Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Fat Man and Little Boy With Chris James

Episode Date: February 11, 2026

"My son's making so much cash in the t-shirt game that I don't have to work another day in my life! ...Assuming my health does not deteriorate as I age." - Homer Simpson When Bart's final baby tooth falls, he puts away his childish things and enters the burgeoning adult world of chestwear entrepreneurship. But when he's ripped off by an unscrupulous kook, Homer once again assumes his man of the house role by resolving things with the threat of nuclear annihilation. Our guest: Chris James from Guys: A Podcast About Guys and Not Even a Show Support this podcast and get over 200 ad-free bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod, not to mention Bluesky and Instagram!

This podcast is brought to you by patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. Head there to check out exclusive podcasts like Talking Futurama, Talk King of the Hill, the What a Cartoon movie podcast, and tons more. Event or product. Hoy, hoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, the podcast that will not say Kawabunga. I'm one of your host, Chessware Monthly, Features editor Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of the Simpsons, who is here with me today, as always. Henry Gilbert, and Basic Cable said I should nurture you.

And who was our special guest on the line? Oh, hi. My name's Chris James, and I'm realizing things. And this week's episode is Fat Man and Little Boy. I need that shirt. I'll trade you puppy goo for it. She still has a lot of her original strawberry scent. Forget it. My attitude isn't for sale. What am I saying? Of course it is. This week's episode originally aired on December 12th, 2004,

and as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Happy holidays 2004, everybody. Oceans 12 beats Blade a Trinity at the box office. Snoop Dog and Farrell top the charts with Drop It Like It's Hot, and the hot holiday gifts of the year are Brats and Robosapion. Hmm. So the Robosapiens did not eventually dominate humanity. Not yet. Not yet. Yeah, they basically are like, what if Furby was an action figure?

They would move around and do stuff. I had never heard of them before. Never heard of. That entered my knowledge. But Robosapion, I had not heard of. Those weren't popular, I guess, because, yeah, the brats I do remember as well. But are you sure that it does sound like something that you would make up? You know what I mean? That you would say like, hey, you can remember Robosapians? Like, it sounds like a made-up thing. But it was an actual product? I also bring it up as the hot toy because three years later, They even had enough money to license the Simpsons because they then created a Homer Sapien variant, which basically put a plastic Homer head on top of it.

And he said canned Homer phrases. It's self-described as a biomorphic robot produced by Wowie Toys. And Brats, I think of Brats as a late 90s thing. So in my mind, Brats fell with the Twin Towers. But I guess they were sticking around a few more years. I guess we did not yet have the Brats film, right? That's like 2006, 2007. Yeah, yeah. Apparently it crested in in 2004, at least when I looked up a lot of like, what was the hot toy this holiday season of year X?

Brats was listed several times as the big girl's toy. I mean, it's perfect for the W era, I would say. Like it's incredibly vapid, teaches children terrible lessons, and is incredibly consumerist. Like, it is the perfect for 2004 toy, I'd say. And huge heads on those brats. Yes. Bad role models. only to make their bodies look more unattainably tiny as well. That's true. Yeah, drop it like it's hot. I remember that song.

I mainly just remember Farrell's. The mouth noises he makes. I don't know how to explain them. It would be ASMR if I tried to do it. It's like that thing he does as the music for it. That song was huge, drop it. Like it even made its way up into Canada. That's how big it was.

And I remember that it was like a big deal because he was like, where the hell did this guy coming? from, but it turned out he was like the producer who had been producing every single popular track before that. And then at some point he was like, I want to be famous as well. So he made his own song and it worked out super well for him. He has, speaking of, I mean, I'll tell you what, he's got some hats that might fit quite well on those brats, if you know what I'm saying. Hey. And Farrell crossed over. They didn't exchange hats though. Yeah. It is cool to know that they did sort of, that Farrell was making hits and well, Bratz was around. Like, that's kind of one of

those weird things where it's like, holy crap, Pharrell and Brats at the same time, yes, that was something that happened. And now this is a song is just part of the wedding reception rotation. That's right. When you've done the chicken dance, it's time to drop it like it's hot. And the awkward moment in it of like, okay, is this the clean cut or is this predominantly white wedding going to sing along with the N-word part of the song? Oh, yeah. Did the DJ grab the right one did he do his due diligence on this one, yeah. You could tell what kind of families event you're at

if they say ninjas when they're singing along. And yeah, Oceans 12, the least liked Oceans film, like Oceans 13 is basically like an apology for Oceans 12, as I recall. I only see an Ocean 12 once. What was the conceit?

