Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - D'oh-in' in the Wind With Alex Navarro

Episode Date: August 21, 2019

We've gone granola this week as we welcome back Giant Bomb's Alex Navarro to discuss Homer's hippie conversion! We talk about The Summer of Love, bare feet, NARCs, Beatles covers, Billy Joel, and so much more as Homer becomes the hippie his mother wanted him to be. Try not to freak out as you listen along to this week's far out podcast! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron!

attention talking simpsons listeners we have a special mini-series just for you we're going through the entire first season of king of the hill and you can only hear it if you're a five dollar and up patron at patreon.com slash talking simpsons we're giving the talking simpsons treatment to all 13 episodes of king of the hills first season and if you want a free sample you'll find the first episode available for free in the talking simpsons feed patreon.com slash talking simpsons it's the only place you'll find the first episode available for free in the talking simpsons feed patreon.com slash talking simpsons it's the only place you'll find the first season of talk king of the hill made you go click click click click click click click it's real easy man hey everybody quick update here that just so you know that we recorded this one and posted it on patreon last week before

the untimely passing of peteronda, which RIP. Unfortunately though, part of the podcast is us talking about them doing a joke that Peter Fonda had passed away and us saying that Peter Fonda was still alive. He is now no longer with us. So if you're wondering like, why are these guys talking about Peter Fonda that way? That's why. So whoops, again, it's one of the problems with recording a podcast ahead of time but hey just to make sure you guys aren't confused why we're talking about it i hardly endorse this event or product Ahoy, ahoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, where we turn everything into one big plastic hassle. I'm your host, Cosmic Fool Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who else is here with me today?

No way, Nark. This is Henry Gilbert. And who do we have on the line? I believe this is Alex Navarro from Giant Bomb back again. Yay. And today's episode is Doan in the Wind. Heads up. Hey, it's Homer J. My man, you've gone granola. Right on.

Join the hack. Today's episode aired on November 15th, 1998. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my god! Oh boy, Bobby! The final new episode of Animaniacs airs on Kids WB. I Still Know What You Did Last Summer debuts in November for some reason, and Half-Life introduces gamers to Gordon Freeman. Ooh, yeah.

A lot's going on. Next week we've got Ocarina of Time. This week, Half-Life. 1998 was quite a year for those video games. So we can mourn the departure of Animaniacs by playing two amazing, world-changing games. But the movie is still around the corner, the Animaniacs movie, Wacko's Wish.

That's right. It wasn't Yako's Wish. He got everything he wanted in that series, Henry. It's Wacko's turn, damn it. The generation that grew up with Animaniacs, they were ready to enter into their angry, violent teen years with Half-Life as they put away their childhood. They learned all about growing beards.

Now every white guy has a beard. Except me. Me too. It's tough. It's a little too patchy for me. Yeah, no, my white guy beard is a travesty and it is something that i if i were to go back in time and tell young me that you would never be able to pull out a full beard i would be crestfallen that would be the worst news you could bring him for 2019 it's the only

news i would choose to give him because i feel like anything else would just destroy him i'm looking at the final episode of animaniacs and what it was it looks like a bunch of material that was just uh culled together that was left over. Half the clip show. Yeah, the wiki says, here are the segments. Number one, the good feathers look at and comment on a sunrise. All right, that's some good material. Number two, standing in for Richard Stone, who was out for the day,

Nival Nosenest is driven completely crazy by the Warners for the scoring of a cartoon. So I'm sure that was pretty funny. That was one good one one i watched this recently and wow number three a clip show segment of the first 99 episodes of animaniacs intended to fill out the remaining time the show's final episode set to orchestral arrangement of the show's theme so it was a real like kind of a cop-out and yeah that final segment there's no credited director on it because it wasn't directed they do credit the editor though and and i still know what you did last summer i believe that's the one that has jack black in it as a stoner guy i think he's

in it yeah yeah he gets killed i know that i know that was kind of the heyday of burnout jack black showing up and stuff because i feel like the jackal was like 97 like kind of in that same general vicinity of time i think highidelity is when he finally got to move above being the goofball, the Rob Schneider of action. And I remember how much fun Grammar Pedants had with making fun of that movie's title because it should have been,

I know you did the summer before last, everybody. Why are people seeing this grammatically incorrect movie? We used to call them Grammar Nazis. Now they're a real Nazis again, so we call them grammar pedants. Yes, that's better. I know I saw I Still Know What You Did Last Summer because I watched the first one because after Scream, I was really into the post-meta world of horror films. I was into that more than regular slashers.

I was there for the irony, not the blood. But then the second one didn't even feel all that ironic. It just very like quickly slapped together. I think, though, it is the reason Freddie Prinze and Sarah Michelle Gellar are together, at least the first one. I believe that's where they met. I've not been reading Star Snoop Henry, so I don't know anything about this. Specifically the Star Snoops from 1998. Yeah, the back issues.

But hey, welcome back, Alex. Yes, Alex, famously of giant bomb and alex i believe you chose this episode can you talk about why you chose uh don't in the wind yeah i chose this one because i have a good deal of life experience with aging hippies my parents were both of the flower child generation were very much ensconced in the radical politics of the the late 60s my mother lived in the hate ashbury and at the time was married to the first head photographer of Rolling Stone when that magazine launched. She was very much in the mix of all that stuff.

And like my dad even lived on a hippie commune in Ohio for a little while until someone made him realize that, oh, wait, I need to get a job. I spent a lot of time hanging out with older hippies who have held on to their ideals with varying degrees of success. We both live in Berkeley. So, you know, what Berkeley is associated with. And I see so many just ancient hippies walking around, especially because I do a lot of working from home.

And they're always in front of me in line when I'm trying to get something. And they're basically narrating every item on the menu as they decide. Like, I usually go to this coffee stand. I'm sure i've complained about this on the show before it's all about my working from home problems but uh there's always an aging hippie in front of me with like a big like straw bonnet on and a tie-dye t-shirt and they're probably like between 70 to 80 and they're just going through all the pages like apple turnover i don't care much for apples oh scone

hmm that's a little too hip like going through just narrating every item in front of them and it's just like acid does a lot of damage to the human brain don't don't stay on the acid for too long kids for sure my most contacts with old hippies i don't get it all that much now even though i live in berkeley but that's because i don't i don't go to coffee shops all that much i I'm more of a work from home, literal work from home type guy. But when I worked as a video store clerk at a Berkeley one up until 2009, that was a lot of my contact with the old Berkeley hippies. And some could be frustrating, but others were like, oh, you're a nice old man. I wish you were my grandpa.

I have to say I can't uh i can't dislike hippies because it's tired to dislike hippies anyways but my first landlord here in berkeley was an aging hippie and uh i needed to move to the bay area but i didn't have enough money to visit first before i moved so i didn't have enough time or money to look at places and visit with landlords and the one landlord who actually let me move into her house was an aging hippie and she let me move in because over the phone, she said she could sense my aura. So thank you, hippies. The ones that have held on to their ideals throughout the years, the ones that have sort of like been most dogged in maintaining the hippie lifestyle, I feel like are the ones that are like the most genuinely like nice and, you know, giving, whereas a lot of the ones that were like, maybe just involved in the radical politics of the 60s and early 70s, and then maybe just kind of sold out and moved on to

being just a boomer. Those are maybe not the ones you're going to have the best experiences with. Yeah, those were a couple of my least favorites. Well, though, the 90s, late 90s also had a real anti-hippie backlash. Oh, yeah. I mean, David Cross, I loved his stand upup then i you know i i he's still a good stand-up but i i remember he had just many anti-hippie things like it was yeah multiple sketches on mr show as well like uh sitting criminy craft like uh which is one of my favorites i love that but it was just a strain going around yeah lots of hippie bashing on south park around this time too yeah i feel like a lot of that sort of reactionary kind of vibe toward that stuff was But it was just a string going around. Yeah, lots of hippie bashing on South Park around this time, too.

Yeah. I feel like a lot of that sort of reactionary kind of vibe toward that stuff was maybe just born out of the fact that a lot of kids of hippies were about that age in the 90s. You know, they were all kind of getting into adulthood and they were like, if not going actual right wing, then just still like looking at the politics of their parents and finding it mock worthy or at the very least lacking uh in a way that they saw as valuable i don't know i definitely i definitely had a strain of like anti-hippie sentiment as i was like moving into adulthood mostly just because you know i was rebelling against my parents and i just saw the way they looked at the world as maybe naive or just insufficient i guess i don't know but i i eventually kind of got over it and i've i've come to embrace the people who i think are most you you know, like I said, most who have held on to their ideals the longest and have maintained kind of that lifestyle and those politics. But also, I know

a lot of ex-hippies who have just kind of become, you know, sort of corporate sellout types as well. As Homer calls the characters in this episode. Last thought I had on comedians commenting on it, Patton Oswalt had a really great bit about how he said all the Republicans he knew from his generation, they were doing it to rebel against their, you know, touchy-feely, hippie generation parents. And it was just, he marked it as that kids just want to rebel against their parents,

or some kids do. And so if you are a hippie then they rebel by becoming alex p keaton as we as we learned in the documentary that's right but family ties family ties i always call family ties facts of life anyway it's very important you get those two they're very distinct i think there's some wisdom to pat noswell saying though he also joked that he was going to be a boring button down dad which he is not to his kids thankfully so and that is jock's son with rose action figures on the roof i have some pre-production stuff about this episode though some interesting stuff so it's the first episode directed by matthew nastick who had been on the show since uh 1990s treehouse of

horror one that's where he started he was a background artist on that episode he worked from that until now on the show and he was a mark kirkland's assistant director but during the production of this episode mark kirkland found out his wife was divorcing him and he gets a lot of uh good natured ribbing on the episode about that it's really funny on the commentary he's laughing along with them it kind of takes over the commentary but it's implied that it's like oh yeah it was the long hours uh yeah they say they say like oh how many hours a week do you work on this and then he's like well at the time i was doing four episodes a year and um it really did kill my marriage and they're like oh no and he said shortly after this it was agreed that directors only do three a year

uh so yes matthew stepped in i believe he directed the first act then mark came back directed the rest and since then matthew has directed 48 episodes up until this day in the new season. So yeah, it's Matthew Nastic's first episode. He would direct one in this. He would move on to be a director in this season after doing part of this. His next one would be Make Room for Lisa. Yeah, yeah. In this season, I believe.

Season 10. And I was surprised to hear he's still with the show. I think Kirkland, you know, he also said he is happily married, remarried now, or at least was 10 years ago. And I wish him the best on his then current marriage. I also remember this one because I swear it was one of the first in the PR cycle of Simpsons that would advertise like in this episode x will be revealed oh yeah because i definitely remember the ads were like you're gonna finally learn homer's middle name it's always been the initial j and now we're gonna really learn what it was it's uh that's like the entire first act is just the story and then the next two acts are just like sketches

with homer being a hippie yeah i have one have one more thing from the intro just to explain things to our younger viewers, including me, because I had to remember what this was. So Bart's joke is about what the definition of is is. And this was from the Lewinsky testimony that Clinton was given. So I have a quote. The question was given to Bill Clinton. Whether or not Mr. Bennett knew of your relationship with Miss Lewinsky, the statement that there was no sex of any kind in any manner, shape, or form with President Clinton was an utterly false statement.

Is that correct? And then Clinton said it depends on what the meaning of the word is is. So there you have it. Spoken like a lawyer, man. He's, I mean, slick willy, always with the smooth talk. Yes. Boy, that impeachment. It's funny.

Funny to remember. And that was ongoing. That was like they were right in the middle of those proceedings when this episode air correct yes by uh i know it because i was doing the history for another upcoming episode in six weeks i believe it will be from this episode's airing he will be officially impeached by both houses of congress so yeah and it's very close and just like with that adr joke in the last trios of Horror, they're able to add this in at the last minute to reference the current Clinton thing. Yeah. Yeah.

Which that's, you know, maybe they were feeling the pressure from South Park. They're like, oh, we can't be as, South Park's eating our lunch. They're the cool new thing. And they're being able to make, you know, jokes from that week. We got to get on that. And by the time Homer to the Max comes out, they can make jokes about him having sex with pigs. So. Yep. By the time that episode rolls around, they can finally be relevant.

Yeah, which they swear on the commentary they're not calling Monica Lewinsky a pig. The joke is meant to be that he had sex with actual feral hogs. Sorry, that really dates this podcast. I know. We're in the era of 30 to 50 feral hogs, and I apologize. If you were in a coma for 12 hours, you don't know what we're talking about.

Yeah, that era is rapidly approaching its end in about 45 minutes. So let's enjoy it while we can. I'm waiting for the retrospective on that. This also takes me back to late 98, where people could still remember Woodstock as a great thing. Like, it's nine months away from Woodstock 99, which is just one giant crime scene. Oh, God, yeah. And that was the death. I mean, I know a bunch of boomers wrote that in 1999, but I think it really was a death of idealism or just a dark moment in our time, for sure. Well, and especially when you consider you consider like woodstock 94 and the way that went

which was you know it's still very much the corporate version of woodstock but was a very functional festival by all accounts you know it was it was the version of that that i think they wanted woodstock 99 to be and then oh boy could that have that could not have possibly gone more south yeah i mean you know when you put Bizkit on stage and have him sing about breaking stuff. I mean, what do you, you know? In defense of Mr. Durst, he has said to break stuff at many concerts throughout the world, and not everyone has taken him up on it. That is true. Break stuff is a metaphor, isn't it?

Yes. About making a breakthrough psychologically. Sorry, as a Jacksonvillian, I do not like defending Fred Durst. He's a Jacksonvillian. Ooh. jackson villian i do not like defending fred durst he's a jackson villain it's also uh interesting we're recording this right around when woodstock 50 was canceled they had to just throw up their arms like it's not happening they this year is the 50th anniversary of the summer of love and woodstock and they were going to do a 50th anniversary concert in upstate new york but for a bunch of reasons, it all fell apart promoter-wise. Yeah, the venue canceled, and they tried to move it to Maryland, and then a bunch of the bands backed out.

