries. Everything is always celebrating an anniversary divisible by. five. So it's an easy way to get content. Yeah. And I look forward to like a slow to something as big

as that kind of rollout. Like the Simpsons movie 20 years ago or 19 years ago had so many thing tie-ins, so many things like only I can think of recent ones like everything has as many tie-ins as that like Mandalorian and Grogu have so many ties ins. But the Simpsons in 2007 having like, well, there's Burger King. There's 7-Eleven. There's cereal. out there. There's new snacks out there, so much new merchandise. And then the game and the movie, there was so much like, will they even be able to have like half of that next year for the movie launch? I wonder. Yeah, I really want to know what this is going to be like under Disney. Well, I have one new Simpsons movie 2 news. I saw this right before we started podcasting. The sequel is set to be among the

first animated projects to receive funding from the state of California, landing $21.9 million in production incentives as part of the state's film and TV program. So California is your paying for this. It better be good. I hear from people who move to California and moved to Los Angeles to work in the entertainment industry is every job is leaving there. And so if California is like handing out free money to businesses just so they stay there, I hope that at least helps the actual people instead of the Bob Eiger's of the world. But though, yeah, I'm sure they're going to be animating this a lot in California for sure. They're going to be doing some drawings there. Yes, they will. they would. Hey, I'm glad that means that at the very least, the higher level stuff will be there.

Though, man, I'm still wondering, especially because that Coyote versus Acme trailer just came out, which looked funny, and I think it could be a good movie. It's sell shaded. It sells shaded 3D. Like, well, can Simpsons actually be a 2D movie? I wonder. I mean, I think it has to be, but it could surprise me. I don't know. I really hope they never move to any sort of like 3D animation. I know. The reason they're doing it in, I'm sure their main reason it was cost for coyote versus Acme. I would bet it is much cheaper to animate the CGI people and make them look kind of 2D with cell shading versus full hand-drawn animation even in digital.

It's not as expensive as in the Roger Rabbit days, but still. We rarely ever get American-made full animation 2D movies in theaters. Whenever I see one, it's always from France or from Japan. This could be the first one in theater since the Bob's Berger's movie in 2021 or 2022, whatever that was. And that was like barely released thanks to the pandemic as well. So yeah. I hope so too.

It just it makes me scared. I see things like that coyote versus acne. I'm like, oh yeah. Of course that's all be CG. Like even the stuff that's just supposed to be a roadrunner cartoon, that could have just been 2D animation, but now it's CG as well. So there were a few things announced on World Simpsons Day. I don't want to poo it too much, but it's basically just merch.

But like songs in the Key of Springfield is getting a double LP release. That's fine. I've heard that album like gazillion times. I don't need it again. But it's cool. It's a cool collectible. I'm not going to argue about that. There's like new hats that are already all sold out.

There's like new merch. But we don't really report on merch anymore because there's always new Simpsons merch. And it's never really that interesting anymore. Yes. I mean, I think I have now seen five different recent releases of things advertised to me on like Instagram of Homer in the Bush's meme of like from five different companies. Like that's just how many ways that. One specific moment is getting merchandise these days. That it's not worth reporting on it.

It would just be so redundant in our news section here. I mean, like, there's new shoes. I'm so tired of Simpson's shoes now. First, they were cute, and now I think they're annoying, and I want them to die. The songs in the Kia is Springfield as a vinyl. That sounds fun, though. I bet all of these, like, if they're limited drops, then they must go out of print very quickly. And the only way you're getting them is it a markup on things like eBay, right?

Yeah, so I'm glad they did something, but I feel like this was a lot. scraped together the week before. They're like, oh shit, what's releasing? What's coming up? We can just say, we can tie this into the anniversary. So again, not trying to be too negative here. I feel like this is establishing World Simpsons Day so we can all have a grand 40th anniversary with the Simpsons in 2027. I think when I saw that it was World Simpsons Day, I only knew it on that day. And I tried to make like a quickie post of trying to draft on that popularity of just like to promote our podcast on Blue Sky. But it did feel like, wow, if we don't know about this, then this feels very last minute planning here.

And we are really scraping the barrel here because we can report about a tweet, a very vague tweet that Al Jean made on April 3rd, where he dugs like an old critic binder out of his storage. It's a photo, well, a drawing of Jay Sherman that says it stinks. It looks to be like a binder, perhaps a story bible for the critic. And he is tagging at John Levitts, which could indicate like they're getting ready for something. Something could be happening.

But again, we don't know anything outside of the fact that Algey. Gene's role has been reduced on The Simpsons. I would guess he's at least taking some meetings, the very first start of meetings with people. That makes me hopeful for if there were to be more critic episodes that might actually happen. So how involved will Mike Reese be in it, too? I wonder, and also will.

James L. Brooks really sign off on it. And lastly, production on animated shows takes so very long that he could get it sold tomorrow. and I bet it take three years for us to get 10 episodes of it on Prime, let's say. Yeah, we'll get it eventually, but it's not going to be a huge order. Like, I was just thinking today because the Clayface trailer drop, and I was thinking, oh, right, there's another season of that Cape Crusader show coming out because Amazon Order 20.

We got 10 in 2024. It's 2026. I hate waiting two years to see 10 episodes of something. It sucks. You know, thanks for bringing that up. That reminded me it came. up in a news story. I read, I think it was a Hollywood reporter this week,

it was a small part of an article on, why did J.J. Abrams fuck up or like, because I don't know if you saw the bad robot, his company downsized and sold their Los Angeles office and are moving to a smaller office, I think, in the New York area. And it was seen as just like this moment of, oh, things are really changing. J.J. Abrams lost his big overall deals

and can't keep up his big production studio going in Hollywood. And Batman, that animated series of Cape Crusader, was listed in there of like, oh, part of when Warner was losing faith in Abrams was effectively canceling the series unless Prime picked it up. Yeah, it's a weird situation there. And I'm just hoping for the best for Batman in general, because Henry, as a Spider-Man fan, you're eating good. Yes.

We Batman fans are clinging the silverware against the table, yelling for more. Well, Batman is in a very weird place. where at least theatrically they are waiting. They, I mean, the James Gunniverse is waiting for the Batman part two to come out, which apparently will take a decade. Yes, Matt Reeves get off your ass. But they won't make other Batman things instead. And so Clayface is the closest,

I don't know how they're going to make a Clayface movie that doesn't have Batman in it, but already I've seen people pointing out that like, there already was a Clayface in the James Gunniverse in the animated series Creature Commandos, which I thought was all right. Clayface appears in it, but he's portrayed as a fat gamer, nothing like the dude who's in the trailer for Clayface the movie.

So people are trying to go like, wait, I thought they're supposed to be the same Clayface in this shared universe, right? This doesn't make any sense. Yeah, I'm not a fan of this Batman spin-off stuff. I know the Penguin was a good show, but I just want my Batman.

Yeah. Well, that Penguin show, what I liked about it was that it just so openly imitates sopranos with cast members and shooting style and everything. I didn't care for the penguin in the best. man. So I didn't want to see more of him.

And by the way, I didn't want to point this out, but I feel like I must. It's better that we report what's happening on Algin's Twitter because he seems to be very mad at Zoran Mamdani. And I wasn't even going to say this, but today there's another retweets that's anti-Zoran Mamdani. So in particular, Al-Gine is very mad about Zoran's plan to tax billionaires, a very small percentage. If they own a second property that's worth over $5 million and they're not living in the city as permanent residents. So that's his one issue when it comes to Zoroamam Dani. Other tweets fine,

but I wasn't going to mention it, but I saw another one today. I'm like, Al Jean, come on, buddy. Come on. You got to see which way the wind is blowing, Alfred. Well, especially with posts like that by older centrist guys like Al Jean, is at the very least ask yourself,

do I agree with Trump on this? If you do, then think about that maybe you're the bad guy here, if you're agreeing with Trump, because that's the, this complaint that it's like taxing rich people out of living in New York. York City or that it's scapegoating rich people. That's exactly how Trump is literally complaining about this tax as well and hatred from Mondani.

Yes, we don't need to explore his politics in full, but I would just a little put off by that. I mean, there are other things to complain about if you want to complain about Zara and Madani, I'm sure, but that issue seems like a very bizarre thing to fixate onto the fact where you're like retweeting articles about it over and over again. I'm like, come on, dude. Maybe he needs something else to do. Maybe that's why this critic thing is a good project for him, because

He's just twiddling his thumbs in his consulting producer job. He's not running the show anymore. We need to get him off Twitter and on to writing jokes for John Levitz. Oh, man, Bob, now you've made me imagine a horrible thing. That critic show happens. They're going to have to do an anti-Mam Dani episode because he's based in New York City. Like the critic's going to complain about the new mayor there. Jay Sherman goes to Israel.

That's going to be the season premiere. The Tel Aviv Film Festival. He'll tell us what a great society it is. The only democracy in our friends there, yes. I've been to Gaza. It stinks. And then he's shoving someone out of their home. You can understand how this would go. Yes.

You can imagine. Don't make us say the things. And then my last news item here, at long last, we've been screaming about this for years. Finally, someone has listened. Disney won't listen to us, but there is a Frinkyak for King of the Hill with even more advanced features. It is called Boom Pain. It was put together by Esty Dong. I hope it stays online forever.

And it is better than Frinkiac because you can create gifts, but you can also create clips with audio. I don't know how this is online. I don't know how it's not bankrupting this poor creator. I don't know how Disney is allowing this to continue, but I'm glad they are because now I am seeing DVD quality King of the Hill screen grabs, not any of this crap that you can just find by Google image searching. It's so great.

We're living in a new age of King of the Hill memes. I'm so excited for the future. When I made the image for next month, the May schedule, and was able to just go to Boom, Payne, and pull up any screenshot I wanted from the episode just that easily, I felt like I was living in the future or the thing that should have finally happened. Like I really thank the creator of this

for all of the work they put into this to make an improvement on Frinkiac quite honestly. And like a free service that is obviously costing them a lot of money. There are no ads on this thing. It's crazy to think of how much bandwidth I'm supposed to be sucking up.