Was there, I mean, they were trying to rob something, I know, but I mean, what was like what made that one different than the first one? I think Julia Roberts plays herself. in it as well. I think they do that. And it's also like they just go, everybody is just kind of going through the motions in it, which is what they say in Ocean's 13. They're like, yeah, we were going through the motions. All I know about it is that there's a plot element that's a huge cheat in which

the characters realize that the character played by Julia Roberts looks just like Julia Roberts. And that is part of the heist. Now I can answer many more questions about Blade Trinity because I watched it very recently as part of, we decided, you know what, we watched the first blade together, wanting to see Blade last year. And they were like, well, why don't we just watch the other two? Blade Trinity is, of course, famous for Wesley Snipes was in a drinky, drinky motion a lot during it. And he hated working Ryan Reynolds, Vancouver's king, Ryan Reynolds.

But don't worry, guys. Money brought them back together for Deadpool and Wolverine. We hate Ryan Reynolds so much. I live in Vancouver. I'm Vancouver born and raised. And I just want to say, we do not claim him. We like Nardwar, the human serviette. He is the number one celebrity from Vancouver.

Yeah, I mean, I walk by a statue every day. Every day it's newly defaced. Yeah. Oh, yeah. The amount of times they've had to rebuild the Ryan Reynolds. It's a Deadpool statue, of course. It's him and as a character, Deadpool. It's gigantic.

It's basically the same size as the Statue of Liberty, and it has been knocked over three or four times for sure. This is the movie where I believe Wesley Snipes refused to open his eyes while laying down as a vampire, so they have to see GI on opening eyes onto his face. And there's a great animated gift out there. You don't need to actually watch this movie to experience that. Why would he do that? What could possibly make an actor refuse to do something so simple like that?

He had his own ideas about vampires, I guess. Oh, okay, yeah, I guess that makes sense. Because vampires are like, it's hotly contested kind of, you know, how vampires work. I love the idea of him being like a full-on vampire guy who's, like, really into it, and he's fighting the writer and director on direction of the film and stuff like that. Is that really? Are you joking or do you really think that? I'm serious.

He had his own ideas about the blade character, which is why they did not pursue Blade 4? Although, now, Henry, did you watch the Blade movies because of Wolverine and Deadpool that includes some Blade customer service as part of the movie package? No, I had bought a Blade 4K, and then I watched,

there's an episode of community that's entirely about why Blade is cool and it's a great movie. And so I was like, you know what, finally time to rewatch it. And man, the first Blade, a third of it really rules. And then for the middle two-thirds,

they kind of run out of money of the movie. And then once they get money back again and can do like cool fights and it's cool again. But Blade was part of the new Deadpool though, right? That's why people were talking about him? It is true, yes. Why are you telling me they're bringing back like old IP and stuff like that for some of these things nowadays

to try to give people all pumped up? I've never watched, I was saying I never watched Blade ever. And I'm like a big movie guy, but for whatever reason it was one of those things that I just kind of missed and then I never, I don't know. It was like I kind of missed the boat on it. I was like, I'm not going to go back.