It turns out there's no more love left in the world. That's very true. Even though they could have booked Shauna Na, I'm sure they could have got them. At least two of them must still be alive, right? It's the first of... Oh, man, do I have a Shauna Na fact for you there, guys? Please give it to me okay

one fact about shanana is john bowser bowman when he left the group he sued them and created this precedent of truth in music which is if you advertise a band is playing somewhere like shanana it has to have at least one member of the group still in it to be officially called the band it was. So even if it's just the drummer or a guy who played in one record when it was the real band, it's all because Bowser left Shauna and sued them. You know, we're talking about Bowser, and I do the podcast Retronauts. It's still my theory that Bowser from Mario is named after the Sha Na Na singer. Because if you look at Mario 3, you know the boos in Mario 3,

they're Boo Diddleys. Oh. Like everything is a musician's name in Mario 3. Maybe it is after Bowser. It's my crackpot theory that Bowser from Mario is Bowser from Sha Na Na. That's it. I'm not even being sarcastic or like pulling a joke or anything. It's true. It's got to be true. Alright, we need to get Miyamoto on the horn. We need to figure this out right now. Oh, he did not approve of this localization change. Those Koopa kids were unnamed. There was not a Roy Orbison reference in the Japanese version of

Mario 3. Are you telling me that no one on the Kyoto team was a big Morton Downey Jr. fan? Oh, God. I think they dropped the Jr. and now he's just Morton Koopa. it's like well that reference was good for about eight months yep this episode has two big old guest stars martin mull and george carlin who uh george carlin no longer with us martin mull still plugging away at 76 i at the time i knew martin mull as only roseanne's gay boss i mean too yeah and i knew

george carlin as that funny old guy who had a fox sitcom after simpsons and sometimes appeared on politically incorrect that's all i knew about george carlin in 98 he was kind of having a renaissance in the late 90s there were lots of new like books that were just basically like sign language where it was like his his bits written down yes uh things like that i think one was called Braindroppings. I just remember my mom buying a lot of George Carlin CDs and books at this time

and getting back into him. Yeah, this was around the time when I was actually getting into stand-up comedy that was not just like stuff that would occasionally show up

on HBO. So I was kind of getting into Carlin around this time. But also, you know, don't sleep on Martin Mull, a great comedic actor and as someone who

loves the movie Clue dearly, he is one of the best parts of it. Yeah, he's so fun. And then he started as a musician. Like, I didn't know, like, he was, until he was cast on the parodic sitcom soap opera Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, which would lead to Fernwood Tonight, one of my mom's favorite shows. Fernwood Tonight, I saw on Nick at Night a bunch.

I was like, what the hell? Like, it blew my mind as a kid. It's like a fake, it's a fake show he was he's so fun him and fred willard just such funny guys on that show and yeah martin mole so great i also as uh if you're an arrested development fan he was gene on the the private investigation uh and and yeah george carlin i can't believe he has been dead for 11 years now like it it still feels recent to me that he passed away. And a lot of people want to say what he'd say today about our times, but I am certain that today he would be a subscriber to our Patreon,

and you should follow his example, listeners. Actually, it's Gene Parmesan. I don't want to get any corrections in the comments. Okay, there we go. Also, by this time when this came out, like, we were really awash in Summer of Love remembrances. Like, frickin' Forrest Gump was still a ever-present... Yeah, I know it came out four years before this movie,

but, like, or this episode, but... People were still making Forrest Gump jokes constantly around this time. The Simpsons would in four years base an entire clip show around the Forrest Gump framing device. We've talked about that before, but the internet has hurt how long you can reference something and still still be considered current forrest gump reference in 98 would have been like yeah forrest gump that's a normal reference it's not it's not musty or old now

now the reference speed has just moved up so fast uh so this episode opens with burns's lunch which Burns is lunch, which is very odd. Ah, lunchtime. Well, let's see what I've packed for myself today. One bouillon cube. One concord grape. One Philly cheesesteak. And a jar of garlic pickles. No one will want to kiss me after these, eh, Smithies?

Well, it's their loss, sir. Yes. Allow me, sir. It's no use. Shall I send out for some Chinese? No, those people are all gristle uh so they're going to eat they regularly eat chinese people or burns has in the past it's a bunch of random items i wish they were all odd or uh old-timey yeah it just seemed a little too uh random to me if i could joke uh doctor this

i mean a philly cheesesteak that it is more like huh burns eats that not an old-timey thing but you know oakley weinstein left they were really into the old-timey you know foods but instead it's just it's just to make you go like oh burns who is going to eat one conquered grape and a bullion cube by itself not with any water added to it he will also eat an entire philly cheesesteak which he apparently packed himself well i also like he doesn't know what's in there he's like what did i bring to lunch today he's very old that's true i do enjoy the visual of the unwrapped wet sandwich just sort of flopping down on the desk though it's a good uh good foley on that sandwich too and an entire jar of pickles too which that that sounds too heavy

for burns to carry around either that one that's, it's not a lot of calories, but it's probably like 40 times your suggested sodium intake. Oh, God. Burns just knows Smithers wants to make out with him now. Like, he's not confused anymore. Yeah, I think after Lisa the Skeptic, that gave it away. Yes, yeah. But they have to kind of pretend that he doesn't know in order to just keep making those jokes. So he just has to look away like

he brings in all these able-bodied young men to try to open the the pickle jar which you know is a realistic pull of like oh that's observed behavior kind of thing which simpsons is usually really good at but that the no one could open it is is pretty uh that's i think burns glued it shut in his uh senility i mean i'm gonna say that homer like has a heart attack he dies yeah yeah that could be a bigger story in this episode and i think smithers is back to his season two level of villainy because he plots to drain homer's blood oh right yeah it's a little extreme a little extreme for uh the character of smithers but burns for like this opening has nothing to do with the next scene yeah i was just thinking about that uh the episode could just open with burns making a movie the a to b to c is kind of

weird in this episode we need to inject some youth into this team this is the only way they would ever possibly think of how to do it a talkieie. Though, like you said, this is an episode light on content as well. They had the full opening, like the minute 10 opening, which Scully is using a lot more than Oakley Weinstein did in 7 and 8. So it just feels more like filler. Funny filler. I'm not saying like, but filler itself doesn't make it bad. Yeah, some of the funniest stuff in the show has been filler but yes burns arrives on the director's scene wearing his cecil b demille outfit for directors which i kind of wish that was still the uniform for directors they all have to

be forced to wear that if someone's walking around i want to know if they're a director puffy director pants yeah and they gotta have aable now. Now I feel like the stereotypical director look for the last 30 years has just been the Spielberg of a t-shirt and jeans and a hat of the movie you're making. Like, I think Abrams, Abrams like many things, stole it from Spielberg and has just kept it going. Sam Raimi, I know he did the whole, you gotta wear a suit. You gotta wear a suit to direct a movie. It's business. Meanwhile, I think tarantino is just he's just wears regular clothes no shoes he just shows up no men have to wear shoes honestly it's

women who are shoeless i got it i got it i will be referencing once upon a time in hollywood a few times in this because it just i just saw it it also is about the summer of love in its own way yeah if you want if you want some revisionist 60s stuff, here you go. And also dirty feet with black bottoms as referenced later in this episode. But yes, Burns is directing a talkie. And action. Wow, what a graduation. I'll say.

But with college behind us, we'll need careers and good ones. What about chestnut roasting? People always need chestnuts. Or begging. I know a place that'll saw your legs off. Slow down, fellas. I've got a way we can keep our legs

and still have a bright future. Now you're dreaming. Oh, am I? Of course! Nuclear power! It's the job of tomorrow. Today! Really? Well, that settles it.

For all those reasons and more, let us choose an electrifying career in... ...line. Nuclear power. Nuclear power. You thunder-headed stooges are the worst bunch of... Hey! Pretty good, huh? Well, it's better than that

last Barbra Streisand movie. I didn't quite get the point of it, Dad. Why would Lenny want someone to saw his legs off? Well, there were script problems from day one. Didn't seem like anybody even read the script. That was the problem. That's a real, like, Marx Brothers style zinger.

Well, at first I was going to chastise it as like, Burns is too smart to write that cut your legs off joke. But apparently I think Lenny just improv'd it on the day. Marge mentions Barbara Streisand's last movie. As of 98, that was The Mirror Has Two Faces, which I have not seen. She would not be in another movie until Meet the Fockers in 2004. I think that was the last movie she directed was The Mirror Has Two Faces. Yeah, yeah.

I didn't see it either. I remember people were savaging it as like, I mean, you know, Barbra Streisand certainly has a high opinion of herself. In the 90s, she was an easy target for mockery because she just seemed very inflexible on jokes. I mean, then there's the whole Streisand effect thing would continue from there. But I mean, you know, what women got to direct movies then even? It's kind of crazy that she was one of the few female directors then. And it felt like people were being, I look back on it, maybe people were being a little too mean to her,

just a tiny bit. You know, people like to go after celebrities that seem particularly haughty. I don't think that's even necessarily changed that much these days. She just made herself a fairly... I'm not saying it was justified, but just by sort of being the persona that she inhabited, I think that was red meat, especially for late-night joke writers

and things like that. I mean, South Park in 98, they were being way meaner than Marge was. I'm a big nose-haver, and I have to say, leave our people alone. We've suffered enough. Do you know that on her property, she has a whole mall?

She has a mall, and I believe she also cloned her own cat, which I would do that, or a dog. I think she cloned a pig. I think it was a dog, yeah. Yes, yeah. Which, hey, we should all be able to do that. Or we should just adopt shelter animals, probably.

That might be the real answer. Create more animals. That's not enough. The Simpsons will be right back. 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? Hope you guys are enjoying this week's Freak Out of a Podcast. And a big thank you to our guest, Alex Navarro from Giant Bomb. We thank him so much for the insight he gave us into his hippie upbringing. And we really appreciate all of you guys coming to this little podcast loving. And if you want to make it even more groovy, you should head over to Patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. The Talking Simpsons podcast, as well as its sister series, What a Cartoon, is supported by folks at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons

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Plus, you get access to all our previous premium video content that's only behind the paywall, and that includes our Season 9 Deleted Scenes exploration that just went up. So please check that out at the $10 level. One more time at old patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. There's also an alan smithy gag which i did get then only thanks to the film burn hollywood burn i think maybe mystery science theater clued me into that ah okay has anyone i think i think mst is where i also learned it yeah has anyone seen that movie burn hollywood burn you know not in its entirety but i saw some clips of it because they must have had some freaking deal with e-news because i was a big e-news watcher in 97 98 it was that impreta porte slash ready to wear

the alt altman film they advertised the crap out of those i feel like because they had some deal with the e-news network or something and so i remember the burn hollywood burn clips i saw were mostly like they were able to trick jackie chan or leonardo dicaprio to sit in front of a camera for two minutes and be like oh see technically they're in this movie better go see it i just figured out what the only alan smithy movie i've ever actually seen was oh yeah uh and it was Hellraiser 4, the one where they go to space. Whoa! I didn't know. I tapped out at 3. I did not see 4. I mean, 3's a bad movie, so I don't blame

you. 4 is the one where they get deep into the lore about the puzzle box and how it came to be, and then also they go to space. And it is an Alan Smith-y movie because the director wanted it to be way more gory than it was, and the studio kept making suggestions that he hated. Okay. Speaking of bad movies, Alex, I think it was you.

You dug up a clip of a very rare Nicolas Cage appearance, and also speaking of big noses, where he's wearing a prosthetic nose. Your tweet got so many retweets, and you got in touch with the film's editor? It was the director, actually, and the producer. And they got in touch with me. I did not reach out to them at all. But yes, it's this movie called Never on Tuesday. editor uh it was a crazy story actually and the producer and they they got in touch with me i did not reach out to them at all but yes uh it's this movie called never on tuesday it came out in like 88 or 89 it was direct-to-video it was the first movie that adam rifkin ever directed the the

director of the chase and detroit rock city and i only remembered it because there was a period of my life where i was just hunting around for a lot of weird cage clips because that was just where my life was at and i had found that on youtube years ago and then i around for a lot of weird Cage clips because that was just where my life was at. And I had found that on YouTube years ago, and then I tracked down a copy of the movie, which is not very good, but it does have this like 60-second cameo from Nicolas Cage where he shows up in the middle of the movie driving an old Ferrari with a prosthetic nose

on doing his best Emo Phillips voice and then just disappears again. Does anybody hurt? No, everybody's fine. I guess somebody left. Oh man, that's all right. Got everything under control. And I had no idea the internet would react to it the way they did.

Apparently, as of today, I found out that Nicolas Cage has commented on the clip. So I am just going to retire from the internet now. Oh, nice. Wow. That's, I mean, God, Nicolas Cage, he's just a fountain of wonder. Like you can just, that you can still find things like this in his career is amazing. It is a diverse and strange and wonderful career he has had. It has definitely had some low points,

but I think the highs are among the highest you'll ever find in a Hollywood career. Well, I said before, my dream is that Cage should be like the final villain in a Fast and Furious, like in the last Fast and Furious movie. Oh, totally. But him fighting John wick would be pretty great oh boy man yeah no just just celebrate cage any way you can uh but yes the the movie that they made it's weird that burns has like a real artsiness to some of it like he's uh like that pull apart of the screen uh to reveal the plant like that's actually good he needed to hire an editor

yes that he could be mad at homer for blowing that line but like edit it out get another take i i gotta assume it was just one take and he fired everybody and then at the end the editor's like we have nothing else but yes homer learned the real lesson of that is that he could now join a union and he's gonna join sag which is funny in its timing because three months before this aired the simpsons officially joined the writers guild of america west or yeah or that was recognized by fox this was a shocking thing to find out because they did so many like union jokes on the show and they talk about on commentaries you know that they had to do wga says we have to do this or we hired freelancers because it's wga rule and i always thought like

oh that they were always wga but it wasn't until august uh 1998 that fox officially recognized the union and their collective bargaining powers on simpsons and all their other animated series yeah it makes you realize why a lot of people did not leave the show after 98, when everyone before that left. As the show is being one of the biggest in syndication, all of the writers who would, on a live action show, would have very certainly gotten syndication royalties. I don't think were.

