Talking Simpsons - Talk to the Audience?!? - August 2020

Episode Date: September 2, 2020

Whew, another month in the history books as summer reaches its last days. We've had another fun month as we reflect on some decidedly political Simpsons news, chat about the upcoming miniseries and tease some other fun plans, we have a quick chat with Simpsons collector BartOfDarkness about his new podcast Simpsons Is Greater Than..., AND we close it out with us reading some of our favorite comments on Patreon. Listen on your phone or BusyBox! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! Check out our new shirts on TeePublic! And please follow the new official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

I heartily endorse like Marge Simpson. That's true. You have a very good Marge. You've been honing your Marge voice very well. Thank you, Bob. That is perfect. But yes, in case you have not heard Talk to the Audience before, it is our community podcast. We talk about news that's happening in the Simpsons world and in our world.

And then we read your questions and comments from the past month's worth of episodes. And if you're on the Patreon feed, this is the final talking simpsons of the month and if you are on the free feed it's the first talking simpsons of the month and we have some political news to start with in the simpsons world yes yeah always with the politics uh yeah let's let's start with it because it was the most viral the simpsons went this month, too. Two of these things don't make any damn sense to me. You know, it's the one thing we're not talking about currently on the shows is up-to-date political things just because we're recording so far in advance. Yeah.

But you're getting this. We recorded this the day before it goes live on the Patreon. So this is hot takes. Have we recorded a November Talking Simpsons yet? I thought we just did. Yes, we have okay and we're about to record another so if you're like wow why'd you release the right now we're on track for bark to the future the trump predicting episode to go out on the patreon the

day of the wow wow people are going to be wondering why we're not talking about world war three about why we're not announcing our next uso show appearance are impressed into service yeah we'll be asking our guests they're like so what do you think about uh your new enforced service uh but this month was of course uh big news on the politics including kamala harris was announced as the vice president pick for joe biden and uh you know lots of people had opinions on that and that included donald trump's dumb shit campaigner jenna ellis who said that she thinks that kamala harris sounds like marge simpson which is just like that's not right that's fundamentally incorrect there is absolutely nothing in her voice that sounds anything

like julie kavner's marge voice kamala i and also uh pardon me on the pronunciation i grew up with hearing kamala kamala said a certain way i'm trying to retrain myself you're thinking of the wrestler by the way r.i.p to the other kamala whose last name was also harris as well yeah but kamala i don't think she sounds like marge at all she has a somewhat high voice i think she has kind of like a wine mom tenor or wine stepmom tenor i guess i should say but but she doesn't sound like marge and marge herself even responded to this because i mean this is kind of the simpsons like snl style strategy of like oh if we're mentioned in the news instantly reply which i guess honestly goes back to like 1991 with hw bush but but here's what marge had to say i usually don't get into

politics but the president's senior advisor jenna ellis just said kamala harris sounds like me lisa says she doesn't mean it as a compliment if that's so as an ordinary suburban housewife i'm starting to feel a little disrespected i teach my children not to name call jenna i was gonna say i'm pissed off but i'm afraid they bleep it so there you go it's cute i mean i don't really like the have you no decency because of course they don't yeah also marge you're not doing a good job of preventing your kids from calling names because they do it all the time it's true there's countless episodes where it happens but that is exactly in the same spirit as bart watching the hw bush speech and saying like hey we're hoping we're

just like the waltons we're hoping for the end of the depression too i'd say bart's comment uh way less toothless than uh be nice a little bit yeah it's like i don't know i guess that pissed off thing at the end is a little too the classic simpsons edge in that bit but yeah i mean also it just looks weird because it's it's totally like space goes coast to coast it's just old footage of barge talking from a halloween special yeah uh which is like you know al jean rock and rolls the voices on everything from since the beginning it's weird though i just noticed in the clip that she's like in front of the classic halloween red curtain what's at the opening to uh frankenstein oh yes yeah but it was a black and white uh then the establishing shot of sorry the like disestablishing shot because it's leaving the scene is of the house it's like

did she set up this entire like auditorium in the house what's going on boy yeah it's weird it also just struck me that like when we're having this conversation about does senator harris sound like marge or not when you hear marge talk i'm just like you sound a little less like marge these days julie so pains she's you know we've heard her in person yeah she uh hearing julie cavner in person go yeah that made me laugh so hard that was the big that might have been the biggest laugh of the whole uh table i think i think she just hit 70 though so uh it's a hard voice to do even when you're in your 30s back when this started and sadly also in simpsons

entering into politics uh asshole secretary of state mike pompeo also had a comment like uh while senator elizabeth warren was speaking during the Democratic National Convention live stream. She, you know, had a lot of emotion in her voice. And Pompeo again compares her to like the whining, crying Lisa Simpson. And so he shared a picture of Lisa from Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington of tearing up her speech in anger. Yeah. And Bill Oakley. Which makes the opposite point, right? Yeah. I mean, Bill Oakley was notified. from mr lisa goes to washington of tearing up her speech in anger yeah and bill oakley opposite point right yeah i mean bill oakley was notified he's like i'm not going to dignify this with the response he's doing it again and i didn't quite understand like the article about this by inverse

i don't know if they're being like a little cheeky but it says pompeo who has used the image before to mock the speaker of the house nancy pelosi was only 28 when mr lisa aired in 1991 it's certainly possible that he could have watched the episode when it aired well yeah of course like yeah why is that in question it was a very popular show is he saying that 28 was too old to watch the simpsons that's what confused me i hate to even imagine mike pompeo at 28 though that kind of brings me down that but he's probably like reading all the conservative newsletters are like the simpsons are bringing down the american family he's probably dreaming of someday being in the hw bush white house that like in the second term he's like i bet i can get in there in the second term but i mean to it's this is the thing we've brought up multiple times in the scully years of like i

really don't like the casting of lisa as the too whiny feminist who never gets her way but he didn't even use a scene from that he used like an actually very good scene of lisa losing her faith in politics because she sees they are all dirty like that's that's why she's tearing up her speech because it inspires her cesspool on the potomac thing i i think i saw yardley dunk on him as well like you don't know shit about lisa kind of thing i feel like especially now satire is like just a useless tool it has no purpose it's just the worst thing you could ever do because no one's going to get it and it doesn't work and we're beyond it yeah every joke you made is worse by reality there's no heightened like

satire is always a heightening of reality. Reality is heightened every like eight minutes. You can't keep up. The production time on a satire alone means you can't keep up. So our next bit of news here is that there was a recent oral history of steamed hams and it was published by Mel magazine. My issue with this, not the piece itself, but the nature of the Internet was I saw this and every article that I thought was the actual oral history was you'll never believe what just was written it's like I fucked up there too yeah I'm not blaming you Henry but when I tried to find this every article was an article about it because that's what the internet is that's what we did in the final years of our jobs like hey look at this thing someone else did someone that had time to do their jobs did over there it's just uh yeah so

it's actually a mail magazine piece but like every link to it was like hey check this out over there somewhere okay so then the correct author of it is brian van hooker that's who wrote it i don't blame you the internet's awful i yeah i and i read the whole thing too but i also forget every website's name because it's just a link through twitter and the only reason i remember a website is if when I click on it, it's like, oh, here came 17 things asking me if I could sign up to allow them to send me notifications, sign up for a newsletter, and then it's like, hey, is it okay if we do cookies? And it's like, fuck you.