Do you think I could go back now and watching it? It would be good? Or is the special effects and stuff a little bit, like, outdated? Well, okay, Blade 1, I would say there's some very dated CGI in it of, like, blood moving around and stuff. But they have some actual, like, good physical effects in it. I still think the first blade is a good movie. Now, the second blade, that's Guillermo del Toro doing his best with a sequel. Like, he's also kind of, like, fighting with Wesley Snites for the vision of the film.

but it still is about like, Daddy, why can't you fix me monster story, like all of his movies. And then, yeah, Blade Trinity, having watched it now, I think Wesley Snipes was right to be slightly defensive because they basically hire like a whole new cast around him of just like, hey, Ryan Reynolds and Jessica Beale

are kind of be the stars of this. And you're pretty much just elevating them to be the stars of a spinoff series. And it's just like, these two white people taking over his series, and he's being directed by a guy who's his first time director. So if he's on a lot of acting powder,

I can see why he wouldn't want to listen to that. Yeah, and he's busy hiding his assets as well. You know, he's making sure that old Johnny Law doesn't get his money. I don't know much about Wesley Snipes. I do kind of like him now that I find out that he was fighting the director of Blade on different vampire things. He seems kind of cool to me now. Well, Chris was mentioning how Marvel keeps bringing back old

heroes and I feel like Disney will be filming X-Men scenes at Patrick Stewart's funeral. They're just going to C.I some X-Men around him as they lower his body into the grave. Unbelievable that new trailer that wants to get you, at the time of this recording, that wants to get you

all in the fields about like, oh, Magneto and Xavier, they're going to die. It's like they've died many times in movies now. Yeah. They've retired the roles multiple times. I saw it happen. You can't tell me it didn't happen. They really wrecked it with the thing where everyone dies and they just come back, you know, Once you do that even once, you've kind of spoiled it, right?

Star Wars did it as well with like Palpatine or whatever, where they're just like, oh, yeah, no, he's not dead anymore. And it's like, so then how are we supposed to believe anything? So now someone dies, no one dies ever, right? You know what I'm saying? You just see them in a different parallel universe or something. There's no, like, finite death. And it sort of makes the movies worse, in my opinion, definitely.

One more thing I had Blade Trinity, Bobby. You mentioned that eye-opening thing. I'd seen it outside of the film before, and I'm waiting. the whole movie to see it. It's the last scene of the movie, but it's not in the real movie. It was in the extended edition ending. Like if you watch it online, you'll go like, hey, Goober, where's him open in his eyes? They made a different ending of the movie, and that's the one where he opens his eyes, and they put CGI eyes on him. They probably had to change it. They probably had to change it, because they're like, hey, this is originally what we're going to do. And then Wesley wouldn't do the

thing. And they're like, well, we can't really end the movie with this outrageous CGI I thing. So then, and I guess, but then why release it at all? Yeah, yeah. I only recall the common complaints about these movies that I haven't seen, but I do remember people complaining about the iPod product placement in Blade Trinity. There's an entire scene where Jessica Beale is like putting on her playlist to slave vampires with this newfangled invention that you can buy at Best Buy after the movie.

Best Buy, I worked there. By the way, I was fired for selling my own phone to somebody. Well, he couldn't afford any of the phones and stuff. And I was like, I got one, you know, and apparently that's. It's not. Like, I didn't make a bunch of money off it. It was just, I wasn't supposed to be doing that, apparently. That's what best by said.

But that's what we were doing during this, the last episode of the Simpsons to air, closest to Christmas at the end of 2004. And joining us for the first time today, it's Chris James from the podcast, Guys with Brian Quimby. Welcome to the show, Chris. Hey, thanks so much for having me. I want to say, first off, you guys are very professional. And you sent out all this stuff, like, in a professional manner. and, you know, it started making me think we don't really do that kind of stuff on our podcast.

And maybe I might get a little bit more professional. So I appreciate that from you guys to sort of show me the way. Well, I was one minute late, so I apologize. It's totally unlike me. I think I was two minutes late. I was even worse. Yeah, you guys were, listen, hey, I didn't want to say anything. I was here on time and you guys were both late, but it was by one minute and two minutes.

I don't even think that counts, you know. It's still coming out of our pay. Unfortunately. Ah, that's brutal. We're on the clock right now. We love what you guys do on guys. We've been on a couple of them where we are scared that we're revealing ourselves to be the Simpsons guys. As we know, the Simpsons, like, as we can decode all of the crazy Reddit comments that people are saying.