And I mean, that really increases the bottom line for Fox and makes you know why they kept it going so long. But damn. I'm wondering if that was like maybe part of the real like, you know, there was a big animation push push around the time The Simpsons started getting more popular. I wonder if part of that might have had to do with the fact that like that stuff wasn't unionized by default. Oh, totally. Yeah. Yeah.

I think it's why venture capitalists or investors before that term existed, they always want to go to places that are new because organized labor is less likely to exist in new spaces, whether it be animation or the internet or eBay. That's the internet, too. So that's like Atlanta now, right? Is that like Atlanta now? You know, I think definitely Florida is still a right-to-work state. I don't know if Georgia is. Yeah, actually, in the early 90s, that's a big secret of why Nickelodeon moved and wanted to do production in Orlando and why they were all like, could we make Orlando the Hollywood of the South? It's because Florida is a right-to-work state. So it would cripple the union ability to

work on shows like they have so powerfully in Hollywood. Do you mean to tell me that Viacom might have done something untoward when it came to labor? I know it's shocking to hear, Alex, but... My God, my whole worldview is shattered. We're breaking that news right here. So Homer is going to join SAG, but first, which is a very... So is Homer a SAG member from this point forward in the series? Should we read it as that?

I assume they rejected his application. Homer wanting to be an actor kind of ends here. Oh, yes. Yeah. It's an odd avenue just to get to talking about a middle name. It's a setup for an episode where he becomes an actor or tries to. That's true. Well, no.

As a voice actor of Poochie, he wouldn't be Sag because those are not union shows. But yes, Homer doesn't really want to be an actor. What he wants to know is his middle name. Hey, Dad, it says they need your full name. You only put down your middle initial. Hey, what the heck is your middle name anyway? You know, I have no idea. Hey, Dad, what does the J stand for?

How should I know? It was your mother's job to name you and love you and such. I was mainly in it for the spanking. But I can't ask Mom. She's on the run from the law. Serves her right for being a 60s radical. Though she was a demon in the sack. Oh. So, Dad, regarding that form,

why not just make up a middle name? You might as well. You already made up a phony film credit. No. Harvey Simpson does not lie twice on the same form.

He never has and he never will. You lied dozens of times on our mortgage application. Yeah, but they were all part of a single ball of lies. The point is,

I'm a grown man and I deserve a middle name. Hmm. I know where we might find your missing moniker. It's a bit of a drive, but on the way, we can have a nice father-son chat.

Great. I'll go shoot myself for bringing this up. That's a real Married with Children singer. Yeah, I know. And so ADR, like, that was a late edition. It's so real married with children singer. Yeah. Fires up. And so ADR, like that was a late edition. It's so harsh, dude. It really is. And another thing about the Simpson men, they all have J as their middle name.

It's a tribute to like Rocket J Squirrel from Bullwinkle. And so Grandpa's middle name is Jebediah. Bart's middle name is Jojo, which I don't know where it's revealed. It could be like a comic book or a trading card or something. Yeah. As I recall, I think that is fully just a Matt Groening non-TV thing where Groening either put it in a comic or he said it at a panel like, no, it's Jojo. And it like just that's it. No more conversation.

It's Jojo and it just stops. So who knows if it's canon? I'm trying to imagine a scenario where anyone has actually said that out loud on the show and i can't do it uh i i would think that they would want to undo it and make it something else but when it's matt graining's uh continuity it kind of goes over the their heads in that scenario i tried to find it what the first time in the show they said homer's middle name. And I did. I think, I doubt there's an earlier one than this. Let me guess.

Is it Smithers saying it over the loudspeaker at any point? No. Okay. No, but you're in the right ballpark of job related. God, please help me out here. Well, okay. It's in, well, actually, it's in the episode where Homer loses his job in Homer's Odyssey. Well, at what point in the episode would you have said his name is Homer J. Simpson?

Oh, when he vows to devote his life to public safety, right? Actually, it's right before that when he signs his suicide note. Oh, okay. Wow. I forgot. Yeah. Oh, that's a dark way for that to come up. Yeah.

If there was one before it, let me know, listeners. I don't think he did it in any of the shorts. I think they didn't think of it until then. As we remarked in that episode, Homer's Odyssey, where he loses his job, the third episode of the series, the second act ends with Homer deciding, I am going to kill myself because I cannot provide money for the family. After trying to steal money from his son to buy beer. When they talk him off the ledge, like the edge of the bridge, they just kind of like, oh, let's just let this go. Like, you just did this.

And then it's about safety. But yes, that is the first time he wrote sincerely, Homer J. Simpson. Which also is funny that then it's connected to this scene of Homer saying he's going to shoot himself. I mean, a long time in the car with your father is, even if you have a good relationship with your father, that can be a challenging thing. I would never do it. There are many things like, would you rather get four root canals or a three-hour drive with your dad? I think root canals because I could be high during that. I just did a week-long road trip with my dad earlier this year, which is the first time he and I have done anything like that since I was a teenager and we were doing the divorced father-son thing.

And I'll say this, my dad and I have a totally decent relationship, but by the end of that trip, I was very ready for him to go home. No, man, I don't see that happening with me and my dad. And also it's because I have to fly to Arkansas to see him. And that's, you know, not going to happen. You guys have dads. I got to say, it's weird. It's really weird.

I have a good relationship with my stepdad. My stepdad's are where it's at. I don't think I'd go on a drive with him either. Or more than an hour. But yeah, Homer also, he has such a weird stance that he will lie on a form once, but not twice in the same form. The large ball of lies. I mean, it's just all them throwing out like, this is completely inconsistent, Homer.

This makes no sense. But they just let it go. They head off to the commune, which this episode does retcon some stuff from the Mother Simpson episode from a couple seasons ago. Yeah, I was going over my notes for this. So in the timeline, so in Mother Simpson, we see that Mona is like activated or radicalized by looking at Joe Namath's sideburns, right? That was Super Bowl III of 1969. That was January.

So Woodstock was in August of 69. So potentially what we didn't see was she was radicalized. She didn't leave that night. She tried living her hippie lifestyle and tried to turn Abe onto it. But after Woodstock, that's when she left,

Homer behind. That's my theory. And I think it fits into the timeline pretty nicely. If you can buy that she spent another nine months with Abe after seeing the sideburn nicely. If you can buy that she spent another nine months with Abe after seeing the sideburns. Considering the fact that she went into that marriage

very much trying to do the dutiful wife thing, and she had a child, she had a family, I could totally see there being an eight-month to nine-month period where she's trying to figure out how to balance all of that before she destroys a bunch of burns, germs, and then has to go on the run yeah yeah no okay so you're right it doesn't i i sometimes get it mixed up that it was 67 because i thought it's the first super bowl they're watching but no you're right i thought it was the first one when we did that episode but someone corrected us and said it was the third like we don't do sports so thank you well it also you're right the 69 thing does fit as well with uh spiru agnew jokes

because he was not vice president in 67 so they wouldn't be using a spiru agnew alarm clock spiro agnew that's right he must work there or something so okay then fine but i do think it to give homer new memories with his mother that he didn't have before, that, I don't know, I think it kind of defangs the tragedy that he lost his mother and Abe just said she died when he was at the movies. I forget how this flashback is framed for Woodstock. Is it Homer remembering it or is it just showing the audience? No, it's Abe.

It's Abe remembering it. Oh, okay. Homer doesn't remember that it got it got it which he has had a lot of brain damage so understandable he'd forget but and he was very young you know he was he was a small child at that point i i i would like to think that if i were at something like woodstock when i was say like four or five years old i would remember it but i don't know i can't remember anything from that period of my life i think i mean yeah it's hard for me to remember it for going to somewhere either but uh i lightly remember getting to see what i think was my first movie in a theater which was of course the wonderful to remember 1986 final reissue in

theaters of song of the south it was very important that you saw that oh man yeah i hey look i was four i was innocent i didn't know my mom mom took me to the cartoon animal movie. I feel for her of just she brought two children to it. My brother was like, one, it's such a boring film. It's the most boring movie Disney probably ever made. Another reason it shouldn't be seen by children. But yes, they arrive at the former commune. And I like Homer's at the former commune,

and I like Homer's reflecting on the commune here. This is the hippie commune your mother ran off to when life with me became a living hell. Wow, look at this place. There's a pond for skinny dipping, a tire for skinny swinging. I can actually feel the good vibrations. Ouch. I remember them, Seth and Munchie.

Look at those filthy, lazy flea-ridden... Oh, hi there! Hey, check it out. Is that Abe Simpson? Geez, man, we haven't seen you since Woodstock. You went to Woodstock? Your mother dragged us both to that godforsaken love fest. I like Homer's mmm intonation of saying ouch.

Yeah, it's like E.T. or something. I guess we'd have to play the death jingle for George Carlin. Ah, yes, let's play it. But then I will also play the anti-death jingle for Martin Mull. Protect him. Death stalks you at every turn. There it is, death! So he died June 22, 2008.

And I have to say, I don't think he does a fantastic job. I think he's just directed poorly in this episode. His lines are pretty flat. I like him in things like Dogma, and his stand-up is really good, but i just feel like he wasn't directed well in this martin maul does a much better job i don't think carlin did a whole lot of voice acting in general and you know he's he's playing a pretty one-note character in this but yeah i'd say like generally he's actually a better actor than people tend to give him credit for yeah i did enjoy his sitcom as a kid and it was actually uh created by sam simon it was a

gracie films production makes it funnier he came back he did not say he had a good time on that show so for him to come back to gracie for this is is interesting uh though i think yeah i think i agree with the light direction i mean he played a similar character in cars that i think he did better as phil more the hippie van yes yeah which god well good times right that one film could have paul newman george carlin and larry the cable guy all in one film i it's the three titans of cinema it is such a mediocre franchise but when i go to california adventure i've only been there once i walked through that land i was like god i wish i like this it looks like it would be so much fun if i like this it's cars land is pretty great uh in the ride is cool oh it's a great ride yeah i remember cars was actually

one of the only pixar films that i had a halfway decent video game adaptation too yeah yeah that's right thq made so many i think that bought Cars games bought them like three extra years of life. And maybe they did that Toy Story 3 game that was supposedly very good. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I don't think I ever got around to playing that one, but I do remember hearing some decent things about that. I remember when I got started in the games press in 09 or 10, I just seeing like there's like a four it's an annual cars game even when there's no cars movies these must be gigantic yeah the kids could not stop eating that

shit up and i remember i think i reviewed at least one if not two cars games and i remember being just gobsmacked that they were not garbage uh we we were all hoping it would be like another, oh, that classic trucking video review you did. You know, not everything can be a god-awful PC trucking racing game. You know, sometimes people actually throw some effort into the things that they put out. That's too bad. I agree.

Everything should be garbage. But yes, and then Martin Maul, let's play that anti-death jingle to the man still going strong at 76 so yeah i guess you gotta start uh doing like comedy albums like music albums like country seems like a tom layer of sorts yeah that but yeah then just became a comedic actor and yeah clue clue might be his best movie performance i think he's i mean it that is just like great comedy actors the movie like that's why i think if it wasn't constantly played on comedy central in our use it would just be

completely forgotten oh yeah yeah uh and of course we mentioned ros he played leon and was was fred willard his boyfriend in that show he married him okay yeah as as an inside joke but yes like uh as a gay man it just it still feels weird having to praise roseanne now but in the 90s roseanne was such a progressive show especially in including its depiction of gay characters which was not done by pretty much any other sitcom at the time and certainly not one of the top five most popular on tv in the 90s but she had tons of gay characters on there or bi characters like just across the spectrum and that included her boss played by martin maul at the uh at the where she was a waitress in the i think season four she was a waitress at a diner originally which he ran

and then when they opened the loose meat sandwich restaurant later on i believe he was the manager of that place as well that's right yeah yeah and i think that they did jokes over time about how they are like is he gay is he gay and then he just comes out to them which is that as a as a young gay myself it was it was uh memorable to me i so. Martin Mall is a formative memory for me in discovering myself. But on top of that, he's just a very, very funny actor, too. I really love the observation of talking shit about somebody and realizing, like, oh, they're hearing me as I told you. Hi, guys! It's a dangerous game to think like you have

to guess if they can hear you that's why you leave that in the dms or also when you're an old man and just don't care actually if they hear you or not yeah yeah that's true i mean their opinion of abe probably couldn't be lower anyway so what do they care if he hates him those things they're playing with are apparently officially called devil sticks oh yeah devil sticks though i mean you get more google results if you put in hippie sticks that's that's what everybody calls them but officially they're devil sticks i've never played with those i i think i may be hacky sacked once but i never played with devil sticks we had a lot of hacky sack circles at my junior high when i was growing up it sort of became a de facto uh it's recess activity for

skaters who you know obviously couldn't skate around the campus so we just needed something to do that wasn't smoking you know out by the smoker's corner or whatever and so i remember we all had fucking hacky sacks and we were constantly messing around with them and our junior high vice principal tried to get in on it oh no it was very much this dude in his mid-30s who really wanted the kids to think he was cool uh so he he had this he had like slick back hair he wore cowboy boots to school which was very confusing uh and he used to like to come and hang out and do the hacky sack circle with us uh and then as soon as he would leave we would all immediately start talking shit about him behind his back. Oh, man.

He just wanted to be loved by students. No, he just wanted to be well-regarded. Okay. The game of hacky sack, I feel like it's all about the worst part of any sport, which is retrieving the ball after it rolls away. That's like 90% of what hacky sack is. Oh, let me get it. Oh, there. Okay, you get it now.