This is why people turn on Adblock. Can we text you when we write something new? But yeah, like a lot of this uh i mean i knew the story not to be like i know everything but i mean i knew the story but it was nice to see it all laid out by bill oakley in one place and the more interesting part was like here's how the memes grew and like what they've turned into and it brings me back to like uh what a what a glorious time like was it 2018 when it was fresh and the world was different and we were just we were all about the steamed hams uh yeah i've seen i've seen oakley give basically the exact same history in other places too but i i appreciated that the writer

reached out to multiple people from like know your meme and in all these other places to explain the history of the meme so not just the creation of the article but these things always strike me it was just like poor bill oakley that he thought that his uh for years like oh nobody gave a shit about this nobody likes my seasons nobody remembers my jokes and now finally he's like oh people do remember my jokes yay it's always nice to see uh all of those choices justified like 25 years later where he was like nobody got what we did all these things died at the table read and people were just questioning us and then like those are the ones that i remember the most and much later in time and also all they were seeing on alt tv simpsons was just like worst

episode ever like so they uh i i'm so glad they can finally uh finally be satisfied with that and of course i had to go like i see what you did there of like it has the full c the full dialogue of it is in of the sketch is in the oral history so it is also an oral history that is steamed ham so pretty clever i delightfully diabolical you're right yeah what if i were to take the Steams Ham sketch And pass it off as an oral history So thumbs up From a fellow content creator

Brian Van Hooker that was a really Good article and up next we Have Harry Shearer being a bit Of a stinker about you Know the recent news story from I think July Where no Non-white character will have a white actor portray them. And like I really think like if you're going to make this kind of statement, you need to back it up or like at least hang around to like give me another paragraph.

But he was basically just saying like, well, you know, it's an actor's job to play a character. You have to play someone you're not. But that's Harry Shearer completely ignoring like all of the context for the change. It's like, well, yeah, we're doing it so other actors can have opportunities, not just like white people playing everybody. And like Harry Shearer, he's approaching 80 people. He's 76 years old. Everyone's getting older, set in his ways. I don't think he's a racist or anything.

He is just a very, you know, conservative minded guy, even though he's a liberal. And, you know, he's just not with the times anymore yeah and i mean he's even said like you know this isn't like i'll quit the show if i can't voice dr hibbert anymore that's not what he said yeah he's just like definitely coming from an old school way of thinking like the job is playing someone i'm not is is what he said he also though apparently said like uh whether he thought that this is from the cnn article when asked whether he thought the show's decision was a mistake he said he wasn't opining publicly on that matter and joked we don't get paid by the voice so yeah i mean he he gets hundreds of thousands of dollars either way uh if he is the voice or isn't. But he definitely, it came off a little like the boomer energy of,

this is going too far. I can play anything. Who cares? I'm a progressive guy, but this is going way too far, is what we always hear. I'm pretty liberal-minded. But, you know, I still love Harry Shearer for all the nasty things he says about Lorne Michaels.

I got to appreciate that. I'm waiting for him to get to Mr. Burns' original age, love harry sheer for all the nasty things he says about lord michaels like i gotta i gotta appreciate that i'm waiting for him to get to mr burns's original age was like 82 years old that's right yeah i think simpson and delilah like how old do you think i am simpson i'm only 82 yeah boy he's getting close there six more years uh so up next we have a tattoo record was set an australian man set a record for guinness uh 203 simpsons characters on his back and this is not body shaming uh he you need to have a back the size of this gentleman to fit all those characters on because he's essentially got like the classic simpsons poster on his back but with the main family members very large in the foreground he has

quite a big back it's uh it's a large back that fits a lot of characters. I mean, you ought to appreciate that kind of dedication for like a full total back tattoo and in color. Not just the line work, but full color on the characters too. Especially after they insulted his country so savagely 25 years ago. In mean news, I'm definitely getting a tattoo when all this is over to like celebrate surviving. And there might be a Simpson involved, so stay tuned. Oh, man. I can't wait for this. Boy, I should get a Simpson.

You know, I do have a Simpson. Me as a Simpson drawing. That feels almost too self-centered. At this point in history, no tattoo is too stupid. Yeah, that's true. What do you got to lose here? Come on. Yeah.

I had seen this news spread uh by mike reese and he had a funny comment and just like all those characters you couldn't get mr bergstrom who's me on you come on he's gonna get him on his ass i bet now you know on the first hundred i'd have mr bergstrom if it's like okay you have to fit 200 characters on you i'd at least have mr bergstrom in there somewhere sideshow rahim is on his back so why not mr bergstrom yeah and our final piece of news is uh the vile chinese app tiktok destroying our country and democracy uh i'm fine with tiktok by the way uh tiktok user did a very popular mashup of nelson's haha with the m83 song midnight city i will admit i had to look up what song it

was parodying i didn't i did not know yeah i'm i'm out of touch uh but but the children are actually wrong when i looked up the song on youtube and saw it had 300 million views i'm like boy i'm really out of touch i hadn't heard this song but uh but yes it took the specifically nelson's haha from the movie when he's pointing at Bart's penis and mixed it up here. Yeah. We actually found out about that because a friend of the show, Alexi, former guest, sent that to us in a DM. That's right. I didn't know it was parenting something popular. She was ahead of the, she is our youth consultant on this, I guess. And that she's like five years younger than us.

That's true. But a musician, so she's part of that world as well yeah well and hey now that i've heard that song midnight city i'm like this is a good song i like this song but i'm all i'm old i don't listen to new songs uh i should but i i like i heard there was a i had the old man reaction of like when we were young and a new rolling stones album or bob dylan thing came out the old people for us would go like i'm still hip i just listened to the new bob dylan album and he's still great a new bright eyes album just came out and i had the same reaction like i should listen to that i i'll stay hip and in it we should still got it yeah singing about malls at age 60 uh but but

that's it for simpsons news this month uh Let's knock on wood that nothing like horrible or crazy happens in Simpsons news before this comes out. So let's move on to podcast news. We have a special surprise for you. The next Talking Simpsons episode won't be about the Simpsons because in the past, whenever a new Simpsons related show appears on the Fox schedule in our timeline, we'll do the pilot of that instead of the Simpsons that week. And this time we are doing the non animated show Malcolm in our timeline. We'll do the pilot of that instead of The Simpsons that week. And this time we are doing the non-animated show Malcolm in the Middle. If you don't like that, I got three words for you. Life is unfair.

Boom. Take that. As they might be giants said. Still a very cool band. Yeah. Oh, they're still so cool and hip and young and vibrant. I realized while watching the trailer, I think maybe I've said it before,

but we are the Flansburg and Lonell. It's true. People have pointed that out in like in like pictures. But yeah, we're doing the pilot of Malcolm in the Middle. A fantastic show. It is still on Hulu as of this recording. It's probably going to be there forever. And it's part of the Simpsons world.

And that is a live action cartoon. And also Jay Kogan was a showrunner towards the end and malcolm in the middle is with the reason why fox canceled all of the live act that's all the animated shows yes that launch in like 99 2000 because like this thing is way cheaper and people like it more it's uh it's a really interesting show to go back to on hulu i think i had also seen that disney plus had originally or disney had originally floated the idea to be on Disney Plus because they own it, like all the other Fox shows. But I think they eventually decided it was too dirty. So it's living on Hulu with Family Guy and American Dad.