Yeah, of course, definitely. And we talk about that a lot on guys where we sort of steer away from having people who are, like, associated with the topic that we're talking about. But I think, I don't know. I mean, one thing that I think is saving is that you guys are. like nice and cool and funny and most of the Reddit post that we were looking at from people talking about it were not funny or didn't seem very cool. It seemed to be like, yeah. So, but yeah, we had you on the South Park guys as well, right? Yes. And that was a little bit easier. You guys could, you know, because there's that huge rivalry between Simpsons and South Park that

that we all know about. So you guys obviously hate South Park, right? Well, we still had fun on the Simpsons. We both had a great time on that one. It was fun to hear. I love to hearing an aspect of Simpsons fan I had not heard before until hearing the stuff that was dug up was like guys mad that Lisa can beat Bart in a fight like really mad at it. Yeah.

Yeah, they get a lot of that stuff where we deal with that a lot about when we're talking about guys like TV show or something like that where they get hung up on stuff like well who's living in where are they living when they're not there. You're like in this spot in the summertime if somebody's in that place like they're really getting hung up on like stuff

like that and yeah, think the Lisa Bart thing, those might have been misogynists. Yes. Possibly who are like just angry at Lisa being able to do anything positive at all. That was a huge part that stuck out that a lot of people mentioned is that they wanted Bart to kick the shit out of Lisa just beat her fucking ass, which I don't know that that would play super well for comedy purposes. A series finale, working in there.

Possibly be. A series finale where he, a very realistic fist fight between. I mean, they've done. huge fights in the Simpsons and stuff. Pretty realistic fights, but probably not man on woman. You guys would be able to tell me better. Has there ever been an intergender

fist fight on the Simpsons? Well, in an upcoming episode, like a couple of years from now, I think it's season 17. Lisa goes undercover as a boy in boy classes and gets punched in the face by Nelson, but Nelson didn't know he was punching a girl.

He thought he was punching a boy. So that's the first one that comes to mind for me. Still, I mean, hey, listen, as you guys know, the Simpsons have pretty much done everything. It's hard for that, you know, you can't, it's a famous thing online, right? The Simpsons said it or called it or did it or whatever. I think I guess that just happens when you make, like, how many episodes? Do you guys know that number? I'm really testing it.

I guess they technically hit 800 last month, but they're celebrating 800 in February of this year. That's a phenomenal amount of episodes for anything. that's British shows are either like six episodes long right like they just do six of them they're like that's it we're done we're only going to do 12 or whatever two seasons of six or they're like one million episodes like Doctor Who or downtown abbey and stuff like that where they just go on forever and ever and I guess the simpson is probably the closest thing we have here in America like that well yeah I guess we used to make fun of British shows and their low episode counts but now a show will launch with like five episodes you wait three years for the next season and and everyone is much, much older with different haircuts. The children are all now seven feet tall. It's not Finn Wolfhardt's fault that he took growth hormones or whatever.

Now, I'm kind of new to Vancouver, but I believe we respect him. Isn't that right, Chris? We do respect Finn Wolfhardt. A shout out to Finn Wolfhardt. I will say I did meet him and I hung out with him at an arcade bar one time through a mutual friend,

like a comedian that I knew who was in town and who knew him or whatever. So I went out somewhere with Finn Wolfhardt. and it made me really feel bad for him, honestly. Because he's just like trying to, you know, go about it. And it's just everybody is fucking bothering him constantly, you know? Like, and they're grownups. And he's at that time when I think he was still very young.

And it's like, leave the kid. He's 19 years old or something, you know? Like you're a 40-year-old man. Like, just leave him alone. Don't stop hassling him. He also did a very, very good thing along with some other directors and people. He saved a movie theater here, a beloved movie theater called the Park Theater, which is a fantastic theory.

They show 70 millimeter films there, or they did. I'm sure they still will. But that's where I would go to watch anything like 70 millimeter. And yeah, that one, it went under and they saved it. So I like him. I definitely like that. I was just going to mention that. Where is Ryan Reynolds?

