Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Bart The Mother With Scott Gairdner

Episode Date: July 31, 2019

It's Phil Hartman's final appearance on Simpsons, and joining us for this exploration of his career is Scott Gairdner, writer/actor/creator of Moonbeam City/discoverer of Tiny Fuppets/cohost of Podcast: The Ride! We chat about our childhood memories of Hartman, our last Troy McClure video, and also a story about Bart accidentally killing a bird then caring for its eggs. Plus some healthy divergences about Splash Mountain and digital actors, all on this week's podcast! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron!

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Welcome to Talking Simpsons, the most exciting thing since Halley's Comet collided with the moon. I'm your host, fine-feathered colleague Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who else is here with me today? Henry Gilbert. And Nelson would hate how few scarves I wear. And who is our special guest in our LA recording studio today? Uh, what am I? Kreskin?

No, I'm Scott Gairdner. Hey, guys. Thanks for having me. Hello. And today's episode is Bart the Mother. That was no accident. Shame on you, Nelson. Cram it, ma'am.

Today's episode aired on September 27th, 1998. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh, my God. Oh, boy, Bobby. Brendan Fraser gets married to actress Afton Smith. The couple would divorce in 2007. Mark McGuire hits the 69th and 70th home runs of his season setting a record that would be broken by barry bonds and those are the baseballs that were purchased by todd mcfarland

creator spawn and last uh it's a hard knock life for jay-z as his volume 2 album hits record stores that's future simpsons guest star mark mcguire, yeah. He's in one of the few episodes written by George Meyer. It's all about Ritalin. Oh, I remember this. Focus in. Focus in, yeah. Bart's all hyped up. Yeah.

It's kind of a scary one. I remember feeling freaked out by seeing Bart all wired up like that. He was covered in tinfoil at some point. Yeah, you get a tinfoil hat. It drives you crazy taking focus in. Certainly not Ritalin. Focus in. I prefer their uh viagra parody jam it in whoa it's the filthiest joke i forgot yeah it'll come up in a few years but jam it in is a great name for a viagra style drug so you're on you're on the path right now to all of the simpsons drugs yes yes that could

be a listicle no one's written that yet. And if you consider Tamaco a drug of some kind, yeah, yeah, you're heading to all the... As pharmaceutical industry grows, Simpsons will have to write more and more jokes about it, so... It'll be, yes, five episodes a year or about a different topic. But yeah, all the guys who broke the records

of home runs, it's just they all have asterisks by them. It was like his one was broken by Barry Bonds, and he was competing with Sammy Sosa, and they all have asterisks by him. It was like his one was broken by Barry Bonds and he was competing with Sammy Sosa and they all were just obviously on steroids. It was just so clear then. At the time it was a real nationalist thing because Sammy Sosa was born in Cuba.

I believe so. And it was about the American versus the Cuban. Clearly the American one. But they were both incredibly jacked up on all kinds of potions. Sammy Sosa was also sammy says was also uh uh taking drugs oh yeah he was they were all indicted in that stuff i mean it was funny especially at the same time because mark mcguire got famous i did know him i don't care about baseball normally but um for two years of my childhood i did care about baseball and i really followed the oakland a's because they had the Bash brothers Mark McGuire and Jose Canseco oh and you're from up there oh sure yeah yeah and and in 98 everybody knew then Jose Canseco was a giant steroid user but people still were like McGuire he's just he's a hero

he's just the baseball hero well did you like like me like not really care about baseball but if you heard the names of the ones who were on that Simpsons episode, you kind of spiked them. Oh, yeah, Steve Sachs. So for sure, yeah, big Steve Sachs fan. To this day, those are the only baseball players I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It gives you a nice little tour.

That covers a lot of teams. You get Yankees, you get Mattingly. I don't know who was who exactly. And you had Todd McFarlane, the creator of Spawn. He famously bought those baseballs for millions of dollars to have them and then they they went down to value like within a decade once barry bonds broke the record with like his 71st home run in a season i thought he was a hockey guy but i believe he got out of hockey after that hockey player sued him for naming a pedophile after him and spawn he

did do that tony twists like i just i just named a pedophile murderer after you i'm a big fan why you gotta sue this all happened by the way folks look it up please jeez i don't know todd mcfarland he does love hockey as a canadian does but i actually have interviewed him about how much he loves baseball it was that uh in my video game job because he made video game toys and so they were giving away assassin's creed toys at a san francisco giants game and so they're like hey come and interview todd mcfarlane before the game so i said like oh you know you like working with ubisoft on this he's like oh yeah the their studios right down the from the park and so after a meeting i can just take in a game it's so fun

like he oh geez he loves him some baseball is that loves him some baseball. Is he sort of a folksy dude for making such dark stuff? I love that baseball, Henry. Jeez. No, I'm trying to remember the quote that they always do in the Image Comics documentaries. When my father worked for a company and he retired, they gave him a fucking watch. The Todd McFarlane is a really, you can see how he's an

influential guy. You can see how he talked all the Image comic guys into following him. He sounds like a Vermont mom or something. Good voice. Let's talk about our special guest, Scott Gairdner. Scott, you have frankly too many credits so I might miss some, but things like

Funny or Die in Conan, Creator of Moonbeam City, one of my favorite things, Tiny Fuppets, an amazing YouTube series. It's nice to, you know, I feel like people know the things I've done, and I'm never sure what's around the corner, but if it ends up being Tiny Fuppets, I'm the happiest

guy. But of course, you know, I'm just, all I did was popularize Tiny Fuppets in America because it was made by Portuguese animator Arturo Lima. You helped localize Tiny Fuppets. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I sort of like, I presented it in the way Spielberg presented Tiny Toons. I just, you know, I just tried to gift Tiny Fuppets, which is a great Portuguese animated series and in no way a ripoff of Muppet Babies.

If anything, they stole it from... Oh, I know. My friend Gary is going to be very jealous of me because his last birthday party was a Tiny Fuppets-themed party. What? And he made little party favors that had amigos on it

with the Tiny Fuppets heads. Oh, my God. So please don't sue, but... There was a party of this? Yes. Really? That's insane. It happened in Portland, believe it or not.

Whoa. Okay, well, now I know where the molten core of Fuppets... the kind of people who have a Fuppets party. That's insane. It happened in Portland, believe it or not. Whoa. Okay, well, now I know where the molten core of puppets, the kind of people who have a puppets party. That's insane. PubCon 2020, right? In Portland. Oh, that makes me so happy. I'll deliver a special message if they do it again.

My wedding was vaguely puppet themed. I did a puppet voice in my vows. I did the voice of cormit uh and then i um the the table settings were all every every table was themed after a different puppet and uh if if if you don't know this thing it's mainly characters who are sort of similar to the muppet babies but not all they're really their own thing legally distinct right yeah, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely, yes. Colors are changed, and that's plenty. So we had 20 or so tables at our wedding, so we had to really stretch who was a character in this, because there aren't that many. There was a guy who was sort of like the Kool-Aid man named Mr. Fresh Juice.

I was going to ask about him, if he was part of the wedding ceremony. He wasn't part of it. If I'd had my druthers, I would have had a suit made of him, and he would have performed it. There would have been a lot of foam wedding ceremony. He wasn't part of it. If I'd had my druthers, I would have had a suit made of him and he would have performed it. There would have been a lot of foam to buy. Everyone was represented via the place settings and it was fun seeing my friends understand what was going on and relatives wonder,

why am I at a table that's themed after M&Ms but they say D instead? You're at the D&D table. What does that mean? But everybody enjoyed it at the end of the day, I feel. And also, you're a co-host on Podcast the Ride, one of my favorite podcasts. Oh, thanks so much.

Yeah, much appreciated. I do a podcast about theme parks and all the wonderful world of theme park arcania that my co-hosts, Mike Carlson and Jason Sheridan, I couldn't believe that I met other people in comedy who didn't just go to Disney World as a kid, but went to Disney World and learned every single name of every place. And like, so 60% of our brains is useless theme park knowledge.

And now with a podcast, we finally have somewhere to put it. That's how we feel on The Simpsons. So it's your bird of a feather here. Well, I love your Galaxy's Edge one was seriously useful to me. Oh, good, good. Because my husband and I, he really, once he was seeing all these videos of Galaxy's Edge, he's like, we got to go while they're still doing reservations.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Although it turns out now, maybe you didn't have to. Seemingly not. It's been oddly not crowded because they've blocked out all the annual pass holders. Oh, ouch. That's what's going on. It's like the people are just walking in there because I think they were assuming that it would just be this flood of everybody's got an

annual pass. So most people are blocked out for the entire summer. So it's been really reasonable getting into all this new Star Wars stuff. Yeah, yeah. But that being said, the reservations were a nice way to guarantee that you got some serious time in. My husband did such an amazing job

planning everything out. He's like, you go that way to the cantina line. I'm going this way to the lightsaber line. Right on. And then we'll meet up and we did it all. Like in our four hour period, we did everything we wanted to do. Like lightsabers, smugglers run, cantina with all the drinks.

I've held one of those lightsabers, and without the bulb, you could bludgeon a home invader to death with it. It is seriously a blunt instrument. It's blunt. A friend of our show, Carly Weisel, who does a lot of reporting on Theme Park World, was on Twitter showing a picture of somebody with a double one, with a Darth Maul style, that was much taller Twitter saying, showed a picture of somebody with a double one, with a Darth Maul style, that was much taller than him,

taller than any door that this man could hope to enter that day. And she rightfully was like, do we all feel okay about this? A man having just a gigantic weighty staff walking around Disneyland. I did feel like the biggest nerd in the world walking around with my shoulder holster tube of a lightsaber through the rest of Disneyland. That did feel like the biggest nerd in the world walking around with my shoulder holster tube of a

lightsaber through the rest of Disneyland. That was embarrassing. That's a safe play. That's what you're supposed to be doing. That's true. It's a place where you can just be your nerd self. In recent news, there was a brawl in Toontown. I don't know if you saw this on Twitter. You know, I did this morning. I'm glad I caught it before I came in. So I was just thinking about the

weapons, adding weapons to the families fighting now. Yeah. If one had had a lightsaber, and if one side of this fight had had lightsabers and the other hadn't, people may have not survived this fight. There could have been fatalities,

but I think Disney will gentrify Toontown now because it's getting pretty rough over there. Well, they've closed a lot of it. Any area that you need to that ends up getting gentrified like what's this tree house oh there hasn't been a business in there for a low nine years and it's the only part of disneyland with a jail oh yeah pretty sure yeah very true yes easily break out of all those yeah the bars bend should you find yourself stuck in toontown jail a lot of recidivism but itown. It's the countdown to the end of Toontown.

It feels like... Roger Rabbit just feels impossible to still be there. Though now I'm regretting hearing you talk about your trip to the Japanese Roger Rabbit ride. Oh, you heard this. Oh, great. I didn't hear that. You know, we did an episode about Roger Rabbit's cartoon spin,

and I was a little... We were all a little harsh about it. It is not my favorite ride at Disneyland, and I find the little we were all a little harsh about it it is not my my favorite ride at Disneyland and I find the line to be sort of awful and kind of claustrophobic like it's it's hard to skip it's a very slow loading ride so you can end up stuck in this very like claustrophobic it's like a dark scary city like you said like a rundown area of town that is what the line and I recognize it's well themed and everything but it's just not a place I like to stand around for 45 minutes. And then I've had my problems with the ride.

I feel like they've dropped effects and there's things that they've stopped doing. But back in April, I went to Tokyo Disneyland. It rained really hard, thus getting rid of all of the sane people in the park, but it left my wife and I, who were there for our once-in-a-lifetime, so we braved the rain, and we ended up in Toontown solo. It was eerie because it's all the way in the back of the park and everyone else was watching a firework show. So we're literally the only people in Toontown.

We made it back to Roger Rabbit wondering, I wonder if the ride's better here. It is so much better. We blasted through that line. I mean, it helped that nobody was there. But we got through the line. The employees were cheering us on. Hooray! Go, go, go!

Because the employees in Tokyo Disneyland are so nice. It's the Tokyo niceness combined with the Disney niceness. It's a dangerous level of niceness. It's almost too nice. All the effects work. It spun perfectly. It's precision steering like you'd never find in the

one here the dip was working like it has a dip gun that fires and then it like clears just in time for you to go past it the dip stops running yeah and that affects his work which hasn't worked in a decade in disneyland so i have much nicer things to say but right i i called it one of my top five things of the trip was roger avid's cartoon spin highly recommended in tokyo in disneyland it's a little they need to do some work on it that's what i'm saying well i guess scott too if we should get back to the subject of the simpson let me i have more roger avid's cartoons it's a cartoon right it's allowed i'll talk about but yeah i mean as creator and writer and animation guy, like, I mean, The Simpsons

must have been a big influence on you as a kid. Oh, very much so. Yeah, yeah. Watched it religiously as it aired. Watched it religiously as soon as it was syndicatable. When the DVDs came out, I devoured those commentaries. We were talking a little before we started recording, especially in, I ended up, I was in film school when the DVDs were starting to to at least when the dvds of like my favorite seasons

were coming out so i'm analyzing films in actual classes and then i'm going home and just you know like as fast as i can downing those commentaries and i wonder if the commentaries were a better education than film school and a lot less, you know, uh, thousands and thousands of dollars cheaper. Um, yeah, only like 40 bucks, those DVD sets. So, so it's like throughout your show business experience, have you ever run into Simpsons talent or work with Simpsons talent before? As I was describing pairing Simpsons commentaries with film school, I had the memory of David Merkin. Oh, great.

Showrunner of what, five and six? Seasons five and six. I really loved his commentaries and then he came to speak at my film school and there is a somewhat regrettable story where I don't come out looking the best where a girlfriend of mine was like, I was on my way into this screening and I was really, oh my God,

I get to see a Simpsons guy talk. I think he went to my film school to Loyola Marymount. So he was a graduate and I'm going to see this guy talk and I'm going to get to ask him questions about the show. And then like five minutes before my girlfriend at the time called me super sick, just like, like something something i don't know what's happening but like she's like barfing on the phone i just knew it was going to be a big ordeal and i knew that the screening was only going to be like 50 minutes or something so i shut off the phone

and i i chose seeing david merkin speak over uh helping my my girlfriend at the time and then when i got out of the screening, I called to ask how she was doing, and she had gone to the hospital. Oh, no. Oh, boy. I seem like if people do or don't know me, I sound like an asshole right now.

I mean, I did end up helping, but I was just, I don't know, I really like The Simpsons, and I wanted to see this guy talk. And it was good, and I got a picture with him. That's cool. And that girlfriend is alive and thriving today and it all worked out. So if that doesn't tell you my level of Simpsons

fandom. Well that's a gamble. You're like she's throwing up now in 15 minutes. Who knows? Have I neglected a loved one for the Simpsons? Probably. I'm going to say probably. I can't think of anything. I'm not sure if I'm the only person on this earth who has done such a thing.

I wouldn't do it with regularity, and I don't think I would do it today. I was young and dumb, and in love with The Simpsons, which I remain, though. I'm a big Simpsons guy. Yeah. Did the lessons you learned on those, those commentaries,

like help you any in your career of content creation as they would call it? I feel, well, I feel like, I mean, I made an animated show for, for comedy central called moonbeam city. And I do,

I mean, like I was thinking on the way over, like, is the, is there some way that it impacted? I mean, only in that, like the big Simpsons influence on me making animated shows was just like,

you can, like, cram jokes in everywhere. Don't forget that every sign is a chance to get a joke and you can get in jokes at the sound mix. Every level is a potential place to put in something.