I think it's too Marxist for Disney. It has a lot of things to say about being lower class and a working family in America and George W. Bush's America. I know. It's about how you know it sucks to be poor it's really hard like that and yeah it's uh i think it was important for us to do because it was partnered with the simpsons for like seven years straight you know i i think one season they got moved to thursday but pretty much it was always with the simpsons

it was one of i think it is the most successful show to be always with the Simpsons it was one of I think it is the most successful show to be partnered with the Simpsons based on its season one ratings yeah it was like the slicker hipper married with children like another off-kilter anti-sitcom family and I believe this came up if you want the behind the music on this it was uh when we did our episode with Lindsay Kaytai six weeks ago for Little Big Mom it came up that like oh yeah Malcolm in the Middle premiered this night and off the mic we said to each other like you know what we did it for Mission Hill and Family Guy shouldn't we do it for Malcolm in the Middle so yeah I mean look hey does it suck that Frankie Munez is a MAGA guy now it absolutely does but he

does suck literally has significant brain damage significant major brain damage you can't remember any part of the filming of this show and you can appreciate also the Cranston man the Cranman you can appreciate Brian Cranston before he became Mr. Serious Guy

like this is he is so great he was the show's like secret weapon but also Jane Kaz casmeric is like an incredible actress perfect casting all around we'll talk plenty about it but yeah just a fantastic show and i've been watching a lot of it on hulu it's like comfort food for a time in my life where i wasn't very happy it's weird that i'm now nostalgic for like times in my life where i was very unhappy and lonely yeah i guess now it's like uh well it especially reminds me of right before 9-11 or even post 9-11 i think i never missed an episode for the first two seasons and then watched uh on

and off from season three onward i'm seeing now but it's yeah great show but so that's coming next week not the next episode in simpsons chronological order so just just so you know gary from malcolm in the middle and we got a cool guest lined up as well. That's true. And more news for us, we sold out big time. We're in the pocket of Big Shoe

because we got some free things from Vans. We each got three free pairs of shoes. We interviewed the designers of those shoes. That's on our Patreon and on the free feed. And Henry, you've been buying

a few more things from them, right? Yeah, you know what? I really lost out on this deal because I still spend money on their shoes. That's how they get you. They send you three free pairs and you buy one more. I bought two more, actually, yeah. But I couldn't.

So, you know, the free ones we got, we got the one that's like Bart's colors in a slip-on loafer. We got the donut sandals, which I wear that every time I walk down to the front door to let you in and then the ones i i don't think i'll ever wear but it's the uh the family on both sides one which is really good but yeah and then i also bought the one of all the springfieldians on the shoe plus i couldn't resist the crusty burger hat that that's really cool i wanted the mo shoes but when i went to the website they were sold out of my size so i was like maybe in maybe in the future, if they make more, I'll get some. But that's the only one thing I wanted. I think I haven't worn any of the shoes yet.

I might wear one pair to my wedding because our wedding now might change because it was going to be small. But now we're like, we should celebrate, you know, because we had to not see each other for over six months at this point. Yeah, you know, and have a big, once you can finally have a big ass wedding, have a big ass wedding. Yeah, take over and destroy the city of Vancouver when that time comes. It's our time to shine.

And also, Futurama Season 2 Part 2 won the poll for the Fall 2020 miniseries. And very soon, in a few weeks, we'll be sitting down to record all nine new episodes of that show. I believe the first one will launch on October 30 30th and the final one will be out on christmas although i might bump that a few days earlier just so you can get it before you uh leave for a trip perhaps if that's possible yeah it's weird to even think about like i guess we do need to think about what christmas will feel like now and uh what will thanksgiving be i don't like thanksgiving if you've got a racist relative you can just kick him out of that zoom room yes yeah uh depending on who wins that election too this could be the worst thanksgiving that's ever happened yeah uh look i want biden to win i'll just say it i don't

like him but of course yeah it'd be nice i get it if that's who we're stuck with is yes yeah but anyway futurama yay more futurama it was close I like that future it was only four percent ahead of King of the Hill and uh sorry again to our double d's Duckman and Daria they they were they came up short they'll have their time to shine but yeah like like Henry said we are recording way in advance because at some point I'll be able to leave and then I'll have to stay in Canada for a bit to get all the viruses out of my body. But yeah, we're not going to be commenting on like very important current events because we will be recording way in advance. So if you're wondering why we're not talking about something that just happened, that's why.

And this space is where we do that. Talking about like the very new stuff. For example, that Red and Stimpy podcast that just came out on the Patreon that was recorded months, six weeks, I believe, before the double fist of Ren and Stimpy news of the documentary. The controversial doesn't sound that great documentary coming out. And then also the news of a potential revival of the series. So if you're listening to that, like, how could you have on that and Bob Jakes and not talk about those things well because it was weeks ago and i still think it's a really great podcast and i i don't know i feel like bob jakes would be not want to talk about those things anyway yeah i mean it sounds like nobody from the original show was contacted about the new reboot at this point so uh i don't know if they're happy or not about that but if you go to forces of geek

dot com you can read that kamarowski's review of the uh documentary and i trust him apparently it's very disappointing and what's disappointing about it is they had to rework it uh after the john k expose was written but then they turned it into a he said she said about pedophilia and that's not cool no no and it gives and it gives it gives john k the last word yeah yeah which is just like so wrong yeah i still want to watch just to hear the voices of people who made the show but i don't like that he had to be part of it they should have just written him out of it like yeah we're not going to talk to him yeah i mean thad had a very good point of just like all you're going to hear from john k is lies like if you talk to him now he will just lie to your

face or tell you a story that's already out there. So I could see a documentary and going like, Hey, it's not fair to not get his side of the story if he wants to offer it. And it would be incomplete without it. But he is just a liar. Like why, why get any information from him? He's said enough in the past that you can just quote that. And he's really good at it. Like enchanting people under a spell.

And apparently it worked on the documentary people. he's just he's just doing it again all he does is use people and he's just did it again he wouldn't john k wouldn't be the monster he is if he wasn't like excellent at using people and taking advantage of people like that's all yeah i don't even want to talk about him and also like uh i guess more news about that uh is that his like his monster father that informed all of his work just passed away in his 90s wow that old man finally died man that's just so depressing to me because you just i'm sure his father was horribly abusive as well and just to see that like john k's life was about passing along that instead of learning from it continuing that abuse it's just it's horrible anyway let's talk about

good things in september what a cartoon schedule uh so here's what's on the schedule for september the first week we'll be talking about inuyashiki last hero the third episode of that that's a really uh mature anime series on amazon i didn't hear about it before our patron dave winnington requested it he's on the episode and it's all put together and ready to go on Patreon. And I've been watching the series past that point of this episode that we did for the show and it's great. So I recommend watching it on Amazon. So up next after that second week is Sonic, the Saturday morning cartoon, the episode Super Sonic with our best friend Ian Jones Cordy. It's a great episode. We recorded that like months ago, it feels like. It was a very raucous uh fun exploration of sonic uh

the good sonic that's still pretty bad yes yeah and ian i mean ian is a sonic expert and super fan and even wrote sonic into an episode of ok ko he got to do a crossover show like so uh ian has so many fun views on sonic just as a fan and a creator I especially like he he made a great point that like the Sonic he knew growing up doesn't exist anymore and the kids today are just like well no Sonic's not like a jerk what are you talking about and after that we have the Dungeons and Dragons episode the Night of No Tomorrow the early 80s series that much better than the Saturday morning fair around it oh yeah yeah compared to everything else that came out in 1983 better animated and smarter written and also like good voice actors

and yeah that was a lot of fun to talk about we even go a little into the history of dungeons and dragons itself and our uh we have a premium patron guest on that one devin who helped us with a lot of uh insights into the playing of dungeons and dragons because uh though i have a background with tabletop role-playing games i never played dnd so devin was a really helpful guest on that one and i'm looking that again we recorded that one a month and a half ago that feels like it was a may podcast but uh and finally the what a cartoon movie is the return of jafar the aladdin. We just recorded that. Of course, you get the free preview of that.