I'll tell you where he is on Vancouver Island, counting his money. Yeah, exactly. Reynolds could never. Reynolds would never show up for that. Reynolds is like, you know, he's having sex with his beautiful wife and being sarcastic. He's having sex with her and he's going, Oh, sorry, hon. He's making a little gag afterwards, you know. He's doing his little sarcastic look at the camera after he fucks his wife. You can't turn him off that Ryan Reynolds. No, you can't. I bet you you can't honestly. And I bet it becomes fucking tiresome being around him. Just knowing people like that, you know.

He is a billionaire now. He spends a lot of money to make sure nobody is ever around him who's normal. I really do hate Ryan Reynolds. I hate Deadpool. And I believe, this is my real belief. Deadpool is Ryan Reynolds. Ryan Reynolds is Deadpool There's no difference between the two They act exactly the same Other than like the murder The killing and all that stuff But the way they talk

The way that they like That's him. He's just doing himself Deadpool is the perfect role for him And that's why it's the worst movie ever You know you could blame Blade a Trinity for being the first movie Where he clearly started working With a personal trainer

And getting into like insane shape There's tons of scenes just in that movie Showing off his abs And I was like oh okay this is where it started. This is where he became, instead of just like a funny enough handsome guy on a sitcom to, I have to have the perfect body,

but also have everybody think I'm Bill Murray. Hmm. Yeah. And it's funny that he produced a documentary about John Candy, and he's like, I love John Candy. He's like, you are so the opposite of, he wants to be as beloved in Canada as John Candy. Yes, John Candy is absolutely, absolutely beloved.

I heard that documentary was boring because he's so nice. That's what I heard, right? That it's like watching a documentary, everyone's like, well, this guy was the best. It's like, it's fun, I guess, for a while. But I watched the Chevy Chase documentary recently. And that one was, I think, like a little more entertaining because Chevy Chase is such an awful, awful human being. And it's kind of interesting to hear people describe how awful somebody is and then get to meet that person and see firsthand how awful they are in the interviews. But yeah, John Candy, Second City TV.

I mean, these are real Canadian legends. Ryan Reynolds could never. Now, we want to say here, it's okay if you like Ryan Reynolds, but he would kill you and your entire family for a quip. Oh, absolutely. If he thought he could make three college kids laugh, he would murder your family without a doubt. Well, and as he shot your mom in the head,

he would say, like, does this make me look gay doing this? Yeah, that would be the level of quip he'd be working at. He would say not the mama. Hey, you know what's funnier than Ryan Reynolds' whip joky T-shirts of the aughts, which this episode is about. Yeah. Honestly, it feels like a throwback to 70s T-shirts, which maybe those OTS T-shirts were also a throwback. I think so. I mean, we all were buying, like, I'll admit to it, I bought those funny shirts that I do love shirts that show that I know a niche comic book character or have been to a theme park or whatever.

But occasionally I do like shirts. I don't think I ever owned a shirt that's like my first language is sarcasm or I'm fluent in sarcasm. I don't think I ever had a shirt like that, but close to it. You did not want to appeal to the Dennis Miller ratio in other words. I owned one of those shirts, like those over the top. I like ordered it online. I used to do stand-up comedy and I did a character called Wolf Thomas who was like a bad old comic who came back or whatever. And the only reason that I bought this shirt, it was like basically I had war.

the shirt on stage and then I had something over top of it and then I did this like horribly contrived punchline that really didn't make any sense and then I like revealed that it was on the shirt you know and then I was trying to sell them in the back I think it was something exactly like that yeah my number one language is sarcasm and if you feel you know it's like one of those really long a bunch of stuff written on it but I think I maybe my age wise that when those were like a big thing when was that when do you think that was this time 2,000 for? Really the aughts because I was just watching the first season of the Amazing Race because my wife wanted me to see it and never seen the show before. And throughout the show, a guy's

wearing a shirt that says, I'm shy, please hug me in text on the front. Hmm. Yeah. I guess in the aughts, I was like, I'm born in 1984. I don't know how old you guys are, but so I was like 20 years old and I think that type of shit when I would have maybe won that stuff would have been like 13, 14 or something like that. So I think I maybe had a shirt that was like George Bush and Hitler, you know, here's the things that they did. And I thought that. I don't know. I really had a shirt like that. I was like 14 years old in Canada showing up to school the shirt that had Adolf Hitler on it. So it's like, you know, hey, well, I'm making a point. It's like, well, you still probably shouldn't wear an Adolf Hitler's shirt to school. But yeah, that was my level of