I never seen anyone successfully do it no we had a couple of kids who were pretty good at it but like being pretty good at it just means you go longer without having to retrieve it yeah i uh you know the only thing they're missing is a unicycle i definitely saw a hippie unicyclist in my or a few around berkeley here i you know i don't see the devil sticks as much. Maybe the cops, you treat them as weapons now and you're just not allowed to have them. I don't know. I feel like whenever I did see devil sticks, it was on the rare occasion when I was like in Golden Gate Park in the 90s. Like every once in a while you would see someone messing around with those, but I don't feel

like those ever really caught on too much beyond that. And Seth and Munchie would make one other appearance in the show but non-speaking at mona's funerals spoilers for listeners homer's mom dies in a later season yeah in uh they didn't want to pay glenn close anymore it's like season 18 or 17 or something like that it's 19 oh 19 wow yeah it's called mona leaves i did see that one when it aired and me too which was weird because i was not you know making appointment viewing for the simpsons and i didn't know what the episode was supposed to be but i just flipped it on and when i saw the like she she dies at like minute six in the episode and i was shocked i was like whoa they they actually killed Mona off. And then it ends with a real, like, you know,

a heartstring-pulling mom-love finale, which the Mama's Boy stuff always gets me on the show. So it still worked. It still worked. But yes, they are present at her funeral. It's just, or at the funeral home. It's Homer, Abe, and Seth and Munchie on the other side. But they won't be saying anything or doing

anything i remember watching that episode on an ipod classic on a train to chicago and that's all i'll say there's a story behind that yeah it's uh it's sad they couldn't get their voices either because if they had gotten carlin in that it would have aired like a month or month or two before he passed away if they got him on it i think too they don't necessarily look like martin maul or george carlin but they don't not either yeah yeah i think i mean i'd say the carlin one probably looks a little more like him yeah yeah the the seth is a little skinnier than maul's uh you know build is they drew carlin maybe it's too because they're like well we know carlin everybody hears his voice you're just thinking of george carlin maybe it's too because they're like well we know carlin everybody hears his voice

you're just thinking of george carlin anyway so just make a make a balding bearded guy give him a little ponytail though also they're ben and jerry like yeah oh yeah yeah completely and they even said kirkland talked about on the commentary they they wanted to draw the commune to have kind of a vermontstyle appearance even, because that's the East Coast version of Summer of Love folks hanging around the Bay Area that we have. I was just in Vermont about a month and a half ago for the first time. I had really never been up there before, and it is exactly as you describe. It is just rural quaintness, you know, interspersed with a whole bunch of aging hippie types. The deep

irony of that existing right next to New Hampshire, it is essentially the homes of the Green and the Libertarian Party right next to each other. I got to visit one of those places. Vermont is lovely. I highly recommend it. MST3K gave me all my opinions of

Vermont because they... Oh, is that from the Time Chasers? Time Chasers, yes. Those Castleton snubs. They my opinions of Vermont because they... Oh, is that from the Time Chasers? Time Chasers, yes. Those Castleton snubs. They make fun of Vermont, so I remember they call it, like, the cheaper, worse Canada. Well, Canada is lovely. But yes, they flashback to Woodstock. They redrew a lot of classic Woodstock photographs or scenes that are from the documentary film that every that is

how everyone remembers woodstock and i mean there were also there were lots of naked people dancing so it's fitting that homer would be would be one of the free love you know uh just kids having fun there and that i do love the drawing of just like the you couldn't be more conservative abe sitting there in a lawn chair. And just judging everything. Bowser for president. Yes, yeah. Which jokes on Abe, because he's obviously misremembering this. Bowser was not a member of Shauna until after Woodstock.

Unreliable narrator. A classic device. But what is Shauna for our young listeners out there they were a cover band of 50s doo-wop hits popularizing they i think they they claim to be the people who created these 50s nostalgia boom in the late 60s going into the 70s they they take a lot of credit for it they say they like they made their appearance at woodstock like four years before american graffiti came out five years before the fawns was created they are like uh this this was on the wikipedia pages i feel it was written by sean and i's management

the the stats are on their side there they really were one of the first like you know people singing at the hop and all that other junk in the in the in the late 60s yeah i bless them for being willing to take credit for that i had no idea what shauna was in the 90s despite hearing so many references to it me neither i don't think i really knew exactly who they were until and Daly, the very funny improv comedian on podcast. That's it, yeah. He constantly plays a Seananaw superfan who wants very badly to join the band Seananaw, and he throws out a bunch of Seananaw facts. And like any Andy Daly character, he's desperate and suicidal. Yes, yes, yeah. He's one of the funniest people in the world, Andy Daly. I love him.

But yeah, Seananaw's big break was Woodstock. The only thing I think our generation remembers about Seananon now is that the joke is that they were at Woodstock, but they really were. The story goes that Jimi Hendrix was fans of theirs. They had opened for him on the road early in their careers. And so Jimi Hendrix is the closing act on the final day of woodstock the monday a lot of people have gone home at this point but he's going to be the last act and right before him is sha na na and they're in the woodstock documentary there for like 90 seconds and everybody loves it in the documentary everybody's like who is this band singing these classic 50s songs and

that led to them and getting their own variety show in syndication that lasted for 97 episodes wow what a terrible time to be alive yes hollywood and variety shows the variety show boom of the 70s is genuinely one of my favorite cultural artifacts of all time just the the sheer volume of them and the variety of people they would hand them to just because someone on cocaine was like ah that could be a show well what are kids doing what do we do put they made star wars japanese girl group and some guy named jeff and that's a show god yeah and i mean they made star wars into a variety show yep yeah it's it's all they knew how to do it's like it's how everything has to be a streaming thing now it's that everything

it was the pivot to video of their time it was the pivot to variety sorry sorry get phyllis diller in there uh well i mean it's i mean that's what saturday night live is too it's insane that saturday night live you know is uh still around these days when it came from the same factory of you get a musical act you get a famous person and you write some wacky sketches around it that's that's a tv show i mean the simpsons skewered it perfectly in uh the simpsons family variety it's my all-time variety hour the drawing of hendrix playing the national anthem is really good too they uh on the commentary, Mark Kirkland gives a direct shout out to the animator on it, Tomi Yamaguchi, one of their Japanese-American animators on the show, who is a huge Hendrix fan and I think drew a really good version of it. Which, you know, with all the licensed music in this, I think they were like, let's just go with the national anthem. Nice copyright free.

It's also like one of the most iconic woodstock things oh for sure i think it's also totally the kind of thing abe simpson in that situation would get very grouchy about oh yeah that's true but he even bought a sign with him that said i'm gonna put that down to abe misremembering things i would believe he's a big shanana fan at least in 69 but not that i would also believe that shanaw would have gone on right before Hendrix, and he would have totally forgotten about it. Yes, that too, yeah.

Or maybe he's demanding that Seananaw come back out and stop Jimi Hendrix from closing the show. And hire this Bowser guy he's heard about. But yes, actually, why don't we go back to Woodstock with this little clip here? Oh! Bring on Seananaw! Whoa, bring on Sha Na Na. Whoa, mellow out, Abe.

Little Homer's trying to groove. Get him on you, boy. Put some damn pants on and then pull him down. Wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee-wee- Never. What you need's a good long hitch in Vietnam. There must be an enlistment tent around here somewhere. It's funny that baby Homer's voice is deeper than adult Abe's. They treat Abe's more aggressively in pitching it than they normally do. Yeah. In flashbacks, I should say. I also call back to what he said earlier, that he's only in it for the spanking. Yeah, yeah.

Put some pants on him and pull him down. I do. I think probably, maybe not my favorite joke, but probably the most memorable joke for me is the idea of Abe signing up a four or five-year-old Homer Simpson to fight in Vietnam. At Woodstock. At Woodstock. One of my favorite lines in the episode is Martin malls unneeded. Yeah.

Whoa. It's his additional. Whoa. Like you can just hear the voice director being like, yeah, more hippie, just whatever more hippie sounds like to you. Just do that.

I do like in their acting in this flashback, this is them at their most, you know, crunchy and that they are definitely more uh like tommy chong style yeah and and now in current day you're seeing that they're more of the sellouts homer calls them they're not as as crunchy now they don't sound as as baked as they do in this flashback so homer finds out that he would have been a cool hippie if his mom had her druthers. And he gets to...

It's also weird pacing that they go straight from a Woodstock flashback then to another fantasy. It's like you hear the strings of a flashback and then the strings of a fantasy really close together. But I do like the design of imagination hippie Homer with his long, luxurious hair and his sexy 70s gals next to him. I guess he imagines he's not with Marge in this either. No, he just imagines he is enjoying a great deal of casual sex,

wherever it may come from. Or he and Marge have an agreement. Sure. She's also a hippie in this fantasy. Offscreen. Also, the Pink Homer's pose with Sitar is a very Ravi Shankar kind of thing, though not that he was posing with women like that. But it takes me back to watching the concert for Bangladesh, which is a very ravi shankar kind of thing though not that he was posting women like that but it takes me back to watching the concert for bangladesh which is a really good concert movie

i i like that one a lot it totally is and i feel i don't know do do modern people who know anything about hippies understand the connection between ravi shankar and sort of like the the summer of love generation i feel like i only ever had like a tenuous grasp of that just through the knowledge that my parents own multiple Ravi Shankar records. I knew him as I got to get into the Beatles. I knew him as like the Beatles friend with his big guitar. I only knew him through this show. Oh, okay.

When Krusty had him on. Ravi Shank. 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 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 i still own those like i took a bunch of my parents records at one point and i have their records here like they they exist they're out there uh the i only really got in touch with this stuff watching putting on concert for bangladesh at the video store i worked at the previously mentioned hippie customer video store i put that on because i could put on any movie that wasn't r-rated but the boss eventually said we show movies here we don't show tv shows so no more simpsons on tv so couldn't do that uh and eventually you know i just wanted to hear music at work i didn't want to put on um citizen k Kane for the 40th time or whatever, or Spirited Away. So I would just listen to that one. And it's the opening of it starts with Ravi.

Like they say before, I think George Harrison comes out and he's like, before we get to the fun rock and roll, you know, this is a concert for Bangladesh. We need to respect that culture in here. So let's hear some of Ravi Shankar. And he comes out and he's tuning up. And when he stops tuning up, the audience applause is like you're finished yay and it's time and he's like oh if you like that tuning up you'll like the real song and then he plays for another like 15 minutes and I that almost feels like punishment to the people who just came there to see George Harrison and

Ringo Starr play music together again after After Homer reflects on his hippie possibilities, he learns something important about himself too, his middle name. You know, Homer, your mom was a pretty groovy chick. And a demon in the sack. Aw, you heard about that, eh? Anyway, I still think about her every time I walk by that mural she painted. Oh, my mother painted that for me?

Oh, my God. My middle name is right behind that shrub. I'll finally know what Jay stands for. From this moment forth, I will be known as Homer J. Simpson. It's so beautiful. It's very clever. Yes. I like that reveal.

I kind of wish there was more of an explanation as to why J. You know, but it's funny that it's just the homophone, if you will. Yeah. I mean, the cadence of saying Homer J. Simpson is just fun. And so changing it to anything else would remove that. And I'm kind of glad they went with what could be called a cop-out of just that it's, well, we've always called him J, but it's actually J-A-Y, J. And so nothing needs to change. Especially, though, if you were watching the episode because you bought into the commercials that told you you're going to learn homer's

middle name i could see some people being disappointed by that of like it it's still jay that's what the middle name is well it's also this was it correct me if i'm wrong because i i haven't watched a ton of episodes from this these like recent seasons in a while but this was i feel like this was an era when they were just trying to mine character details anywhere they could, specifically stuff that no one absolutely would have ever cared about, like, say, Homer Simpson's actual middle name. Because I will say this as someone who religiously watched the show up until about season 11 or 12, I never wondered that once in my life. Do you think they were kind of doing a takeoff of so i looked it up

and in 1995 the seinfeld episode the switch the big deal for that is knowing kramer's first name which is cosmo which no one cares about now but it's a similarly hippie based origin story so i wonder if they were like we're gonna make a parody of that with the character's middle name that will ultimately be disappointing i think you're on to something, Bob. And they really hyped out the Kramer thing in like a severe way. Whereas this, I do remember the commercial you guys are talking about, but like I feel like it was just sort of, like that

in and of itself almost felt like a joke. Like trying to hype it up that much. I think a more clever thing for Seinfeld is if they would have made his first name Kessler, like Kessler Kramer, because when he first shows up, he's called Kessler. Oh, that would have, yeah, that's, I, I'm smarter than Larry David. I forgot about that.

I think Cosmo was one of those things where the payoff just confused people. Yeah. And then they just call him Cosmo for several episodes until I think somebody goes like, enough with the Cosmo stuff, you're Kramer. Yeah, I think it was like kind of

undercut expectations or whatever. Not, I think Larry David was kind of into that and same with sign jerry as well and yeah the the painting that uh mona makes is pretty nice too it's touching yeah especially that it's it's nude homer again is the spirit of the 60s too but like all the emotionality like this act one is just a story all the emotionality ends and then just goofy is just a story. All the emotionality ends, and then it's just goofy, hippie stuff, which is fun. But they don't really commit to the Homer-mom connection too much. The mom stuff just vanishes, which is interesting because it was just three seasons ago that they even introduced this stuff. This is like a sequel to the mom stuff that now is just, they're kind of forgetting about. They're jumping away from it as soon as they jumped onto it well i mean this is one of those things where it feels

very much like the emotionality is entirely for the setup because the entire premise of the episode is we need homer to be the jerkiest hippie possible yes yeah it's it's really just takes it to homer being a jerk uh as the but through another avenue of making fun of what he thinks hippies to be also another scully standard is any emotionality has to be followed by something disgusting yeah yeah which in this case is homer nuzzling a dog piss covered poncho i do like uh so i complained about george carlin's readings but i did like him saying skin and bladder problems. That was pretty good. And yeah, Homer just nuzzles it to his face and the disgustingness of this poncho,

I thought it was just going to be a one-off joke, but he wears this soil poncho until the end of the episode. And this first act is like 10 minutes. It's a really long first act for the show. A real short third act to go with it. Homer decides he's going to be a hippie.