And I do feel like it helped to, like, those DVDs were great in terms of, like, here's a cut scene with the storyboard reels animated and figuring out, like, well, why would they have cut this? I guess that's funny, but it doesn't really drive the plot. And then out like, well, why would they have cut this? I guess that's funny,

but it doesn't really drive the plot. And then some scenes, well, that's just too funny to deny. They had to keep it in, even though it specifically like impedes the plot. So hearing these guys talk over the decisions they made and like seeing some of their work in progress and deciphering why that would have made it in or not,

it definitely affected us and at every you know i just worked on another animated show and like they usually go long like usually the the problem seems to be getting the 28 minutes down to 22 or 21 or whatever it is rather than like building up and i do remember like for sure in the room i was like in rooms i've been and i've talked about how yeah, I know like the Simpsons have those tricks, right? They would do like, alright, if the episode's running short, we can do the really long couch sequence where it opens up and there's

the elephants dancing. Or like, oh, we're gonna stop and loop the Sideshow Bob and the Rakes. I got to work with a guy, Joel Kuahara, who worked on the golden years of the Simpsons, who works at the studio Bento Box. Oh, cool.

And he was there for a lot of that stuff and was able to speak to like, oh yeah, here's why this would have happened. You know what I got to ask him about was this thing that's a meme that's pretty popular that I love from Simpsons World, which is the dud thing. Yeah. When the dud looks like Milhouse and Homer makes this bizarre, this weird, like almost lewd smile. Like it's almost lascivious or something.

And I was really happy to find out that the internet's also a little obsessed with you or the dud. Or what's it actually called? What's the moment of the... I think it's the dud. The dud, yeah. I think that's how people would refer to it.

Yeah, the slow, creeping smile on Hobart. The memesters paced onto other scenes from the show and remix it. I love those ones, too. Oh, yes, yeah, yeah. They took that creepy smile and they put it onto Mr. Burns or Apu or other characters.

I was just so happy to... It was a thing my wife and I talked about for a long time, that weird smile. What is up with that? And I got to ask Joel who worked on the technical The production side of it And I said, is there any way that's some weird accident Or like a board error or something

And he said, no way, that is like for sure Absolutely a decision somebody made It's gotta be that smile And it was nice to hear like, oh yeah That bizarre smile was really like Thought about and crafted and it shows. That's why it's so memorable. The memes really show what we as a people recognize as the weirdest moments or the most funny moments.

It's just like if you see, let's say, Bart hitting Homer with the chair meme or any of the Steve Hammys. What's the most recent meme phenomenon now? I don't know what we're on now because I feel like. I saw Steve Hamm's are coming back around again. Okay. It's new Hamm. Super Mario Maker. People have somehow. I didn't know what we're on now because I feel like... I saw steamed hams are coming back around again. Okay. It's new hams. Super Mario Maker. People have somehow...

I didn't click it. I'm a little steamed ham fatigued. But yeah, some level was made based on it somehow. I'm not sure. And right before that was Homer kicking the door open and warning about the boogeyman. That's right. Yeah. That was the most recent one.

I don't want to alarm you, but yeah, that was such a good one. Yeah, there's Twitter. The best part of Twitter is Simpsons memes of the remixing of jokes. It's a fun way to reclaim moments and recontextualize them. Yeah, and also when you can see an anime or a wrestling fandom or some other weird fandom then also cross over into Simpsons world, I think it shows it's such a universal thing if I can talk very heady about it.

I don't know that this is like a super memed moment, but I'm sure it exists as a gif or a gif. I still want to say gif, but I know that's not right. This is a gif show. Oh, camp gif right here. We're a pro gif place. It's an Albany expression. We say gif. my my favorite animation moment maybe second to the bizarre the the dud smile uh is the homer's head exploding

when he finds out that marge is pregnant again and that is a thing that i like i taped it off tv and stepped through it frame by frame just to like see how that like and I still will do it every once in a while like my wife and I will like you want to just like frame by frame that because everyone is funnier than it's funny at its midpoint it's funny when it's about to burst it's funny that Marge is just looking like oh no

she's like sort of alarmed but not really like it's still like a thing that would happen in their world i think people thanks to frinky act can really appreciate those moments even more than they could before like as it it now it like made it easier for people who aren't just hitting pause on their tapes to to do it oh sure yeah yeah that for sure i spent a lot of time like i better i need to tape this and watch this moment frame by frame. And I was one of the people frame by framing the list of corrections that Rock Bottom made.

And one of which is, if you're reading this, you have no life. Which for sure at 12 was correct. We were big tapers. We have Henry often tells us tales of the tapes on this show when he messes up a recording. And never learned to just tape the goddamn commercials, Henry. Are we running out of tales? Do we have some tales left? Maybe a couple, but I will, I think by 13,

I kind of stopped taping diligently, so yeah. Oh, sure. I was 20. It was time to go to college. I couldn't tape Simpsons anymore. I'm sorry. Well, at some point point taping became not the not the thing anyway and with the dvds coming out for a separate podcast for the clerks one uh we

did one for the clerks anime series just recently i was talking about it was the last time that i got to be the cool guy with my high school friends because i taped a thing nobody else saw that i could be like i taped the clerks episode nobody else has it let's come to my place and watch it like that was like uh 2000 and by the next year it was just like well yeah i'll just download it on kazaa like i don't need to watch your tape like it just tapes tapes weren't as important anymore in the uh the the trading community it was the end then i guess so but but there's certain things that, like,

unless there is an initial tape, it may be totally lost to the sands of time. You know what's out there now that I, now there's many copies on YouTube,

but for a time it was really hard to find this thing that I've talked about on our podcast called Ernest Goes to Splash Mountain, which is a half-hour special

with Ernest P. Worrell that is the reason I was terrified of Splash Mountain my entire life until I finally braved it recently and actually conquered it. A big deal for a 33-year-old man to go on a ride that children go on. But it was just a sequence where he goes down the flume and then his hair goes back and forth like as if he's getting electrocuted.

And as a three-year-old, this was the scariest, this was like a David Lynch film. And I needed to see this so badly. Like, does anyone in the world have a copy of Ernest Goes to Splash Mountain? And I had to buy a DVD of a guy who had dubbed it and watched it. It was so lame.

I never should have been afraid of it. But now there's many, many copies on YouTube. This stuff's cool. I'm glad everything's so available, but you do kind of miss tape times and the rarity of then you found a treasure by finding this weird thing off of tape. I do appreciate on Podcast the Ride

that you guys admit to being scared of thrill rides because that was the thing. Now I am becoming a theme park enjoyer, but for the longest time, I grew up in Florida. My family didn't want to go to the theme parks that much. They just saw it as a waste of money. But also that like when we go to like Busch Gardens, I was like, I don't like this. It's just all roller coasters.

This is the all roller coaster place. That's why I've never been to Magic Mountain to this day. Born and raised in Los Angeles. And I've never set foot in Magic Mountain. That's insanity, but it doesn't have what I like. I want immersive themes and fake rocks, and I don't want coasters because I don't like them that much. How about Space Mountain, though? Space Mountain's fine.

Yeah, that's kind of like the height of my throw-away tolerance, but I love Space Mountain. Oh, you do? Really? Okay, okay. Yes, that's fantastic. But I think the next step above that is a pretty big step. I'm not even sure what it is. I wasn't doing Incredicoaster slash California Scream and what it used to be until this year. Same here. Now I love it and I go all the time.

Yeah, that's my new sort of peak for thrill rides. But I went to another park recently and things were like above Incredicoaster and I was like, absolutely not. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm totally with you. Fellow wusses in thises in this room yeah yeah yeah three wusses it's nice to nice to be among yeah and it's a confusion about our podcast people are like us you must love like coasters and we we we don't we're wimps and i also i often find that there's not a lot to talk about with coasters because you can go like it's this high and goes this fast and that's it but if uh you're done but if you're if there's a ride with some bizarre character in it some ip that was intended to be beloved and then it never took off and the dummy is rotting in a dumpster somewhere

now there's a ton to talk about um so yeah not a not a big coaster guy but i guess this episode yes uh well yeah we'll transit it's been a roller coaster right. But I guess this episode. Yes. Well, yeah, we'll transit. It's been a roller coaster ride. I guess it's part of the mother now. Is that what's happening? Well, let's see. Hey, look, it's fine. The Sentence will be right back.

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thank you to our guest scott gerdner for doing the show on our most recent trip to Los Angeles, California. Scott is such a fun guy. We love his podcast, The Ride, and we love talking with him about this episode and the life and times of Phil Hartman. Please be sure to check out his podcast, Podcast The Ride, out there now. And if you're a fan of this podcast, especially me and Bob being able to go out to hollywood california to record with cool people in person that's all thanks to the support at patreon.com slash talking simpsons supporters there for five dollars a month they help us do this full time and take cool trips like this one all on our own dime but you get so much for your support beyond just knowing we're making cool things you get access to every episode

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You'll get to hear this month's Beavis and Butthead Do America only if you're a subscriber. Plus, you'll get to hear all the previous ones we recorded. Over 24 hours of exclusive film conversation podcasts about movies like Batman Mask of the Phantasm, Kiki's Delivery Service, Akira, A Goofy Movie, The Secret of Nim, Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse, Tiny Toons How I Spent My Summer Vacation, and tons more. You get so much bang for your buck at the $10 and up premium level, so please consider upping your pledge or just signing up at that right now to hear all of the cool stuff at patreon.com slash talking simpsons. It was good to have an excuse to re-watch this and revisit it. But I don't think, it's not one of my favorite episodes necessarily. I don't know if that's okay to say. No, that's fine.

There are a few final appearances on this program. It's historically a very important episode. The less sad final appearance is David S. Cohen's final episode as a writer, although he would write a Halloween segment. Yeah, he's credited on a Halloween

segment in 10, but he was done. He was out of there. And he was never heard from again. there like this working on he was never heard from again no look is this is production season nine still i think this is uh it is yeah two so it's one of the last or like close to the last yeah yeah he probably when it aired he was probably long gone oh yeah he wrote it while still while on the way out the door for future i think on production nine he already was like in futurama town it would be on the air like six months after this airing so uh march of 99 right yeah yeah i still we gotta talk to cohen someday i want to know about that part about where he quit

futurama for before like for a part of the early production that sounds like an interesting there's more of a story there yeah is the uh because there's this book that alludes to that and that when he was a simpsons writer he was david s cohen and obviously drama he's david x cohen and that x was like a way of he was like a phoenix rising from the ash like i'm a new man toughened by the horrible network development process i think that's what's alluded to in this one book and i'm curious if that's true. I thought it was just a guild thing, but it could be both. Oh, maybe. It could be a very boring answer. Just like there are so many Josh Weinsteins that are

writing. So there's like Josh Weinstein from The Simpsons, and then because of that the Josh Weinstein from Mystery Science Theater is J. Elvis Weinstein. So you have to find your way to differentiate your name. And all these Joel Coens Joel Coens, there's many a Joel Cohen floating around

Very confusing I'm not taking that low-hanging fruit on the jokes About lots of Coens Oh yeah Not doing it But also, yes, it's the last appearance of Phil Hartman Yes, and we're too classy to play our death jingle No, I'm not going to play

It's funnier when it's of natural causes to play the jingle not so here not jesus christ is this first the posthumous appearance it is yeah and his only posthumous appearance yeah and only um yeah that's kind of why i was like when you guys gave me a couple of talk about that's why i was i was excited to talk this one not because like almost in a weird inverse way because i realized like even seeing when you sent me a list of here's what you want to do upcoming seeing the phrase Bart the mother gave me this weird dread because I remember looking in the tv guide and which one's on tonight or seeing that phrase in entertainment weekly in a preview or whatever and go and knowing this is the last Hartman because I I loved him so much I'm not I don't think I'm the only person who would say that.

But I really like, I was such a mega Hartman fan growing up. And that episode starting and knowing you're heading for the last time you'll see him. Yeah, I was waiting for it. Yeah, I mean, we lost a great man, a great voice actor, a great sketch actor. But also because of the loss of Phil Hartman, you're losing Troy McClure and Lionel Hutz and you're losing certain kinds of scenes the show can do. Like the court scenes weren't as funny without Lionel Hutz

and they sort of lost the set piece of the educational film. Yeah, like in a handful of episodes after this one is Marge Simpson and Screaming Yellow Honkers and they have like, they make up a mean cop lady to host the video that's, like, about road rage. And so, because they wanted, you could tell they were testing out, like, can we do this without Troy? And the scene's not bad. It's not like it's a bad scene.

But I think they did decide, like, no, we just, it doesn't work without Troy. I think that, like, eventually Gil would be their lawyer for some things. The character Gil. He didn't have the false confidence of a Lionel Hutz. We talked about in Realty Bites that it ends up being an unintentional torch passing from Lionel Hutz to Gil in that episode. Oh, sure. Is that the last Lionel Hutz?

Speaking role, I believe it is his last one. He appears at a bus stop in um lost our lisa which is the second to last episode of nine yeah we got a patreon comment recently that said he does appear in a tale of two springfields as somebody on the other side of the one of the springfields in season 12 so honestly that feels like a total mistake like they yeah they really worked hard to take him out of character packs like they could have had non-speaking drawings of the characters in there but they explicitly were like we don't want to even show his characters anymore well and yeah what a like bummer it would be to see them and not get to hear him speak yeah besides the characters being so

funny just like what a great voice like the literal literal voice of Phil Hartman is so pleasant to listen to. And whenever it appears in anything, it's just like there's just such a heavenly glow to it. I always forget about Back to the Future. That he's Mayor Goldie Wilson's campaign. He's just like a random, he's not a random, but he's a van going by. And that's where it really becomes just an insane amount of overflow to me in terms of him factoring into everything I loved as a child. Because I grew up obsessed with Simpsons,

obsessed with Saturday Night Live, obsessed with news radio once it came on. And realizing there's a common thread between this guy is in all of these and he's the funniest guy in all of them and he's part of Pee Wee. Yes. And Back to the Future

really quick and like my other favorite thing as a kid and then like and then weird spotty other that he's like the

wait, is that him in Dennis the Menace? That's right. Voice acting way back in the 80s. Yeah, and co-writer of

Pee Wee's Big Adventure and also Captain Carl on Pee Wee and part of the stage show as well. The stage show which is so good. That's a DVD I made a point of buying a couple years ago live at the roxy so so good um

that it's just it gets ridiculous he's not just in peewee really quick he wrote the movie like one of the best comedies ever he's so he was so good at everything but he did it in such a way that like he was in the background he always like even though he was so funny at everything, but he did it in such a way that like he was in the background. He always like, even though he was so funny all the time, he was elevating everybody else around him when he did it in like, you could just see it in every single SNL sketch. I think the book was like, they called him the glue that he, they put him in every sketch because like, well, he holds this all together for the, you know, the bigger guys like Dana Carvey or whatever in the, in the scene.

Sure, sure, sure. for the you know the bigger guys like dana carvey or whatever in the in the scenes sure sure i get thinking there was in his in the book about him he seemed to have a chip on his shoulder for a while like he doesn't have the the breakout character and then literally the breakout characters start becoming movie star characters and that that was that was weird for him but ultimately you look back and like i mean he's clearly regarded as one of the great i don't think there's i don't think you could do a list of the top five and not put him in the top five which is saying something because there's been so many great people since him but i think you'd have to really i would have to put him in the top five no matter how many sketches he would be the guy that is just perturbed by the one note sketch character just the guy that like spills his

coffee or backs out of the room or it's confused about pets whatever like the matt foley sketch is one of the most celebrated sketches of all time and obviously it's the chris farley show like you love it it's like chris farley so funny but him not breaking when everybody else is breaking makes it work so much better his performance is not breaking yeah he does a great job. You ever seen that moment when his last episode, that there's this Sound of Music tribute where all the characters sing, and the very last moment is him saying,

I can't think of a better way to say goodbye to my eight years on this program. And then he holds Matt Foley like a baby as he zooms out from a spot. It's like, and now that Chris Farley's passed, it's like chilling to watch at this point, but very, but like bittersweet and emotional.