If you are on the free feed or a $5 patron, you get that early. But if you're a $10 patron, you can hear the whole thing in all of our other What a Cartoon movies. And that was a lot of fun. I had not seen that movie since the first time I saw it. So it's an interesting movie that kicked off a much better TV series. Yeah, it was really something to reengage with. We talked for over three and a half hours on it. don't know what it'll ultimately the edit will come out but it's a big one and speaking about a cartoon movie we have one coming up in october of course

it'll be another horror themed event here and the picks for that one are going to be coralline the movie by the director of the nightmare before christmas not tim burton that that credit stealing jerk uh scooby-doo on zombie island uh the first like mature monsters are real scooby-doo story direct-to-video uh wallace and gromit and curse of the were-rabbit uh their only feature to date i believe yeah they're the full-length feature film the only one wallace and gromit got and vampire hunter d the uh that's the 80s one, correct? Yes, the 87 anime, yes. I do like both of them. The Bloodline, I think it's called? Bloodlines? Yeah, Bloodlines might honestly be a little better,

but it's not as important. The D on the bus stands for Dracula. Sorry, the D on the grave stands for Dracula. There is a Dracula bus, though. I always think of, in these group ones, we need one anime in here but it's technically two animes because scooby-doo on tommy island is anime that's the most anime

scooby-doo and i love it i love it so much so uh and i'll just tell you guys too ahead of time if you think we're starting with scooby-doo if that wins and you think that's the first scooby-doo podcast we'll do not true in october you will hear another scooby-doo podcast before that we're doing it right with a regular scooby-doo podcast before that and we have recorded that probably like two weeks ago at this point yes but uh oh but yeah but the poll will be up on september 1st to vote on the october movie so that way we can record it in september and stay ahead with that so keep an eye out for that september 1st to vote on coralline scooby-doo zombie island wallace and gromit curse the were-rabbit or vampire hunter d make your voice heard for the next october movie well now before we get to the

rest of the comments we actually have a new interview with a friend of the show warren you may know him as bart of darkness on, and he's got a new podcast. We're going to talk about it right now. Well, hey, so Warren, welcome to the Talking Simpsons Community Podcast. First time you've been on our show. Man, it is an honor to finally crawl my way to the top that is Talking Simpsons, I'll tell you. And if people don't recognize your handle, they probably recognize your collection, your vast, vast collection of Simpsons merchandise and memorabilia.

Yeah, I mean, as you guys can see, no one can see at home. It's everywhere. your collection your vast vast collection of simpsons uh merchandise and memorabilia yeah i mean it's as as you guys can see no one can see at home it's everywhere it consumes my life you know there's a lot of people out there who have collections of of some merch or like but to have these deeper collections you have like it's like three decades worth is just shown all over the place in there and it's it's stuff i recognize from childhood and then other stuff i'm like oh that must have been made last year kind of thing or this is from germany and i've never heard of it before yeah i mean it's it's one of those things where if you get into simpsons collecting uh you sort of have to find these avenues into the weird random uh obscure stuff from other countries because that's honestly some of the more interesting stuff and a

lot of it um is just rarely seen in america so that's sort of the fun of it well i wanted to talk about your new podcast too in a sec but i just where did you begin with this collection was it just stuff you had as a kid and then it grew into getting more stuff so it's funny uh when i first moved to florida to be with girlfriend, now wife, I hadn't really had enough time to devote to a hobby like collecting. And it's something I'd always been interested in. And I had a good friend named Lars that was collecting a lot of stuff from various toy lines. And I was like, you know, that's something I would like to do. So maybe I should find the thing that I really love and just really focus on buying it. So I bought like, you know, some Simpsons VHS sets

and I bought, you know, some dolls here and there, random, you know, flea markets and places like that. And I just sort of fell in love with the aesthetic of a lot of the early merchandise. And I was like, you know, this is stuff I wanted as a kid or stuff that I had as a kid. I should really seek this out and see how much I can learn about this stuff

and the origins of it and where it comes from and how deep it actually gets. And the truth is it gets really, really deep. So have you been able to track just like what the different waves of merch were? Because to me as a bystander and someone buying the merch, it felt like there was a ton of merch in the very beginning. And then there wasn't another wave until like 10 years later. Just a few things here and there throughout the 90s. But like the next big wave was like 99 with all the Playmates figures and stuff like that. It's that 200th episode that like right around then, that's when they started making new deals. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, so what you notice collecting is that obviously in 89, there's only a couple of things because most merch was really, really early stages. 90, 91, it was just a flood of merchandise and then you realize that around the mid 90s they were still making a good amount of stuff but it was very obscure and a lot of stuff was being made in the uk and new zealand and australia and what you also notice is that a lot of the stuff being made in the UK up until as recent as 97, 98 still looked very, very proto like 1990. And you realize that a lot of this international stuff didn't have nearly the restrictions or the approval process that a lot of the American stuff had. So you definitely, you can tell what era it's from based on packaging and things like that.

You start to notice little patterns between based on packaging and things like that you start to notice little patterns uh between uk and us and things like that but you do like i can look at a thing and i can probably tell you within you know two years of when it was made wow that yeah well you hear those stories about how involved mac raining was and approvals on like especially in the first run of merchandise and even to this day, we interviewed the creators or the designers of the Vans Simpsons stuff. And they said like, yeah, they got direct notes from Groening on it.

Like he's still very involved in that stuff. But I wonder if like, you know, he's only one guy. Can he approve an Australia thing? Can he approve something made in England? I always wonder that. And, you know, I want to say my favorite Simpsons toy line ever is from New Jersey. It's called Dandy or Dandy. And I it's all the like flat face dolls. Some people remember those and I love everything that that company made. And the story

goes that they made like a hundred dolls and Matt only approved like 15 of them. And so I wonder, you know, what that process looked like in the late nineties. That's something I always think about because this company called Vivid Imaginations, specifically from the UK, a lot of their stuff into the late nineties looks so early 1990 that I just can't imagine Matt or anyone would have approved it that late into the game but who knows maybe I actually I do have one of the dandy flat face barts oh I don't I have like I have like seven Simpsons things uh classic Simpsons things look these up maybe I had them too the the only the the toys I had as a kid of the Simpsons I had the hard plastic head ones that

got sold at Burger King and I also i had the mattel line that had the bart man and nelson in it one i had that but these i'm looking them up on ebay now but while i do that um you know another thing i've seen you like shout out to on twitter is bill morrison who is like the king he is of the 90s uh like the best simpsons artist then like he was the guy who drew everything that looked correct to me as a kid whether it be bongo comics or the calendars or video game cover art was bill morrison and like you've you've probably gotten to know his art quite well too even though he doesn't sign it you just have to know it by the look of it you just have to know well i think the finest example of bill's

stuff is obviously a lot of the video games and i think once you realize like what his style is like you start to link him to so many things and when i say like i mean bill obviously worked on bongo but he was doing box art for card games for you know random sets of trivia he was doing vhs art he was doing like the amount of i mean i'm pretty sure he even did artwork for the uh simpsons tapped out game so i mean he's done so much stuff it's honestly sort of insane and yeah i'm a huge fan of bill's work well and i think his his need to be constantly like on model and correct came from him being such an in-demand poster and merchandise artist like in in comics especially with the deadlines you have or the expectations of like oh it's a kid's comic

like who cares about being too on model you got to get this out on time but if you're going to be a t-shirt or a butterfinger ad in a comic book you gotta hit the rules you got to do every simpsons rule and all the our friend nina who is an amazing simpsons artist on her own like she just gives you a a hint of the rules that bill morrison probably formalized like well no a simpsons mouth does this it doesn't do that yeah no and and you know i gotta say like i think when i think of simpsons art period i really only think of david silverman west archer and bill morrison like to me those are like because you also you know you find out when you

talk about merchandise that uh some of the earliest merchandise like the say cheese shirt you know the famous image of homer choking bart like that was actually a david silverman drawing oh you could tell and you know the the image that's on all the scripts you know they actually david told me that he they wanted him to be involved in the merchandise really heavy from the jump and they they you know they knew he didn't have time for that but i think it's interesting to see those things tie in and how certain people almost had a different path you know yeah getting those scripts we went to the table read last year just like that that image is just so wonky but it is like oh yeah that was the image on all the t-shirts and stuff in 1990 the front-facing bart man poor poor silverman that he was like he was directing five episodes