I'll treasure this poncho forever. You might want to wash that. The dog has a lot of skin and bladder problems. All right, we got what we came for. Plus that stink rag to boot. Now let's hit the road. Just lying around, never working, without a carrot. My my head full of long luxurious hippie hair i'll do it what i'm gonna be a hippie just like mom wanted i'm gonna let my spirit soar

and love all of god's creatures get off you stupid dog i like him fighting with uh ginsburg the dog the dog was in the right it was his he stole that from him uh but then homer to uh him saying i'll do it like that is a real they use that many times as a homer plot movement moment and uh ginsburg the dog is no rover hendrix which is a joke they all hated on writing staff yeah ginsburg's a little funnier i think rover hendrix not i mean they're both hippie dogs but uh homer becomes a hippie that that's really where this was born in i think and they they talked to on the commentary that i didn't realize until this time how what a force in the room ron haugi was yeah they they keep talking like on this one

they're like you know the character designs you helped a lot with the ones for Seth and Munchie. He worked on that. He pitched a lot. He's a constant on these. Also, they talk a lot about how George Meyer was a big attendee of Grateful Dead shows in his youth. Yeah, that is very funny, knowing who George Meyer is.

Ron Huggie came from Ren and Stimpy, so he was an artist. Maybe that's where all the grossness comes from, too. The show did get grosser when he joined. That said, any time that poncho is on screen, I'm just kind of stifling a little bit of a wretch every time. My skin itches when looking at it. Yeah.

But yes, Homer decides he's going to be a hippie, and he's going to learn it from the master. If I'm going to be a real hippie, I have to learn from the master, Mr. Bob Flowerchild Hope. Hey, peace man far out groovy, I'm a hippie. Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Jill St. John. Hey, Bob, I just came to invite you to the love inn. Brr. I got you a date with the perfect flower child,

Phyllis Diller. Let's get it on. Ha ha ha ha ha. Now I know how Dean Rusk feels. Get out, everybody. Love inn. Dean Rusk. All Get out, everybody. I'm here loving Dean Rusk. All right, George, I've got it. It's not even a parody of a Bob Hope USO bit.

It's just them writing their own, and it is very lame. I love how savage they are. Like, peace, peace, far out, I'm hippie. And then he gets a laugh. A light laugh, a very light laugh. Also, that Phyllis Diller is dangerously close to i'm hauling ass to lollapalooza oh yeah it's one of tress mcneil's old lady voices uh yeah and also dean rusk was secretary of state during the vietnam war and he really loved that war i had to look that up

though apparently it's weird that he was like such a pro-war guy but also is being called like when i looked at his wikipedia pages all these things about like he was a wuss he wasn't a leader he was seen as like a a sleeve puller like following everybody which i i is what i think the joke is the way he says he's saying that dean rusk is impotent when his flower goes down i i think that's the gag as somebody who did not know who dean rusk it was until googling it for this episode, this is my uninformed guess. No, I think you're dead right. And to a child in 1998, I'm going to say that bit did not play 100%.

No. I did like the, I mean, in 98, Bob Hope was technically still on television. I mean, he was getting carted around. So I knew him as not funny or is a the person who i didn't laugh at yeah like he died in 2003 and um when they recorded him for lisa the beauty queen i believe it was conan o'brien was there with maybe john vd or someone and they said he was like blind he was blind he was like basically blind that's sad that's uh i mean look it's bob hope. You politely agree

with all of his jokes. That's all you're allowed to do. We brought it up before, but the Gilbert Gottfried podcast. There it is. Yeah, I was going to say it. Because Gilbert Gottfried tells the same stories over and over. It's why it's a fun show. He always brings up the Bob Hope as Jack Frost, but because

late in life, Bob Hope lost his mind before his wife did, and his wife wanted to get revenge on him for all the cheating he did because he was a famous skirt chaser and other things. With Jill St. John. Yes. So basically she roped him into doing all of these ridiculous variety shows as an old

man, and putting him in these ridiculous costumes and basically feeding him lines through an earpiece. So watch Jack Frost. Bob Hope in his late 80s dressed up as Jack Frost dancing around. It is very sad. It's filmed elder abuse. Another elderly person was abusing him.

It's fine. It's elder on elder abuse. Yeah, I think that's double jeopardy. That cancels out. They'll throw that out of court. But yeah, their great point that he's like, he has no material, no one laughs, and that he uses like he has no material he no one laughs and then he

uses sexy dames as a crutch like that's that's their entire thing on bob hope which they uh there's some real gynaxing on jill st john there when she comes out to the the animators when they get to do a they don't get many uh chances to draw a curvy dame and so they do nice pair of bongos that's the part with uh as yeah the jill st john she was uh a bond girl in tomorrow one of the tomorrow movie i i'm not a bond guy tomorrow comes the day after today so homer uh putting his feet up on the table after he learns his hippie stuff that was what really brought me to mind of the new quentin tarantino film because margot robbie in the theater puts her feet very like rudely puts her dirty feet up on the seats in front of her and i it's like back to back with another feet up on a dashboard scene in the movie and i i i at this point i can't tell if it's just Tarantino getting his jollies out or him commenting on how people all say he constantly films women's feet.

I think it's a mix of both. So in reading about that movie and the run-up to it, my understanding is that Sharon Tate was also, in fact, just very frequently barefoot. That is a legitimate character trait. And I wouldn't be surprised if that is the specific thing that drew him to the material. That was when he finally decided, like, I have to tell this story about Sharon Tate. Barefoot in Hollywood, you're just asking for a staph infection. I'm sorry. The streets of Hollywood and Vine were apparently a lot nicer back then. I don't know. Who other than Quentin Tarantino is casting Clue Gulliger in the movies now, you know? Just him. I mean, that's his thing. He finds actors that he liked from when

he was a kid and he finds a way to make them famous again this this episode about hippie dumb it was that movie was just so in my mind the entire time it's it's hard uh it's hard not to especially this commune stuff makes me think of how you know the evil horrifying commune is seen in the movie as well i'm not one thing I will say is that the Manson family was maybe not representative of how the majority of hippie communes operated. No, no, no, no. Yeah, they just want to, you know,

they want to farm and smoke weed in peace. They want to take their psychedelics and just sort of exist in their own little, you know, communal space. That's really what a lot of it kind of boiled down to. Anyway, yes, Homer now is a hippie. He's putting up his dirty feet on the dining table, and he's calling everybody narcs.

Homer, excuse yourself. No way, narc. Bodily functions are a natural thing. Not to mention hilarious. You know, I really don't appreciate being called a narc, and that poncho is filthy. Let me dry clean it for you. But you...

Why do you have to turn everything into one big plastic hassle? Marge, you got too many hang-ups. Like, the whole shaving trip. Come on. I want to see those legs all furry and gross. That ain't gonna happen, bub. Well, at least lose the bra. Free the Springfield, too, Mar bra. Free the Springfield too, Marge!

Free the Springfield too! I think you've had too much strawberry wine. I like his little wine sack. Yeah. Both that and the narc thing take me back to Homer Palooza. Oh, yeah. Whatever narc. He was called a narc.

Also, look, as much as I would generally defend Marge's stance on most of what happens in this episode, she's literally a cop. She was literally a narc. He learned the power. Also, look, as much as I would generally defend Marge's stance on most of what happens in this episode, she's literally a cop. She was literally a cop. She was a narc. She is a narc. She is the most narc of anyone in that family. You are correct. You know what?

I'm on Homer's side now calling her a narc. It's true. I only knew that word from video games as a cool thing. Yeah, yeah. Narcs are fun. You wear a cool costume and shoot scruffy-looking guys. Yeah, you fight PCP addicts that chuck dumpsters at you. Which, hey, that's just self-defense, man.

You're big, man. He's sending them after you. So the strawberry wine, I was like, oh, that's a strawberry alarm clock reference, without even realizing that the song just is later in this episode. That's right. But the song, incense peppermints. And then there's the third thing they say. One of them is strawberry wine, which I don't think I've ever had strawberry wine. I think you enjoy the sweet liquors.

You enjoy strawberry wine. I'm a rosé bitch, so I'd like that too. If they make it in box form, I will totally try it. That's the only way they make it. I just love Homer's also just like like no way narc like big delivery by dan there and also his stance like one big plastic hassle that's that's a funny that's a funny exchange i like that and uh then in this next brief clip we have homer committing a cry oh help oh i've never seen. My eyes have been soiled.

Come on, Maude. A human wang is a beautiful thing. Homer, for God's sakes, put your poncho on. Okay, okay. Narc. Exposing himself to Maude? Yes, yeah. He put the couch out on the lawn and sat on there nude with his frisbee. So now Ned and Maude have seen his doodle, right? Yes, yeah. the couch out on the lawn and sat on their nude with his uh with his frisbee so now uh ned and maude have seen his his doodle right yes yeah i i mean human wang his beautiful human wang that you

know this nude homer they embellish a little bit they actually give him kind of a puffier chest in this drawing than in previous nude homer scenes and they draw his uh hair scraggly he's got like yeah his m on the side of his head is sort of draping down by his ears and his like curly cues on top of his head are kind of like curling up a little bit they're unkempt he's he's letting his hair grow out as much as he can do that i i like his uh i mean he's just going back to his childhood nudity as well so except now it's uh poor maude like she's just wearing her nice you know gardening outfit she didn't want to see that she'll be dead soon oh now you're bringing me more down

uh and yes that i i love homer's little under his breath sneaky narc on her too i i think you know she didn't see him naked but there was that episode where he's in the kiddie pool seemingly new uh yeah looking for his hot dog uh which is not a euphemism that's the one where the next door neighbors are the people trying to buy the house right yes yeah and the real estate agent has to sigh homer puts his clothes on and uh heads off to the the commune to hang out with his hippie brothers which he immediately is awful to them and just smacks him in the face with his Frisbee. I mean, it's a great, the setup of Homer being a hippie has the great comedic

setup of two agreeable hippies who are just like, we don't want to make him feel unwelcome. We're nice hippies. And Homer just walking all over that niceness. They have one expense to freak out with him. Yes.er also implies free love with them which is like does he want to have sex with them does he or does he think women are arriving we skip past it i meant to comment on it too they're like seth and munchie both clearly had sex with mona but abe does not understand yeah the recurring joke of constantly commenting on how homer's mom was a demon in the sack uh i feel like they could have mined even more out of that. Yeah.

It was funny enough seeing Abe do that in front of the kids. Even Bart and Lisa look at each other like they know what that means and are disgusted, but Abe's mind is on only one thing there. That's why when he sees her again, she's like, can we have sex? Oh, yeah, that's true. No. Man, and she was a demon in the sack before she was even a hippie. Like, that's impressive on Mona's part there.

The sexual liberation was always there. She just needed Joe Namath to bring it out. So, yes, Homer learns that his hippie friends are actually huge sellouts. We grow our own vegetables and process them right here, and we give half the profits to war orphans. Profits, profits, profits! What kind of hippies are you? Peter Fonda must be spinning in his grave.

And we're just trying to pay the bills, Homer. I mean, we're still hippies at heart. Oh yeah? When's the last time you freaked out the establishment? You guys are total sellouts. Wait, don't you work for a nuclear power plant? Look, we can sit here all day and play the blame game, or we can start freaking people out. Come on, where's your freak bus?

I drive a Saturn. A Saturn? We used to have a bus. In a way, the 60s ended the day we sold it. December 31st, 1969. Yeah, an old-time freakout sounds tempting, Homer, but we've got a big order to fill. Fine. I guess the juice business is more important than the ideals our hippie forefathers refused to go to war and die for. I suppose we could duck out for a couple hours hey we'll call it a business trip and

right off the mileage now your freak flags flying let the freak out begin i did enjoy that saturn comment because uh they're out of business now i believe but at the time in the 90s it was the very touchy feely car company where it's just like, I'm a Saturn owner and we go on picnics with all the other Saturn owners. Like this fantasy world where this love of one kind of car unites us. No, my grandfather bought a Saturn and he said it really unsettled him that after they bought it and they were leaving, the people at the dealership were all chanting his name when he left like they did in the commercials he's like wow i just i just wanted a car i uh maybe

that is a nightmare those ads really got me i thought they were like oh the saturn's such a cool company it was it was really good at selling that kind of touchy feely you know faux hippie i guess spiritual vibe of it it's just, it was cars. It was a car like any other car. That corporation loved me. They did. I mean, it was kind of in that same vein of like the era of Snapple, you know, like they

were trying to market very specifically to a demographic of people who grew up with that stuff and might be at the age where they might start feeling nostalgic for it. Oh yeah. I mean, Snapple is a big part of this third act as well. Yeah. These are Snapple-type guys. If Ben and Jerry ran Snapple... Boy, nobody talks about Snapple anymore.

I think you can still buy it, right? You can. You can, yeah. Snapple still exists. It's mostly an iced tea form, from what I can tell. Most of it is just like here's as much sugar as we can possibly get this thing they are so sugar i think you know people like hilt snapple is when people realize like how sugary those things are and it added it it sold

itself as a fruit drink or as a health drink and then when you actually look at the calories on the back you realize it is not like 40 like 77 grams of sugar in a single bottle and then when you actually look at the calories on the back, you realize it is not. It's like 47 grams of sugar in a single bottle. And then, you know, 50 Cent's vitamin water came along and just ate their lunch. So, you know, that's ultimately 50 Cent is why Snapple is no longer a big deal. Wow. Yeah, actually, so we were big Snapple fans as we all were in the 90s, but my uncle was a truck driver,

so he could bring us home the rare Snapples, like the regional Snapples we couldn't get in Ohio. What was a good regional one? Ooh, I think we couldn't get peach iced tea in Ohio. Can you believe that? Oh, that's wild. That's the most plentiful thing we had on the West Coast. But it seemed like a crazy idea.