Yeah. There's one sketch, and I forget what it's called, Hunter, you might know. It is one of their only like serious sketches, or it's just a very melancholy sketch where it's Phil Hartman and Jan Hooks

that are now both dead. I'm getting goosebumps thinking about this, but it's about an old like Hollywood Hollywood couple dancing their way into the past, and they're just waltzing together and staring into each other's eyes. Yeah. It's the only non-funny sketch. There's no joke to it. There's no parody to it.

It's just a very sincere sketch about loss. Well, it's filmed, too. Yeah, and filmed. It's one of the filmed works. And it shows you that they both could have been film stars in the 40s. Oh, especially Phil Hartman, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just like good, like, you know, handsomely,

like good enough singer can kind of do it all. And he's got that 40s actor slickness. God damn. Well, and Phil Hartman, the Simpsons is like, to be one of the funniest people on The Simpsons who was their top recurring character, that would be many people's claim to fame. And for him, it's like fourth or fifth down on the list of things he did. Like SNL Newsradio, I'd put above that just because he was so good.

I mean, Newsradio is, nobody watched that, but it was really good. He got to play an over-the-top character there and he was so great. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Bill McNeil. Yeah, that one holds up if you go back into it. I was trying to think of, like, okay, well, I was upset, like, probably the first comedian I was, like, truly, like, God, I loved Phil Hartman when I was, like,

10, 11, 12. And I was trying to figure out why. Like, why does he resonate more than anybody else? And I think, if I could condense it, I think if you take, certainly his Simpsons characters, Troy McClure, Lionel Hutz, a lot of the SNL ones,

Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer, even his portrayal of Clinton or Sinatra, I think the common thread of a lot of them is that they are full of shit. That they are like a public figure who has this way they present themselves but there's something clearly nefarious lurking on the inside.

I think that in that age, like middle school age, where you're getting a little cynical or skeptical and where a little dose of skepticism is good, I think I love Phil Hartman so much because he's the guy who lets you know, wait a minute, are some of the public

figures in this world, are the people I see on TV full of shit? I think it was a lot of boomers. He was just kind of clowning on the corporate insincerity they grew up with. The educational films that Troy McClure's making fun of. Talking about how great America is, or how

great these products are, but they're being very insincere. They just have the used car salesman grin all the time. Sure. And that like this man could be that he's so just thirsty for a paycheck that he will be an empty vessel for whatever horrible corporation wants to shove their message through him. So it's like a fun way to present that point, which just hit me really hard as a kid and also that troy is such a salute to bad taste because he's in all these films that would be just shameful or like these are bad movies no one would want to remind people that you were in them he proudly announces that yeah you may remember me from this like no one wants to remember that and when you get to that

fish called selma episode where you really like think about troy mcclure for a while nobody's ever really said out loud troy mcclure is bad he's in bad movies he doesn't acknowledge that ever he doesn't like every film every film strip is as good as the last and i that he is like a low rent guy they they kind of don't say out loud but it's so the episode that's all him is so great i love spinoff showcase as a kid and i loved 138th episode spectacular even though it's a clip show it's the best one yeah yeah they wanted to make it special you can just imagine the future where i you know it's it's a whole other topic to talk about the decline of the simpsons is where you see it at but sure to know that the show couldn't have troy mcclure is just a like a host of a set of shorts like spinoff showcase like they couldn't really do i mean they could do they did do them but without being supported by your go-to always

funny guy of phil hartman you can't it does hurt the show to a degree it's as if somehow like itchy and scratchy were off the table like some like sort of outside component like a really great flavor it's not necessary for the show but boy you're glad when this shows up and like it just like it's just unfortunate that like coincidentally right in the time where maybe the show is hitting a decline creatively that that's what among many other things, you can't do these two great characters anymore. Yeah, yeah, what a bummer.

Can I say really quick, and then we gotta get into the episode, but the, because I was, I just remember being, I was so bummed when this episode aired, as I said, and just like, he died in May, I believe, and there was so much fallout of that, a lot of which came to pass

In September when all of these shows Came back Because Simpsons is back and they have to do this And do a tribute to him News radio has to figure out what are we even doing I just thought of that I don't even know Probably all in the same month

I think you're right So they had to do this very sad tribute episode You have to mourn him for like five fucking months. Like, yeah. Yeah, as production catches up, you're right. Yeah. I never thought of that. It was just like delayed.

And then like, what's the third rock from the sun? Yes. Had a cliffhanger that involved him and Jan Hooks. And then they had to solve it without him. Yeah. And the movie Small Soldiers was in the can. And it's a movie all about him being like tortured and hurt. And they don't want to like, I think it hurt the box office of the movie.

They had to cut him essentially from all the ads and the trailers to just limit the amount of Phil Hartman in it. Let me bring a little theme park thing in here. Something I didn't know until prepping to come here with you guys. There was a Small Soldiers temporary attraction at Universal Studios that was

with original videos hosted by Phil Hartman. Welcome to the small soldier's experience. And they had to cut it and do something different. So it affected Weird Theme Park World too. Were those ever recovered, those videos? I have no idea. Every lost recording of Phil is a treasure.

We need to find it. Every outtake, everything we never saw. There's only so much Phil Hartman material out there. Yeah, true. No, it is like a musician who died in his prime and like we should we have to like protect every demo and every like rare recording of yeah god if that's out there oh my god it has to be found and preserved and yeah i have some phil hartman stats here that i didn't realize how much he was on the show he's in 52 total episodes from starting with season two's bart gets hit by a car he was in 52 after that this is the 206th episode so he was in basically one out of every four simpsons before this time like that's how much he was in it like more than

i thought too i was like oh yeah yeah. Phil Harmon appears every cup, like three times a season maybe. But yeah, one out of every four. And then he occasionally played characters like the Evan Conover, the Australian guy. And Lyle Landley of course. Yeah.

Oh man. Yeah. So many great characters. God, that is like a, such a tour de force, like guest star part, but it's like essentially a guy who's in the extended

rep company yeah yeah like just like marcia wallace too who also no longer with us but yeah died in case you don't know how phil harman died he yeah he was murdered by his wife that very dark very dark and unlike and that again what a pummeling of a time this was where chris farley had passed away five months ago his death you heard about and were like oh god the extension of the way he lived happened it's so horrible but it's like almost I'm sure for people who knew him like maybe not even a surprise because it was like he was on that path unfortunately it seems like the Phil Hartman death was out of nowhere people did not know the problems in that marriage or I don't i don't know that even that was a thing she

was like inevitably going to do i think it was a horrible horrible night where just everything came to a head and yeah um it's yeah so so so grim and just it just seemed like such a shock like i think that was one of the most shocking moments of my childhood well i was like 15 but yeah i mean i was probably on the internet and i saw the news on whatever cnn.com or whatever was around then i was like this feels like a mistake like this murdered should not be next to phil hartman's name in any case yeah yeah yeah and well then too you think about how he was 49 when he passed away he'd be 71 now or almost 71 at the time of this recording and just think about the comedy nerds

who grew up loving him how much they would have cast him in everything and all the stuff he would have done like he would have had a whole like second renaissance of his career for the last 15 years like maybe even like serious roles you never know for sure he could be he could be a fucking oscar winner right now for all we know like it's just that's the real tragedy of it all that really makes like why it still makes me feel bad watching this episode and hearing his last lines there was this incredible run at funny or die where i got to work for a while where like so many heroes came in the door either to work in a specific video or just like took a meeting like dana carvey just came in for a meeting and I think 55 people jammed into a conference room.

And he walked into the conference room like, Jesus, he didn't realize he had to do a stand-up show that day. Then he did. He did every character. It was unbelievable. But I always think in terms of hero, the ones that I was just in an alternate world where these things didn't happen,

who were the people I would beg and plead to try to get in or to meet somehow? Phil Hartman and John Ritter. Both people who I just adore everything. happen who are the people i would like beg and plead to try to get in or to meet somehow phil phil hartman and john ritter like both people who i like i just adore everything they they they did and like yeah if only there was some world where the unfortunate things didn't happen no and i was seeing funny or die stuff with like uh sinbad starring in the fake shazam a movie like that sketch i was thinking like did they do that did they make us yeah oh i don't think it was pretty funny it was pretty funny but um but i was just thinking when i saw that like we'd have like 17 videos where phil harman plays troy mcclure in live action like a 60 you're right

yeah totally uh phil and it's just uh it's such a bummer potentially a movie they say on the commentaries they totally would have done that at the very least like on the asaries. They totally would have done that. At the very least, like on the TV movie, I would think, you know, but what greatest once is he probably was like locked in the news radio, but then news radio would have just been canceled the next season anyway. And so then he'd have been freed from his contract. He could have done it.

Like, it sounds like that show was a struggle every time. Yeah. And that was so good. Oh, you know what? The other one we didn't mention too, that he was going to be at Branigan. yes yeah oh yeah totally totally as they did table reads with him playing

zap brannigan like he's that he is that brannigan was invented to be the troy mcclure of the show who would be a recurring guy have pretty much a lot of the same character beats as like troy and lionel hutz like but in a captain kirk kind of way oh sure yeah that's why fry's name is philip j fry too yeah that's right to phil hartman is it really oh no kidding i didn't know that one yeah wow well this it makes me so happy even the even to talk about his death is horrible obviously but just like i'm like viscerally happy talking about phil hartman for this long it really even though this is the last one one, it's a good excuse to do it. And I have one last depressing thought, though, of the future of Phil Hartman characters.

Okay, so with Muppets, Jim Henson died. They did recast some of his characters because you just can't not have Kermit and Ernie and all those characters. But they did kind of softly retire Rolf until the muppet movie then rolf just shows up like hey i'm rolf i'm here with you too and it just is like i guess rolf's alive again now okay and i wonder if you know say 10 years from now when disney is recasting other simpsons actors because of time moving forward what if they do just say like, you know what? It's been long enough. Let's just, if we're recasting Homer or Bart or whatever,

why don't we just recast Troy? Like, let's just have Troy come back. Oh, heresy. This cannot be. I wonder if that point, if the idea of a washed up movie star from the 70s would work as well in like 2030.

That would be as anachronistic as Dennis the Menace was when we were kids. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. This is a, this is what a bad kid is like. He still calls people Mr.

Bad. But yeah, I, um, I don't know. I wouldn't be that surprised if Troy McClure comes back someday if they just feel like doing it. It'll really be the test of how in franchise world are we if primary cast members start passing away

and they just replace it and keep going. Or if they aren't passed away. Or if it's just like, New Simpsons, here we go. That will really be... I mean, I could see an 83-year-old still living Harry Shearer going like, I don't want to work for Disney. And they're like, okay, time to recast. And they just do it.

I want to believe that computer technology will be so advanced by that time they could just take every syllable they've ever spoken and just rebuild any line they want to use on the show, like sort of what Roger Ebert did before he died when they basically, based on one commentary track he did, they rebuilt his voice. Yeah, that'll just happen. His computer speaking voice so i feel like by the time you know people start passing away there just might be enough

recorded material to conceivably do any interpretation of any line they want i've had the the theory it was a podcast luminary bug main that uh the that the marvel people have to secretly sign contracts to they have to like do the syllables in advance. That they like, all right, you're going to be in a Marvel and first you have to like stand in this room for three hours. Say, look out, Spider-Man. Look out, Captain America. Look out, this character.

Just any conceivable scenario. It saves a lot of work if they just say the full names, for sure. Yeah, and then they just do like every vowel, every syllable. They have to do a full body turn. They have to be scanned and filmed all the way from the bottom of your feet up to the top of your head. I don't know. It makes sense to me. It's going to be tough for Marvel to pretend that they are like, oh, we got so lucky.

They actually recorded this before they died in a car wreck or whatever. We just happen to have all of this footage. Well, I mean, some people thought in that Fast and Furious 8, some people thought it looked fake, but when I was seeing the movie, I was like, I don't know, this kind of feels like Paul, what's his face, didn't die.

His character is so Frankenstein together, but I couldn't catch where, there was a weird bit where he's just on the phone with his wife, and she is doing all the talking really. She's like, so you're saying you can't do that? And he's like, yep. All right. Well, I could... It was the

Fall Out Boy joke from Pre-Activate. So you're saying three full sentences of exposition? Yes. But okay, let's get into the episode. I guess we did our Phil Hartmanosition. Yes. But okay, let's get into the episode. Barth the Mother. I guess we did our Phil Hartman episode.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cut that out. That could last us another week, I think. But yes, this episode of Barth the Mother begins with a power trip of a mail call. Mail call. Gather round, everyone. All right. One for resident.

That's me. Well, that's it. One stinking letter? Why'd you make us gather around like that? I needed my power fix. Hey, listen to this. Congratulations, your child or children have been selected to appear in Who's Who among American elementary school students. Please submit their names along with $95 for each handsome volume you wish to order.

Oh, I've never been so proud. You both deserve a big, big reward. Mom, they put every kid in America in that book. Just so gullible parents will buy it, it's all a big scam. Shut up. Are you sure? I can usually smell a scam from two towns over.

Yeah, Lise. She is a smart, sophisticated woman. Now, let's hear more about that big, big reward. Quit stalling, Marge. We want our reward. Are we all aware of the who's who scam that was happening in the 90s and earlier? Sounds familiar.

Yeah, so there's no trademark on the phrase who's who, so anyone can do it. And essentially what they would do was there'd be like who's who among the banking industry and who's who among American high school students where you basically pay a pretty hefty sum to get your picture and name in this book. But it's just a book full of people

who would pay the money to get their name in a book. And I know when I made a new friend in like middle school they're like the first thing he showed me he's like i'm in this book you gotta see this and he totally believed it but even then i thought like this seems like made up like what did you do to get in this book it's like oh you submitted a picture and paid 90 so uh the most recent um the most recent story i've found on this was um in like 2011 about just the scam in general and what it is. But I guess things like social media makes it not even a thing anyone wants to do anymore. We get enough self-importance that way.

We don't need to pay somebody to put it in a book. But the Who's Through thing is real. That's crazy. Perfecting a real thing, yeah. Wow. I was, like the kids here, witness to parents getting scammed and trying to tell them you're being scammed to not being listened to the uh the one i remember the most was i told my mom like this guy isn't really selling magazine subscriptions for iraq war veterans like he's please don't give him 50 dollars she's like no i really think this guy like she even invited him in to have a drink of water

and i was just like fine whatever let's give him 50 bucks i though then again i was in one of those magazine subscription things and i fell for it at the door but i wrote them a check and then once they walked away i was like wait a minute no and then i i canceled the check so though then i got my routing number and stuff so maybe i i lost more than 50 on that who knows let's bring back the who's who's. I think that we need a way to, you know, with social media being such a huge morass, like you don't know who's important, who isn't. There's only one way. Let's, with a book.

We need to bring back the book system so we know who needs to be paid attention to in this world. Well, there's no MySpace, so you can't openly rank all of your friends anymore. There's no top eight on Facebook. I want my friends to know who are my favorites. Yeah, now it's just like a Dragon Ball Z power level of followers on Twitter. That's the best you can get out of that. And that's just too straightforward. But I also like Marge is such a mom in this episode.