But my only complaint is it is not called propaniac and I really wish it was. Yeah. Do you think that had to be like couldn't get the URL kind of deal? Possibly. But boom pain is

on a very strange URL because it's like boompane.orgoliberal.com. It's not boompane.com. Yes, the URL was a little strange to me. I'll also say that. But if that's where it made the most financial sense to take up all of that bandwidth or all of the means of that, then that's how it had to be done. The ends justify the means, however, to get this into our lives. What, did we just say it was the 10th anniversary of Frankie Act? Like, it took that long? Last month, I believe, was the 10th anniversary. So yeah, now a new golden age of King of the Hill memes has begun and we're presiding over it. Thanks to all the folks who like told us about it on blue sky. Like I think me and you got added in multiple replies and I think the at Talk Simpsons pod account to just to let us know like guys, did you see this?

Did you see this? Which was I loved seeing that because it let me know that so many of our listeners know that we have been begging for this for so long that they were excited to tell us. I would say whining for so long. But thankfully, we whine long enough and someone else did the work, which is how it should work in this country. So moving on, that is it for news. We're sorry, we wish there were more news items. And I wish they would have put that episode out on World Simpsons Day. It only would have made sense, which is why they probably didn't do it.

But I imagine within the coming months before broadcast season 38's premiere, we will be talking about Extreme Makeover Homer edition and whatever the hell it is. There's at least two more in there, too, of Held Over episode. It was either four or six. I can't remember off the top of my head. But it's not just though that two-parter. But yeah, I hope we get to hear new news before. I'll say before the July San Diego Comic-Con,

which is usually they have big news coming out of that. Maybe possibly a teaser trailer for a Simpsons movie too, maybe? Yeah, like even just a quickie thing. You know, the first teaser trailer for the Simpsons movie was, while they had two, the one of like a CGB that then gets run over and killed as their way of saying, this is in 2D, and then the one of Homer wearing the Superman shirt. Like those are the two teasers I remember.

Okay. I'm looking forward to any information so we can tell everybody out there. We can report on it. So you're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad heard only in Canada. Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libson Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libson ads. Email Bob at Libson.com to learn more. That's B-O-B at L-I-B-S-Y-N.com.

That is news for The Simpsons. Let's talk about our news and our schedule for the month of May. First up is What a Cartoon. We are covering the new-ish series, Jellystone. We thought it was new, but it turns out to be five years old. Anyhow, it's a great series, and we were talking about the episode SpaceCon, which is the episode that features of many Space Ghost Coast to Coast characters. And on this episode, we have the guy who co-wrote and storyboarded this episode, Toby Jones,

who was a frequent guest of Talking Simpsons. Yeah, it was great to talk with Toby about his work on that episode. His viewpoint from working on Jellystone in its second production year, third season that aired on Max Original and all of that complicated stuff we dug into, plus a fun history of just the Hannah Barbera franchises and many characters. And Toby is always a fun guy to talk to. He even gave us a couple of light teases of his work on the, coming regular show, the lost tapes that he's been working on more recently.

But yeah, SpaceCon, what a fun time that was. And if you like podcasts that are more than three hours long, you'll like this one. If not, well, listen to it anyways. It's free. Yes, you got to do it as regardless, whether you like it or not, you must listen to the space. You have to listen to it. So on the Patreon at patreon. Patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons.

Of course, we have our regular miniseries episodes. The first is Talking Futurama. We are covering the Futurama episode Cold Warriors, in which Fry brings the colds of the 20th century to the future and they have to deal with a global pandemic with quarantining and all that fun stuff that we live through. It was interesting to see the nine years before the lockdown. The Futurama predicted it. This was, I think, the first one we covered where I did not see it before watching it for the research on this one. And I did not know that it was a dad feelings episode, which how well do they pull it off? We've got opinions on it. Yeah. It's borrowing the

formula of luck of the friarish. So if you like emotional episodes, you might like this one. and for talking of the Hill, we're covering the King of the Hill episode, Bill of Sales. We actually just recorded that before we started recording this. It is a fantastic episode with Bill and Peggy. Peggy basically turning Bill into an unpaid volunteer to help her sell products through her MLM program. And we finally are confronting the Bill's feelings for Peggy and how the fallout from that is very interesting. It takes a lot of unexpected swings that you would think for a sitcom. It also delves deep into mental health stuff that I feel like you, people didn't think, got explored.

in TV shows back in the year 2000 and it's just a really good dark bill episode and of a perfect Peggy episode about her acting horribly and for what a cartoon movie we are covering Winnie the Pooh the 2011 Winnie the Pooh movie

the last traditionally animated Walt Disney feature period that is it this came after the Princess and the Frog most people forgot about this movie and its existence but we are going to be covering it and I have actually been doing a lot of poo research I've been deep in the poo as they say just digging through it with my hands. And so far, I've rewatched the many adventures of Winnie the Pooh.

And now I'm watching the very interesting and strange series of Otts Pooh movies. I just watched the Tigger movie. Tigger movie's really good. I don't know if we'll ever cover it, but I'm going to start watching more of these before we cover 2011 to Winnie the Pooh because I like these. And by the way, they're animated in Japan. So maybe that's the reason why. Right, because that was like as they are about to close Walt Disney Animation, Japan, they get these films out of them. And they're doing like feature-level animation. which they obviously can do.

They're very skilled animators at Walt Disney Japan. This is making me want to check out the Tigger movie. I never saw it. I think when I had a video store job, we put on the Heffalump movie because I heard good stuff about that one. I like the original Winnie the Poo movie, but I think Tigger movie is actually a better movie.

And I thought it'd be like just a cynical Tigger-filled movie because, you know, Tigger obviously, very profitable merchandising figure, especially of that time. But it's really good. So, yes, looking forward to watching more of the Poo, and covering 2011's poo. And that will never not be funny to me. The fact that that thing is called poo.

This is why they cannot sell it to anybody above five years old. That's the hard part of it. Yes. So yes, that is available. The preview is available for free. But if you want to hear the entire thing, please go to patreon.com slash talking simps and sign it for 10 bucks. You can hear that,

which is probably going to be like three to five hours long. And then a huge back catalog of what a cartoon movie episode is nearly eight years worth of them. So check that out there. And now it's time to talk about us and what we've been doing, not related to podcasting. I've got a few things to mention very quickly. In terms of video games, I've been playing progmata, which I've been saying a lot in Hank Hill's voice for no reason.

I had my doubts about this game. It's made by Capcom. I played the demo, and it kind of won me over. But initially I thought, oh, it's a dad shooter. I'm kind of over this. But then, you know, I wasn't trusting Capcom enough in the institutional knowledge they gained from not laying people off every five months.

And this is a very, very well-made game that is not the kind of game you think it is going in. because when you play a dad game, most of the dad games like The Last of Us, etc. It's like sitting down with a guy at a bar. He's very drunk and he's telling you how much he'd kill for his children.

And so games like The Last of Us are about like, I can't really stand my kid, but I will kill tens of thousands of people for them because I'm a dad, damn it. But this is about by exploring the softer side of being a dad more than it is about I will kill for my kid. The same way, I watched my husband play the more recent game called God of War,

which is also a dad game. And in that game, it's like not just teach him how to kill, but also like, okay, I've been with you as your first kill. Here's how you end the life. Like, it's just, it's such that the American expression of masculine fatherhood is murder and death and hate and anger. And yeah, I actually played the demo last night. And it is just that your little robot girl pal is just saying nice things. Like, actually, maybe you should look over there. Ooh, this is fun.

and she draws a fun, like, colorful crayn drawing at the end of it. It's nice. The bond between the two characters is very sweet because you're playing, like, basically, a space marine type and your partner is like a little robot girl. But then the shooting gameplay is really good. Like, I've compared this. Like, this is like an ideal 2009 video game. It's like a 10-hour game full of, like, inventive shooting mechanics.

And it does remind me a lot of vanquished in that sense. But essentially, you are using the little girl character to hack enemies while you're shooting at them. and it really doesn't get old because they throw enough curveballs at you to keep you on your toes like, oh, you're used to this enemy and this kind of hacking style. Well, here's a new enemy that requires a different approach entirely. And the levels are very dense and fun

to explore. I am very impressed by Capcom launching this new IP. As much as I complain that they don't make new Devil May Crys or Phoenix Wright, I'm glad that they launched a completely new idea and I was proud to support it. So Pragmata is very good. If you don't believe me again, check out that demo. It's great. They have been promoting it for what

felt like years at this point. And I was happy to see it was released. And yes, hearing you compare it to some of my favorite games of that era, like I've seen other people mentioned Dead Space as well, as Vanquish. And when I played the demo, too, it reminded me of like what my favorite thing was playing Resident Evil, the ninth Resident Evil last month was it also reminds me of the RE4 gameplay that Capcom is so good at, like a different evolution of it. And I can't wait to play more of it.

I think it is going to be my next game I play. Yeah, I said it earlier, but I'm glad I can trust Capcom because like Nintendo and a lot of other Japanese companies, Capcom doesn't lay people off, you know, like American companies do or other companies do. So they have people who have been there like 20, 30, 40 years, and that institutional wisdom makes games better. That's why these games are so good.

As opposed to say like when Ubisoft just announced a re-release of an old Assassin's Creed game, how many people that made that game, you know, 15 years ago, or even still employed by Ubisoft. You know, 10% if that. And I just wanted to mention also, I am replaying Mother 3 because that game came out in 2006. I'm replaying it for the 20th anniversary. There will be a retronauts about it in May.

Still really enjoying it. Glad to come back to it. It's a great game. In case you don't know what that is, it is the sequel to Earthbound. It only came out in Japan for the Game Boy Advance. And fans have been waiting for a real translation, well, sorry, an official translation for 20 years now.

and there's been a extremely good, better than professional translation out online since 2008. So I'm replaying that. I love that games. It's great. It's been sitting on our steam deck for years now of like, that was the most recent time. My husband's set up an emulator for me on it

to be like, okay, seriously, you should play Mother Thiel. I still haven't. This 20th anniversary. That needs to be my next road trip or a lot of flights games. It's a hey, it's an RPG that is about how capitalism is evil. I think you get down with that. I love those. Especially if you played for free.