I didn't know how to have peach iced tea. But I guess in California, I'd just be like, yeah, you wake up and you shower in that. It just comes out of the faucet. It's really unhealthy. And this also reminded me of Fruitopia, which was like the fake Snapple that Coca-Cola invented. Like it didn't even start as a company that then sold out it was just an invention of coca-cola that advertised itself with the kind of like freaky imagery that goes over the credits of this episode yeah like the tie-dye well like weird trippy fonts and stuff though fruitopia no longer exists at all like it no longer exists

and yeah i love how homer just spits at the idea of like half the profits go to war orphans. He just doesn't care. Always wanting more. Well, that's the thing. Like his version of being a hippie is the version that you get when you like someone young and not really aware of politics or really what any of the hippie lifestyle was sort of latches onto it and just finds buzzwords to get mad at like profits,

which, you know, fair capitalism is bad but like he's obviously not thinking about why prophets are bad he just knows that they're bad no matter what he heard the word prophets and he's overreacted to it that was like a lot of my friends who in like i don't know around 1996 uh listened to their first rage against the machine album yes and they had a lot of things to tell me about the world yeah i uh you know for me it

wasn't rage against the machine it was the first jello biafra spoken word album i listened to oh wow it's uh and then later i found out he was in some band or something but then it's funny i moved here and i have not thought about jello biafra in a million years even though he was like a bay area mainstay of the 80s i would i think that's kind of where Jello B. Offer belongs. Like, even as a Dead Kennedys fan from back in the day, he had his time. Oh, yeah, that time is over. Though, man, he'd be such a tweeter today.

You know, he could be on Twitter, and I don't even know him. If you're very quiet. He's got a locked account somewhere. If you're very quiet in Berkeley, you can still hear him. I also love Homer. Homer has the classic misdirect in a conversation if you make a good point and somebody says

like we could sit here all day and play the blame game in the conversation right there because you're not having a conversation anymore it's just a misdirect a classic debate misdirect and we did kind of skip over

the day the 60s ended that's a great joke that's a perfect joke I love how that's maybe the best joke the episode yeah it's the one when I see this title i think of that joke you know what let's officially give it line of the episode with the jingle that's the joke yeah i guess they they traded in their hippie cards like three months after woodstock yes yeah i mean sharon tate had

just died too like it was it was it was time to get out of the hippie business I think well it was the next year would be the Rolling Stones concert where people got stabbed to Altamont right Altamont yeah it was so it only took me three episodes of this show I finally managed to not step on the line of the show thank you ah you know I wanted to get at least one under my belt where I didn't fuck up the timing but i i do love that line of just that it was december 31st 1969 uh some could say that that's when the 60s ended you know i i forgot to mention it too but uh it comes up a little later in the episode but i was also thinking about this era right in 98 because the summer before this i saw fear and loathing in las vegas on vhs i didn't see it in theaters and that was my introduction to like hunter s thompson i'd never heard of him before

i was i was a babe in the woods so that was that was all about the end of the 60s and uh and also drugs and tripping out i don't know if i called my favorite terry gilliam it might be it might be my favorite but it's just, now there's all this, you know. Not Brazil? Boy, it's really up there too.

And that one doesn't have as much baggage with the lead actor in it. Yeah. Not as much, no. But Fear and Loathing, I think for a lot of kids of a certain generation, that was kind of their first real exposure

to like any kind of art that sort of depicted like the more decadent and, you know, grim aspects of the end of the sort sort of depicted like the the more decadent and you know grim aspects of the end of the sort of you know the the the hippie movement in the 60s and yeah i will say that that movie was was deeply formative for me in my like oh wow there's there's a whole messed up side of this stuff that isn't just sort of the things my parents told me about when i was growing up i saw that poster for the movie in so many rooms in college and high school the scene that sticks with me the most now is the cop convention he goes to like just all great casting on all the cops in there and the scene where christopher maloney is the sassy gay manager

who's just like finally i have power over you cops fuck you i love it that was such a great scene and then agreed uh also shockingly peter fonda is still alive yeah i i'd assumed he was dead i hadn't kept up with it i he's alive and tweeting apparently oh i i gotta start it sounds like a follow for me today i know i don't recommend it but he is he is up there and he is occasionally saying cantankerous things on Twitter. Okay. Well, I mean, he hasn't turned right as much as Dennis Hopper did, or I guess Dennis Hopper always was that. Dennis Hopper, I don't even really know where his allegiances lie. Like, yeah, he definitely had an authoritarian bent to his personality, but I'm not 100% sure exactly where he landed on anything.

But Peter Fonda, I'm pretty sure is still still more left leaning at least and that's apparently a saturn sl2 model sedan wow they really got a saturn in the show yeah they they actually just drew it they the writers told the animators they wanted a saturn and so they drew the real model of saturn sedan so that's a fancier saturn model too that uh that they own no one got a free saturn on the show i bet i uh they were happy to just get the free drambuie because they mentioned that mentioned that in the next episode and i got i think too seth and munchie are a little dumb to get actually tricked by homer we get a great gag they talk about this on the commentary that they have to give a credit to billy joel because he did approve of them making fun of him.

He had to know the context. Yeah. I'm never going to freak anybody out with this music. I brought something from my personal stash that'll blow some minds. Uptown girl She's been living in her uptown world I bet she never had a chance

Can you turn that down just a little? She's got hair, long beautiful hair Can you turn that down just a little? Hey, Square, expand your mind. The doors of perception are open for business. Thanks for the tip, Homer. Never fear. The cosmic fool is here to blow the lid off your conformist button-down world. Weirdos.

The second time they played Hair on the show, right? Yep, yeah. And you were just mentioning the unicycle earlier. There's your unicycle gag. Yeah. But it's an anti-hippie riding the unicycle. Yep. Yeah, but yes, the last time it was played to Hair,

the opening song to Hair was Sherry Bobbins. There was a real run of songs from Hair in The Simpsons. Well, and there's another reference to the Hair song later in this episode, too. Oh, yeah, Good Morning, Starshine.

But man, the Uptown Girl, like, couldn't be more uncool in 1998, for sure. I don't think that song was ever cool. And I say this as someone who is generally a pretty staunch Billy Joel defender. I like the

majority of his hits, but Uptown Girl is maybe one of the worst songs ever written. Well, the music video is so cool, though. No, it's not. It's one of the most heinous things you will ever see. Is he like a dancing mechanic in that video or something? thought i think that's the one yes isn't christy brinkley the uh the woman in it the titular uptown girl i think she's the one in the photo that he

sings to in the locker it's uh it's a classic bad music video yes especially seeing billy joel pretend to be a uh working class guy Leave it to Bruce Springsteen. Well, you live in New York, Alex. Have you ever gone to one of his many, many, many shows at Madison Square Garden? No, you know, I haven't made it out. The girlfriend is not a particularly big Billy Joel fan, which I don't blame her for. And I, you know, look, I enjoy some of the catalog, but I've never felt a strong pull to go see him in Madison Square Garden or anything.

But, you know, I respect the Joel. I respect him as a Long Island legend. And I prefer to keep it that way. He's like the nerdy little brother to Bruce Springsteen, I think. That's true. He's the piano man. Yeah, he's... Remember, one of Chuck Klosterman's books,

he referred to Billy Joel as the only rock star who would write a song about his dad yelling at him for being too depressed. That sounds about right, yeah. And yeah, Uptown Girls is probably his most uncool hit. And that Homer arm movements to dance and play is so funny. March dancing, yeah, whatever that is. And that I love Seth'sike shouting could you turn it down uh that they're they're trying to even be accommodating to such an uncool song and but it's

even just so loud for them and uh some real electric kool-aid acid test vibes to this uh little freak out trip here i love the animation when homer is shoves his face into the camera saying the cosmic gesture yeah oh it's uh it's a little exhausting i gotta say the uh what did george myers call it like uh like enforced oppressive whimsy that's something that stuck with me after that commentary oppressive whimsy i love that yeah term It stuck with me too. Like every time I see one of those Dr. Seuss hats or other people, which I don't want to like, you know, pee on their parade. They're just trying to have fun and freak people out. No, please do. It's just, you know, it's stupid. And it's just, it feels like, it does feel like peer pressure in the form of having fun, which don't i do not like that at all i've never worn one of those but i've never gone to a warp tour before so i uh i saw willie nelson once and

he uh somebody threw a dr seuss hat onto the stage and he put it on and played a song wearing it so that's that's my most exposure to that kind of hat and it uh that was before I saw this episode. 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 there's also a joke that homer like marge bought dockers for homer which 48 ways for the balloon seats balloon seat is such a funny term yeah the uh that's one step beyond relaxed fit. But Homer never wears Dockers, I guess, except for funerals and stuff. Were Dockers a new brand then? I feel like I didn't hear Docker jokes until the late 90s. I feel like that's another Seinfeld thing.

The first time I can remember someone actively making fun of Dockers or mentioning Dockers in comedy, there was a Seinfeld episode about it. He was mad at the commercial. Oh, right. Man, they told us every brand Seinfeld did. It's such a brand center. When I think of Junior Mints, I think of them. When I think of Pez, I think of Seinfeld. I mean, when you think about a show that is

rooted around the notion of these people whose lives are generally kind of vacuous and empty, of course the only thing they can talk about is the brands of the time. Yeah, that's, yeah. I saw on Twitter actually recently that somebody was, they showed a picture of a recent Junior Mints box.

When you buy Junior Mints, you get a digital version of that episode to download. What? Yeah. That's a recent thing. They just did that. I remember that. Wow.

You can see how the Junior Mints killed a man. Wow. Do they kill him? Well, no, they come back. The Junior Mints eventually saves him. Oh, that's right. I remember that. Wow. You can see how the Junior Mints killed a man. Wow. Do they kill him? No, they come back. The Junior Mints eventually saves him. Oh, that's right. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

I forgot how it went. Who can eat Junior Mints while watching? This is turning into Talking Seinfeld now. I have to stop this. That'll be another series. That's our $30,000 reward. In the year 2030. Then I can hire someone else to do it.

I could talk Seinfeld. I could too. Sure. But anyway, they also arrive at the school. Bart and Lisa know it's Homer before he even walks in. And they're...

I smell that poncho. Ooh, yeah. It precedes him. And then they... Though they don't need to be told twice that they can leave the conformity factor and they all run out. I like Skinner reflecting

that an invisible he would trust that invisible document from home from a cosmic jester though he says it's 15 years no in principle in the popper it was his 20th anniversary you can't talk about episode of henry you'll be tortured oh that's right it's the threat of torture they arrive back after their little freak out there's a cute uh little visual gag of homer leaving the saturn and his cat in a hat hat pops up like he got scrunched down when he was in the car i uh first time i caught that one and then they arrive into their uh juice making barn and see that the everything has been broken they left everything there and there's just a pile of smash bottles there's a great like

under angle shot of them looking at the smash bottles and reacting to it and of course homer did it like we all knew oh yeah we all knew that before we even saw his uh frisbee in there but i have to say for seth and munchie one hire one other person there yeah they should have like employees exactly or also just don't run the machine when you're not there yeah and it seems like they went straight from him convincing them to go into the freakout to getting in the car did they turn away from homer for just a second and they were like oh what happened to that frisbee oh well you know take some responsibility for yourselves there seth and munchie i mean they're burnouts they're tired they probably

just aren't their memory is probably full of holes you know they just they got sidetracked they also do have to be pretty exhausted from that freakout. They're men in their 60s doing all this freakout stuff, running around. They need to take a nap after the freakout. I do like the word juicelator. That's a funny name. And Homer assures them Marge was definitely freaked out. But yes, Homer is now excommunicated from hippiedom.

Pretty freaky, huh? The only people who are going to be freaked out are our stockholders. I'm sensing some negative vibes here, but I promise tomorrow's freakout will go a lot smoother. There won't be any more freakouts. You're not a hippie, and you never were. Yes, but the poncho... Please, Homer, just leave us alone.

How could you let me turn into you? But the poncho. But the poncho. Hit the road square. That line actually kind of adds some power to it the how could you let me turn into you yeah like ouch that's harsh but the uh but them also telling him he's a phony like that that does hurt homer quite a lot he but he is he's a tremendous phony at that point you know i mean it's it's it hurts because it's true he he needed to hear it finally somebody tells homer the truth which they should have realized that would only make things worse

for them like homer the worst day of their lives is when homer re-entered it is it at this point that they point i mean like uh i think it's later they point out he works for the nuclear plant i couldn't remember when it was but at this point i was like you work for the nuclear plant even in like uh the cut scene from mother sim, she points it out, too. Yeah, it's incredibly evil as far as working at places. But Homer's really good at misdirecting things and being like, you know, let's not talk about that. Let's not play the blame game. He's bringing it down from the inside, as he said.

I also like that Homer's imagining that they're going to do this every day is going into town and freaking people out, which that really sounds annoying. I feel like by the third day, they would just be arrested then. The ass-whomping would come by that point. So we're well into the stage of The Simpsons now where Homer not going to work is barely even remarked upon anymore, right? Like, that's just the running gag is that he just shows up whenever he feels like it. I mean, they showed that he had a job earlier, which just makes you think like, why isn't he at work? Like if you didn't put Burns in the beginning, you wouldn't even think about it. But you're like, yeah, he should be at the plant.

Clearly no one is noticing. Yeah. And we're just like four episodes removed from Wizard of Walnut Street where he says he quits his job and he can't go back. Not the way he quit. Yeah. Which obviously he did. I think Mike Scully was not as interested in power plant humor it seems like he he he liked burns not as much as other writers but he just didn't really talk about the plan a lot or had a lot of scenes at the plant

yeah i think uh you know they were really feeling at the time like what have we not done a story about and it felt like they had done every story they could about the nuclear power plant so it's time to give job give homer a new job each week and his job this week is hippie so they they homer the greatest job of all this episode could be called homer the hippie yeah yeah they gets a hippie job they were a little uh this is a hard one to search for in google it always gets it wrong it's like dough dough in in the wind too clever yeah which uh is a bob dylan reference the answer my friend is blown in the wind in case so sometimes we don't explain the obvious titles yeah and uh mona sings it in uh mother simpson yeah that's right yeah the uh you know actually i think maybe they meant it as a misdirect too

when he first says and i'm gonna learn from the Bob, and you think he's going to say Dylan, and then he says Homer. I think I might be an extra component to the Bob. Oh, you're right about that. I never thought about that. Layers to that thing. But yes, Homer decides he's got to do something. Stunned league officials say point shaving may have occurred in as many as three Harlem Globetrotters games. And in business news, Groovy Grove Juice Corporation

has announced it will miss delivery on its third quarter shipment. A spokesman attributed the production shutdown to a half-witted oaf. Oh, it was sweet of those guys to blame an oaf. But really, it was my fault. I just don't have the discipline to be a hippie. Ooh, does this mean you're going to start showering again? Perhaps, in time. Aw, cheer up, Dad.