She has no character to her beyond motherhood and things related to it and that includes like like going like oh i'm usually so good with a scam like i can catch him like though my dad always he had this we had this joke that we'd say my dad would always tell mom they saw you coming if she said like oh i paid ten dollars for this thing's like they saw you coming it's like i tell my god it's the menu price of the place. It's $10. I would have talked him down. I forgot this whole opening act is just to get Bart access to a gun.

Just like the who's who leads to the Family Fun Center leads to Nelson getting a gun leads to Bart shooting a bird. Yeah, I had no idea what that flow was. There's no other way to get him a gun than to go to a castle amusement park that get him a gun than to go to a uh

like a castle amusement park that would have a gun like you know that's that part of it is still a stretch yeah the opening could just be bart sees nelson shooting things with a gun and then he's like i want to shoot that and that's all someone had to take husu down a peg it was a public service well i mean i do i love a good first segment of Simpsons that is like observational of things. And this time they're taking down family fun centers, which I love how boringly it's called, too. It's just like it's family fun center. Like in my neck of the woods, the thing that was this exact place of mini golf plus arcade plus batting cages it was called adventure island that was the name of it and it was a string of them all around florida i don't know what part of florida

if that's not northern florida okay it's not there's one there's like a pirate mini golf off of disney world property yeah this uh this was a little piratey i think they were ripping off the orlando pirate stuff which i've been to the Orlando's World's Biggest McDonald's. Oh, me too. Yeah. All right. And it simply takes up a lot of space. I mean, I guess it's got kind of a big playground.

But those vaulted ceilings are magnificent. I mean, the thing I remember is that there was a just, you know, it's kooky. There's a lot of crap on the way. Here's a big shark with sunglasses. And then, like, there's a pillar that has a life-size cutout of Bill Cosby. Whoa. Oh, man. I wonder if that is not there today.

I went because they have a Mac Tonight piano playing animatronic that I went all the way across the country to see it, essentially. And then it was broken. I guess Cosby did shill for McDonald's. That's one of the many things he shilled for, right? That must have been in there somewhere. It sounds right. Yeah, yeah, the list. He was not above pudding, so McDonald's is on the same tier.

And you know who else shilled for McDonald's? Phil Hartman. Oh, you're right. Yeah. But he played a cheesy pitchman and then just was a cheesy pitchman. He was so good at it. What was that movie with him and Sinbad where he befriended Sinbad? House Guest.

House Guest, yeah. In that, they go to McDonald's. Like, it has aggressive McDonald's product placement in it, I remember. Boy, I remember that movie now. That was so weird. Yeah, Sinbad just has fantasies about McDonald's and what he's going to order. It's just like where he wants to be at all times. Seven times in the movie.

That's too much. And they're both seven times in the movie that's too much and they're both in jingle all the way too but they don't share a scene right like he's yeah phil hartman's trying to steal arnold's wife if that's oh really yeah he's the there's a bit on the phone the best scene in the movie is when phil hartman is on the phone like oh i'm having her wife's delicious cookies and then arnold says like those are my cookies put them down uh but yeah the family fun center i never rode go-karts because like they did scare we talk about being a wuss i was on that yeah i mean i rode them once and they were frightening i was probably going

12 miles an hour wearing a helmet yeah i guess me neither yeah you know what i turned down that i didn't do a go-kart outing with friends as recently as 2012. I sat on the sidelines and played air hockey instead. So yes, I would have to put myself on the whiplist as well. I think when I sat down in the go-kart at age 10, I was not ready for that amount of freedom. And I felt like I was in way over my head. I'm going too fast.

What if I hit the tires? What's going to happen to me? I did not explode like Milhouse did. Explode in flames like a NASCAR driver. Well, cars in general always scared me. I didn't get my driver's license until like, well, 18. That's not like super late. But I was the last of my friends group to learn how to drive. And I even remember getting like freaking out as a little kid.

It was, I forget the name of the ride, but it was at Atlanta Six Flags, where it was one of those types of pretend you're driving rides but you can't actually drive okay but i was like eight and i thought i was driving and i was just and my dad was like come on turn the steering wheel i was like no no i won't do it like yeah it freaked me out so i'm a recent listener of podcast the ride did you guys do autopia yet haven't done autopia and you know what we're uh we're kind of anti-Autopia. I've ridden it once, and I am now in that camp. I mean, it's not made for adults because the way I drove the car was I sat in one seat, and I was sort of steering on the – I think I sat in the passenger seat.

I was reaching across to steer the driver's seat. Oh, yes, that's very awkward, the positioning. Yeah. You have to be kind of splayed out through the whole thing. I think you could only do it – it's only adult sized if you have a child with you because operating the gas yourself I had like really awful leg cramps for 10 minutes

one of the last times I did it. I did feel like the very tall man in The Simpsons. And also they don't need to run on gasoline. I don't know why they still do that. It stinks. It stinks. Disney has to do its part environmentally and also get rid of it so we can have the Tron coaster. Well that is coming to Orlando right and killing Autopia. Disney has to do its part environmentally and also get rid of it so we can have the Tron coaster. Yeah.

Man, counting the days. Well, that is coming to Orlando, right, and killing Autopia. It is. They were able to put it off and so, you know, weird grass off to the side where there was nothing. But here we got hotels as soon as you leave Tomorrowland. So unless they can buy the Howard Johnson in and blow it up and put the Tron coaster there,

Autopia is the only option. It's got to go. I wouldn't put it past them to kill Hojo. They'd buy the entire company and just to blow up that one. That's a Disney move. Absolutely. They're raiders. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops.

So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you home and auto insurance personalized to your needs weird I don't remember saying that part visit desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? But yes, the go-kart scene, it's just really cute. Homer wants, after all that driving, he still loves go-karts and just the fun of it. Oh, that felt like a very Autopia reference.

Like, finally we're out of the car. Oh, hey, go-karts. That felt like, yeah, you drive all the way to disneyland and then get in a weird little smelly car uh but i feel like most real dads are like please don't make me get in the car ride i just drove all the way here sure sure and uh meanwhile marge is believing that slow and steady wins the race as everyone passes her she'll stick with the plan yeah she has to comfort herself like stick with the plan like and has to comfort herself like stick with the plan like and then this is an interesting thing i think plotting wise in this that they i think

in other episodes they wouldn't need a scene to set up for viewers nelson is a bad kid because i think they can just assume viewers know nelson is bad but in this one they have to show like nelson injuring millhouse and then marge saying i don't like you nelson like just letting you know that she doesn't like nelson if he wasn't a character in this episode of prominent one we would not get a comment on his behavior he would just show up to injure millhouse and then leave yes is it to establish maybe that like marge maybe you've not seen marge's opinions about nelson before i guess she's kind of never really, I mean, you would assume she doesn't approve of Nelson, but I guess she has never really said it before.

I mean, her daughter briefly dated him, so. Oh, she didn't know that. She might not have been aware at all, yeah. Also, this is the first time I got when Lisa calls Marge pokey. That's like calling her slow poke. That's why she, at first I thought it was a Gumby reference. After the go-karting, everybody's getting their prizes. Okay, what can I get for 12?

Count them, 12 prize tickets. Two thumbtacks and a mustache comb or five rubber bands and an ice cube. What can I get for 8,000 tickets? A BB gun or an Easy-Bake oven. Hmm, hot food is tempting. But I gun or an Easy-Bake oven. Hmm. Hot food is tempting. But I just can't say no to a weapon.

Ah! Whoa! Can I try that sometime? Yeah, sure. Never hurts to have a second set of prints on a gun. Wow. Thanks, Nelson. I'll come by your house later. Oh, no you won't. You stay away from Nelson months.

But, Mom... Nelson's a troubled, lonely, sad little boy. He needs to be isolated from everyone. But, Mom... Yes? That's all I got. So what prize did you end up getting? Mustache comb. What'd you get?

Fake mustache. Want to comb it? This sucks. It's time to punch out of this yawn factory. I'm going to Nelson's. But Mom said not to. Mustache comb, what'd you get? Fake mustache. Want to comb it? This sucks. Time to punch out of this yawn factory. I'm going to Nelson's. But mom said not to. She doesn't scare me.

I do what I want, when I want. Oh God, inchworms. I think if these were kids of the 80s and not the 60s, they would have the spider ring being the initial lowest tier ticket prize. Whenever there was a ticket redemption arcade or whatever, the top prize would be just an empty dusty nintendo box even in 1994 just like well they're super nintendo now i think that box is empty yeah not when a ticket redemption in places like that that's when you realize what like a scam capitalism is the first time as a kid it's just like here's oh man i earned so many tickets, right?

Oh, you didn't get a tenth of the tickets you need for the third best prize. Like, you can't get that stuff to Animal. But, sir, I put in so many hours. I slaved all day, and this is my reward. It broke as soon as I touched it. It's like Lyft driving. It is, yeah. And just like in Lyft, though, you're paying up front to play SkiBall

and then get the tickets to play. It's a good scenario. Yeah, no, also the SkiBall was a favorite to buy, and I do like SkiBall. But it's funny, Nelson, when Maggie and Lisa do that Maggie oop and cheat that way, Nelson says, hey, that's cheating. In Radio Bart, Nelson does that exact thing of just grabbing a handful of balls and walking up to the holes

and just putting it in there. At the Chuck E. Cheese, sorry, Wally Weasel. Yes, Wally. I thought they'd done that before. That's why it's funny when they start, because I noticed this thing with both, with theme parks and then family fun centers, that when you do the math over upwards of 30 seasons that like,

so Springfield has a 14 theme park, seven Chuck E. Cheese esque places. They just, it's like multiple stadiums, multiple mountains and gorges. Yeah. Oh yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. There's so much nature there. Yeah. A ton of malls. Like every type of store is there. They have a Trader Joe's equivalent. At least one ocean and lake, too.

And what, the second largest mountain or something? Yeah, yeah. The Murderhorn is like one of the tallest mountains in the world, yeah. Oh, yeah, so rarely acknowledged, yes. Presumably the United States, probably the tallest mountain. Oh, and Mr. Burns' Casino, too, like one of the biggest casinos in the world. Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah. Even though also Las Vegas exists separately, but aren't there other casinos

elsewhere? Yeah. Well, they go to a Native American casino, too, because every show in 1999 had to do a Native American casino joke. They really did. They all had to do it. I'll forgive them because there's only one skee-ball joke to make, and they did it. They just forgot about it. I mean, I challenge you out there, only one skee-ball joke to make, and they did it. They did do it. And they just forgot about it.

I mean, I challenge you out there. Write another skee-ball joke. Well, in Chasing Amy, they had the skee-ball joke where he throws a ball and then smashes into somebody. When Joey Lauren Adams says a shocking sexual thing is he's about to throw a skee-ball. So that's the one other skee-ball. But that's basically just a bowling joke except for skee-ball. Yeah, yeah. It's got to involve

tickets. It's got to involve tickets. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I guess, yeah, you could get distracted and throw it backwards and

then, like, it's that little hard ball is, like, right at that testicle. Oh, yeah. So there's probably a good, like,

holding the balls gag to happen somewhere. Oh, but actually, right before this scene, Homer gets hit in the ball with a batting

machine, so they can't, they'd be just doubling up their ball hit jokes if they did that. Do you guys think, does that, watching, I don't go into season 10 a lot, and that was one where I was thinking, is the physical comedy starting to feel

like a little forced? Was that, that felt to me like, well, and then Homer's there, what do we do with Homer? Yeah. We gotta do something. He should be, it felt like a little Looney Tunes scene

they stuck into it of just, they felt like they had to it was very telegraph where lisa's like up front you better wear a helmet dad yeah and you know he's gonna be pummeled with baseballs i did like the animation of him on the ground and being hit with the baseballs is slowly turning his body over yeah the force of the baseballs those little turns yeah it was all an animation though yeah the animation i felt when he was just getting hit while standing the animation was letting them down a little bit it wasn't as good as some of his like physical stuff you'd see in like season like five or whatever i guess the idea of charging the mound when it's a pitching

machine is pretty funny oh yeah yeah i did like that but but the limited the best because the animation seems more limited than in the previous years in this scene. That's why I think the, it turning him over works better because he doesn't have, the joke is how he's not moving. And so it's just inch by inch being turned over. Were they like, were they drawing the show or not drawing? Like that's a dumb way to put it, but like,

were they, were they animating the show differently at this point? Because I started in addition to starting to go around season 10, like,'s going on it's not as funny to me what did it start like looks more unpleasant to me and i'm not sure why i think over time uh mostly due to matt geraning things became more regimented like expressions became less wild and off off model they were able to do less the artists had less freedom and i think over time the budget kept getting smaller so they had less and less money to play with. But the digital era will be coming up in, I think, season 13 or 14? I think 14.

Yeah. And also, too, they lost David Silverman. David Silverman's at Pixar at this point in the show. And I think he could get away with more things of like, I'm breaking the rule. Homer shouldn't do this. But David Silverman had been there since the short. So if he wanted to break a rule, I think he could get away with it more than newer guys could.

Oh, interesting. Whereas to this day, like there will be just a, like some little scene, some character animation in South park that feels way off and like way individual to whoever's doing it. And if the documentary indicates anything they

will like yeah you go do that we're busy with other stuff just handle that scene and then they'll bring it back and they just did this totally like individualistic little moment so maybe that's what we're losing at this point it's like somebody just putting all themselves into this nutso little scene i mean right now the show uh is not traditionally animated it's animated through the animation tools that many animated programs use today. So they no longer have the privilege of being traditionally animated. It's been that way for years now. And you do lose a lot more. You lose a lot of the individual drawings, like everything you see on the screen in this era, somebody drew every pose. That happens in the storyboard and everything, but you lose a lot

of that, you of that individual expression and the human quality when it's just all, a lot of it is done with computers. I'm not saying it's just like they feed a computer a script or anything, but it's been even more streamlined since this era, too. But it might be like we have this bank of when Lisa looks like this, when Mo looks like this. Yeah.

I see. They were already getting more locked in around season 10 in expressions, and then I think that it got digital it just even more so locked in and they couldn't change it much which uh when bart leaves too i i like i love uh him and lisa's little exchange about combing each other's mustache like it's kind of it's a really cute scene and yeah the we never got mustache oh and also one of the prizes was a currently melting ice cube too yeah it's just in the display uh and you can see it it's drawn in there like and an ice cube and it's

right there like there's condensation under it it is melting on this trip i got the itunes version i think that ice cube was cropped out of the picture yeah the 16 by 9 version which is the only one available on itunes if you want to buy it digitally it sucks and if you do it even in the fxx app you can't change it other two on your phone that you have to you can get four by three on fxx or on the simpsons world if you do it on uh through like a browser but on your phone it just is like yeah you want to see this cropped right like that's a so what will come of all this when it moves to Hulu or whatever? Oh, no, I'm sorry. Disney Plus.

It is Disney Plus. Okay. We're praying they retain the commentaries and also the ability to watch it in the original aspect ratio. But I guess we don't know yet. It doesn't seem like something Disney would care about. But if they put anyone in charge of, at least though Disney is also, I can attest as a theme park person, as long as they put somebody in charge of something who is obsessed with stuff like fans are, then they'll hopefully see the thing through with some quality.