in season one but they're also like hey we got t-shirts you got to draw too could you do that like i guess you know that's a good segue here you talk about david silverman uh you have been getting into the podcasting game as well not just just in the Simpsons collecting game. Yeah, I you know, this, you know, I talked about this a bit on the podcast. But you know, this whole quarantine has sort of inspired me to push myself to do something I've thought about doing for a long time. Anyway, you know, being a guest on a podcast here and there, I was like, this is something I would really like to do. So I've sort of just been using this time to reach out and make contacts and record these interviews. And, you know, I'm happy to say that I'm actually launching tomorrow. I'm really pumped. I'm dropping three episodes right away, one of which is with you

guys. Oh, awesome. And so I'm super excited for everyone to hear it. I'm excited to do more and more. And if you guys are fans of just you know you know in-depth conversations about why the simpsons is so great i think you're gonna love this podcast and now what's the name of that podcast the podcast is called simpsons is greater than and it should be available on every anywhere you get your podcast you should be able to find it amazing cool yeah it's uh it's hard you know me and bob it took us a couple years to finally get like what bill oakley on as our first guest and he's what a great guy but like you and your first episodes are just like boom boom boom the stars

like it's very impressive i really appreciate that i mean i you know i would have never imagined that this would have gone the way that it's gone for me. And I, you know, I don't know if I have my collection to thank for that or what it, whatever it may be, but I consider myself very lucky that some of these people have been so open to talking with me and, you know, I'm just excited to see where it goes. I'm going to, you know, put myself to the talking Simpsons model and give it my whole, give it all I got.

So we're very flattered. Yes. model and give it my whole give it all i got so we're very flattered yes no thanks and and our chat with you is was great too just about like our uh you know we focus on one episode per thing but just having a more like bigger conversation about our lives as related to our phantom of the simpsons and how and how that you know went into our personal lives and our careers and stuff. That was a lot of fun. And yeah, I mean, just this week you did an Instagram Live interview with Carolyn Omine. That was really cool too. So yeah, I'm looking forward to hearing all that stuff now that it's starting up.

And yeah, man, David Silverman and Yardley Smith. Al Jean, yeah. Al Jean. He's still on our – we got Smith. Al Jean? Al Jean, yeah. Al Jean. He's still on our, we got to get Al Jean soon. We got to do it. But yeah, that's so impressive. Well, you know, I really only did it to dunk on you guys. You did.

You pulled it off. Mission accomplished, buddy. No, no, no. Yeah, I'm very excited. I like what you highlighted as far as the format. You know, just for anyone who doesn't know, it's really, you know, for all intents and purposes, quite different than Talking Simpsons. My goal is to sit down and talk to people that feel like the Simpsons had some sort

of impact on the way, you know, their creative endeavors in life went or just the things that they were interested in moving into careers. So I'm going to talk to artists, musicians, anyone that feels like the Simpsons sort of molded part of their brain that led to the career that they chose. So I'm really excited to have that conversation. I think it's going to be awesome to talk to a lot of people about. Yeah, no, it's been great. And you're doing Jacksonville Proud as a fellow Jacksonvillian. I have no alliances to florida i'm sorry trying my best i'm trying to make florida not look awful for at least yeah man i can't wait

to hear uh the rest of the simpsons greater than you uh you have a twitter account for that as well not just part of darkness i would figure probably our listeners follow part of darkness on twitter just to see all the cool stuff you share yeah but I really I really hope you guys do if you don't. But, you know, I want to say if you search Bart of Darkness on Twitter or Instagram, you'll find it. And same thing for the podcast. Simpsons is greater than obviously you can't have a name that long on Twitter. So it's Simpsons is great, which I almost changed the name of the podcast to. So, you know, either you can find me on all of that stuff. So please check it out. And like I said, three episodes coming tomorrow. Great. Awesome. Well, thanks so much, Warren, and best

of luck with that. We, you know, I hope people enjoy ours just as much as the Hearing Al Jean on it too. No, it really means a lot, guys. I appreciate you having me on and yeah, I'll see you guys soon. Yeah. And before we get to the questions and comments, let's have our little quarantine corner, what we're doing to stay sane. How about you henry what's going on with you oh it's uh it's been another month full of content but i was shaking it up a lot with uh well first off i read a whole comic book actually i read two comic books one shout out to our friends uh ian boothby and nina matsumoto uh on their new comic sparks Sparks Double Dog Dare. I just read that. A lot of fun.

Please buy it now wherever you can buy books. It's great. Yeah, I got it digitally and read it. But I also believe you can get a free or you can, if you buy it physically, you can also get a signed thing from Nina and Ian out there. Look into their Twitters. I forget the official stuff for that. But Sparks, it was a lot of fun it's just funny and i think ian just has a great like sense of humor as a writer i especially like the um uh the lazy squirrel friend they have i think he's my favorite character he

just sits around and eats i like that but uh and and nina matsumoto is really good at drawing like delicious looking floppy pizzas like i there's some real like ninja turtle style pizzas uh and also a comic i read this month was uh the naoki urusawa comic uh muji rushi which is a you know it's like eight chapters long so it's basically one volume length of a of a long ongoing manga but it's just one full story and it's like done in collaboration with the louvre so uh it's set in the louvre it is about how awesome the paintings are there it uh i'll tell you what if you are wishing you could travel to places reading it uh might make you feel a lot of pain because you're like boy i wish i could go to japan or paris and go to the loo this looks pretty nice but it's a really great

comic i i read a little of it last month because that led me to watch the uh osamatsu kun show because it references that and i've been watching a little avatar the last airbender i'm still in book one but i've been enjoying that also still going through the legend of galactic heroes oh yeah i'm 30 episodes into that and it is so fire emblem fire emblem games totally ripped it off like it's exactly i to go into it more would spoil things but the character design tone and the way the story of a long-term war is told i now see so much of what fire emblem got out of this i guess the timeline would match up with that yeah because the the book started in 87 and the first fire emblem came out in 90 okay yeah yeah and and i'm i've been watching that on verve i also have been using my verve membership to watch uh garfield and

friends uh which that's been fun to go back to and then uh two things i wanted to shout out to you on youtube defunct land along with our our bros from the podcast the ride they did a documentary like a full real documentary about helix oh right the uh the band that the star wars kiss band that played for like a summer at disneyland and never came back i still need to watch that but i was listening on their podcast i think they were going to like tour with the movie and stuff it was going to be like a summer at Disneyland and never came back. I still need to watch that. But I was listening on their podcast. I think they were going to like tour with the movie and stuff. It was going to be like a movie that they were going to screen places around this time of the year.

It's weird, though, because I've been like I've run through all my old podcasts or so I've run through all my new podcasts. So I'm going back to old podcasts like pre-pandemic podcasts. And I'm hearing like, come out and see us in April for our live show. Rolling out in April. Come see us this summer. Just like, fools yeah you foolish fool yeah it's uh that can be a little painful hearing those old ones with all the plans they probably we have a lot of plans we talked yeah we're gonna be like oh we're going out to la again in the spring we

probably would have been out to la like in april or may or something sure at least sometime in the summer i miss it uh and uh but yeah that Defunctland is really great. And also our buddy Popperina, who we've had on a couple podcasts, his last two knickknacks were really great. He did one for Adventures of the Little Koala, which was really awesome. And he did a new one he's doing called The Sampler. It's an 11 to 15 minute thing, just about one of spongebob and so it's his way of like you know let me skip ahead to a thing that's popular instead of just just doing chronological so it's a long walk to spongebob from where he is right now like 1987 i think yeah it's uh 2025

he'd probably get to 1999 and and also i played a little bit of this video game that was on sale called what the golf which came out last year. It's really neat. It's very clever. To describe more would spoil the whole attraction of the game. But it's not exactly a golf game. It's not quite a mop. But it's What the Golf.