Ha ha. It's in the spirit of the game. In terms of watching stuff, I've watched a lot of stuff, but I wanted to call out a few movies. So in terms of anniversaries, it was recently the 30th anniversary of Mystery Science Theater 3,000, the movie. And I watched that movie so much

in the first 10 years of its existence. I did not watch it for the past 20 years. So I took this opportunity to buy a Blu-ray, which I rarely do, in order to enjoy the movie and all the extras. And I think it should be re-evaluated. While I'm not a fan of the host segment, the non-movie parts.

I think the writing in the riffing sections is like some of the most top-tier comedy the show has ever made, and you could tell they worked very, very hard on it. And a lot of it is locked into my mind forever, but I was just kind of like sitting in appreciation of how good these jokes are in this movie. And I know it was a big failure. I didn't get to see it. So I forget, Henry, did you get to see this movie in a theater, Mystery Science Theater The other movie?

No. Okay. Believe me, I woulda. But no, it was not showing anywhere within 50 miles or 100 miles of where I lived back back. Yeah, same here. Yeah, I got a very limited distribution and I never got to see it in theaters. And then it's funny to think that this failed, but now we've been living with nearly 20 years worth of Rift Tracks Live in theaters. And now Mike and Kevin and Bill are coming back and Trace and other people are coming back to make Mystery Science Theater again. So I'm glad that this was not the

end for them because the movie could have been the last thing they did if they didn't get picked up again and, you know, Rift Tracks didn't exist and so on. That movie, also I watched it on BHS, like like eight million times as well, I think, as it was for a time, until I started taping more again off of sci-fi channel. It was one of like six VHS tapes officially released of Mystery Science Theater I've watched. I remember putting on the DVD when I worked at the video store, but I don't think I have watched it in full. Definitely not in the Blu-ray release, though I probably own it.

Well, and then. Henry, I need to know if you own this. Well, okay, if you give me one second. Okay, we're going to pause. we need to check in on Henry's inventory. Oh, Henry is presenting it. Henry does have it. Yes.

Can you hear the plastic still on it there? Yes. I'm not open to it. Henry, you really need a spreadsheet. I was going to, you know, I downloaded from listening to Tracy Letts on the blank check podcast about his collection of physical media. I downloaded the app he says he uses, which is CLZ movie. I just haven't gone to the trouble of scanning.

That's going to be like a week-long project. Yes, yeah. That'll be a staycation idea. Instead of going somewhere, I'll do that. But yeah, I just wanted to re-evaluate that movie. I have a lot of fondness for it. And I see people being kind of dismissive of it, like, oh, it's just an okay episode. I feel like, again, the sketches are not that great.

I feel like they're too in love with their expanded sets, the things they can do, and I understand why. But, again, the movie segments are just so funny, and I wish they had more time in the theater because that movie is shorter than an episode. I think another thing that made me less wanting to watch it in the last 10 years was having it confirmed in, you know, multiple. oral histories and interviews that like, this is why Joel quit the show. This is what caused like multiple rifts in it. So it's almost like watching like the near killer of mystery science theater is to watch the movie. Yeah.

Yeah. I recommend people watch it and it gave me not like I lost respect for him or anything, but I have a new appreciation for Trace's Crow because I feel like I've seen a lot of Bill's Crow lately gearing up for his new episodes of Mystery Science Theater. I think Trace's Crow is just as good, a different experience. of that character and I sound like a crazy person but I'm right I need to re-evaluate my crow rankings as well I love them both crow is my favorite guy of the three now there are too many crows yes hampton yount I can barely have opinions about him let alone the crows beyond him

I just can yeah I feel like in this new mystery science theater iteration we need to have like a mind swap and have trace B crow for like at least one segment I want to see him back with the puppet again no offense to bill I just want to see it's been 30 years I just want another taste of trace yes I hope to see that too God all their updates have been so great watching them build physical fucking shit to acting oh I'm so excited yeah no green screen it's all real

built by old men so this is interesting to Henry I think now Henry I watched the 1989 Punisher movie have you seen this film I at best I watched it on like either USA or a VHS tape a long time ago we put it on as a goof

my wife likes the Punisher I have no opinion but this movie totally owns it is like a real Life McBain movie. It is so over the top. And I'm like, who is this director? I've never heard of him. He directed this and like a weird buddy cop comedy with zombies. I think it's called

like Dead Heat or something like that. It turns out he was James Cameron's editor. He edited things like True Lies, Terminator 1, Terminator 2. And that is why this movie is directed so well because a lot of the directing happens in the editing bay. So I trust this guy. But I feel like people think

this is trash. People think like, well, it's not really the character I love. It is like, Gonzo 80s over the top, extreme violence and just very creative action set pieces, wall to wall. Like, it did remind me a bit, this could sign hyperbolic. It reminded me a bit of Fury Road where there's never a break. It's just like crazy thing after crazy thing after crazy thing. And I'm never bored and it's 89 minutes long. It is supoib.

And I recommend you watch it, Henry. If you like John Carpenter movies and things like that from the 80s, I think you really dig this film. Wow, that is quite an endorsement. And I saw a similar positive endorsement from Nina, who does. like the Punisher comment or just the Punisher character. Yeah, I only knew it as like it would be on a list of bad Marvel adaptations because he doesn't have a skull on his shirt in the movie and is it even really the Punisher and all that stuff. But like Punisher's background and his character lends itself perfectly to a cocaine-fueled 80s film. Yeah.

Yeah. I gave it four and a half stars and a like on Letterbox. So I am not a hipster snob. I am adding that to my watch list. I will be giving that a watch list. Yes, I really recommend it. And also, hey, we watch the Super Malary Galaxy movie, but you can listen to a retronauts about that.

We shocked everybody by liking the movie. I'm not calling anybody out. A few people, when we posted the episode, they said publicly, like, I'm not listening to this. I know you'll hate it, but guess what? We didn't hate it. Don't jump to conclusions, guys. In general, I recommend you listen to a podcast before you comments.

Yes, or wait to see at least what somebody else who listened to it says actually happens in it then, at the very least. If the title is like the Mario Galaxy movie, why it sucks, then yes. You're welcome to comment. But please, I recommend you listen to the things we make, and then you're free to respond. We really did enjoy it more than we expected.

It was very interesting. I guess Retronauts will be on the free feed now, right? When this comes out, I think. I think so. I think by the time this comes out, and Henry, what are you doing with your Yoshi popcorn bucket? Do you put your weed in there? No, right now it's just sitting next to two other popcorn buckets

in the living room on the shelf. What are those? One was my purchase, one was my husband's. I bought him a loan up to it. A lot of people invest. in the Galactus head, Fantastic Four bucket. I don't want that. I wanted the Herbie, the Robot one,

because he was basically life size. So I got that one. And then I approved my husband purchasing this, but it was his purchase. When we saw a goofy movie in theaters, they had a Max as Powerline doing one of his dance moves, popcorn bucket as well.

The perfect cast? Oh, yeah, it is. It's the point-up part of the perfect cast. That's right. Yes. So those are our two. I don't want it to keep growing, but I fear we might end up with at least one more

from the Mortal Kombat 2 release coming out soon. I think you're going to have to have a popcorn billy in your home. Popcorn dedicated billy. The popcorn buckets take up so much space. They really are. Because they have to technically hold popcorn, even though you should not put popcorn in those. You don't know where they've been.

Don't put food in them. Yes. So I love that episode how it came together. So check out Retronauts, if you want to hear our thoughts on Mario Galaxy. As for other stuff, so I was very excited about this. I saw Bruce McCullough, his one-man show at a depressing casino outside of Vancouver. Bruce McCullough, I believe he was only Turin Canada, by the way.

And yes, one of the kids in the hall, by the way, we've covered them on What a Cartoon. I don't have any favorites, but I love Bruce a lot. And it was great. Just a great dark comedy show where it's basically just him on stage, doing a lot of bits, a lot of jokes, a lot of stuff with the audience. I had a great time. I'm not sure where he's going or if we'll come to the States, but I thoroughly recommend it. I don't want to give anything away, but there's an album that he has out now,

and I believe a lot of the bits he does on stage are on that album, too. I saw there was like Cabbagehead merch there even, right? Like a T-shirt I saw? Yes, yes. He's like, well, here's a reference for you. Cabbage Head won't be here. I mean, like 30-plus years ago, he killed off Cabbagehead graphically in a sketch because he'd stated playing him, right?

At one point. Yes. This was the Dark Purple Slice tour, by the way, and I believe the album is called Dark Purple Slice. So if you want to listen to some of those bits from the live show, it definitely, I was laughing a lot. It was a great time. That casino, though, I've been to casinos before. This was the oddest casino I've been to because it's what I'll call a royalty-free casino

and that none of the slot machines were based on IP, except for one slot machine that was based on Whitney Houston. And my wife made a joke that it makes it very easy to film there. And I'm thinking that's probably why. Because previously it was a rock and roll Hall of Fame casino. I'm sure it was all rock and roll theme with like every machine. was like, it's the Mick Jagger machine. But outside of Whitney Houston,

all the machines were like Pirates Gold or Pharaoh's treasure, like very generic things like that. One slot machine was simply titled Egg, EG, egg. Wow, man. That sounds like a joke, but I put the egg machine online and let people know, like, there is a slot machine simply titled egg. If I hadn't seen the pictures, I would have been like, no way.

That's insane. Like, yes, now that you've said that, my first expectation was, or assumption was, as you described it, like, oh yeah, it must just be a really cheap one that can't buy the more expensive machines that are based on famous IP. But yeah, so much stuff is filmed in Vancouver. And if you want to film in a casino without showing branded IP or people you have to get permission for, then that's a perfect casino for filming things in. Yeah, it feels like it was designed for that purpose.

But there were a ton of people pumping money in those machines. If I'm going to gamble and I don't, I want at least like Homer Simpson to dance around the screen when I lose 12. No, no, that is the core appeal for me when I do gamble. When I just was last in a place with gambling was Las Vegas, and when I went there, I was constantly stopping it like, oh, look, this is a hot stuff machine. They actually made it out of the, like, ancient cartoon character, Hot Stuff. Oh, the little devil. Okay.