Yeah, I would hope they give it the treatment they give Lady and the Tramp or whatever. I would, but with true archival like, they wouldn't crop Lady and the Tramp now, or they wouldn't like one of their more square old movies and I hope they wouldn't do that with Simpsons I think especially if I mean just from a business standpoint they would look better than Simpsons World if they're like no no we we know

the right aspect ratio to have this shit yeah yeah hopefully hopefully I'm excited for Disney Plus hey look you can't stop it so may as well yeah I love it I'm excited for Disney+. I am too. Hey, look, you can't stop it, so may as well. I love it. I'm excited for it. Seven whole dollars.

It's a pretty good deal. It's the best deal in town. It actually is. I hate saying that, but it's true. They got to get the Disney afternoon stuff on there. I'll be very sad. They have like 8,000 hours of content just from their TV animation in the 90s. And I want full restored quality Ernest Goes to Splash Mountain.

4K up-res color correcting. I wonder if they feel weird about having Eisner stuff in there because this is like four CEOs ago or something. I don't know. They shouldn't. It's part of their history. It's Walt and it's Eisner.

Eisner is 80s Walt. and we need to just embrace this. I just want a super cut of all of the very awkward and stiff Wonderful World of Disney introductions he did. Like, hello, I'm here with Kermit. Oh, my friends, I did this for Podcast the Ride. Oh, wow. I'll send it to you. This is probably the biggest deal of a thing that's happened to me this year.

We made a super cut, and it's just him saying hello. Oh, okay. Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello. And I found as many specials as I could. 67 was my sum total. I scoured YouTube and elsewhere. Posted it. A couple days later, the man himself retweeted.

Amazing. Michael Eisner himself. I've never been so, i truly like quite earnestly my wife came home from work and like give me a big hug i don't know why eisner me but uh and he made a good little joke too he said he said hi there i'm working on varying up my introductions yeah that's funny big big honor yeah i'll send it to you hello hello hello hello hello hello if you're looking for me i'm right over here no no no over here i'm in a computer here on the desk good hello as a new as a newly minted theme park, it's always fun in every YouTube video about Disneyland rides.

I'm like, when are they going to say Michael Eisner in this? They all have to have the Eisner minute of hate. We depart with who is otherwise our friend. And he is our friend at Defunctland. They make very popular YouTube videos. I love Defunctland. I really do. But I think They make very popular YouTube videos. I love Defunctland. I really do. But I think he's very Eisner poisoned.

I hope to hash this out with Kevin of Defunctland over the course of like 12 episodes. Eisner's important. If you don't have Eisner, maybe you don't have the company at all. Did he do some bad stuff? Sure. But I can point to so many things at Disney World

that wouldn't be there without him. And the company might have just gone bust entirely. So I love you, Michael Eisner. Thanks for everything. Me and Bob Moore are now on the side of like, Jeffrey Katzenberg is the one everybody was supposed to hate. But he has time to redeem himself with the rise

of Quibi. Oh, yes, Quibi, that's right. Soon, Quibi will be upon us and the final chapter of the Katzenberg tale will be to when we all stop going to the theater entirely and exclusively Quibi, that's right. Soon Quibi will be upon us and the final chapter of the Katzenberg tale will be to, when we all stop going to the theater entirely and exclusively Quibi. All those webisodes, man.

I'm going to just, I'm going to consume so many webisodes. Big bites. Because we're all busy. We all have just quick lunch breaks, so we just have to take quick bites. Snackable content. Is that what it is?

Every listener is Googling Quibi right now because no one has heard of it it's like a billion dollar thing oh but they will they when they see Peter Farrelly's show about suicide thing they announced yeah buckle up what fights a suicide we're not even out of act one I'm sorry okay this is the way our podcast usually flows

but so bart head heads over to nelson's and we get to see how fucked up nelson's house is like the worst it's ever well it did look pretty bad in the nuke the whales moment uh yeah but i do like the detail of in the way that someone would have a pen tied to the wall for note-taking they have a knife tied to a string on the wall that you carve into the wall your messages. I did really like that. If it had just been a knife that he picks up and put down, that's boring. But a knife that is tied to a string only for note-taking purposes. I guess it establishes that Nelson's dad has also been in jail.

His mom was like, your mom's a jailbird, so is yours. Let's play. There's no consistency to his parents i mean before he eventually reappeared much later he was the soccer coach who was smoking with nelson yeah made uh voice of phil hartman there we go oh no alternative nelson's soccer and acting camp wow though he didn't voice nelson's dad in his last appearance where he picked him up from the football game and said he was taking him to Hooters. That was here, sure. Yeah, and he said, I don't want to bother mom at her work.

We're learning a lot more about Nelson's family life beyond season eight. And she's addicted to cough drops, I believe it was, too. Poor guy. Nelson is taking Bart out for some shooting. Bart does not listen to him telling him to put on a scarf uh and then they they head outside nelson shoots up his shooting car which uh three more payments i'm surprised that windshield was already intact at that point they've been shooting it so much yeah yeah that's a that's a prime shooting you want to save that

for last satisfying and then it was uh it's Bart's turn to shoot. Bet you can't hit that bird from here. Are you crazy? I don't want to shoot a stupid bird. That's because you know you can't. You're not a super stud like me. Am too. Or not.

You're an octo-wussy. Whoa, look at me. I'm Bart Simpson. I'm scared to use a gun. I want to marry Milhouse. I walk around like this. La, la, la, la, la, la. Hey, quit it.

Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Oh my god Whoa, major shot Even compensated for the crooked sight Crooked sight? You are one cold-blooded killer, dude But, but, I wasn't, I didn't

Right through the neck doesn't get any sweeter than that simpson savor the moment so before the uh the comedy twist in the third act it does feel like it's heading into the marge be not proud uh bone storm episode similar yeah where it's like marge's shame is worse than any sort of punishments bart could have and he's trying to make it up to her a mild component of lemon of troy as well like not wanting to get caught writing his name in the in the cement that's right yeah graffito tag uh but yeah the uh well marge be not proud is one of scully's best episodes before he uh you know became show

runner maybe i think that's why this episode i was gonna say it later but i think that's why in the third act it takes such a turn because i think they realize like this is really similar to mars yeah proud we gotta we gotta have uh bird genocide in here to shake things up it's no longer about bart's redemption after act two is over. Yeah, yeah. It is, well, also, this is a thing I feel like as this era progresses

is that you have episodes that feel different from Act 1 to Act 2 to Act 3. And it is an uncomfortable mix for me of like, it's sort of like,

almost like creepily emotional at times. I'm like, when they keep saying killer and, why are they calling you killer? It's like oddly, it's almost like sort of like cheesy

in its emotion and then we end up with like flying lizards at the end. I think this kind of episode culminates later in like where I really checked out was like, and you guys will get there soon enough,

the episode with Kid Rock and alligator killing. And I just remember that one being an all over the place. Like, where are we now? It's crazy. And why did this happen? Yeah. Yeah.

I think this is another crossing the Rubicon moment. It's a term I say all the time on the show. This is another. We're eight Rubicons ago. Yes. There's so many Rubicons ago. Yes. There's so many Rubicons in my theoretical world of Simpsons. But the bird shooting thing, I mean, it is them plumbing the depths of like childhood shame that we all feel of like one thing you regret you did as a kid. We don't have to list our own sad things.

No, no. We probably already have. Yeah, at some point. Mine is that the girlfriend I abandoned to meet David Merkin. I'm sorry. On the commentary, Ron Hauge, one of the writers, he talks about that he did kill a bird in a similar way. That's right. Unintentionally, or like of the trying to miss variety and not wanting to.

But I love how extreme the crooked side is, that the bullet has to fully bend. Yeah. It was a real magic bullet yeah i love bb yeah the part so is trying to miss and yet uh and then then when you hear crooked sight that's such a good joke it's sight and it's why nelson didn't stop him when he was so obviously pointing away from the bird he's like he knows about that crooked side yeah Yeah. Got it. I feel, you know, Bob is a bird owner. He has a pet parrot.

I have been for about 20 years. So all this bird violence here is a tough one in this episode. It's easy to see the media hates birds. As Homer says, everybody hates birds. Sorry, one of Homer's relatives

says everybody hates birds and shoots birds at the airport. No, wait. Homer says it. There, finally got it. Oh, when you meet all those weird other citizens. Yeah.

But I feel like because they're distinctly non-mammal, it's more acceptable to present violence against birds in media. And for some reason, I see more violence against birds on the internet, and people think it's funny. I don't think it's funny. But I can see why if Bart shot a cat or a dog, they could not go back from that.

But I think birds are expendable creatures in media to the point where if there is a episode about like, oh, so-and-so gets a bird, I'm like, okay, when's it going to die? Like second act death, third act death, when's the bird going to die? And our friend Nina Matsumoto, she's a big Frasier freak. So we had her on for the Frasier episode and she told us to watch a few episodes. And one is where Niles gets a cockatoo. And I was like, that cockatoo is going to die. But it didn't die.

I was like, okay, so there's a few instances where it doesn't happen. But I've already been on my bird platform before. Your perch. Yes. It's a good design, but, I mean, a sad-looking one. The dead bird, it has a few loose feathers on its chest yeah it's like the body's been damaged in the fall like that's also i that's a good design i think i think some of my dread in in like how i describing seeing the phrase barth the mother like like gave me this little dread feeling i think some of it obviously that we're getting the last polar bear appearance but also

there is all this bird violence yeah and i forgot that at the end it's like really it's pretty extreme plot wise I like how they get to the gun and how it all works out but I feel like there's no there's no instance of this pigeon menace being remarked upon at all like one pigeon lands on a windowsill in the episode and then like with 30 seconds left Kent Brock's be like of course the pigeon menace that we're all suffering through yeah why couldn't it have been the I guess he can't have been taking care of a pigeon Even like Nelson could have alluded to

He could have said like Birds suck and then point to Some weird like Pigeon problem up on a telephone pole Or something I've been wasting pigeons all month Like a drop line or something like that Yeah but I think that also

shows you you talk about how comedies always kill birds this also shows you like if this was a blue jay deaths that all happened i think they'd be like no those are all too cute what's the least cute bird yeah get away with and they'd go with pigeon there's too much pigeon prejudice i will say that they are acceptable they are very expendable in media and i feel like they're no more disease than any other animal that's in the wild this is like and they're pretty smart they can get around without feet no pigeons have feet their toes fall off after like the second year because city living is so harsh like this walk around on little knobs and they're fine that's what that's how pigeons have to live yeah oh no yeah we do that to them the next time you see a pigeon in the city like look at the feet. It's a tale of tragedy.

No, it's like Nelson. They're a product of their environment. They couldn't help it. Those are some of the best jokes in this. Everybody acknowledges, oh, Nelson has a horrible life. We will not fix it in any way. We have to exclude him more.

It's a good little subversive. Yeah, I do like that. This is also the second time in production season nine they do an octopussy joke. Oh, right. What was the other one? Bart called Lisa octopussy when he turned around in the chair at Kids News. Oh, yeah. Silence octopussy.

Octowussy at least puts an extra spin on it. Maybe they couldn't get away with saying pussy again in the show. Maybe that was the one per season. Well, they get away with tit pecker later oh tit pecker i laughed out loud skinner saying tit pecker uh but yes uh we come back from the break marge is folding clothes homer is helping in the way that like march you know by now to not ask for help from homer because he balls up socks by making them all an entire one ball of just socks and we have a very loud scene but you can hear like the echoes of the recording studio.

Enjoy that. I rolled up all the socks. What's next? Well, I deal with this. Why don't you start on that basket? All right. Oh,

I hate folding sheets. That's your underwear. Well, whatever it is, it's a two man job. Where's Bart? He's up in his room. Bart! It's okay, Marge. I'll folding sheets. That's your underwear. Well, whatever it is, it's a two-man job. Where's Bart? He's up in his room. Bart!

It's okay, Marge. I'll get him. Bart! What the heck's going on? We need Bart to help fold your father's underpants. Where is he, anyway? Bart? Uh, he went to play with a friend.

He didn't go to Nelson's, did he? No, no. I'm pretty sure he's with a friend. He didn't go to Nelson's, did he? No, no. I'm pretty sure he's with Milhouse. Milhouse! What? Jailbird to come home! I think he's at Nelson's! Who's Nelson?

Nelson? I do enjoy Dan screaming yeah yeah he's pushing he's he's pushing the mics as loud as he can there i incredibly good uh meanwhile uh like pamela hayden she it's tough to yell at the whole house voice she's she's doing a good job but that's a tough voice to yell and i think how these they're all able to do that and then to uh sing it as all of these characters is very impressive. That's why they pay in the big bucks. Well, not yet, but they will pay in the big bucks by the end of the season when they renegotiate the contract.

That's when that happened. When Julie Kavanaugh was suckered into playing Marge on Tracy Ullman, she had no idea how much singing she'd be doing for the next 30 years. Pick a voice that you can sing full, musical level, many octave, lots of variance variance it's great to hear a verse with just marge singing like wow she's doing it in that voice yeah god uh and for this one joke homer has boxers but normally the jokes are the tidy whiteys that he wears like the like just a couple episodes ago that dog was scarred for life smelling his underwear in the uh natural born kissers episode. Yeah.

I think the Simpsons made tidy white. He's the comedy underpants, no longer the polka dot or heart, uh, you know, stencil boxers. I think those are back now. I want,

I want to see those in cartoons. I'm trying to bring a bet. We had heart boxers in, in movie city because we had a theme park stunt show and like, they're going to have art boxers in there. I, um, that was, that was the whole like arc the characters, that he was shamed by having to be like,

those art boxers. That's why he became a villain. Oh, actually, in the first episode of Meme City, one of the first jokes is killing a bird, isn't it? Oh, you're right. He shoots a bird. Oh, my God. I totally forgot that. What is Scott doing on this podcast?

Oh, no. Yeah, you didn't know you let a bird abuser into your temporary home. It was animated. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was fake. No birds were harmed in the making of this cartoon. Well, the sound effect wasn't good enough. You had to kill a real bird to get the right spot.

Oh, yes, we did. Yeah, it just wouldn't sound right. That was the Foley department, not you. I had to crunch it myself. No, no, I wanted to. I had to be a hands-on showrunner. Which kind of Birch would we crush? We went through a few.

And to compliment the animation of this one, there was a good... I liked the shot of when Lisa is lying on Bart's behalf. It's kind of a down shot on Lisa that you know it's from Marge and Homer's perspective looking down on her instead of just a flat angle. I liked that.

I feel like in other episodes later, they just settle on like, she can just deliver these lines on a flat shape. Why change perspective on it? Oh, sure. And then Homer, his punishment of Lisa was making her go get him a beer and some food at the Quickie Mart,

which I think by now she just has Apu's trust and he will give her beers for homer he he can trust her to not drink them i feel like that was a thing in america maybe up through the 80s where you could conceivably go and pick your parents up beer with a note i heard like dana ghoul talking about that really yeah yeah i think my parents would talk like that's a thing that they would do for their parents like go pick up beer for them more trusting world back then yeah i i'm jealous of all the scams people could uh do then now it's so hard to do a scam it's too much information out there i know who's who's and then uh as bart is thinking about his bird

death he then imagines bird court which is like the only kind of like um fantastical moment in the whole episode yeah but i do enjoy any joke where it's basically what is happening while this character is imagining something oh and in this case nelson is slapping him because he got bored yeah oh yeah the thing that snaps you back to reality or yeah like does something tie into the fantasy or like i just rewatched it's still so funny that the under the sea sequence ending and realizing homer's up on the couch yeah they did the joke so many times but i always laugh at a scene where someone is having a fantasy or remembering something and they cut back and people are staring silently at a person thinking about

something like that joke like marge imagining the six million dollar man and they're just looking at her as she has her eyes closed. It's so funny to me. Just one more. It's time for Bird Court. Hey, leave it alone. Okay, okay. Don't kill me, killer. Don't call me that.