You know, obviously, probably people played it a long time ago last year. But when it's on the switch that's when a game it's new to you at least to me yes yeah uh as for me uh kind of a boring month i've been actually working very far ahead on retronauts as well because i'm trying to get a lot of those in the can i'm up to november there because again when i leave i have to make sure my plate is clear my schedule is clear what my plate is clear is what kind of dinner analogy am i working with here my slate is clear there we go so things been playing i played the new no more heroes game uh it was kind of for a podcast but then i got into it it's like the it's called travis strikes back

it's a fun uh i'd say b level game lots of lots of personality to it it kind of came and went in 2019 but i guess it was popular enough that there's going to be a no more heroes 3 this year but that might get delayed i think it'll be delayed i remember at the end of that game like people were like oh there's a tease at the end that they'll just make a real no more heroes 3 yeah there definitely is you you shared a screenshot from that game where a character saying like people don't want to read in this they bought a new no more heroes like well yeah tough titties there's a lot of fun uh like self uh making fun of themselves in the game making fun of other games it's it's pretty irreverent i do like it a lot of fun uh like self uh making fun of themselves in the game making fun of other games it's it's pretty irreverent i do like it a lot i started final fantasy 9 in february and now i'm

almost at the very end of the game that's for future retronauts and i mean like i probably cruised that game in like a week when i was 18 when it came out but i'm hitting like 40 hours over the course of like six months so that's nice that's like chipping away at it like dungeon by dungeon that's got to be good podcast listening game oh it is yeah i love i love nine and currently i'm playing the not very good escape from monkey island for a podcast uh coming up in november so spoilers yes the continuation it must be with a certain monkey island partner you have yes she will be on it and a game i'm getting ready for releasing this friday is a game a very obscure game called moon rpg remix adventure on switch it's actually uh the developer

localizing that game for the first time it came out for the playstation late in the playstation's existence it's a really cool like inverse of the rpg and that you go into an rpg world after the hero has won and you find out like oh when you're a hero of an rpg you're actually killing a bunch of things and stealing a bunch of things so you're repairing a world that the RPG hero has ruined so it's like a weird inversion of the RPG too weird to ever come over to the PlayStation way back in the day and it's made by Onion Games a really cool developer who makes a lot of interesting stuff so that's coming out for the Switch Friday I recommend you check it out because it needs a lot of attention. I had never heard of it until you shared it. And its concept is so ahead of its time.

I felt like in the late aughts was when you started seeing indie games that were challenging the tropes of a classic RPG. And here's one from the late 90s that's like, no, RPGs are kind of screwed up from a certain point of view. It was uh way way ahead of its time and the developer is awesome i support them and everything they do and it's only going to be like 1899 when it releases so this is one of the few like really cool games that never got a fan translation i might have been difficult to do i just don't know why but there was always one like kind of in the works for a while but now like 20 years later 20 plus years later i guess it's finally coming out for a platform. So check that out.

Other video game stuff. I'm only playing video games now, people. This is just, it makes the time pass faster. I'm still playing a lot of Final Fantasy XIV with Nina. Still cruising through Shadowbringers. My new class I'm playing is a dancer. So I can be extra pretty. Your bunny lady is going to be hotter than ever.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I'm almost at level 20 in that game i've been playing it a little bit since the the up it's nice it's also a good podcast listening gaming it really is yeah and uh still watching avatar the last airbender because it's 60 episodes long and it's only been a month since we last talked about this are you uh are you done with book one oh yeah we're like more than halfway through book two oh cool cool man it's uh i'm now getting all of the uh all of the

memes on the internet now i'm finally watching this show i recognize that gif yeah i was watching the fourth episode and i was like oh yeah that gift it's the one where ang uh meets a bunch of people and was like hey look at this pretty cool and it's the ball spinning and then everybody's losing their mind including the guy who like yeah mouth froth is and falls over like i was i was that's a gif i finally know the gif yeah and all those avatars you saw over the past 15 years but uh yeah that's our lives and in quarantine six months quarantine uh we're in we're in month six you know uh this could turn around at any point yeah i'm sure this isn't you know the halfway point of it. No, absolutely not.

But yes, we hope you're all doing well out there. And please stay safe. Don't fraternize with other people if you can help it. And, you know, just be careful. If you're an essential worker, you know, our hearts go out to you, especially. Oh, for sure. We are very blessed that we can do our jobs from home and don't have to put our health at risk or and don't have to put our health at risk or and don't have

to worry about thanks to all of your support we don't have to worry in a lot of ways that many people do and we really appreciate that and i know for me and bob podcast has helped us a lot in this tough time and i hope that we can do the same for you guys yeah we're trying to be ultra productive again all i care about is time passing faster despite that means less life to live but uh it means i'm closer to something that's not this that's all i'm looking forward to so we're just both diving into work and being very productive and uh working way way ahead i assume like in the fall we're going to be in september we're going to be like well here's our first 2021 podcast rolling out. Happy new year, everybody. We'll have to start it with. But yeah, let's go on to comments for Talking Simpsons.

And these are for Take My Wife Sleaze. And Brian Horton says, I wonder if the NRBQ documentary is being worked on. Was there appearance on A&E's Breakfast with the Arts? I don't see the series catalog thoroughly anywhere. But if you search for NRBQ Breakfast with the Arts or NRBQ Simpsons, you'll find bits and pieces. The clip has most of the Simpsons stuff and features Mike Scully. Everything seems to indicate it was from 2003, so it is questionable.

I could see A&E sitting on that footage for a couple years. Yeah, I mean, NRBQ documentary is not like a hot ticket item. I saw multiple comments that are like, who's NRBQ? I guess we never fully said they are a band that plays music I figure we talked enough about them because that was not their first appearance

there was just the most nrbq was in that episode we've complained enough about Mike Scully giving his favorite band a bunch of appearances in the show but yeah the uh in the comment Brian Horton has a a lengthy clip that is mostly just things from the episode, so I'm not going to play it here. But if you want to see Mike Scully in his office talking about getting NRBQ in there, I wish I'd found that clip when doing the prep for the episode. But on the commentary, you hear Mike Scully say, oh, I was doing something for a documentary.

That's the clip out there. So thank you brian horton for finding that also on take my wife's sleaze joe hodgson says bumper pool is pretty much baby pool it's what you get if you don't want to spend a ton of money or have the space for a traditional pool table when my grandparents moved into their first empty nest house my papa bought a bumper pool table for the basement they come in different shapes and varieties but his was just a regular rectangular shape my cousin had one that was an octagon and it's a two-player game where each player has five balls and you take turns trying

to sink each ball in the opposite hole from where you start and there are only two holes the fun in that game is trying to use the bumpers to sink your balls with various bank shots there were two bumpers alongside each pole and a series of them in the middle of the table in a cross shape so that you had to go around them as a kid i remember that that's where drunk guys and smokers went wherever whenever my grandparents threw a party i'd play it as a kid too and it was fine but not as interesting as traditional pool it gets old so when my grandfather decided he'd rather have a bigger table he actually gave it to my family i think i used it once before my dad gave it away

to someone else it's one of those things where i'm like we have video games now we've been beyond this like in the 90s a friend of mine had a foosball table. I'm just like, this isn't fun. Can we play Mario Kart? They take up so much more space than a console that sits under your TV as well. Yeah, you play with it once. And also, it's like, I think that's the joke in the show, too, that a bumper pool table feels like a person didn't want to spend the money on a real pool table. So it just feels like, oh, you're cheap. Like, I'm playing the cheap version. Why don the money on a real pool table so it just feels like oh you're cheap like i'm playing the cheap version why don't we just play real pool like i now i had a friend who

yeah he his family showed off their upper middle class wealth by having a real pool table and his stepdad was very clear on like this is not for kids oh yeah there was a family that i was friends with that was just like the pool table was never to be used it was an object of like opulence just like look what we could buy we can ruin a whole room that's only for this you'd use this for something useful but this is instead a table that you can't touch so up next we have grift of the magi and robert flaxman says the episode holds a very special place in my heart. As a few years later, I was playing college quiz bowl and went to a tournament with my school

where I had picked the names for our two teams, calling them, quote, Galaxy of Prawns and, quote, let me talk to Mr. Kwan. A girl from one of the other schools was a big Simpsons fan and told me how much she liked our team names. A little over two years later, we started dating and just celebrated nine years of marriage.