You make a great hippie. Aw, you're just saying that. No, really. You're lazy and self-righteous. And the soles of your feet are jet black. Well, I do walk through pretty much anything. Oh, you kid is sweet. I know you feel bad about the juice incident, but I'm sure you can make up for it somehow.

That's it! Somehow! Bill Oakley was pointing out on Twitter, and I agree with him, that oaf is like the perfect comedy insult. It just has the perfect sound to it. Oaf. It was nice of them to blame an oaf. It's a beautiful word, and it doesn't mean anything particularly offensive. It just means you're clumsy. You know, you're a clod. Yeah, it's right up there with clod. Now, clod hits the comedy rules of, like, cuh sounds.

It's funny. But oaf is great in the opposite direction of, like, it's kind of a soft sound of oaf. Yeah, I think my favorite word time they said it on the show is when gorbachev said see you brawling with local oaf oh yeah local oaf you're right yeah and then we have up next a uh like a little mini montage with like not a lot of jokes i feel like they couldn't think of anything so it's like why doesn't homer just get attacked by gophers yeah it's a little bit random yeah it's like i don't think we needed a montage to show us what he was doing because the reveal is enough that he picked all the vegetables you gotta fill 23 minutes you

know yeah yeah and uh you gotta pay for another song this had to be one of their biggest licensing budgets of all time in this episode al gene and mike reese would have put in an unrelated parody you know what they would they would have done like uh let's say willie wonka type thing of homer making all the juice or something like that uh i mean and instead this is just him being attacked by gophers which i mean go for violence is funny and all that but yeah it's uh it also doesn't really fit to like time of the season doesn't particularly fit one way or the other for like harvesting it's just a this could easily have been fortunate son or whatever other for like harvesting it's just a this could easily have been fortunate son or whatever just another like 60s hit from a similar time frame i think it

would have been well they already hit uptown girl so much that if they put uptown girl here it's just then it would be overkill and i believe that this episode based on the commentary it was written backwards from the idea of like how to get the entire town to trip out and it was written backwards from there yeah so that this is the kernel of the idea that started the episode is getting all of springfield to trip out and i don't think enough people do they could have had a few more yeah i mean i will say that the trip out part is by far the best part of the episode like they started from the best part and then just had to assemble weaker parts around it. But I do like the trip out as it is presented. It is great. I also really like the misdirect on Homer saying, that's it.

Somehow. Like he doesn't have the plan. This is the point in a script where Homer's supposed to say, I'll do all the harvesting myself or I've got just the plan for it. Him saying somehow is him admitting he doesn't have a plan, but on the drive to the commune, he realizes he does have a plan. He's just going to get there and he's going to figure it out. They also, you see that they seem to sleep in the same room.

They have a real Bert and Ernie platonic relationship. It's free love. Yeah, it's true. As they, after time of the season by the zombies plays, they then have another hair reference with Homer greeting just Munchy as Sunshine and saying, Hey, Seth. He makes sure that he's not calling them both Sunshine. He only means it for Munchy.

He's closer to Munchy, I think. He's a little nicer. Seth yelled at him more. Munchy was more like, Please, Homer. Just go Just leave us alone dear God But yes Homer has saved the day Good morning Starshine

Seth What's going on What happened to our crops I picked them juiced them and delivered them To every store in town Your business is saved But there weren't enough vegetables left to fill that order. That's what I thought at first.

But then I found the other garden behind the barn. The one with the camouflage netting. Uh-oh. Homer, those were our personal vegetables. Well, now the whole town can benefit from their nutrients. Fergie! Winnie, you complete me. Saints be praised.

Oh, closer. I've always dreamed of this moment the like rake scars across his eyelids are great it's fantasizing about the duchess of york and he thinks that that's what kissing feels like is a rake scraping his face god damn it i i hated as a kid even knowing who fergie is because i'm like, Americans shouldn't care about the British Royals. I think it's wrong. Well, the new Fergie overrode her. Oh, yes.

Yeah. Everybody now just knows that Fergie. What even happened to her? She's not in stuff anymore. Nah, she's around. The last time I saw her in something was in Grindhouse. I mean, she's definitely done stuff since then. The only Fergie I acknowledge is Ferguson from Clarissa Explains It All. Correct. Number one Fergie. The last time I saw her in something was in Grindhouse. I mean, she's definitely done stuff since then.

The only Fergie I acknowledge is Ferguson from Clarissa Explains It All. Correct. Number one Fergie. And this was the part that reminded me of seeing Fear and Loathing right before this episode in 98, because I had heard the song White Rabbit before. I actually was a big listener of the 60s oldie station growing up but uh in my innocence i did not realize it was a the one of the most obvious drug songs of all time until the fear and loathing joke about uh gonzo wanting to be killed when white rabbit peaks and that it's obviously about doing drugs but it's possibly be more obvious. It's maybe the most drug song that has ever existed.

Yeah, that it takes the already obviousness of the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland and then makes it even druggier in their song. That reminds me of a King of the Hill joke where I guess they're talking about singing Puff the Magic Dragon and Hank is like, do you know what that song is about? A dragon.

We're grown men. Oh, man, I forgot that show. Oh, that's great. I would like to say one thing going into watching this for this show I had completely forgotten about. When you get to the drug trip sequence, I had initially thought and remembered that as Homer taking their weed

stash yeah i was about to take like a big bit of umbrage with the idea of you know a lot of weed making people hallucinate because hollywood never gets weed right they never figure out a way to portray it in a way that feels at all like what it's like to be stoned i feel like inherent vice is like maybe the one movie I can think of that, where it's like, Oh yeah, everything just feels a little bit washed out and kind of burned. And it just, it,

you just feel very slow. It's not a hallucinogen, but then later on, uh, chief Wiggum is like, it's nothing but carrots and peyote. And I'm like, okay,

they said they salvaged it. They figured it out. I thought it was, uh, I forgot. I thought it was weed too, because I see that a lot of the shows doing that. Like when you smoke weed, you

hallucinate things. In fact, when Homer gets medical marijuana in like four or five more years, they do those jokes where he like cuts himself shaving like a rainbow comes out of his face instead of blood. It's just like yeah, it's not what happens when someone has laced your joint or something.

But somehow the most like widespread of all drugs that that people use and somehow the one that no one has figured out how to portray in like a way that feels at all authentic you know i've never done a hallucinogen i've i've uh not not peyote or any other but for me pod in the dozen times i have imbibed it it just it either makes me just not want to move or lay still and just repeat phrases to myself over and over again yeah listen to music i should i should be doing watch cartoons instead of it's it's a drug that has a wide variety of effects on different people but very to my knowledge it has never made anyone i know or anyone in the world uh hallucinate like

you're doing lsd or peyote. No. Yeah. Well, none of us are cops in this room. We could talk about certain things. I have taken acid like four or five times, mostly in my 20s. And it's fun, but it's just like you lose. This is the adult me talking. You lose so much time.

You lose track of time. Oh, yeah. You lose like an entire day if you take acid. It's like, I'm too busy. I can't lose a day to look at my hands. Yeah when i was a teenager it was a pretty low dose i think all kind of all things considered and all i remember is weird shapes appearing on the wall and like some you know some melty kind of effects on on my surroundings i actually did try to take mushrooms when i was in amsterdam a couple of years ago uh but it turns out that the hallucinogenic properties

of mushrooms don't work if you're on most antidepressants oh so all i got was like a little bit of like oh there's a shape or two kind of moving around but otherwise it just had no effect on me well i think i thought this was pot as a kid and even until this rewatch because their covered thing looks more like people growing pot back there yeah like it looks like the space for it. I guess I don't know what growing peyote looks like, actually. So what do I know? Let's just assume they did the research and it is a very similar setup. You know, the Simpsons writers, in Mike Reese's book, he alludes to it a little bit. I know this is like the most hack thing in the world to say, but like, how much did they get high when they wrote this, man?

Wow, man. But he really, but Mike Reese in his book did talk about how they would get stoned sometimes. Like I, now that it's more legal, I wish they could, they would talk more about it. But it also is like the most hack question you can ask a comedian in the world is how high they got. Because it implies like you couldn't have been creative without being on something and that's that's all anybody needs to do to write a funny joke is to be stoned and to be fair there are those performers out there who you can tell just don't have much of anything if they don't have drugs as a crutch but uh i would not apply

that that brush to the broad spectrum of comedians and artists in the world now homer should go to prison for this like yeah clearly in the entire town this he dosed everyone in town this is jail time and i think that's why they have to aggressively end this episode this episode ends like a looney tunes where nothing matters it's a bizarre joke it's just like that's all folks oh yeah and fergie even says a line from jerry mcguire just to make this all extra late 90s as well what did she say again you complete me oh you're right you're right do you have the rest of this uh freak out uh i don't have the barney one because that's all visual but i love that gag that that he uses the

drunken pink elephant to fight back his Ralph Steadman style freak out goblin. I like how the, does the elephant like doff his cap at the end or something? I really enjoy it because we just did Beavis and Butthead Do America for the What a Cartoon Movie podcast. There's a free preview of that on the What a Cartoon free feed, by the way, if you want to listen

to it. Still an incredible movie. Oh, it is so good. And they never referenced Beavis and Butthead outside of the Butthead memorial auditorium from lisa on ice so this is jasper and grandpa in the beavis and butthead poses like grandpa's facing forward which he never does and jasper is like at the quarter angle profile and they're laughing like beavis and butthead it's like throughout the height of the beavis and butthead series it was never joked about a reference and now they're doing it 98 was pretty much the end of the original beavis and butthead series, it was never joked about a reference and now they're doing it. 98 was pretty much the end of the original Beavis and Butthead run, wasn't it? Yeah, it ended maybe like 18,

like it ended in early 97, like right after the movie, there was one season. 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? And that was it. So we are deep into King of the hills rise to power right now yeah maybe that's why they felt it was finally time to do it and also you know they were they were friendly with mike judge mike judge did a cameo in the previous season in uh the football episode oh yeah uh and i feel like they wouldn't do this joke now because it's just so many specific copywritten drawings but like it is the exact grateful dead bears and the grateful dead uh skeleton walking down and the pink floyd's marching hammers like

they just drew them like which and it looks great like that's some of the best when ned seeing that his freak out is some of the best like art in the episode they chose the right characters to freak out yes yeah i i had a grateful dead summer a summer of liking listening to old grateful dead things and it didn't go beyond that and obviously this was after uh garcia had passed away speaking of skeletons i only like their song that had the skeletons in the music video oh touch of gray yeah yeah i i had a weird dead connection because uh in in like late school, I went to school with Mickey Hart, the drummer's son. Whoa.

And I remember I actually got in. So I play drums and I got into drumming because at some point I ended up going to one of Mickey Hart's side project concerts. There's a thing called Planet Drum, which was like a bunch of different kind of world music discipline percussion things. And that ended up getting me to play drums. I was like, oh, this is an instrument I understand. I should try this out. So I went through like a longer than average dead phase, I think kind of inspired by that connection initially. Wow. I didn't, man, that sounds like an event made to make children be drummers. Totally. His son was kind of a dick, but Mickey Hart was a very nice dude. That's like that story that everybody who went to that Sex Pistols concert started a band.

It's the same with every kid who went to that became a drummer. Totally. I have this Grateful Dead video on, by the way, because I want to refresh my memory. And there are just classic skeleton gags all throughout. It's a hoot. I recommend you look up the Touch of Grey music video. I might be making this up, but if I remember correctly, the reason

the video is like that is because no one in the band ever wanted to do a music video. So they did the puppet thing specific with the skeleton specifically because the band members did not really want to be in it. Yeah, the other half of the music video is a concert that they cut to. So they just took some existing live footage, I bet.

They didn't want to be sellouts, man, as they were selling out everything. Someone wrote a joke about a dog stealing one of their femurs. I recall from the pop-up video for that one, they talked about how Jerry Garcia was missing part of a finger, and they made sure his skeleton was missing that part of the finger, too. Yeah, there's a fairly iconic photo of him holding up his hand where he's missing the finger. And that was actually taken by my mom's first husband. That was one of his photos that he did from that era of the 60s.

And you can see very clearly he's just showing the hand where the finger is missing. And you can see that skeleton at the Planet Hollywood in Boise, Idaho. I just made that up. Oh, okay. But yes, as the freakout is happening, I do have a little bit of the Beavis and Butthead reference in this next clip. We are so old. Wee! Oh! Hello. Hello, are you alright?

The electric yellow has got me by the brain banana I see My god, it's nothing but carrots and peyote Damn long hairs never learn, chief It's time for an old-fashioned hippie ass-whomping. This definitely feels like it comes from George Myers' distaste for the police, I think. I think so. I also wanted to say, if they wanted to make that Beavis and Butthead more accurate, that parody,

they should have had Jasper go, oh, yeah. Instead of just saying, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, there you go. That was a good one. Yeah. Yeah, I did a lot of beavis and butthead voices when i was a teenager that's kind of what me and my friends did me too i had to hold

back on that podcast recording to not annoy everybody it drove my mom absolutely insane i think my mom just gave into it she's like i'll just buy you the beavis and butthead merchandise just keep keep it up they didn't mind me watching the show. I was just smart enough to recognize that I was supposed to laugh at them and not with them. So they were cool with it, but they just did not take to me doing the voice constantly. They were very annoyed about that. I'm impressed with Wiggum's ability to recognize peyote from a single lick, too. Which should be enough to dose him you

would think but he's too square also you don't need to tell cops twice to beat up counterculture people like oh no they they're they're on a hair trigger for that uh the one the one nice touch of them showing up at the commune is the part where the tank just pulls up at the end it's like yeah of course they would just bring a tank for no fucking reason i mean honestly that's not much compared to the militarized police force you see these days now every would just bring a tank for no fucking reason. For sure. I mean, honestly, that's not much compared to the militarized police force you see these days. Not every small town has a tank. And Wiggum saying

Womp is just such a funny word. I like that Wiggum, too, is making it clear we're going to destroy everything. We're not just here to take the contraband. All of your worldly possessions. But Homer has another offer for the pigs. You can smash this drug barn all you want,

but first you'll have to smash our heads open like ripe melons. This man does not represent us. All right, boys, set your nightsticks on womp. Mine's stuck on twirl. Oh, for the love of... There. Now let's crack some skulls. Seth, Bunchy, they can destroy our bodies and our ponchos,

but they can never silence our song of protest. Uptown girl, she's been living in her white bread world. Come on, guys. Forget the clubs. Just shoot them. Look at yourselves. Pointing guns at your fellow man. Hatred is a cage that keeps us from soaring free.