Jesus. That's how, when they scrape the bottom of the barrel that much, I'm like, well, I have to put money in the hot stuff machine. And guess what, Bob, if you hit the bonus game on that, it plays the salt. song, Hot Stuff, baby. They play the songs. They even paid for that. Wow.

I bet it was very cheap to license hot stuff. They're like, you take it. Like, take it off our hands. We'll pay you. Also, a part of living in Canada is learning about the culture and how they have different bands like Prozac, which predates gorillas with a Z as a band featuring cartoon avatars. And guess what they're playing in Vancouver. Nina is, I don't call her a fan. She's just aware of them, but she thought it would be funny to go to one of their concerts.

And, hey, it was pretty fun. And behind them, as they're playing all of their songs, we basically watch all of their music videos, which were very early aught, like web-tuny style cartoons. And they were fun. I will say it was a fun little show. I'm not going out to buy more Prozac merch, but it's cool to see this little band that I've never heard of that a lot of Canadians have can just fill a room. It's great. Isn't it cute they have their own music up here? Their big hit is Sucks to Be You, right?

That's the one. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I was going to say, if you want to look up their videos, look up sucks to be you. But you can see, like, by design, they look like they should be in a penny arcade. comic from like 1998, that's the vibe they're going with with these designs. I am aware of Prozac and a few other

of its era of Canadian bands and VJs because briefly in 1999 we got much music on Florida, our Florida cable package. So I was like, it turned into a new thing I could watch music videos on. If like, oh, VH1 or MTV doesn't

have a fun music video, what's much music playing? And I felt like thanks to them having less money, they more often played music videos than MTV or VH1 did. Hmm. Yeah, possibly. I'm not as familiar

with much music, but you would see these guys on much music a lot in, let's say, 2001. It's how I'm able to shock when we have Canadian guests on for the first time.

I drop, like Luke Savage has been surprised at least once we'll be saying, like, oh, I know who the sock is. And he's like, what?

I thought we contained that. You should know who that is. I know who the red-green show is. Exactly. Yes. It broke containment, some Canadian thing. One less thing I want to mention

here is that I did the Vancouver Hoover 10K Sun Run. Now, big asterisk there. I did not run the sunrun. My wife did. Congrats to her. I did more of a funky power strut for 10K And here's the thing I just want to point this out Because I really felt my age Due to this event

I love cardio It's like my favorite kind of exercise And I was doing it two times a week I amped up the three times a week To prepare for this And when I do cardio It's like one day a week I do spin class

Another day a week I do elliptical standing Like one of the highest settings on the machine Another day I do sit down cardio I love cardio And I was like I could walk 10K I could power walk 10K I was aching for like three days

My body was very serious hot. I felt like I was shutting down. I was like, well, you know, I guess I am turning 44 in a few weeks. So this checks out. So I probably will do it again, but I'm going to clear the next few days off my schedule because we had a recording the next day. And I was just like, I could just feel my heartbeat in every part of my body. See, listeners, when you hear R1 for pranks to wrap, see if you can hear Bob's heartbeat on the podcast. I'm in the background just going, oh. I was asking my wife, like, how did this happen to me because I've not had a car in 14 years? All I do walk. We typically, I walk like five miles a day just to get around and do stuff and I exercise and

stuff. And on the weekends, often like 10 plus miles. And then we're in Japan, often like up to 15 miles we're walking. But just concentrated, nonstop power walking up and down different elevations for around seven miles destroyed my ass. And hats off to everyone who actually ran, but I'm not going to be joining you. Next year, I'm also going to be doing the funky power strut with a few extra days afterwards, just kind of lay around and grown. Man, I try to do like four to five miles a day of, you know, funky power strut level walking as best I can. Like a pace of, you're probably going at a faster pace. I try to stick to like a three and a half mile an hour pace on them. Same with when I go on a treadmill, I feel like I'd be even deader from trying

to do a 10k of that kind of focus walking. Also, outdoors on a sunny, it did look like a nice sunny day when you were doing the sun run. Oh, it was. Maybe that's what got to me. Maybe it was like partially sunstroke. I was all sunscreened up and everything, too. I don't understand what happened to me. But again, it's like, well, I'm hitting my mid-40s, and I'm glad I can still do this and live. Yes. Congratulations, Bob. You did it. Respect for sure. And I'm looking, I did some quick math here. I was going about 4.4 miles per hour because I did about seven miles in an hour and 36 minutes. Nice. So probably like just a little faster, basically like a power walk. No, no. Hey, that's a good pace. Three miles on that pace would leave me pretty wrecked, I think. So yeah.

And hey, if you want to docks me or whatever, you can, go to the Sun Run website, type in Mackey and find pictures of me. I'm mostly just like looking at my phone while I'm walking because I'm like, I'm pulling up new songs to get my heart rate up. I didn't even think about like, oh yeah, you can just still listen to your own music on it. You don't have to have headphones out to do fun run. But yes, that was mainly into a story to I could talk about where I can humiliate myself because, yes, I am getting older.

I'm not the Sprite 33-year-old who co-started this podcast. I'm now nearly 44. What's the word? Oh, yeah, in a yoga I do, they say like, you know, elongate the spine to hold back the hands of time is what then. And those words mean more to me than ever now. More of my exercise should have rhyming in it. But hey, sun run, that's kind of a rhyme.

Yeah, hey, you're getting closer with the rhymes there. Yeah, I don't know how much rhyming is in your spin class. No, the guy just says motivational stuff to us. If only could rhyme. Like, spin rhymes with win. It's just start there. Start there. It is true.

He says, I'm not calling this guy out because I think the stuff he says is actually like, I'm like, whoa, like Keanu Reeves, my mind is expanding. He says, don't let the high. highs, get to your head, don't get the lows, get to your heart. Oh, that's nice. Now, pedal, you bastards. Another bit of wisdom I've gotten from the DDP yoga is like whether you think you can or think you can't, you're right. So keep that of mind. Yeah, a lot of exercise now is like hearing platitudes while you're about to die and then because you're about to die, you're like, wow. Yes. It breaks down, it breaks down your acceptance, your critical thinking. It's for sure. It helps. It helps. And that's

me kind of a slow month and yeah that's it for me. You're a podcast listener and this is a podcast ad heard only in Canada. Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libson ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libson ads. Email Bob at Libson.com to learn more. That's B-O-B at L-I-B-S-Y-N dot com. So my big game this month was mere replicant. So my near history and my history with the Yoko Taro games is pretty surface level. My husband played all of Autometer during, I believe it was during lockdown.

And I played a little. He's like, oh, you should play this section or this really cool thing. I watched him play. So I absorbed Atomata, though. Now I'm going to go back and actually play it myself. But it was the announcement that Taro is the new writer for an upcoming Avangelo. series that made me want to finally experience Replicant. And so I played it all on PS5.

And, you know, no spoilers. Very good story. The gameplay can get repetitive. I get why people who in the original version of it gave it like fives and sixes back when it first came out on the 360 and PS3. Yeah, PS3. But the story is like amazing. And if you know Replicant, I'll just say like, I got up to ending E if you know what

that means. Yeah, this has been on my game queue for a while now because I did enjoy the original PS3 release and I'm interested in seeing how they improve this because I know platinum games worked on some portion of this to make it a little better. The fighting the action segments, I think they did a little work on it. Oh yeah, yes. I get that feel for it. Yes, the action does feel very good. I had fun doing the action the whole time and all of the boss fights and yes, the story unfolds in a very interesting way. But I get why people didn't want to give that a chance back then. I just remember, well, also, the original

year came out at the time where if you reviewed any Japanese original game, you had to say it sucked and it was showing that Japan cannot keep up with American games. Yeah, that was a rule back then in like 2010. So yeah, Replicant gets a thumbs up for me. I think my formal game clock was probably

35 hours, if maybe even a little more. I could even play more than that, but I'm ready for a new game, perhaps Prague, Mata. Yes. Well, I just wish Yoko would work on anything other than mobile slop because that's all he's doing now. So I'm interested in seeing this Evangelian thing he's working on, although I will say he loves tweaking fans. He hates fan service outside of putting women in lingerie, which he does a lot.

So I'm kind of curious to see if his Evangelion will piss people off. And I think it will. You know, I think that's a good thing. Like the Evangelian fans, give us hell, Taro. Like, we got too much fan service recently. Like the Oscar 15 minute 30th anniversary special, it's a whole lot of fun, but it's like pure. fan service in multiple meanings of that word. And I think Taro, I kind of want him to surprise us with making us see things we don't expect

to see or that won't instantly make us happy. As for watching stuff, my Star Trek has really fallen behind this month because there's just too much new TV of new seasons that we've been keeping up with, watch the whole new season of Invincible, which was really good. They made some good updates from the comics. The new season of the Daredevil Board again has been pretty good, mostly because they're delaying Vincent DiNoffrio. like just like act well and to kind of just chew the scenery as much as he wants as the kingpin.

I'm hearing good things about that from my wife who is watching it while I'm playing Mother 3 on the big TV. I really like it. They made a lot of interesting improvements. I'm looking forward to it. It's a Punisher free season, but they've announced that on top of about to be in the next Spider-Man movie, the Punisher gets his own like original film or TV movie, I get, or streaming film, whatever you'd call it, is coming on in a couple months as well. And the final season of the boys, has started. I've only seen the first episode of it. They're doing some interesting stuff with it again. The boys has always been better than the comic it's adapting. Like the comic, the comic honestly kind of sucks. Like it's too, it's all shock value and very little story to it. The worst thing that happened to the boys as a TV show is that Donald Trump keeps getting elected because it just makes their satire just not keep up with reality. Yeah. I've heard the satire is like really on the nose. That's because real world events keep getting more and more horrifying and ridiculous. When they make up people who are part of like, you know, the cabinet for the Homelander approved White House, it's like, nope, this just isn't crazier than the people

who are actually in the cabinet. Your jokes aren't, they don't work. It's not the boys's fault. Yeah, RFK Jr. should just be a character on the boys. He would be deemed too silly for the boys. They'd be like, we can't cast this guy. You're telling me the scab man who only communicates through belches is going to be a character. I don't know about this. We have a guy who beats people up with his giant dick, but this is too far. This. for movies, though, talking about the boys, the Napa boys, I give that a big thumbs up. It's Mike Mitchell is one of the stars of it. It just hit streaming.