Relax, Simpson. It was either him or you. No court would convict you. Bart Simpson, do you know why you've been summoned before this tribunal? Yes, sir. Because I killed an innocent bird. Dear Lord, we just wanted you to put fresh newspaper on the tribunal

floor. We're knee-deep in our own droppings. It's disgusting. But since you've confessed to bird slaughter, we have no choice but to peck your face off. No! Not the face! Ow! Ow!

Ow! Ow! Ow! What are you doing? I got bored, so I started slapping you. That's a good Toucan Sam that Dan Castellano is doing. I love that fancy voice he gives him. Yeah, which... I think it was like Toucan Sam, a parodyellaneta is doing. I love that fancy voice he gives him. I think it was like Toucan Sam, a parody of James Mason.

Oh, I guess so. I got bored. I forgot that's what the real Toucan Sam sounded like. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. I haven't heard him talk in a million years in commercials. His nephews really took over that whole commercial franchise. The cereal mascot that disappointed me the most losing him, well, it was losing the other chefs next to wendell at cinnamon toast crunch i liked it when it was three chefs

and and also when uh the dog took over for cookie crisp and it was no longer the the bandit it was a werewolf right yeah well then the werewolf came later so okay first it was the bandit versus the cop well actually before that it was a wizard. But that was before I was born. And so Cookie Crisp Wizard. Then the cop and robber story. And the robber was always trying to steal Cookie Crisp. And the cop would catch him.

And he was Irish. And then he was. And then the thief got a dog sidekick. And then the dog just took it over. And then the werewolf came in and they just dropped all of the thievery of of cookie crisp well they landed on the dog going cookie crisp it's like oh can a werewolf do that sure werewolves are better i guess it does make more sense yeah so what deep it's a wire level of mythology what brought us to the current Cookie Crisp arrangement. I also like the gag that they really didn't know

Bart did anything wrong. They just wanted him to clean up bird shit. Like, that's all it was. And then they're like, well, crap, now that you've admitted to murder, we have to peck you to, which, that's pretty bad bird court, that they just execute you instantly in bird court.

In the courtroom. Yeah, in the courtroom, yeah. It's kind of a, the not my face is sort of a call back to the also the uh lemon of troy yeah not in my mouth yeah put bugs in his mouth is what the kid would say marge pulls up right then and i love that nelson thinks that he's going to take her home and give him stability in his life sad joke a real home yeah A real home. Yeah. It shows you again of like, boy, Nelson could have turned out all right. Oh, well.

It's weird that Bart wants to hang out with Nelson so much when he's physically beaten Bart like 80 times at this point. He has savagely beaten Bart so much. And also tried to, not too long ago, he led a group of other students to murder Bart, Lisa, and Milhouse on an island. He did say he was sorry for that. Well, Mo counseled all of them when he picked them up. That's right.

That's right. Let's say they had a long drive or flight or whatever it was. He eased all the tension. And then there's a cute little joke that Marge is trying to see what's behind him and cats are eating the bird. Yeah. Bart's like, cats like me? That's funny. And then a cat jumps on him.

Yeah. And then, yes, then it's basically the same scene from Marge being not proud of Marge saying like, why? Just do what you want. I can't even punish you anymore. It doesn't do anything like that. Very similar of bart being heartbroken by disappointment instead of uh punishment bird court in general is kind of similar to how do we bring this thing to life visually the way that the in marge be not proud there's the fantasy

sequences and the to the the uh the chair and the car turning into dawn broad oh that too yeah i was yeah yeah absolutely yeah yeah a little like how do we get outside of this sort of contained very Just like the video game character. Oh, that too, yeah. I was thinking the video game characters. Oh, yeah, that too, yeah. Absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah. A little like how do we get outside of this sort of contained, very human story and do something visual. Yeah, like we are a cartoon, let's do a cartoon thing. Because up until the lizards at the end, I guess, so much of this episode could be done in a live action show.

Like it's very grounded for Simpsons plots. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yes, marge is disappointed she just abandons part at nelson's place and then uh part season nelson is like pan frying a carrot while humming the simpsons theme that's really weird that he's humming the simpsons theme till i was getting clips for this and heard it by itself like oh yeah he's humming the theme song for the tv show he's in that's really odd odd. Maybe, I wonder if he was humming a different song and they couldn't get the rights. Yeah, I think they ran into problems when they would have to ask.

So I guess Bart did a lot of humming and whistling in the past. And when they would ask Nancy Cartwright to just make something up, they would often find out, oh, this is actually a song that we have to clear. So then I guess they would just hum the Simpsons theme instead. Rolling Stones songs every time. And then Bart sees that he left some eggs in there. He knows now these eggs are going to die without their mother. I do like how Bart tries to wash away any guilt he has.

Like, there was an incident. A very political way of talking about a death he caused for sure a bart uh jason incident but then he takes the blame for it and picks that just picks up that nest and walks it straight to the library for our final troy mcclure yeah with the same uh billy from someone's in the kitchen with dna yeah that ends on just like a hanging line that explains nothing. Yeah, he's this blue, angular-haired, kind of a strange-looking kid. Big forehead. But the dread that I was talking about of This is the Last of the Hard Men,

when it cut to the library, I flashed how I felt at 13 and going like, oh, this has to be him watching the video. This is going to be it. It took me to this weird place like oh god it's come my last like new troy mcclure i'm ever gonna see is this yeah i think i had that same feeling too uh or similar because i know when this came out like i was reading any news story about it i could like in the newspaper or on the young internet and i know there were interviews that like with Grady and Gabe

where he clarified like, this is the last one. We recorded this before he died and we're going to play it. This is it though. And so I definitely went into it knowing like they didn't have any more recorded. There wouldn't be more of it.

I think I just watched this episode filled with dread waiting for when is he going to talk for the last time? Just, yeah. There is a little bit at the end where it feels like a retake where they made him smile like i don't think that beat of him pausing and smiling was there before i i don't know yeah i you know what that makes a lot of sense to me like they had to give him

this nice little like glowing and this kind of a it's it's in the film score worlds but or like a film strip soundtrack world but like that that little dun-dun-dun, this little fanfare. It does feel like they tried to carve out a nice little goodbye. Because another, like this Troy, it's also just a little disappointing because this is funny,

but hardly like the best Troy McClure scene. So it kind of brings you down that it's like, ah, it's not his best stuff is his last one. It's a tad perfunctory. This one's a little's like, ah, it's not his best stuff is his last one, but. It's a tad perfunctory. This one's a little bit like, I need to know how, I need to know real information about birds. How do we get it out?

When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you home and auto insurance personalized to your needs weird i don't remember saying that part visit dejaden.com care and get insurance that's really big on care did i mention that we care uh yeah this is and so they're doing it and that that's why the smile feels like a late edition, like a retake edition,

because they've had multiple ones before this end with Troy not having any answers. And it's a much more abrupt cut at the end for comedy's sake. It makes it less funny when he says, it sure is. And then they take a beat. Like, I think the comedy, at least their comedy instincts more would have been like, it sure is. Like, it would have gone straighter to it. You're like waiting for a joke that isn't there. Trevor Clarke was not always, like, probably, I think like 30% of his appearances were film strips, maybe.

It wasn't always, he was maybe more often in a movie or an infomercial or something and so it does feel like kind of a pale copy of the maybe the best troy mcclure moment the meat factory that is the best short yeah yeah that's probably of all the ones that you could just like pull out and like show as a sketch outside of the show uh it has the most jokes i think and the best jokes yeah yeah and the most like awkward the best like awkward editing and tells a real truth about the horror of how animals are treated in these places. This one does feel a little underwritten, you're right.

Yeah, I mean, but as always, Phil Hartman made it funny because he is such a pro. Soak it in, listeners. Here we go. Hi, I'm Troy McClure. You may remember me from such nature films as Earwigs, Ew! and Man vs. Nature, The Road to Victory. In all the animal kingdom, no mother is more devoted than the blue jay.

Valuing her eggs above even her own life, the mother bird bravely fights off such fearsome predators as the badger and the mongoose. Of course, one thing Mother Blue Jay can't defend against is a set of steel tongs. Eggs, precious eggs. If they're to survive, they require the gentle warmth and tender love that only a mother can provide. Or better yet, a 75-watt bulb. Oh, hello. In a few days, our eggs will hatch into nestlings like these over here.

They look awfully hungry, Mr. McClure. They sure are, Billy. In nature, their mother would regurgitate food for them to eat. That's gross. It sure is, Billy. It sure is. Oh yeah, so great. The too loud and sincere laugh at Billy's observation,

I do really get a chuckle out of that. My favorite is that he does a completely unneeded, oh hello, a second time. That maybe is my favorite joke. Or his delivery of like eggs precious eggs like it's just intense kind yeah he's been trying to troy is trying to mine something interesting out of this very dry area and he really did steal those eggs from that blue jay like he's destroyed that like that's actually animal abuse to steal those eggs from

a blue jay like i think that was a rare non-Lisa Yardley Smith playing the blue jay going, Oh, that was her. It sounded like her. Oh, interesting. You know what's unfortunate on the commentary? I think they didn't want to be, they never wanted to be just sad about Troy McClure. There's other times where they talk about Phil Hartman and somebody goes like, Oh, and then David Merkin goeskin goes like come on let's have fun

guys so i think on this one it feels like beforehand they said let's not be sad about phil hartman let's just you know let's have a nice time that's good but so they don't get too much into choices they made for his final scene or you know any production stuff on what they did i mean why would you want to remember that about uh the good friend you worked with for years who got murdered i think you're right on about that like adding a nice little let's make this the the goodbye that moment for me it just made me smile which is also too bad because in the in first viewing up to now the joke afterwards where bart's notes includes the word bill Billy like that's a funny joke but you

can't even think about it like yeah you can recover it all in this episode after seeing that you're definitely not noticing a joke that comes right after the last word you're ever going to hear Phil Hartman say yeah yeah yeah I uh oh man it's yeah I I think the rest of the episode I like

tuned out at 13 like poor man I'm done I'm right yeah yeah you're just kind of like you're just meditating on that for a while I think the rest of the episode, I tuned out watching it at 13. Poor man. I'm done. I'm ready. Yeah, yeah. You're just meditating on that for a while. I always think, you know what I think is nice is how there's SNL things here and there where they still use his voice.

Like if Christopher Walken does the Continental, they still use. You're right. There's been other. Or like if Dana Carvey does Church Chat, they use. And now Church, they like leave him as the voice in the things that we're doing. Or the Wayne's World ones, too. Whenever they do Wayne's World,

they still play his intro to it. Aurora, Illinois, Community X. Oh, man, there's a bunch of these. That's a nice little... Because his voice is the perfect announcer voice. And deep thoughts. Oh, yeah, yeah. God, so many.

Then he's not even in the all of these are just like, those are like, then he's not even in the sketches. These are like just little, but how much, he was the voice of so much. He was a signal that you were going to see some great comedy, even if he wasn't in it. I have just so much fondness for that voice in that man. Yeah.

That's some lizard stuff. Well, it also felt like a very futurama i don't feel too much of david cohen in this one a ton but the pulling up of the predators right off screen and putting them in the face yeah that does feel like the kind of more like magical gags in futurama of just pulling a thing from behind your back there was there was one line that we skipped by that i thought was very coen-y where, like, in Futurama, I think a trademark of his writing is just, like, a character will make a sharp linguistic turn

in their sentence that won't make any sense where Marge is like, I don't know, I think Marge says, I don't want to know what Bart's doing and I'm going to find out. That's right. It feels like a very, like, Fry would say that sort of line. You're totally right. Sure, sure, I see that. But Bart gets his needed information from this, so it is a very plot focused one too i think this might be the most informative troy

mcclure has ever been either genuinely yeah it's not wrong-headed it's not like that picture of the food chain and it's all everything's pointed at humans yeah or genuinely get a bowl he tells him the amount of watts he should have in the bulb that he gets and it does save birds like it actually helps them and the regurgitation thing too is all true which i felt like every show did regurgitation gags then too it was like every comedy writer learned that fact about birds and lets them do vomit jokes on kids cartoons they really did yeah uh But that's it for Troy See you later, Troy But Lizards, right? Always remember him Yes

Yeah, we'll never forget Never forget But then Bart walks away And there's a little gag That like Lovejoy Has been renting the same Bible All the time Which like

I feel like you get free Bible You can't not get free Bibles In America He's just not going To the right places for it Though I guess he's very impover to the right places for it though i guess he's very impoverished uh the rebel of joy is low-run church yeah we do get all his money on trains we do get a one of three homer falling down the stairs yeah yeah i really like in this

episode they're really good yeah yeah it is more limited animation to not show it but i kind of i like the the letting dan castellaneta's noises right the scene for you. You can just see his pain. Yeah. Yeah, he's very good at vocalizing different, and how many episodes has he had to try to find new flavors of Homer pain? It's pretty amazing.

Just falling down the stairs alone, there's been several scenes to date. Oh, yeah. He jokes too that no matter how many times he has screamed, he's like, well, no, they need a new recording of a scream for this one. Bart, though, he's working on helping the eggs and he's even giving them a little talking

too. Hey fellas, good news. I found an extra 75 white bulb lying around. Check it out, guys I've been working on this regurgitation thing Oh, yeah Hope you like Pop-Tarts I think I'll call you Chirpy Boy And you, Bark Jr.

And you can call me Mother No, wait, that sounds kind of and you can call me mother. No, wait, that sounds kind of fruity. Just call me mom. I forgot that Homer starts whistling and walking again, so it sounds like he landed perfectly on his feet from the fall and just resumes walking. Also that Bart knows it's fruity to call mother, but mom is okay. I like that too.

Weird internal logic. We get a little montage of Bart helping the bird and it's, it's just a little too cutesy. I don't know. I mean, the only joke in it is Homer flying on the stairs again with like carrying bowling balls. Three bowling balls down the stairs.

Yeah. I think maybe you feel them trying to find where the jokes are. Like this works as a story. Yeah. What are the hard laughs in it? I wrote, I wrote down it almost feels like a almost a little season one two in a way because it is like there's emotion

to it and it's more story than yeah there's no b plot or anything to distract from this yeah i saw the fact on the wikipedia that it was potentially intended to be a b plot but they couldn't really figure out what to pair it with and ended up yeah well originally cohen thought of it as like homer cares for birds at the plant and then they decided instead it would be you know they'd be more heartfelt to make it a bart and march thing than a homer silly thing and yeah so it changed quite a lot they also had a funny gag they uh that cohen said he but i just remembered he mentioned on the commentary that got cut that was bark gets known around school for as a killer and so someone i forget who it was but he says that

somebody tries to hire him to kill database was it macaraning i like that that's a funny they could have gone to darker places with it. Yeah. But yes, after Bart has been caring for the birds for some amount of time, up in his classic treehouse, Marge and Homer are wondering what's up. What do you think he's doing up there? I don't know. Drug lab?

Drug lab? We're reading comic books. What am I, Kreskin? You tell me what he's doing. I don't know, and I don't want to know. And I'm going to find out. That's the line. Oh, my good gray extension cord.

Oh, no. Gotta keep these warm. Bart, stop whatever you're doing and come down here. Can't right now. Come back later. Oh, I'll come back later. How's this for later? Mom, listen. Why are you sitting like that? What are you hiding this time?

Eggs? That bird I killed was their mother. I don't want her babies to die, too. Oh, honey. Oh, come here. Oh, my goodness. Look. You know, you're right, Scott.