The Simpsons bring people together. That's just a fact. Yep, I have to say I agree. My fiance, future of marriage the simpsons bring people together that just a fact yep i have to say i agree my fiancee future wife uh the simpsons brought us together absolutely yeah without the simpsons would we even know each other absolutely not uh but that's that's great that those specific team names for like a season 11 episode even like if if your future partner can identify a deeper cut than like it's like oh of course you got a mr plow reference you're not worth dating but if you get that no no i don't think that but that's how i judge nina like did you get all my references uh i think the first time we met nina in person she out referenced us with that she gave us that vancouver oh yeah

we're just like oh thank you yeah oh man i love that stuff though it was good salmon yeah the uh i miss coffee crisp too that was a good vancouver you can get those those can cross the border i can't uh but also on the grift of the magi andrew giacchetti says i really appreciated henry's walking back of the fake italian name it made me chuckle as a man with an italian name myself and as someone who is recently re-watching sopranos because sometimes i am confident that they are just making shit up except for the fact that my mom's family is from north jersey and i have seen far crazier and far longer vowel laden names that's the fun part of having an

italian name you can never really tell if it's fake because they all sound so plausible yeah you might not have this on hand but what was the name he's referencing uh valdazo brothers okay that was who worked for fat tony to build it and i yeah i think on the episode i was like they just made that up and i was like you know what they maybe did that could be a real who am i to say what is really an italian name or not that all all names are made up but it's true and it's nice having giacetti now that's italian come and tell us yeah yeah up next we have little big mom and nina matsumoto says speak of the devil uh she says don't be so quick to dismiss little big man it's a pro native american anti-cavalry film partially made to protest the vietnam war i haven't seen it but

it's supposed to be very good so that that's your movie pick of the week. Yeah, I want to see this now. One from cowboy expert Nina Matsumoto. So even though she hasn't seen it, I appreciate her insight into it. Because yeah, I guess on the surface, it sounds like, oh, Dustin Hoffman plays a Native American. No, he is a child adopted by Native Americans.

And by living with the tribe he can see the horrors that america does to them so yeah it uh it sounds like a much more interesting film than i thought it was so i'm gonna check that out also on little big mom in reference to carolyn omine's writing past before joining the simpsons angel young says i sort of remember the full house final episode where michelle fell off the horse and got amnesia i am not going to revisit the episode even though it's on hulu i think that episode was an excuse for mary kate and ashley olsen to be together in one room there was a moment where a version of michelle with her memories appears to the amnesiac michelle they have a conversation and they merge and that

is how she regains her memory oh man like classic dragon ball fusion is happening do they dance it's uh that's oh yeah they should have done the full dance they weren't cool enough that reference would have been lost on americans uh uh it was the only time on the show where mary kate and ashley appeared together even though the olsen twins were famous outside of full house by this point. And people were aware that they were twins. Yeah, they had all those mysteries. Yeah, they'd already been warming up the mystery machine before.

And then, man, how much money did they make on those original mystery movies? Oh, God. All the direct-to-video stuff. Did their parents steal it or did they get to keep it? Well, you know, I think they made out all night. I don't know. They look pretty hungry these days. Well, that might be another thing.

Okay. Oh, sorry. Angel continues. After that, DJ goes to the prom with Aladdin, their boyfriend Steve, and the episode ends with a final cast bow. I don't remember it being a clip show, but I remember the episode feeling off for a finale. I remember being a kid and not realizing it was the final episode. I wonder how much time in advance they knew it was going to be a finale because it felt like the season finale and not a series finale to

me this is no criticism to the writer of the episode it would be interesting to see if the writers were under pressure to close the show and how much time in advance they knew uh i mean that i know home improvement had the same thing they did a season finale that then turned out to be a last episode. And same with Married with Children, actually. I have to say that this brought up a weird memory for me. Like how I found out Full House was ending was I was not on the internet in like spring of 95. I was not reading the trades or whatever. And on SNL, there was like an editorial segment.

You know, like when one person just does like a monologue or whatever. Oh, yeah. Like on the daily or on the update, right? Yeah. We can update. It was Ellen Cleghorn talking about the end of full house. And I was like,

is this a bit, I didn't know full house was ending. And then like the, the show ended like very soon after that. So I was like, Ellen Cleghorn knew she knew she was reading the trades, man. I,

I would just assume it was every actor was too expensive by that season. Oh, for sure. Yeah. That's why it ended it's funny that to carolyn omine much like al jean and mike reese they wrote the final episode of gary shanley show without knowing it was the final episode so up next we have what a cartoon comment and first up is ranma one half and twisted mentat says man this episode really put me back

in the 90s project echo was the first anime I watched, but Ranma was the one that dominated my earliest weeb phase, and the same with my friends. We used to joke about you could tell who we really were by which Tendo sister you had as a waifu. Like Bob and all cool people, Nabiki is 100% hands down the best one, but a friend of mine saws his Kasumi torch. I think the first Ranma I saw was the first movie? That is a huge number of characters, you have no idea who the hell they are. But damn, hard battle. I had that and played it like mad and it was a big hit at any gathering we had parties and other hangouts i'm glad they mentioned that game shampoo was just cheap as hell and yeah i only rented it because it was like an anime thing when that was just impossible to even access

in 1995 or 6 or whenever in a lot of the comments i was sensing a generational divide of like if you were five years older than us you learned of ronma because the trailer were on early viz pokemon videos yes for the first movie big trouble in something or other neck on or on china yeah i think it is yeah and then nihao my concubines the second one yeah the obviously those puns are not in the japanese titles for him but some real love the early viz work right there but uh yeah, it all takes you back to this time. That's why I wanted to have on, I was glad we had on Mike Toole.

That was your suggestion, just because he gave us so much insight into that era of the wild west of uncut anime releases. I think it was the first for a lot of people. It also makes me want to do Project Eiko sometime. I'd love to do that movie but also on the run one half we got a comment from blair which says i never heard of this show or manga growing up and i'm absolutely astonished that anything could have been so explicitly gender fluid in the 80s and 90s

even the most lgbtq shows of today are heavily coded and subtle by comparison if i had seen this show when i was a kid i wonder if i could have recognized my own identity sooner as a trans woman my interest is certainly peaked but even setting aside how much more conservative that era was i'm curious as to how the show's central conceit of gender fluidity was able to successfully appeal to so many cisgendered people as a selling point and i i wanted to include that comment too because i the one thing i think i wish i would have expanded on more in my rama research but that was such a long episode uh but i know this show touched many trans people and non-binary people in in my feed alone when i tweeted out the episode multiple trans

people i i that follow me were like oh my god i love ronma thanks for talking about it and i i would like to explore more with a trans guest perhaps and see how that narrative touched them because definitely i think for a lot of our generation of people who you know would go on to transition or question their gender or explore it uh i do think ranma was a big one for them i think so yeah that they're like wait oh you could become a girl or you could change you can be something else like that and and the show i mean look it's it's a show set in the 80s made in japan like there's some stuff that's dated or just very gendered so you take the good with

the bad with rama but nothing's perfect but god i've seen the show talk to a lot of trans people so it's i think it's a very important show for that so i'm glad i'm glad that commenter uh got that insight to it as well so up next we have uh korgoth of barbaria and savvy william says i must have seen this during one of the few times that we ran on Adult Swim. I found it online while listening to the podcast and I realized I'd never actually seen the episode all the way through. So thank you, Bob and Henry,

for giving me the opportunity to come back to Korgoth. I am an animation student in New York and I want to learn more about Aaron Springer. Your research into his career gave me another realization and that Springer has had a hand in everything that inspired me to become an artist in the first place. At the end of the episode, Specules flies off and then does an abrupt turn to the left without

changing his orientation perhaps this is a powdered toast man reference given springer's history of learning snippy it's a slight possibility and i would say uh yeah it seems like so specific it just or it could just be like it'd be silly if he looked like this but it seems like a reference but it could be powder toast man definitely it it's uh that's a novel thing that happens the more you learn about who makes things that when you realize like oh why did i love all these things oh they all had a commonality of a person working on it that you weren't aware of or like why do we uh love all of these 80s cartoons more than other ones oh it's because anime companies animated them and we liked how they looked. Uh, but on the subject of,

uh, references in Korgoth, Justin Brown said, Aaron Springer reuses a lot of visual cliches in his work. The jackknife dive is used several times in SpongeBob and Specules flight is probably a powder toastman. Not in doing time, a Springer written and directed SpongeBob episode. Mrs.