I wasn't able to see in theaters. Unfortunately, it has multiple things in it that would be like, man, this would have been fun to see in the theater. But it is a micro-budget crazy film that I don't want to give too much away. But conceptually, what if the American Pie franchise that kept having direct-to-video spin-offs what if that happened for Sideways, the Paul Giumani film? Okay, that's interesting because the logo looks like the Indiana Jones logo, and I was curious about that. It kind of play around with mocking a lot of things in it, but basically it's like you're watching the like eighth film in a long running series. They constantly are calling back to older films that don't exist, but they're like, this is technically like the Napa Boys 4 and it should be considered like Sideways 8 or something like that.

It's really great. It's really great. I like it. I like it. Thumbs up to the Napa Boys. Another micro-budget film I really enjoyed. AJ goes to the dog park, which is directed by Toby Jones. I wanted to watch it before he had our Jellystone podcast with him.

It is also a lot of fun, very indie movie. But if you enjoy Toby's comedy that he's done on shows like regular show and OKKO and Jellystone, it's full of great jokes like that, that he makes these cartoony jokes work in a movie with a very small budget and a lot of non-professional actors. And there is a Blu-ray, right? An incredible Blu-ray, yes. I got it on Blu-ray and watched that. Like 10 hours of bonus features,

two commentaries, multiple interviews, like making ofs, like it is a true labor of love. Like, if you enjoy Toby's career or the work of one of his friends, Owen Dennis, who did work on the film, who is the creator of Infinity Train, and other folk, or Rebecca Sugar's music,

there's all Rebecca Sugar music video in it, that Toby directed. There's so many cool things in it. It's just like it is in a time when it is so hard to make a cartoon show, Toby showed that like just through grit and determination and big community of friends, he was able to just film his own movie in Fargo, North Dakota. It is where he grew up and made a real good movie. Yeah, he tells us a few stories about that on the upcoming show about Jellystone we're doing. Another classic I wanted to say that I finally watched was What's Up Doc? I had never seen it before. And it is the, you know, Peter Bogdanovich directed screwball comedy. Forget this, Bob. Barbara Streisand is Bugs Bunny, essentially, in the film. In the role of a lifetime. I've heard about this, but I also don't believe it. For real, one of her first scenes is chewing on a carrot

and saying, what's up, Doc, to a doctor. You've been really digging into the Streisand's lately, Henry, but you have not reached Yentel. Yes, it was this Oriental, but I was feeling more in the comedy mood. Plus, it was on Tooby. So I was like, well, yeah, watch. I'll tune into Tooby. No, I mean, what's up?

Doc is full of them doing the jokes from it. It was made in 74, I think it was, mid-70s. But it's doing live-action versions of cartoon jokes that are like people nearly getting run over with cars. They do the pain of glass crossing the street and avoiding getting cars smashing into it in live action with very few cuts. Like it's also a stunt-tacular. And also it's funny to see one of the handsomest movie stars of all time,

Ryan O'Neill, also a piece of shit. but Ryan O'Neill have to put on glasses and pretend to be a nerd the whole movie. Nice. Instructed by Orson Mall's best friend, Peter Bogdanovich. He's kind of just playing Peter Bogdanovich in it. It's kind of fun to watch as people who you and me both lived in the San Francisco Bay area that it's all filmed in San Francisco, or majority filmed in San Francisco. And it's just analyst one-liners, tons of funny stuff the entire time, tons of great psychags.

And like, yeah, Barbara Streisand, beautiful and hilarious in it too, and not even somebody who I have seen multiple Bogdanovich films after he loses Polly Platt. It's true. His movie suck. Like I've seen him, they suck. But this. Polly Pat, instrumental to getting the Simpsons on TV, right?

She is so important. Simpsons, Wes Anderson's career, Cameron Crow's career, Peter Bogdanovich and all the actors who were discovered in that. Like, she is the secret sauce. Just look at what all the junk Bogdanovich made without her after he was like, you know what, you're my loyal wife, but I kind of want to have sex with Sybil Shepard.

And oh, now Sybil Shepard left me. Uh-oh. That poor man. The last quick thing I want to say is the animated film Predator, Killer of Killers. I finally watched that. Really, it's just four episodes of a Predator TV show, but directed by the director of Badlands. Very good Predator.

A series of short stories of What If a Predator fought a Samurai and a few more things. I won't spoil it, but it's just like, oh, this is just cool animation experiments. Yeah, I watched Pray for the first time this month. The Predator reboot, whatever you want to call it. I really liked it. I gave it four and a half stars on Letterbox. I thought it was just super inventive. I like how they kept things very small scale.

It kept me wondering constantly, like, well, how are they going to defeat the predator? Oh, yeah, I think you even saw it in, did you see it in the dub of the negative language, right? Yes, I forget what language that is, but it was, there is a dub in the indigenous language that the people speak in that world. Oh, that sounds cool. Which is our worlds, because they really exist. No, I only saw the first release of it in English. I'd be interested to check that. Well, if you enjoyed Prey Bob, I'd say watch, Killer of Killers maybe should be your next one before Prater Badlands, which I also really did enjoy, too. Is that the one where El Fanning is a robot? Yes, yeah. It's an entirely escort mission. I will say Killer of Killers, if you're a gamer, might. One downside to it is perhaps that it's all animated and unreal, so it does look like you're watching video game cutscenes for a lot of the time. Very good video game cutscenes, but that might. take you out of it just a little bit animation-wise. I think everything is done in Unreal now, though, right?

Like most 3D things, are done in Unreal? What, Flo was animated in like free or where than Unreal, right? I think so, yeah. Oh, sorry, the dub was in Comanchee, which I feel like that's the wrong way to pronounce that word, but that's just the way I know how to pronounce it, Comanche. I don't know either. Oh, and I saw Satoshi Kohn triple feature at theaters, but you might hear me talking about that on an upcoming podcast somewhere else.

I don't want to spoil it too much. But yes, I saw Millennium Actress, Paprika, and Perfect Blue together in one six-hour marathon at the SIF Theater downtown in Seattle. That does sound kind of mind-dumbing. Three cons in a row? Sounds like a real con job, Henry. I'm glad it started with Millennium Actress, though it does make Paprika seem a little more mid after you've seen his best movie and then watch like his...

And when I say mid, paprika to me on my watching, most recent watch, three and a half stars to me. But that's just because it reminded me like, oh, no, he did this story pretty much the same and better in paranoia agents. Yeah, I don't really like paprika either. It's been a while since I've rewatched it. But I'm curious to see it again just to reevaluate it. Again, I said this before. When I saw paprika, I thought, well, you know, there'll be another movie. There wasn't.

And I saw Perfect Blue. He did it next to, I sit down in my solo seat. And then coming to sit next to me is a woman about my age. and then with her is, I am assuming her, like, 17-ish-year-old son. And I was like, oh, boy, you guys are watching this together, huh? Okay. All right. They could hint.

I mean, you've given me plenty of warnings about this movie. When I saw it, I was just like, it's just the 90s thriller. There was some discomfort after the movie with those two at the very least. But no, it was. What did they do? Well, just, it was a quiet exit from the theater. Oh, they left. They left the theater.

Not during the film. They were just, like, silent in the movie. when the movie was over. They were talking a lot when they started the movie and were silent when they left. And also when I left the theater, like three different groups of people were like, boy, I didn't like all of the R word in this movie.

I don't want our listeners to think that the movie's about, though, because there's very little R word, and it's an actress in a scene, so it's not actually happening. I agree. I'm just thinking that, like, yes, the people in the audience I saw it with, I don't think they were prepared for even that. Like, I don't think they knew what, yes,

the film is honestly, especially, if you watch 90s anime, it is tame, I would say. So just about the reality of being an actress who gets exploited. Yeah, no, that's, I look forward to talking about it more. But yes, Perfect Blue, I should say, again, I really like Perfect Blue quite a lot. I was more annoyed with people who left the theater being like, you guys weren't ready for the content of Perfect Blue. This is why content warnings exist and you guys could have looked it up if that was going to be a problem for you.

Maybe I'm just jaded because I was watching the Clayface trailer. I might have mentioned this earlier on this podcast. But every single website, the headline was, you won't believe how incredibly fucked up this is. And I was just watching it, just like blinking, staring, like, yeah, okay. This is the prestige TV body horror show. Got it. Okay.

Yeah, that actually is surprising. I didn't think, I mean, the trailer, like, it looks like a film that probably will be rated R when it comes out, but I was not. They were making it sound like. Oh, sorry, it's a movie? I thought it was a TV show. Did I get this incorrect? I thought it's a movie. Is it a TV show?

I thought, well... We don't even know the messaging is so fucked up, but people will yell at us and we'll find out. But they're making it sound like it's like mid-Somar or something. Though even that's like not... They're making it sound like it's Cannibal Holocaust or something with those descriptions. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, sorry, it is a movie.

It just looked like a prestige TV show, so maybe that's why I was confused. A $40 million movie basically just looks like a TV show now, right? Yeah, yeah. And lastly, I went to a Mariners game. I'm wearing it right now. I hadn't shown it to Bob before, but my Seattle Mariners one piece, It was to get a one-piece jersey. I'm looking at the back.

It's got the straw hat symbol on the back. Very good. Yes, yes. We did cover this on Lisa on ice. Oh, yes. Yeah, that's where I mentioned it. So if you listen to that, like now I'm finally wearing it. So Bob and listeners can hear my fabric right there near the money.

That's quality jersey fabric. Meanwhile, I'm wearing my Retronauts T-shirt. I'm always self-promoting. Oh, and also it felt like a Simpsons reference too because when we walked up there, we were saying like, all right, I guess we get larges, right? Yeah, that's probably safe. And then they said like, all right, all we have left is extra large and extra small. And so ended up with extra large.