That is line for line. end of almost like she's like oh yeah did you steal this time let me see that yeah show it to me now right oh well i did here i wanted to give it to you now i wanted to save it for later oh i love you so much but like but the emotionality is not there as much yeah like well i mean now that i know what happens i don't really buy into the emotionality of this story as much right yeah though there's a couple lines in the third act that still sort of keep the bart in march yeah you don't entirely drop it but yeah this i mean this basically this confused me as a kid too when i saw this that i thought like well wait it's over

march forgave bart but i know there's 10 minutes left what what else is going on and that's really where it kind of goes off the road also i use that kreskin line at the beginning and i'm a little like that's a pretty like comedy writery reference like i barely remember what i don't know me as a 13 year old like maybe i was a weird enough 13 year old maybe i knew what kreskin was but yes carson was off the air for like six years at that point. Yeah. Was that what Kreskin, or he was? No, the amazing Kreskin wasn't.

Oh, I'm thinking of Karnak, I'm sorry. Kreskin was the real guy. He was probably based on Kreskin. See, I know the parody more than I do the actual guy. It's things that are like that, where you know the sketch, but not the real thing. At the day we recorded this, Ross Perot died, and that's what I was mainly seeing. Only people remember sketches. They do not remember things the real Ross Perot

did. Oh, yeah. Hey, to bring up Phil Hartman again, I remember when Stockdale, the running mate, died, people probably thought of that. I just know him saying gridlock, but Phil Hartman saying it. Like a caveman. Yeah, Kreskin's still alive. Why am I here 84 amazing yeah

the amazing yeah he's good at living outlived ross perot there's also kind of a weird shot like in composition that when they're looking out the window the like bar on the window cuts off marge's necklace perfectly and she looks just naked without a necklace on it's weird weird. It's just odd framing. It just seems like an odd framing choice. But I did like right before that when Bart gets the cat wet and then the cat shakes off on the dog

and the dog shakes off on Homer and Homer's shaking off water animation. I did like that. But they get the emotionality out of the way in Act 2 to then go to Crazy Town in Act 3. But they're seeing that the birds were starting to hatch or the the eggs i should say uh so they take them inside it's honestly this is a joke that was i thought a little too cutesy that they were keeping them warm with pies that marge was

continually baking she has all these lines in here that are just so like mom lines of like all marge can do is bake pies that she is so domestic that she knows about her good gray extension cord as opposed to the other cord. Although it does lead to Homer going to eat two pies in the basement and then falling down the stairs for the last one. That's the one. Yeah. I didn't see it coming.

It's like, where, where is he going to eat the pies? And then he goes to the basement to eat the pies. Uh, no, there's a time cut to when he's eating his second pie that then when it comes back, there's like four empty pie tins. So Homer has eaten quite a lot of pies in this afternoon.

They are watching them hatch. We also learned the fact of Bart's birth, it isn't discontinuity. Sometimes I note if it's like, oh, this is discontinuity with the previous episode. But when Bart is born in when i married marge homer we don't see when she goes into labor it's homer gets the job at the power plant from burns then goes to the bouvier home meets marge's mom and she's like she's at the hospital already so let's go and then homer gets there so if he doesn't remember how long it was partially it's because he wasn't there for most of it i I could see that. I forgot those were the circumstances.

No discontinuity alert on this episode. We're safe. We're safe. Relax. No one needs to be fired for that blunder this time. But yes, they are intently watching eggs. Why is this taking so long? Bart was born in about five minutes.

Actually, it took 53 hours. Really? Well, the time just flew by, didn't it? Everybody come quick. They're hatching. I see a foot. I see an eye. I see a neck. I see a horn. I see an eye. I see a neck. I see a horn. A horn?

Lizards, they'd be. Lizards. I think up to this point in my first viewings of all the Simpsons, this had to be the most, huh? Inducing act break I ever had as a kid of like, what's the, what? Yeah.

Where are we going? The stories, the story seemed over, frankly. Yeah. Like, Oh, Bart,

Bart saved birds, made up for the bird that he killed. And now there are lizards. So if they were going to zig instead of zag, that was their plan. Then I mean, having lizards hatch out of bird eggs definitely is a surprise. Like it is counter to what you expect,

whether it's the best writing that's, you know, that you can argue about that, but it's definitely not expected. You got to give them that. But yeah, it's just sort of like, I think it's just,

maybe this is all stacked weird. Like the emotion would be stronger if the, the marge bart confrontation happened more in act three and then it was this weird addendum that it was lizards rather than it being a full act of let's deal with that it's the lizards okay if it's about like bart being irresponsible and then realizing he needs to be he did this crime and now he's got to take care of the babies and then the advancement of that is they're lizards. And as we continue, we'll go,

well, so what was learned from, I guess he kept caring for the lizards. I don't think we're telling one story here. This is like this weird other. And Bart is sort of like a hypocrite at the end too. Yeah. Like Lisa points out, like, this is weird. Well, and also Skinner has to show up

to be the villain of Act 3, which is not in any of the rest of the episode. I love any good Skinner stuff, but he's funny in this. Yes, that is true, but it is odd. He doesn't fit. He's similar to the Ghostbusters, the EPA guy. I forget the specific, but he's like... Peck.

Yeah, he's like... Peck. Yeah. He's Peck in this, but it's a guy we know who's always his principal. Now, wait, on top of it, this once he is the by-the-books leader of the very restrictive bird society. It's a little bizarre to come out of nowhere.

He's the principal of birds, too. His jurisdiction also includes birds it has a whiff of the late 90s uh environmentalism is actually kind of stupid and bad and environmentalists are hypocrites because these people want to kill the lizards it doesn't really you know dig into that but there's a like a whiff of that i get a little flippant there yeah but well when they come back from the break bart and lisa argue over whether they're birds or lizards bart says ixo fetso which they kind of guiltily on the commentary go like that's just an archie bunker line yeah that's true well yeah the homer says that they should uh decide how who's right by kickboxing and then marge cancelsels that, and then Homer then does his next fall,

which in my memory, when he falls down, he starts eating the pies, but it just stops. I was like, no, he should land and then keep eating the pies from the ground. I thought he was going to based on how he kept whistling when he hit the ground last time. Yeah, I was kind of shocked it was not there. But yes, they head to the springfield

birdwatching society where the pecking order is strictly enforced as the sign gag says skinner is uh quite happy to see these lizards now uh people there's been some confusion about our bird sighting rules you cannot count birds that you've seen at the zoo on stamps or in dreams well i'm back to square one You cannot count birds that you've seen at the zoo, on stamps, or in dreams. Well, I'm back to square one. My God, a pigeon. That's the last bird on my list. So long, suckers.

Excuse me, can you tell us what kind of birds these are? They hatch from eggs I found in a nest. Good heavens. I'm very glad you brought those in, Bart. I'll just get those killed and you can be... Wait, what the heck are you doing? Nice civic duty, that's what. Bolivian tree lizard? Mm-hmm. It's a vicious oviraptor.

It feasts on bird eggs and lays its own eggs in the nest. The unsuspecting mother bird cares for them until the babies hatch and devour her, too. Ha ha ha! What a chump! It's already wiped out the dodo, the cuckoo, and the nay-nay. It has nasty plans for the booby, the titmouse, the woodcock, and the titpecker. How vile! Titpecker's not a real bird. At least, scoring a Google.

They just made up one. And the Nene is threatened, but not extinct. I bet it was. I think it used to be on endangered. And now it's down to the level right below that. Yeah. It's a state bird of Hawaii. I did not know that until I saw.

But yeah, this is based on real life species of birds like the cuckoo and the cowbird. They will lay their eggs in other birds' nests and then kick the other eggs out, so their babies are raised by other birds. Oh, it's a real syndrome. Yeah, so the word cuckoo has cuck in it. That's no coincidence. Those birds are getting cucked.

That's where it's derived from. Well, you talk about those Futurama- he kind of turns in dialogue too just like i'm very glad you brought these here i'll have them killed for you right now like that is also a very quick turn professor yeah and also the the anti-environmentalism thing these this bit here really reminds me of like the poplars episode or the oil drilling in alaska episode of futurama they all make fun of conservation before sort of agreeing with it. Yeah. And they have to be disposed of

as quickly and gruesomely as possible. It gets out of power drill. I love that. Yeah, that's funny. Yeah, but there's also the Scully era is the era of so long suckers. Like people say suckers all the time in the show. Jasper, we see the one pigeon

that represents this pigeon menace. Though I... also a chance to plant it a little more yeah yeah they could have gone harder i just somebody should have said oh well it's i thought now i think it's a gag that like jasper somehow the last one he saw was a pigeon which like those are the ones that are everywhere you always see them i also like that mo just tears his thing but it's kind of a weird animation thing where he tears it in half from the center instead of that it like stays on his neck it's just it's kind of strange to me i it feels like an animation uh goof him up i think this also this is where we

start having like i feel like in another era of simpsons they would have like invented a bunch of new bird watching characters and what is the weird quality of the bird watchers and now it's mr burns mr burns does not belong he gets a few good lines well each person there says a line so nobody's there like um uselessly but yeah you're right instead of making up a funny bird society they're just i mean if you're talking about like cutting corners or saving time on the show just put in your regular cast of people and you don't have to design new characters or take time with that you know but yeah yeah yeah but it seems like they could have like you know in the way that like okay we have we need a bunch of nerds or like the you know like you like where database comes from um yeah

in season four they would have just asked like dan can you make up a new crazy voice for the guy who runs the bird watching society yeah yeah but i think that's just a sea change in how production goes i think scully was more like what what character that we already know and love could do this thing yeah i mean crusty could have been there yeah exactly yeah i'm actually surprised he wasn't the reveal that those lizards were going to kill that bird anyway is also an absolving of bart's guilt a little bit too yeah by killing that bird all he did was kill it earlier than the hatched eggs would have done when it would have torn her and probably like a more humane death yeah that's true oh wait yeah like a shot in the back of the head, essentially, where it's over in an instant instead of a gruesome devouring,

of which we then see later in the episode. Bart causes many more gruesome devourings. That's true. That is a weird... That's a very big hole in this. I never... Well, also, and I never thought about until this viewing of like... Phil Harmon's last episode, when you're thinking about his tragic death,

is one filled with like gunshot deaths and like tearing people apart i never thought about yeah the gun thing yeah the gun thing especially it's like yeah i guess that's why they uh they didn't leave in the memory of after the bird gets devoured there there was one of those upon the original airing right oh it went straight from a bird being eaten by lots of lizards to In Memory of Phil Hartman. Did they have one of those? They did, yeah. That's pretty fucking weird. I've seen the picture.

It is white font on black and then a picture of Lionel Hutz and a picture of Troy from this episode. And it says, In Loving Memory of Our Friend, Phil Hartman. I mean, didn't Trash of the Titans end with Linda McCartney? After all the garbage and poop jokes, there's a picture of Linda McCartney. I think it is that burns calls you to wanker Oh, yeah, it goes straight to in memory of Linda McCartney. It's hard probably a lot of comedy shows It is hard to do and in actually the Breaking Bad I feel like had a lot of in memoriams as it went and it's always after some horrible fucked up thing happens And then in memory of our the real person we do it's a it's a hard area so when they keep casting

like 70 year old men in their show they just they're they're asking for trouble there but in the case of archer the joke was the character was always like horribly abused and beaten and so and it's like in memory of this guy who played woodcrest it's just like do you remember all that elder abuse jokes which is funny in general like having to say goodbye to troy mcclure and lionel hutz two big pieces of shit yeah awful man and then i guess marshall you know like oh that they had to like have bart say, I'll miss you, Mrs. Krabappel. Like he hated her. Yeah. She was mean and smoked cigarettes and bitter.

And in that one, they gave her a true last scene like that one. They in a similar way, they had like posthumous recordings they hadn't used yet. With Marsha Wallace, it was like a scene where she's at a dance with Ned. And then they reuse the scene to be a dream that ned was having of being at a dance with edna and then he's he's got a black armband on and like oh i miss you and then nelson gives him a ha ha and then goes i miss her too and then it just ends like and so i never saw that they they do a more explicit send-off using her voice than they do in this show but i mean they'd be even weirder if

they're just if if after that scene bart's like it was nice seeing that after troy mcclure died or whatever like that would i wouldn't have liked that at all no he was so uh just barely a part of their actual lives when he married uh selma yes yeah strange well yeah part of the simpsons and memoriams how do you even begin to deal with it? I give them credit. We're going to see more and more of them as time goes on. Well, yeah. When they blow up Apu in a truck. They just, I think they really have taken a vow of silence on Apu.

That's their approach now. It's just you don't talk about it. Though there's kind of a funny Apu scene here. I do like the. Oh, yeah. They reveal that he brought in the Bolivian tree lizards. Me and Bob were just talking about this because we went to a 7-Eleven and how fake their donuts are.

And I love that these donuts are shipped in from Bolivia of all places. And it's just loose donuts and styrofoam. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a funny visual. It's impossibly expensive to make donuts. And my favorite drawing in the episode, too, is the logo of the bolivian donut place that it's like a llama or alpaca or whatever like smelling donuts and such a weird drawing but yes apu does not admit that he caused this ecological

thing and we're also talking about when the show's repeating itself this is the bullfrogs in australia again too like they've also done ecological threats of an invading species yeah too it did feel like the uh the bullfrog thing from barbara's australia yeah yeah i don't want to be a negative nancy yeah all these things of like oh they did this before but this is so similar too but in that episode you saw like scenes of the bullfrogs being a nuisance after part leaves the one in the fountain at the airport also they didn't end with bullfrogs eating a kangaroo to death or something they didn't do that it's almost as if television series aren't meant to run for upwards of 30 years no it's

almost as if you might begin to start repeating yourself that is where i can't like it's hard for me to go yeah these writers and they gave up and got lazy. Like, I imagine anyone working on season 37 of it. Like, what would you do? It's not like SNL where there's always new sketch idea. Like, you ultimately have to service Homer and Marge, and how many things can a character do? And you can't go back and survey all 30 years you know just to find

out like have we done this joke before yeah it's a huge waste of time it's hard enough for us to keep in mind like just 17 years or whatever of the show let alone 30 eventually on this podcast we'll be like i've you've told that story oh we're at that point already yeah i've been podcasting for nine years i've told every story at least six times. There's no more like, yeah. There's only so much time to cruise stories. All my stories are now about podcasting. Marge tries to convince Bart to let the lizards get killed.

When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care?

Look, Skinner, we haven't got all day. Kill the horrid beasts, then do away with their lizards. No, don't hurt them. I'll just keep them as pets. They might escape and breed. The law is very clear on this. They must be exterminated as quickly and gruesomely as possible. No, they're mine. I'm sure we can work this out. He's just

a child. Let me talk to him. All right, I'll give you a moment. That'll give us time to prepare for the splatter. Bart, I'm sorry, but there's nothing we can do. Your lizards are banned by federal law. Everyone thinks they're monsters, but I raised them, and I love them.

I know that's hard to understand. Not as hard as you think. Run for it. Really? That's the little bit of the emotionality coming back at the end here of just that. I do like the line that like Bart is now experiencing what Marge sort of felt before of thinking that Bart was a monster. It's different than Marge be not proud, at least. Yeah, at least it's a different beat. So I appreciate that they tried to keep in the emotionality there with this last little scene here.