Yes, the 60s may be dead and gone, and its spirit long since extinguished. But its ideals live on. Freedom, love love and peace wiggum shoots him right in the head right in the head it's crazy like yeah so i mean this is a real crazy ending which well they bring up on the commentary too that the commercials for this just gave it away like this was in the ad somer getting shot in the face oh shit i forgot which is the final gag and scully they asked like scully you were pretty mad about that right he's like yeah yeah but let's he didn't want to rehash it on it this

is like such a dine and dash ending they need to get out as soon as possible it just uh a lot of the scully endings are trying kind of like shrugs as a joke. Like, it's over. Just come on, give us a break. But this one, just how it gets here is just, I just like how ridiculous it is. And the final line is just like, okay. Yeah. I like him or the snippy. That's the final line.

I like too that Homer, the way Homer grabs their heads, he's like, you have to smash their heads. And he just offers up their heads to be smashed. That is their heads in particular and then homer is singing uptown girl at the end come on guys homer actually kind of has a good speech about the ideals of the 60s it's not it's not a stupid speech he said stupider things and it almost inspires you i think it's because they needed him to have a good speech to make it even more brutal that he gets shot in the face for it. Putting daisies in the gun barrels.

Yes, which is a reference to a classic photograph. Life Magazine, right? Yep, from the 1967 March on the Pentagon that was trying to end the Vietnam War. It did not work out, but they was expressing peace. It was a bunch of hippies there with just flowers. They're like, they'll meet us with guns, we'll meet them with flowers. And when they're having guns pointed in their face

in front of the Pentagon, these young kids are putting flowers into their guns, making a mockery of this show of force at the Pentagon. And as we all know, this was the inspiration for the cultural touchstone that was the Pepsi commercial where one of the Kardashians handed the riot cops a Pepsi. That's right. You are correct. God, what a... Just that great cultural moment we all love and celebrate. Yeah, what a dark day. Pepsi who brought us Woodstock 94, right?

That's right. They may have also brought us woodstock 94 right that's right they may have also brought us 99 but they won't admit to it that's that's in sealed documents partial credit uh god that thank you for reminding me of that pepsi commercial that's uh that was yeah it sucks i do recall and i couldn't find it on freaky yak but i do recall recall in the episode New Kids on the Black, the Party Posse episode, Lieutenant LT Smash has a flashback to hippies putting flowers in his guns. Yeah, that's right. Before they attack Mad Magazine.

What a weird... They have a slingshot. They're slingshotting the flowers down at the soldiers. One touches one's face and he screams and dies. Yeah, that's right. I'm looking forward to that one. That is an an insane episode that actually might be one of the last ones i genuinely remember liking uh it uh the biggest thing i remember from it right now is that it came out in march 2001 and there's a joke about blowing up a building in new york city yep yep yeah uh but

now wiggum's reaction is pretty extreme is certainly in real life the police would never go to such an extreme with a peaceful protester they would call happen they would call putting a flower in a gun deadly assault on an officer resisting arrest resisting arrest yeah it's uh i mean they wouldn't even just being that close with a flower like that's it they wouldn't even wait for you to put it went in. Could have went in his eye. You never know. There would be so many just like angry editorials in the National Review about that. Who's to say what was in that flower, you know? And some people lace flowers with deadly toxins.

Both sides on this were involved here. What if a bee was in the flower? Oh my God. And then everybody knows how allergic bees are. Cops are to bees. Honestly, it was him or them but yes homer shot directly in the face and i like again this is like a real screw you ending it starts it goes to the graveyard it's the next shot i love hands over the they know they're fucking with you they know like come on this is like we got to get out of this episode homer's

dead oh no he's not but they can't it's it's a dangerous game they're playing it's it's funny in the smash moment it's such a't. It's a dangerous game they're playing. It's funny in the smash moment. It's such a great joke. But it's a dangerous game they're playing with the audience. Like, oh, did you care? Ha, it was nothing. Nothing changes. You can only tell the audience so much of that before they stop caring at all. But, yes, I have the final line here as its own clip because it's just so weird.

It is weird. Doctor, will he be all right? Yes, he was lucky. If that had been a gladiola, he'd be dead right now. Why don't you just pull it out? I'm a doctor, not a gardener. Can't you just prune some of the leaves so I can watch TV? What did I just say?

Ha. Him being legitimately angry. Yeah. Like a weird Deforest kelly reference there yeah out of nowhere a very odd oh yeah uh though i that scene even in my first viewing made me confused because i'm like just take it out yourself homer it's just moving i guess you know he should be afraid of that damaging his brain you think that moved around the crayon in his brain oh possibly possibly that's stupid they should have discovered the crayon then right uh i mean he's had a lot of ct scans at some point along the way they probably

should have seen it well as hibbert explains his thumb always covers it that's right i forgot about that that's good writing yeah very yes great so yeah bender was always slightly on his side uh yes then we get the credit song which i didn't learn until this uh research time this is not just anybody playing it it's yola tango yeah yeah and uh homer is riffing some uptown girl over the some but the beloved alt rockers and it's also though a beatles reference homer even says i buried flanders at the end of it uh i i was not the biggest yola tango listener when i was growing up but i don't remember them being a particularly psychedelic band i just remember them being kind of an alternative rock band but they do a they do a good job of their fake psychedelia here you know what it reminds me of is when they got brett hart

on the show yeah they they're like our idea is for a stereotypical wrestler, not you. And so they kind of shoved Bret Hart into that. And I think they're like, Yolotango likes us. They're friends of Donnick Carey, apparently, at the time. And so they're like, yeah, just we need a psychedelic song. Will you play it? And they do. I think they were also like drug adjacent.

They like, if you think of Yolotango, you do kind of think of drugs, right? Or it's just me. That might just be you. I don you i don't know at least i wasn't a big fan of them growing up so i don't really know what the associations are i i would think of them definitely in the alt rocker kind of style but no more druggy that like i didn't think of them as as much with drugs as like fish like fish would be yeah in 98 fish is who you would get for this if you were wanting like stunt uh casting i guess it's up to you what that kind of music is. But I remember my friend was really into heavier stuff like Metallica and Nine Inch Nails and Rage Against the Machine. And he always made me listen to them.

And so I brought over Cake, a Cake CD. Cake is really good. You should listen to it. I put it on one song. He turned it off. He looked at me and he said, this is stoner music. Like very angry. And then he became the biggest stoner.

Wait a minute. Does that just mean that anything that doesn't have heavy became the biggest stoner but wait a minute is it does that just mean that anything that doesn't have like heavy riffs is stoner music because i don't think of cake as stoner music i mean the guy has i guess a slight stoner vibe to him as much as any alt guy is but yeah but you want to say this guy i i'm kind of friends with on facebook now he's getting a phd studying dmt wow so his opinion on drugs changed changed drastically from when i opened his mind to cake man wow go to heaven uh boy phd and dmt that's all dmt studies sure i didn't know yolita i only really got into them like a few a

few years after that but i did have that experience in high school, a similar one, but it was when I played Pavement for people. I'm like, Pavement's fun, right? And they're like, this is a system of a down. That was their reaction. I think somebody stopped being my friend because I played Pixies in his car. Oh, gosh. Wow. Yeah. Well, then that person shouldn't be your friend. No, no, no. But Yolotango, they actually have a Simpsons reference song, Let's Save Tony Orlando's House. Oh, you're right, yeah. Which is a real good song. I like it.

I was just listening to it today. They were apparently told to do something in the style of the Beatles' Revolver song, Tomorrow Never Knows, which I know that one was in the news a few years ago because it was one of the most expensive licensing of a song in television history, if not the most expensive. It was used in an episode of Mad Men. They paid for not just songwriting rights, but the master. They had a Beatles master on that episode. And they paid $250,000 just for that song.

I'm trying to imagine what they would have needed the master for in order to play it on that episode. That doesn't like, unless they were doing some remixing of it on the fly, I can't imagine what they would have needed that for. They, uh, well, I guess I just mean like the one off the record,

they're playing the original, but, uh, sorry, that's, uh, I mean like not a cover. It's like,

you know, you, you, it's expensive enough to put Beatles covers covers and stuff like i think they uh like i remember in royal tenenbaums wes anderson talked about how he wrote a scene to have it be over hey jude and he only to find out like they can only afford a hey jude cover they cannot afford the real song i am well versed in the uh the intensities and the ridiculousness of involved in Beatles licensing. Oh yeah, of course. And in

Lisa's Pony, they play the instrumental version of Golden Slumbers, but when they use that in an Eclipse show, they play like a kind of parody version of that. They don't actually use the same music again. Oh, you only pay for that once. You don't pay for that again. Oh, but I guess new listeners, they should knowlex worked at harmonics on the beatles rock band game so yes

i did i was there for the uh the entire uh development and pr cycle of that game and oh man that's we are coming up on the 10-year anniversary of that game folks that's where i learned the most about the beatles because i didn't listen to them at all before that honestly me too like i i knew i knew a decent amount, but I definitely learned a lot working on that game. I think that you look back on it and the Beatles, they made the right move by doing that just so they could teach a generation of gamers about them who would have probably never listened to a Beatles song otherwise. Yeah. And I think they would have probably been happier if they had taught a much wider portion of that generation about it

as opposed to the number that actually bought that game. No, it sold okay. It just didn't sell the astronomical numbers that I think everyone involved thought it was going to. I brought this up before on podcast, but when Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr showed up at E3 for about 20 seconds, Paul McCartney did not spit out his gum, by the way, to appear on stage in front of thousands of people. They did not seem

very enthused. They weren't selling the game. It was like, I'm an android. And then they walked off the stage. So that's basically... I'll give them credit. They were very involved in that project. They definitely gave their sign-offs. They had their feedback. They were involved. But as far as the E3 thing went, you could

tell that this was something they were doing as a favor. Oh, was all over i mean i didn't want to be at e3 either so i don't blame them i'm not paul mccartney the fact that it happened at all is a minor miracle yeah it feels like their car broke down in front of e3 well i guess we could uh we could just go on stage dub i guess that's the episode then that's uh this well i had a lot of fun little hippie gags in it and and cute visual things and the whole town freaking out uh was great as was the the bullet the the flower shooting moment is a real laugh out loud moment it's i mean it's not their strongestly written episode, but the jokes are there. The laughs are there. Yeah, it's two different episodes.

I like the first episode, which is the first act, which is half the episode, which is like a nice bit of more lore about Mona and more Homer connecting with his mom. The second part of the episode is a different episode, where it's just a bunch of Homer's hippie sketches, which are also fine. They don't really fit together too well, but I do like this episode for both parts. I remember really not liking this episode. And I even up until I watched it for this, I just I'd never had particularly fond members of it. But like sitting down watching it a couple of times, I was like, you know, there's more here than I was giving it credit for.

Like, I do think the the the freak out stuff and the drug trip sequences are pretty funny. And, you know, the pickle jar thing just does not make any sense in in the context of anything else going on it starts with a very random episode i feel like more of the gags land than they don't so thanks a lot for being on the show once again alex uh we will do our plugs once we're off the line with you but please uh plug anything you're working on now of course all the giant bomb stuff you're a very busy man yeah i uh i mean i don't have anything specific to plug right now we uh we're doing lots lots of different shows on Giant Bomb right now. We just wrapped our Season of Crime crew,

which was us playing all the Grand Theft Auto Online heists. That was a fun time. So, you know, check out the site. I'm in a band now. You can check my Twitter for information on that. I'm not going to spend a bunch of time talking about my band here, but I'm playing music again, so that's fun. Awesome.

That's good to hear. The spirit of the 60s is alive well hey i don't know that the hardcore scene really embodies the spirit of the 60s but you know we do our best so thanks again to alex navarro for being on the show be sure to check out all of his great stuff at giant bomb but as for us if you want to support our show and get every episode of this podcast one week ahead of time and ad free please go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons if you sign up at the five dollar level you'll get just that along with our sister show what a cartoon a week at a time and ad free and also access to all of our five dollar paywall content that's everything we've been making behind that paywall for the past

two plus years including all of our limited miniseries the most recent one was talking of the hill a first season exploration of king of the hill and there'll be a new one coming up this fall that our patrons will vote on but that will only be behind the five dollar paywall and henry what is happening at the ten dollar level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons well we talked about it a little on this episode but it's our what a cartoon movie podcast where me and bob go through a different animated feature film once a month we really dig into beefs and but Butthead do America back in July and August is another great month we're going to be doing a dig into the Rocko's Modern Life movie that just premiered this month so you're going to want to hear that all at the $10 and up level

you really get a bang for your buck there at patreon.com slash talking simpsons and no matter what level you sign up for it's very easy to listen to all of our exclusive podcasts. You can either import the RSS feed into whatever player you use or use the Patreon app. They both work very well. So again, that is patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. As for me, I've been one of your hosts, Bob Mackey. Find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. My other podcast is Retronauts, a classic gaming podcast every Monday and occasionally on Friday. Go to retronauts.com and look for Retronauts in your podcast machine. If you like video games and have played them at some point in your life, I think you'll enjoy Retronauts. Henry, how about you? You can follow me on Twitter at H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G. I tweet quite a lot whenever we have new stuff going

up on the Patreon or on the free feeds. You'll be quick to learn about them if you follow me on Twitter. One more time, H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G. Thank you so much for listening, folks. We'll see you next week for Lisa Gets an A. Uptown Girl. She's my uptown girl! I know that I'm in love... with an uptown girl!

I married Flanders. It's so beautiful. What a magical gift for my mother to leave me. She also left her old poncho. Get off of there, Ginsburg.