But that's everything I did this month. And now it's time to talk about questions and comments from the last round of episodes. We're going to start with Bart's girlfriend. And Mike Mariano says the song Soul Man is by Sam and Dave, not James Brown. And it looks like they've never used it in one of the trolls movies. As Bart proves, it's right there for the taking. So, yes, thank you, Mike Mariano. One of us, not saying who, might have said this was by James Brown.

I'm not sure who it was. Thank you for the correction. I'm going to assume it was me because when I read that comment, I was like, wait, it's not James Brown. So it makes me feel like I said James Brown. Well, she's not here. So it was Lindsay K-Tai. Okay, yes. Notorious for confusing James Brown with Sam and Dave. Do better, Lindsay. That's all I got to say. Also on that episode, Drew Mackey replied with,

The Surprise at how many Bones episodes exist reminds me of how I would program my Exist DVR to record every episode of Bones airing on any channel ever. Because the lesser cable channels would air 20 episodes a day and it would instantly fill up his DVR and erase the stuff he was trying to save. That is some ex-revenge there, Drew. Yeah, we covered Bones on this episode

because Jonathan Collier, the writer for Bart's girlfriend, went on to write a lot of bones. That's right. As we said, he was in the Bone Zone. I didn't realize Bones was getting that many airings per day that bones was that popular of a licensee

at one time in the era of DVR. Yeah, it feels like if you want to fall down a hole, there's so many bones to discover. 246 bones in the human body and on TV. Boy, did they get to 246 episodes? They did, yes. Also, that bones information reminded me that I saw it posted. Somebody tweeted this somewhere that pointing out that all of network TV is basically cop shows. Like everything is a cop show on network TV now like bones.

People like them. People love cops. They're not even cricket cops. Like on NYPD Blue or whatever. It's like cops doing their jobs. It's like if it's not cops, then it's people who work with cops or have a cop-like job, pretty much. Well, there's that entire like Chicago universe of shows, right? Yeah, that's all Dick Wolf.

The Dick Wolf of World of Chicago shows. Not to be confused with Dick Wolf's many law and order shows, which was the first universe he created. And then plus, like, there's always a Nathan Philly and cop show on TV and like five other cop shows. Like, seriously, comedies, maybe they're not all cop shows. But if you're watching an hour long on network television that is a new show being produced right now, it's about cops or firefighters or something else that's like a cop or just the troops. Yeah. Well, we're not covering those shows.

There's not going to be any Talking Chicago on this network. No Talking the Rookie for us. Although if we run out of Simpsons and we're like 90 years old, we can do talking bones. Bones first. Bones first. Yeah. You're a podcast listener. And this is a podcast ad heard only in campus.

reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libson ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts, offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libson ads. Email Bob at Libson.com to learn more. That's B-O-B at L-I-B-S-Y-N.com. Well, up next we have Homer and Ned's Hail Mary Pass, and Joe Hodgson says this episode is mildly interesting as a New England-based sports fan. At the time, Tom Brady was still pretty selective with his endorsements and public appearances in this episode might be the start of him opening up, so to speak. Fame came pretty quickly for him since he was rather famously a nothing draft pick, who became a star, and I think he had a smart agent who didn't want him to get over-exposed

early on. Plus, the rates may not have been all that good if advertisers thought he was a flash in the pan, but at this point he had two Super Bowls under his belt and had just secured his third when this aired. Given how Wooden he comes across as a commentator, it's a bit of a surprised to see his line readings here are pretty decent. Thank you, Joe, for telling us nerds about Tom Brady because I didn't know this stuff. No, no, I knew he had a very long career, and I know he's been in multiple Seth MacFarlane projects. I did not know this. To hear that he's so wooden as a commentator is funny, because maybe that means that what he is is better by professional athlete standards, good at taking comedy direction from funny people, and being

funny when directed. While, meanwhile, if he has to be a live commentator, of a sports game with nobody really directing him, then it's a little weak by comparison. I just look this up now because I was so curious. He did host SNL around this time. So that was, yeah, sorry. What did he? Okay. Yeah, like April of 2005 is when he hosted SNL. This episode aired like in February of 2005. So he was being like marketed pretty heavily, I guess. Simpsons, SNL. And I think the family guy isn't that far behind it either. Yeah, you're right. Joe Hodgson is right. It seems like his agent is finally ready. to think that Tom Brady is ready for the spotlight by this point.

And like when any sports guys on SNL, I bet the episode was terrible. Although Beck was the musical guest. Oh, well, you got to at least pull up the musical guest sequences then. Just to see, you can rate how good Tom Brady was at introducing Beck. I want to know that. Meanwhile, Alex says in this episode, in reference to us mentioning that on the commentary, they say that LeBron told Al Jean that he watched the Simpson Super Bowl special every year,

which they said was complete bullshit because they don't have a Super Bowl special every year. And Alex says, it's actually a running meme that LeBron is a compulsive liar, so the fact that he was doing it so early in his career is just perfect. So there you go. Yeah, I did not know this. I'll trust you guys to let us know this.

But yeah, I know very little about him. All I know about LeBron is what is in either The Simpsons or Space Jam a New Legacy. I don't know other information. Another person I think pointed out to us that like, they say, oh, wasn't your last contract for 90 million? Apparently that was about his Nike deal, not like a sports playing contract. Like, it was 90 million to Nike, I think it was.

Yeah, that was it, not even like the basketball stuff. Although he needed the basketball stuff to get the shoes, so it helped. Now winding down his career, while meanwhile, Lisa is the same age. Yeah, how does that make sense? Do not know. Look into this, though. Up next, we have Lisa on ice, and Mike Kature says, The joke about Butthead Memorial Auditorium is actually a reference to a Simpsons-related

story from the time. In Greenwood, South Carolina, a new elementary school opened and the name was chosen by the students as Springfield Elementary. The school board didn't realize it was a Simpsons reference at first, but some parents complained about it because Bart is a bad role model for kids. Fox supposedly responded to the outrage by releasing a statement from Bart that says, at least they didn't call it Beavis and Butthead Elementary. The school retained the name until 2020 when it was renamed for Civil Rights Leader Benjamin E. Mays. So thank you, Mike, and I looked into this. Not that I didn't trust you, Mike. I just wanted to check the dates on this. And yes, this apparently happened in early 94 when Lisa and Ice probably would have been written.

So it was very fresh when it went in Mike Scully's script or was added to it later. I did not come across that. That's a great fine Mike. I did not come across it because I think I was too distracted by in the original script that I learned it was originally a joke making fun of the Chevy Chase Theater and the renaming of that I was like, I was so excited to make fun of Chevy Chase failure that I didn't even look into the Butthead Memorial. auditorium being a reference. I don't like that that joke implies butthead died. It's very sad. His friend Beavis is all alone now.

Beavis is better off, actually. Katie Lamont says on lease on ice, I grew up a short, brainy kid that sucked at all sports. P.E. filled me with terror and embarrassment. When I was 16, I had to select a P.E. And I picked powerlifting, which I ended up being super good and competitive in, one state in 2001. Powerlifting is always looking for small and light,

weight kids, which I was. I ended up having to quit after a year since my coach kept trying to bully me into crash dieting so that I could stay at the 98 pound weight class. I'd already spent a year barely eating to make weight and I couldn't do it again. It was sad to finally be good at a sport but have to give it up so I could eat. Yeah, Katie, thanks for the feedback on that. I really wish when I was a young nerd someone would have shown me the joys of like exercise and working out because there are things I enjoy like cardio that aren't like team sports which I hated and was terrified of for obvious reasons and now I really into that aspect

but I still feel like when I go to the spin class when I walk into the empty room with all the bikes and everyone's getting ready I can like smell the sweat and the cleaning fluid and all of the sense memory like anxiety comes back into my body again it's a very strange effect like I totally get why I wasn't super motivated to try anything different but someone should have sculpted this young Bob character solo exercising has become much more my preferred thing than having to be in groups and all that.

And I do love this story of like a transformation from, you know, a brainy, short brainy kid to winning states in powerlifting. Like though that, man, the stuff I hear about weight cutting for like, you know, professional fighters or pro wrestlers, not pro wrestlers, amateur wrestlers, like it sounds insane. Like the amount that they can cut off and just about kill themselves just to be able to put 30 more pounds back onto their body before a fight is nuts. It sounds very extreme. I'm just thinking that I liked Jim up until we played real sports in gym because in grade school it was like we're going to get out the parachute. We're going to play beamback tow tag.

We're going to do this fun thing. We're going to jump around. And then in high school it's like we're playing football today. And I thought, whoa, whoa, hey, I'd ever signed up for this. Yes, yes. I'm not catching a football. Are you kidding me? Where Katie did power lifting, I was very lucky when I was 16 in that my high school in Orange Park, Florida, was right across the street from a bowling alley.

So you could take bowling classes and they would let you just go to the bowling alley when it's empty in the daytime. And you just bowled and got to do that. That was a good time. I bowled a bit during summer gym, which I took instead of going to gym during the year. It was pretty cool, actually. Oh, that's nice. Moving on to the American Dad pilot and Patrick says, forgot the Memento DVD was so complicated.