And she knows what it's like to have everybody hate her children yeah yeah to kill to literally kill them i do like the burns is outright says like let's kill the hard beast and then do away with their lizards i like that commandment that's the only reason he's there everybody has one line they're gonna say he does get the looking through the binoculars the wrong way like over there in the distance i do like that one it's a fun shot of bart like being warped by the perspective yeah yeah i like that a lot yeah yeah i like when skinner comes back out to discover that they've run away that he says like well it's been exactly one moment yeah skinner would know what that meant that's a pretty that could have been in any year of any like episode of the show that's a very

classic that's great and then uh edna as the woman gets to shove marge out of the show. That's a very classic. That's great. And then Edna, as the woman, gets to shove Marge out of the way. I assume that Edna joined it to try to have a mutual interest with Skinner. That's why she's in the birdwatching society. They're doing activities together as a couple, right? Sweet. I've never, you know, birdwatching seems kind of fruitless.

I don't know. I feel like you can't really do it in a city even, really. I don't have to leave the home to bird watch. It's great. Just look over and look to my left slightly. You're only checking off one bird on your list, though. But what a bird. But yeah, I also like that they all have safety goggles at the ready to put on

because they know there's going to be... How much blood can really come from those two tiny lizards? I can't imagine. Unless they put them in a blender. I can't imagine too much blood put them in a blender i can't imagine too much blood they're jam-packed they're they're a big balloon waiting to go off prepare for the splatter is a good uh line too and they head up to the top of the roof they fight over the box bart uh somehow is overpowering a grown man and skinner and holding on to the shoe box

they then split in the middle and the lizard seemingly fall to their death but then they open up their little gliding wings and float down to safety uh and there's a good line that like skinner saying i knew they had that but i didn't i hope they didn't know yeah that's a good line beginning bart has a moral quandary about whether to play with guns but in the end the lizards had wings. It's like, where are we? It's weird how we got here. Yeah. I do also like that Skinner says,

I said relinquish. That's a very nerdy Skinner thing there. And so, yeah, the lizards get away. Skinner mourns part you don't know what hell you've unleashed, and we get to learn about that hell. Wow, did you know they had those web flaps for gliding? Yes.

But I was hoping they didn't know that. Mm-hmm. Well, I hope you're happy, Bart. You have no idea what kind of plague you've unleashed upon this town. Our top story, the population of parasitic tree lizards has exploded, and local citizens couldn't be happier.

It seems the rapacious reptiles have developed a taste for the common pigeon, also known as the feathered rat or gutter bird. For the first time, citizens need not fear harassment by flocks of chattering disease bags. So I guess you need the authoritative voice of kent brockman to buy uh this solution instead of setting up all the pigeons they're just like we'll just have kent say take my word for it yeah yeah what if a man describes it instead of drawing lots and lots but that's uh but that is a good little turn of and people couldn't be happier

like another futurama i didn't notice until you said it this does have a few cones lots of fun turns yeah in the dialogue and so much hate for pigeons like that over the top hate for pigeons i find them adorable i like when they do their little dance when they're trying to impress ladies they fan out their tail they spin around it's very cute uh i think this uh poisoned a generation on pigeons and made them all just think they're disgusting creatures like i that's why we have this gun problem people bought the guns initially for pigeon killing and then it got out of hand in other ways i also like that in the world of springfield pigeons are disgusting to them rampant lizards running around they're just like oh nice lizards hey like no one's disgusted by lizards crawling everywhere when bart is awarded the scented candle there are like just lizards crawling around in the background lisa pulls a lizard off her shoulder they're just

so copious yeah there's also a weird little moment where the lizards land and look at each other and kind of yeah stick out their tongues it's almost like they sound like talking to each other by sticking out their tongues like the raptors in jurassic. Blue communicating. Have you ridden the new Jurassic World ride yet? I'm not going to do it yet. I know they just quietly opened it. Again, to go back to the wimpiness, I've only been on Jurassic Park the ride once because I don't do the drops so much.

I'm with you, yeah. It's the biggest, well, it was at the time when I rode it, the biggest drop on a water ride. Yeah, I don't like that. It's not good for me. Splash Mountain, I feel like it's pushing it for me. I hate drops so much. I like a single drop more than a bunch of jerking around.

If you told me ride the Mummy at Hollywood, ride Hollywood Mummy three times or ride Jurassic Park three times, I'd do Jurassic Park. For me, it's like the anxiety knowing one thing will one thing will happen it's the drop and you'll be thinking about it the entire time until it happens yeah oh absolutely oh and i and i still feel it like though i now go on splash mountain every once in a while i still bet the climb up that yeah it is it's coming it's happening it's good well presentationally in splash mountain that's my favorite part of it is just the the buzzer talking to you like Bray Rabbit's dead and it's coming for you next and things are about to get really

bad like they ramp it up really good there yeah which I realized is intentional it is a good storytelling meant to but like that that and this earnest thing it's in my head and it took the literal I I not everyone's lucky enough to have this experience. They took the literal designer of Splash Mountain telling me why motivating me to do it. Tony Baxter, one of the greatest imagineers of all time. And he gave me

he said like, well, yeah, it's going to be you're going to be really stressed out for five minutes. But at the end it's you get a minute of pure pleasure. It's the greatest feel that is finale. I wasn't wanting to write it again. I wrote it once 15 years ago and then wrote it last month. Once in Orlando and then in Anaheim. And when I wrote the Anaheim one, I was feeling my childhood stress again.

I'm like, oh, it's building, it's building. But once you go to the laughing place, you're like, oh, yeah, I feel awesome. It's worth it. Jurassic Park doesn't give you that, though. It's just like, oh, yeah, I feel awesome. It's worth it. Jurassic Park doesn't give you that, though. It's just like, oh, I guess I got away from those dinosaurs. You're not having fun afterwards. The ride is over. Yes.

The end is that you get to leave. At least it doesn't saw your log in half like the Scitchy and Scratchy. As a theme park nerd, even at the time, I was like, the logistics of this. The Scitchy and Scratchy land has to replace these logs or reconnect them. Although also, we got it in the episode, I know. But there was a Dudley Do-Right ride at Universal Florida. And there was going to be a thing where there was a big spinning log. And the log split in two.

And then it went down two separate flume paths. Kind of like the real life Fitching Scratchyland ride. I'll tell you where I'm too much of a wuss. I have never ridden that one. Like, I've never. I've only been once, and I decided not to do it. It was also raining a lot that day, so I was like, I don't want to get more wet. It's a scary one, I'll tell you.

There's kind of like a second, it like hits a ramp and does a second drop. Popeye, meanwhile, is just all water. The Popeye ride. Yeah, it's good., it's soaked upon soaked. It's the sokiest ride ever. Bilge rat barges. We'll get to that one. So when we're really scraping the bottom of the barrel.

But yes, the end of this episode is two times in succession, Lisa shits on the writing of this episode. I think this is the Rubicon I was talking about before, everybody. It is kind of middle finger like, wait, what was this about? Like, who was going to learn the lesson? They, after this, would do a lot more of these. Like, this is more than, let's say, Mo. This is a character saying out loud, this is bad writing.

Or why would you do this thing? And then a character shrugging like yeah it feels like they know that people on the internet will complain that this is a cheap ending and they need to let the people on the internet know that bart just shrugs and does not care but it also kind of alerted me to the problem which i don't think yeah it even occurred you wouldn't have even been critic by them trying to cut off critics of the past they then alerted other people to be critical of stuff yeah i mean couldn't it have like taken care of another problem that isn't a bird yeah that would have if it was not pigeons instead of silencing

pettins it created more yeah i think it was more for me i think it's like they want it to be like anti-sitcom and that like oh the lesson bart learns is very contradictory and he's being a hypocrite it doesn't matter but they want you to buy in emotionally so you feel kind of betrayed that there was an there were emotional beats in the story that all things was like fuck you there is no moral there is no lesson bart learned nothing which they do there's another episode where they they kind of determine there was no point is it the sexual harassment one well it blood feud Blood Feud, they say, like, it's an ending. Oh, yes, yeah. But why is that more charming?

I guess because the rest of it's more... Oh, actually, no. The one where Marge said, it's an ending. Let's leave it at that. That was Bobo. That was the... Yeah. Burns just takes Bobo.

Oh, yeah. In the head one, she was trying to find the moral. Maybe the moral story is, yeah. And people were, like, shutting her down, her down like no that's not it yeah so i guess in you know in golden age episodes they did the same thing yeah but i mean i guess they did it first back then yeah yeah but yes let's let's hear the uh the last clip here for decimating our pigeon population and making springfield a less oppressive place to while away our worthless lives, I present you with this scented candle.

Yeah! All right! Well, I was wrong. The lizards are a godsend. But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're overrun by lizards? No problem. We simply unleash wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards. But aren't the snakes even worse? Yes, but we're prepared for

that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat. But then we're stuck with gorillas! No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death. I'm proud of you, boy. Mmm, Logan Berry. i'm proud of you boy logan berry i don't get it part you got all upset when you killed one bird but now you've killed tens of thousands and it doesn't bother you at all hey you're right i call the front seat

you had it on the way over hey that music choice too yeah over yeah it's that that's a real f you as well yeah it wasn't i mean it wasn't super gory it is cartina the just kind of disappears in the cloud of lizards and there's no like sound effects of it screaming or anything but yeah then in loving memory of phil hartman yeah that's an odd juxtaposition and that's well that that deep season 10 there was no way they could fix that and like they didn't intend for there to be an in memoriam when they wrote that joke and i at that point they're kind of stuck with it you know probably if this was live action they'd just rewrite they'd have done a full episode just

like news radio did but yeah they're kind of just stuck with what they made but he's not troy and uh lionel are not crucial to the world of The Simpsons and, in fact, have only harmed them and made their lives worse. So I can't say goodbye to them in a loving way. This was as a kid when I learned of the existence of Logan Berry. My mom never bought Logan Berry at the grocery store or whatever. There's an interesting history to it, though. It was accidentally created by a horticulturalist in 1881, James Harvey Logan.

Oh, I see where he's going with this. He accidentally crossbred a raspberry and a blackberry to create the Logan Berry. It's a good joke that Homer knows it it's a loganberry based on the sense yeah a very kind of obscure berry also the the candle is just a rando joke i think it was them realizing like we've done a lot of ones where the mayor gives them something let's how about a scented candle like that's that's weird it's a good cheap gift yes yeah i do like yeah i had an acquaintance who worked at the yankee candlele, and she said it destroyed her nose. There was just her sense of smell was hurt for a long time afterwards,

which that's a lot to sacrifice for a minimum wage job. Not being able to smell. I visited my dead local mall when I was visiting home about a month ago, and the stink radius around the Bath and Body Works was a good like 500 yards like you could smell it approach as you approach it like as it gets as you get closer and closer just so intense i don't know how anyone could work in there it's it's disgusting oh and also loganberry is somewhat associated with british sailors because of its high vitamin c content content it replaced limes as the thing that the sailors would eat to fight off scurvy though they still call them limey

instead of like Loganese or whatever. I'm learning so much about Loganberries that I'll soon forget. But I guess we did give our final thoughts on this episode before the final clip. But Scott has been with us for almost three hours. Thank you for... This is what happens. Look, our podcast

goes very long. This is your longest episode? No, no, it's not. Okay, thank God. I just never want to be the longest. No, no. I'm glad you also fall into the long podcast trap. You're not like, I've been here for how long?

No, no, no. Yeah, hey, I like to talk. I like to talk about Phil Hartman, and this was a pleasure. I've enjoyed it very much. Thank you so much, Scott. So we'll do our plugs once you are out of the LA studio in fabulous Hollywood. But please tell us

where we can find you, what you're working on. You've got a lot of stuff going on. Yeah, if you enjoyed this and want similarly lengthy podcast content, then check out Podcast The Ride where Mike Carlson,

Jason Sheridan, and I say all of the far too much minutiae that we know about the world of theme parks. And we're coming up on a big event. We did something. We went to every single store in Universal CityWalk, which I hope you check out while you're in town.

If you haven't, one of the finest shopping and indoor water coffin massage parlors experiences you could ever want to have. But anyway, we're coming up on a new thing very soon where we're going to every single place in downtown Disney. Oh. We're calling it the downtown Disney ordeal. So if that sounds like good torture to you, the listener, then yeah, check that out. And otherwise, my website, scottgerdner.com, where you can watch sketches that I've done for Funny or Die

or for the show hosted by former Simpsons writer Conan O'Brien. Conan is the name of the show, and I worked there and made some fun videos there. And if you want to see my animated show, Moonbeam City, there is no way. I respect Viacom's copyright laws, and do not DM me on Twitter at Scott Gairdner because I have no way of getting around these copyright laws and sending you a link, So don't you dare.

Totally would do that. There were no bootlegs in the trunk of his car, by the way. Yeah, I'm not shocked full of self-printed Moonbeam City DVDs. Well, yeah, and your podcast is Patreon supported just like ours. Oh, yeah. I wanted to compliment the podcast where Patreon had another of my favorites was the Green Goblin on David Letterman is one of the greatest moments. Well, well, well, a fan of me, are you? I didn't realize you were so sinister.

We did watch the clip last night and the Company Bang Bang parody of it with Tom Slevin. It's really good. That's the kind of thing on our Patreon we did not it's not a review of Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark it's a review of when

the Green Goblin performed on the David Letterman show and burst in through the back of the theater and then invaded the Letterman stage

so stuff like that yeah if you like if you like all your guys Minutia you probably like our Minutia thanks for letting me talk Minutia with y'all So stuff like that. Yeah. If you like, if you like all your guys, minutia, you'd probably like our minutia. Thanks for letting me talk minutia with you all.

What fun. Thank you. Yeah. So thanks again to Scott Gairdner. Please check out his podcast, podcast, the ride and moon bean city, wherever you can find it.

You heard what he said, but as for us, you can find us on the internet at patrion.com slash talking Simpsons. If you sign up today at the $5 level, you can get every podcast of talking simpsons and what a cartoon one week ahead of time and at free and at that five dollar level we also have a ton of other podcasts including our mini series and our most recent one was talking in the hill a first season exploration of king of the hill and we will have a new mini series debuting in the fall that is only for five dollar patrons henry what is happening at the $10 level for patrons?

For the extra premium level patrons who go up to $10 a month, they get access to our monthly What a Cartoon Movie podcast where we give the Talking Simpsons-style approach to a different animated feature film once a month going up to four hours long in our conversations about classic animated films this month you can hear beavis and butthead do america if you sign up right now and you'll get to hear the august one too which will be decided by our wonderful patrons that support one more time at patreon.com slash

talking simpsons and we thank you for all that because it makes it possible for us to go to los angeles and record with cool guests in person like scott so again that is patreon.com talking simpsons check it out as for me i've been one of your hosts bob mackie find me on twitter as bob servo my other podcast is retronauts it's a classic gaming podcast every monday occasionally on friday go to retronauts.com or look for retronauts in your podcast machine you'll find find it. Please subscribe to it. I think you'll like it. Henry, what about you? You can follow me on Twitter at H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G. You'll get all your Henry Gilbert updates, cool pictures of when I go on trips like this,

and most importantly, every time a new podcast goes up on the free feed or the Patreon, I'm sure to tweet it out so you'll learn about it too. Stay in the know by following me at H E N E R E Y G. Thanks for joining us folks. We'll see you next week for tree house of four or nine and we'll see you then. Stand back and watch the pro. Uh, shouldn't you put on a batting helmet? Nah, they messed up my hair. Ooh, ball one.

Ball two. This bozo's gonna work me. Hey! You're going down, you... Goal! Goal! Ball! You're ball! You're... Thank you! You better go!

I'm gonna go if you do... Hang in there, Dad. Just half a basket left. Ball. Wow, you sure get a lot of balls for a quarter.