Puff rips off a cop's face and it's framed exactly like korgoth when he rips off that guy's face billy dilly is okay but there are several character designs lifted straight from korgoth he also adds howard good love craft bad conan stories are still fun and read well the savage sort of conan comics are a plus material from some of the best artists in american comics the scarlet citadel is straight up a horror themed dungeon crawl that ends with conan fighting a speculies like sorcerer and finally he adds that metal barbarian is commonly celebrated for its violence but conan stories veer on anti-capitalist anti-imperial rhetoric which reflected howard's outlook on society being a

cycle of exploitation and decay ponen is a depressed bumpkin in a world that sees him as nothing but a blunt instrument so the only thing to do is fight screw and maybe people will toast your name after you die young so don't forget about the lamentations of the women yes yeah that'll work that in there actually yeah i guess, you know, I associate Conan more with conservative readings because John Milius was such a fan of the films and he's a conservative libertarian type, but I should read some of those originals or I've only read a little of the like Barry Windsor Smith, Conan comics from the seventies he's referring to here, but I'd, I'd like to explore those. It's, it's just hard for me to not think of them as like jock nerd comics like yeah you should be like pumping iron by uh while

listening to those or reading them rather and just saying to your bros like look at this hot babe and chains here man i wish i could draw babe that hot so up next we have gargoyles and uh dl mcdonald says a great second up on gargoyles i I should really rewatch it all. You did bring up Quack Pack, so I wanted to throw a little Simpsons tidbit at you about that since, well, when else would I do that? If you go back to the Otto show and recall a song, which Homer stops so that he can hear himself think, Otto sings, I feel like rocking, so I think I will, blah, blah, blah. Now, if we look at Quack Pack's opening song, I feel like quacking, so I think I will, et cetera. It's Otto's song they the theme song

is credited to jeff martin a writer of the auto show how crazy is that uh and then there's no clip of jeff martin explaining himself but maybe in the future we'll talk to him uh yeah actually i have the clip here Wow, that's both lyrics of it. Because Otto goes like, feel like rocking so I think I will. Rock, rock, rock until I get my feel. Jeff Martin just reused his Otto song. I guess maybe someone wrote the song and realized it was too close to an existing thing in a TV show. I don't know if Jeff Martin just reused his Otto song. I guess maybe someone wrote the song and realized it was too close to an

existing thing in a TV show. Or I don't know if Jeff Martin worked on quack pack. Well, you know, he had a, he did have a long-term deal with, with some company. Maybe he did.

I don't know, but you're right. It's the similarities are shocking that I was not aware. I thought Otto was singing a real song, not some song Jeff Martin made up. Uh, but I guess it's, uh,

Jeff Martin loves silly songs about rocking and saying rock and rocking uh also on that episode for gargoyles andrew bouvier says one weird error i noticed in this episode when the gargoyles are enjoying halloween lexington is wearing a leather coat for his pilot costume but his wings are bat-like and extend from the bottom of his arms to his legs. He isn't able to wear a coat. Did he somehow cut his wings off? A wizard did it. It's true. In this case, the Archmagus.

Yes. That darn Archmagus. Also, there was a funny comment about how somebody in the show said, double costumes. One of those double costumes? People said, yeah, like double costumes and so those double costumes people said yeah like double costumes you know so uh this is hot off the presses but just went live today but we still have some good comments for the ren and snippy show episode all about uh the royal canadian kilted yaksman check

that out we have thad kamarowski and bob jakes the animation director for that episode on the podcast talk all about it and devin hoffarth says laverne and shirley join the army keeps coming up on these podcasts it's kind of becoming the new bonkers laverne and shirley join the army what a cartoon podcast 2021 and i don't know if we'll ever get that desperate but uh it's a i i it's not even that i'd be against it but we do have one rule of like this has to be watchable somehow yeah easily watchable maybe it's on boomerang or something i don't think it is i think uh boomerang has a lot of the hannah barbara things you don't care about watching but i think it can't be like a licensed thing you know like the licensed stuff is much less available so maybe maybe it's on youtube somebody uploaded all the laverne lavoine and

shirley joined the army but uh i think it's more likely before we uploaded all the LaVoyne and Shirley join the army. But I think it's more likely before we do that, we do Josie and the Pussycats in space. You can buy it on DVD for $25. Okay. Maybe. No. No. I respect our patron, but no.

Well, Devin might have to make us do it. We'll see. Okay. I'll do it for money. All right. But also on the Ren and Stimpy one, Shy Ranger says,anger says honestly i never liked ren and stimpy at all in my life as a kid i was turned away and even when i tried again and even before all the john k stuff i just couldn't enjoy it at all despite loving all the shows it clearly inspired i bring this up because your guys's

episodes about ren and stimpy are easily my favorites of the ones you do. Maybe it's because I'm so turned away visually that I can appreciate the show more than just when I just hear about it. Maybe it's because there's just so much well-done stuff to hear about, I can love the ingredients even if I don't like the final product. And of course, maybe there's just so much behind-the-scenes stuff that I can respect most of the talent behind it, especially in the future endeavors on things I like more. Sorry for such a long comment, but point is, it's amazing how much I love hearing this show about a show I dislike. Oh, I'm glad you can enjoy it despite not liking the show. Yeah.

And I like spreading the gospel and the truth about Ren and Snippy where it's not just like, oh, the one guy did it. He's a genius and he left and then it was bad. Yeah, I need to, just for knowledge's sake, I should watch that documentary, but a point that, a major point that made in his review of like, this film could have finally been the thing about how it wasn't just the John Kay show and John Kay did everything

and don't talk about anybody else, and they talked to everybody in it and yet still john k gets to take over the narrative just because he's involved and he just enchanted the documentarians who just were like yeah that's the narrative is the convenient one let's go with that and they went with it but again i have to watch it too and i will for sure and it also sounds like i'm just going by thad's review but it also sounds like the game stuff just didn't even matter like they're like now we don't yeah it's like oh and then there were four more years of cartoons who cares which also that buys into if you cover that less you're still probably

unknowingly but buying into the john k narrative of like everything sucked after i was gone so if you treat those all as an afterthought even though all these great people worked on some very good episodes of the games cartoons then you're still buying into the john k narrative he's been giving for 27 years that like my show was good until was ruined by other people yeah i just don't like him uh being part of that at all not at all yeah but uh yeah those are all our comments for this month and i'm gonna go get my first haircut in six months I'm so excited it's like the world is slightly normal and my hair will be slightly shorter you're going to get your ears lowered

whatever Skeeter but yeah thank you for listening of course I did thanks for listening to another episode of talk to the audience and we will see you again at the end of September or beginning of October depending on where you are later beginning of October, depending on where you are. Later! Wow. Infotainment.