The worst of those was the first Harry Potter movie where you had to play bad mini-game sacks as anything. Not worth it for that franchise at the time, let alone now. Yes, thank you, Patrick. I've been renting a lot of DVDs from the library now, and it's so fun to see the Blu-ray era in which they actually cared about menus and presentation and stuff. They didn't go overboard in that era,

but it's cool to see, like, custom menus. Because now, sorry, you will buy, like, a $50 4K, and you put it in, and it's like, the menus are made by the same. machine that makes all of the menus. It's just like settings, scenes, extras. There's nothing's happening. There's no unique animations. Maybe a scene from the movie is playing

in the background. Often it's just the poster art. I feel like 4Ks are so expensive. We need to start having convoluted menus again. Yes, they really save money on some of those menus. They don't even have like music in the background or audio from the film. It's just like so simple. But compared to then,

you know, the first Simpsons DVDs, it took them a little while to stop making you play a game to start. Yes. episode. I got the Tommy Boy Blu-ray out of the library recently, and when you put it in, the menu is you are in the car that David Spade owns, and there's

like references sliding by, you're like driving down the street. It's so cool, and I forgot. This was the default for any, like, nothing movie that would come on DVD or Blu-ray. They'd have a custom menu with all of this original artwork and animations, and that's not happening anymore. I feel bad for the custom menu people, not to mention Disney laying

off all of their physical media branch recently. Oh, yeah. Disney can't, what's going with Disney. They can't stop laying people off. It's crazy. Are there still people working there? When they're making record profits all of the time. It's like they lay off all of Marvel special effects people. Then they lay off all the, uh, the Blu-ray and DVD people. Like what? Do you even want to have a business anymore? What's going on? I read the news about the physical media layoffs that Disney, apparently they'd already offloaded a lot of it to Sony, like Sony prints them more than they do. And so this was like the next step. And meanwhile, yeah, the Marvel art team, like to see posts

from one of their art designers saying that, like, I was laid off in the conference room that has my art from Loki on the wall. Man, what a bummer. I definitely believe the reporting that I've seen out there that says this is just to shift everybody to contractors and just have it to be per film basis and not have a staff you retain who, like you said,

with the Capcom games, they don't want to have institutional knowledge or people who feel secure while making stuff. They want to hire as few people as possible who work the worst hours and deadlines and who are trying to think about healthcare the entire time.

They're trying to make a Spider-Man thwip look the right way. Whose salaries don't increase every year because they're salaried employees. Yeah, I never thought there'd be more Simpsons on DVD or Blu-ray, and now I know it's definitely not going to happen. Unless a boutique place is able to get the rights to it. But at Disney, like, I don't think they allow that

because they don't want somebody else making money from it, or they'd probably price it too high, I would bet. Dylan says about the American Dad pilot, I was very pleased with how well this episode held up. There is a couple very dated bits, particularly the still racist joke about the Iraqi couple with IKEA furniture,

but all in all, pretty good for 2005. I enjoyed the first few seasons of this show a lot as they were airing and uncensored on DVD, but didn't keep up with it after maybe season four or so, except the odd episode and Gold Top Nuts as covered on this network. Sometime I'll

need to work through it more closely. Like I said on the episode, I was surprised by how good the first episode is, even though it gets a lot better afterwards and how quickly the show finds itself. You don't have to wait very long for it to be the American Dad you like. And it's possible we'll cover more in the future. I mean, we like the show and there's always what a cartoon. We can always throw in a random American Dad. But we have our hands full with The Simpsons, Futurama, King of the Hill, other things. So unless you want us to die, we're not going to be able to start a talking American Dad anytime soon. But we love the show. And Dylan, if you stopped at season four, the best is yet to come, I'd say. The show gets like, it's those like season eight to 18. Like, there's so many strong episodes. And this most recent season, I'd still say I'm having a good time with it on the Fox run of episodes they've been doing. And up next we have, what a cartoon. Our episode was about Married with Children, the episode Married with Aliens.

It was our live action month. Had a lot of fun looking into Married with Children. And by the way, Henry is doing his TNG rewatch. I am doing my Married with Children rewatch. and now I've watched all of season one and I think like Picard, data and all the rest Al Bundy has so much to teach us. Wow, it's funny too.

We're watching things that basically aired around the same time. These are like television cohorts. You could flip the channel some days. Like, oh, TNG ended at 7.30 on a Sunday or at 8 p.m. on Sunday in my neighborhood. I'll watch it. Now it's time to switch to married with children on my Fox affiliate. That's true.

They're both 87 shows. So, yes, let's see how long that will take me to get bored with it, but I'm really enjoying my rewatch. I have not set down to watch the show in full since the 90s. So, yeah, I'm glad this inspired me to revisit this program. And let's see what Maverick has to say. Maverick says, once again, going back to Coach the sitcom, your history segment ends with a good overall judgment

that there are very few, uh, moments from the 90s, and or anti-other jokes punching down at the marginalized and married with children. Coach has been really good at this as well, and both are aimed at the same audience, that being straight white men. Wow, just like most shows. I'm now in Season 7 of Coach and the Machismo, element is often cut down by a more logical resolution while maintaining the viewpoint of the main character. Coach Fox and Al Bundy are both representations of the inner male psyche that are

portrayed in an exaggerated but relatable form each in their own unique way. And yes, thank you, Maverick. I actually liked Coach a lot when it was airing. I think that is also a very good show that is similar to like the King of the Hill and Home Improvement in a way where it's like, it's the conservative, rough guy having to find like a softer liberal solution to his problems. And having to like soften in a world with his. daughter growing up and his new like second wife right though yeah when i was a kid i was mainly pulled in by these sillier stories with uh jerry van dyke and uh fagerbaki i always try to remind myself like yeah bill fagherbecky yes i pointed this out i think on this episode but coach was

innovated in that they had two kinds of dumb guys there was dauber and uh other guy right yes i couldn't see that was why i said the actors i was like okay one of them's dauber which was the other name I cannot dover's such a good name. I forget the other name. Yeah, and hey, Craig T. Nelson, hotter than ever, because he's coming back to Incredibles 3 next summer, right? Right, right. Oh, man, that was also news this month that, like,

they finally proved that Ray Gunn is a real movie that has, like, steals from it. The Brad Bird's movie, Ray Gunn actually exists, has a cast, it might come out this year. But he didn't get to make it in 2D like he wanted. It's a 3D movie because everything has to be a 3D movie. If Brad Bird can't make it a 2D movie, nobody can make a 2D movie apparently.

Yeah, that was actually my thought. I had similar thoughts when I was watching the Tigger movie, weirdly enough, where that hit theaters in 2000, and I'm sure people are like, oh, what a cynical ploy. Here's Tigger, buy the Tigger merch, but we would all lose our goddamn minds. If something that looked as good as a Tigger movie, came to theaters worldwide.

That's how much things have slipped in the last 26 years when it comes to traditional animation. Blake R says about married with children, doxing myself slightly. to thank you both for making me realize I live a mere 10-minute drive away from the Bundy House. That Home Alone Mansion in Winectka

has had it too good for too long on the list of famous houses to drive by in the Chicago suburbs, much to the chagrin of the owners. Sadly, the Rosanne House exterior is just across the border in Indiana, the ultimate scandal for Illinoisians. Yes, and I replied to,

who was this again? Oh, Blake. By saying Blake, We demand pictures taken from a respectable distance away. Respectful distance away. Yes. Don't break any laws. Just stay on public property.

But photos would be great to see. And it's so cool that it actually was, they wanted to have a real Chicago land area house there instead of just making up one for it. Yeah. And I'm looking. So I went to the Mary with Children Reddit, which I'm on a lot now, by the way. And somebody took pictures two years ago. And the house is the same damn color.

They never even changed the color of the house. You think they would do that just. to throw people off. Yeah. Wow, man, that is very different from the Las Vegas people who own the Simpsons house and changed everything they could about it to not be bothered. There is a new garage door and there are new shutters on the windows, but other than that, it is identifiably the Bundy house.

I'd love to ask the people who live there, like, has it increased or decreased lately? Like, how many people know married with children? Is it as popular as it used to be? And once you ask them that, they'll, like, cock back the trigger on the gun. Sir. The real Al Bundy would point it gun to me too, so I would just take it as reality. Yeah, but I think you, Blake. But again, find pictures, go in the house.

What's going on in there? Does it look the same inside? I bet it doesn't. You know, I've heard for local things that are nearby here, I have heard that if you go to the Laura Palmer or the Palmer house from Twin Peaks that still exists in the Seattle area somewhere, that they give inside the house tours because they filmed in the house too in Twin Peaks. Well, my wife and I just watched the John Claude Van Dam movie Replicant. It's bad.

It came out in 2001. Nobody cared about him anymore. But it was filmed in Vancouver. And we were able to go to the Replicate House. And I said, look, honey, there's the Replicate house. That's where the Replicant was. You can imagine, like, boy, I bet John Claude Van Dam did cocaine, like, right here where we're standing. I mean, no matter where we go in Vancouver, there was always like an X-Files film terror,

or Supernatural or a Smallville or one of many movies. Oh, yes. I'd love to hear when you guys, if you guys did a watch of all of X-Files, or at least all of the first half of it that's the Vancouver years, how many things you're going to recognize from that show? I think it'll happen. You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad, heard only in Canada. Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libson Ads.

Choose from hundreds of top podcasts, offering host endorsements, or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libson ads. Email Bob at Libson.com to learn more. That's B-O-B-B-L-I-B-S-Y-N.com. Moving on to What a Cartoon movie. We have James and the Giant Peach. And Blake R says, hello, Blake R, once again.

Randy Newman's 2024 biography, A Few Words in Defense of Our Country is a great read as it provides equal attention to his studio work, as well as his film scoring work. Surprisingly, Newman considers James and the Giant Peach a project very close to his heart that he had great memories of, suggesting that his working relationship with Selik was enjoyable, despite being thrown into it as a hired gun.

As a Newman defender, I do argue that the score greatly outshines the lyrical work. I've listened to Andy Partridge's demos and find them interesting, but I don't know how well they would have translated to blocking in a stop motion film compared to something as dynamic as that's the life for me. And yes, thank you, Blake. It seemed like Randy Newman was just like, I guess I'm writing about bugs,

but it seemed like he had fun with the movie. I agree. I really like his scores a lot more than his lyrics, and this has a great score. for to Toy Story 5 this summer because Randy Newman's back. I'm sure whatever song he writes will have abysmal lyrics, but hey, the tune will be fun. That's nice to hear when a biography

actually digs into something you think they'll probably skip over like autobiographies or memoirs or a new biography on somebody with his huge of careers, Randy Newman. You either get like a thousand-page book that covers everything or they just skip over tons of stuff. So I wouldn't have thought they dig that much into James and the Giant Peach so I loved hearing that. Like that,

It was like, I remember the Bob Odenkirk memoir actually did dig into many of his projects, even stuff that I was like, well, he won't want to talk about let's go to prison, right? But he wanted to be honest. And he's like, yeah, it sucked. Like, and I made it bad. I apologize. Yeah, a few people want to talk about the Let's Go to Prison in the Solomon Brothers era of Bob Odenkirk. Yes, they're same.

And he has all this praise for the birthday boys, but also saying like, you know what, it probably was the last time we could do a show of all white guys. As the sketch. Here's 12 of them. Yeah, there's so many white guys. And we love them all. We love all the person. And some of them have been on our podcast.

Yes, they're great. And somebody named Nina Matsumoto. Never matter. Nina Matsumoto says, only in Canada and the UK and authors who are citizens of those countries, thanks to the PLR program, get paid for, I believe this is referring to when authors get royalties for libraries checking out their books, right? Yes, yes. America doesn't have a program like that.

Also important to note, there's a limit. We can only make royalties for up to eight checkouts. Still helpful, though, I made a little over 1,000 from libraries last in one year. Sorry, I'll say it. So I mistakenly said that, oh, so did you want to say that again? Oh, yeah, sorry, let me. I made a little over $1,000 from libraries one year. So, yes, on the podcast, I mistakenly said that this is a universal truth that authors get money from a library checkouts,

only in the Canada and the UK that this happened. So if you're going to check out a library, across the border first and then get the books out of the library. America should do that as well. I would love to see that kind of program in America, but I just hope that libraries can survive another like a decade of existence. Me too. It is, I feel like because of our Patreon,

we kind of get royalties for all the work we've done based on subscription. So I consider those royalties, and that's nice. But also I've written a book and every year I get a royalty check and it's like, wow, I didn't do anything. Free money, but then I think about, well, I spent once and months writing that. But still, it's nice to have a check every one. once in a while I'll show up and remind you you've done something. I took a picture of it and forgot to send it to you.

I went to Pink Gorilla Games, an independent game store in Seattle this couple weeks ago, and your book was on the store shelves with a lot of the others from that series. You should have bought all the copies and been like, wow, this thing is flying off the shelves. You should order more. Pink Gorilla Games is a neat place that's full of cool collectibles and like many real classic games. And I believe the guy who was our cashier and maybe owner or co-owner of the place is like the best street fighter player online. Like he is one of the highest ranks people.

That's what he said. And my husband who knows the fighting and community was like, he's not lying. That's the real guy. I was like, meeting a legend. Moving on to talking Futurama, the episode,

all the president's heads. And we have a message from supervising director Peter Avanzino, who does follow our podcast and subscribe to it. Thank you, Peter, for this inside information. So Peter says about this episode, the problem with the party in the hall of presidents

was that all of the heads needed to be presidents. We couldn't just use Jonathan Frakes or Macaigning's heads. There were only 44 presidents at that point, but the hall is big and has to be filled up. In the past, we would only show small sections, but for a party, we had to fill it up. Matt likes to say, quote, just do it like they did in Dumbo. They didn't show any crowds in Dumbo, unquote. But in this scene, the lights are on, so we have to see the heads. I think we did go through our incidental character designs and turn some of their heads into president's heads.

For the names, I have to imagine we asked the writers for a list, but I guess they said just to make them up. This puzzles me because they're usually really good about that. lists of video game names, future TV show names, etc. They really deliver with those. But I guess that didn't happen here. We know better than to put ourselves or our friends in the shows. So if the director says they made them up, then they made them up. Thank God no precedents had to have tears in that scene.

A fun little slam on Matt Graney, who is very particular about his tears. But thank you, Peter. We were wondering why, like, why are all these random heads in here? But my solution would have been like the other heads coming to the Hall of Presidents and join them. I would add that amendment to the script maybe without the pressure. Yeah. It's an entire head museum. It's not just the president one.

I'm glad to hear from Peter this further insight into it because, yes, Matt Graining was not happy with it on the commentary. Like, he's grousing about it. And it was funny to hear Peter say that Matt Graining still says, you know, just do it like Dumbo. They didn't show any crowds in Dumbo. Like, I heard that, him say that like on a commentary from like 2002. Like dancing Homer, I think.

Right. Yes. Yeah. So I was like, guys, why do you draw the whole crowds? They didn't draw our crowds in Dumbo. It's like, well, this scene called for crowds and you guys always want crowds, don't they? Yeah, when I first watched this scene

to remind our listeners, I thought, are these contest winners? It's a bunch of random faces and names I've never heard that aren't jokes. But yes, Peter, thank you for pointing this out. And the commentary did as well. But I always appreciate inside info from Peter. Thank you so much.

And Joe Hodgson says on the same episode, A solid Boston-centric sign gag in this one is the reference to The Big Dig, a project infamous for how long it over budget it ran. The origins traced back to the early 80s, but construction began in 91 and didn't finish until 2007, so it was a frequent punching bag and often cited as an example of government waste and or incompetence. It actually turned out pretty well, though, as the whole idea was to put through traffic under the city to make accessing the airport or Cape Cod easier. The downside is the state

put basically all of the deck created by it onto the public transit system, which is still in issue and the tunnels which had some faulty ceiling panels, which did fall and kill a person. A lot of areas above the tunnel and the city proper were refashioned into parks, so it's been a nice addition for the city and the state, and ultimately the type of thing I am fine with my tax dollars going towards, as opposed to weapons and such. And this is all because we missed a sign gag where when they get to Boston,

it says home of the big dig, And I forgot to look into that. But apparently it is based on a very over budget project happening in Boston. And it was happening all the way back in colonial times, apparently. That's a joke. At least, hey, it sounds like it actually worked in the end, though, to put it on to the public transit system, like, that's classic American government stuff. Like, I'll put it on a thing we don't. Again, there's an endless money tree for weapons.

If it kills somebody, there's endless money for that. It's true. All parties agree. Israel. Or sorry. Israel, yes. Iran. No.

Yes, yeah. So yeah, you know, I just benefited from a recent long project finishing around here, too, which was the two line in the Seattle area. They, I think, voted on appropriations for that bill, for the money to build it in 2008. And they just finished it. Wow. You moved there just in time. It's pretty nice.

I went to see that Satoshi Khan triple features and the Mariners game this last month because it's like, oh, I can just take the train right there. Nice. So moving on up is next. That's Talking of the Hill. And Blake R is back. Sorry, I like Blake's comments. I try to get comments from unique people with every podcast we talk about,

but Blake had so many good comments this week. So thank you so much, Blake. And he says, I was mostly fortunate with roommates during my years in which I rented out rooms and houses off campus during my college years. We all tended to have jobs of different schedules and rarely saw one another. However, when I did an internship with Disney and Anaheim for one semester as part of the Disney college program, I got to experience the dreaded mountain of dishes.

I was the one heterosexual male in an apartment with four gay roommates who I enjoyed sharing a space with. Far be it for me to assign stereotypes, but I admittedly was shocked with how slovenly they could be. I'll admit that during one of my weaker moments making my way through scrubbing plates, I shouted out, I thought you all were supposed to be clean,

which they had a good laugh about, but proceeded to not change their habits. I think the issue is, once you make it clear that you are the one who will cave to cleaning up after other people, all bets are off. And yes, Blake, that does happen, sadly. But also, Blake, thank you for standing up for clean heterosexuals everywhere.

We're out there. Some of us like organization and scrubbing and cleaning and mopping. And just like gay slabs, we like to challenge those stereotypes that we're clean people. Now, that's very funny. He probably thought like, oh, right, gay roommates, they're going to be cleaning up everything. Like, we'll work on this together. I'm attracted to women in freshly vacuum carpets. I matter.

The dishes are a, they can be a real thing. I think my only, you know, non-romantic roommate I've had, we shared the dish responsibilities, I think, pretty good. I bet I was about 60% of the dishes, but I made more dirty dishes as well, I would say. And in our final comment, Jonathan says, For about a year or two in high school, I shaved my legs and thankfully didn't get teased too much for it.

The impetus was that I played soccer and wearing shin guards and sweating profusely made my legs feel gross, so I started shaving to make it easier. I'm sure there was an element of experimenting with gender expression as well, but I had that sports excuse ready to go whenever someone would ask me about it.

Eventually, I stopped playing sports and also got too lazy to keep up the habit, but I have to say the feeling of having just shaved your legs is pretty nice. You know what? I might be there one day, but it's enough of the pain in the ass to shave my face every day. That's not very much skin,

although it's more complicated than a leg, so who knows, maybe it's easier to shave. shave your legs. I hate shaving my face so much. I grew a beard. So credit to anybody who enjoys shaving their legs, like even with, man doing it with like soap and stuff. But yes, also if you're a man who wants to, as Jonathan puts it, experimenting with gender expression, your cover of like, it's for sports. Like it's an easy one to guard yourself from hateful people. You know, I'm doing so much cardio. I need to show off the gam. So maybe it's time to raise that forest this summer. Feel the cool Vancouver breeze on my skin.

At least the calves more often, right? They're probably looking pretty good these days. They're pronounced. Settle down, everyone. Yeah, that was Talk to the audience. Despite nothing happening this month, we've talked for two hours. But I think it's because Henry and I are on a roll. We already recorded a two-plus hour podcast earlier today, so we just can't shut up.

No, we're too excited about World Simpsons Day. That's right, yes. You can't see us. We're both wearing party hats. There's, like, streamers in the background. And the excitement just rolled straight from that into our recording like the days later. We just love it so much. It's World Simpsons Week, in my opinion, honestly.

But thanks to all of the great comments. And again, you know, if you're not a subscriber to the Patreon yet, know that you're missing out on some great exclusives like Talking Futurama and Talking of the Hill this month. Both have really great episodes, Cold Warriors, and Bill of Sales. One, we enjoyed more than the other, but they're both for a ton of fun to talk about. And you can also sample some poo if you sign up for the $10 level. Patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. And by poo, I mean a podcast about Winnie the Pooh. The quality of the podcast is impeccable.

Ed, free and early ones for stuff like our Jellystone discussion about the episode SpaceCon with Toby Jones, which is a whole lot of fun and definitely a lengthy discussion. Well, thanks everybody for listening and thank you for being part of our community. We will see you next week for another episode of Talking Simpsons and next month for an entirely new episode of Talk to the audience and we'll see you then. Marketing is hard. But I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be.

Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now, and it's great. You love the host. You seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion. And this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention?

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