comedy. No, wait. It wasn't comedy, I don't think. But that was the type of of the shirts I was wearing. Political commentary, let's say. Now, I mean, this will shake Henry to his very core, but the idea of a shirt with something on it, a t-shirt with something printed on it is a fairly new idea. I didn't realize this until I was reading like Mad Magazine in the 90s and they were reprinting a lot of old articles. And one of them was from the 70s and it was a mad look at t-shirts.

And it made me realize, oh, the idea of a t-shirt was something funny on it or a character on it. That is like maybe 50 years old at this point from 2026. And Henry, what is currently on your t-shirt? I am wearing my Universal Studios 50th anniversary of the tram tour, Ragland Tea. Oh, I like that. I like Universal Studios. It's actually one of my favorite places.

I'm not even joke. Anytime I go over to Los Angeles, I have to go to Universal Studios. I love the new rides that are like, you know, half VR. I don't know if you guys, have you guys go? Have you been? Oh, yeah. Okay, so you guys know then. Yeah, like I like the Harry Potter, like those type of rides and stuff.

to have some practical stuff, and then they integrate. Like, you get to feel like you're in the movie. That's what I felt like. I felt like it was the next step of, like, watching a movie. Now I'm kind of inside the Transformers movie. You know, like I'm actually doing it. You're killing people right next to Optimus Pride. Yeah.

My shirt is just born. My shirt's an Arcteric shirt. It says it, do you know Arcteric's the brand? I don't know. It's a Canadian brand. It costs way too. I got a gift card. And so I bought a couple of t-shirts there because my stuff costs so much fucking money that the gift card could only get me a t-shirt, basically.

They mentioned it in the episode, Homer's saying the Keep-on-Truckin shirt. Like, that was just black text on a t-shirt that said a thing. And keep-on-truck-in was among them. Yeah. They were definitely coming back in this era. I remember when I was in my early 20s and going out a lot. There was one guy who would always have on a clever t-shirt with a joke written on it. And they were all very common.

but one of them I could never find online and I'm pretty sure he might have made it himself on the shirt on the front it said don't hate because you're not in my top eight now we're all very old men do we know what that's a reference to is that my space? MySpace yes your top eight friends on MySpace

I have Googled for that and I'm sure AI will generate me a shirt if I search for that now but I'm pretty sure this guy just made it because he thought it was clever during the MySpace era that would be a head turning T-shirt I want to say. You know? We're not ranking friends anymore on social media.

They got rid of that aspect of it. I don't know. Yeah. The Myspace era, I wonder if that was different than, you know, like as far as I wonder if it affected friendships and stuff again. Were you on Myspace? Oh, yes.

Yeah. And I was paying attention to women I liked and where I factored into their top eight. Often never. And I would often, you know, arrange my top eight as like a speculative fiction sort of experiment. Like these are my. friends in my ideal life, and some of them are just acquaintances, but what if?

Yeah. I was more on Live Journal. I definitely used MySpace, more for music than anything. I think occasional comments to friends. Now, today also, Bob knows that I like a T-shirt. I'm a T-shirt fan. We need a spreadsheet. We need the Henry Archives to be released.

There's just so many T-shirts that are like, I feel emotionally connected to them that even though I don't wear them anymore, and I've lost a little weight and they don't fit, so I wouldn't wear them. It's also like, but I want to remember that I went to this pro wrestling event and the only sell old this one t-shirt there. Those are the best type of t-shirts to have, honestly, ones that are like commemorating something that you went to so then you can fucking remember this, like, great show that you went to see. So I agree. I like those type of t-shirts. And I think it's totally cool to keep those t-shirts, even if you can't wear them. You're supporting my addiction.

Yeah, I am supporting it. And I want to say my wife is disagrees because I do that as well. You know, I'll have just like some old t-shirt, like an old blog. party t-shirt or something that I have. And it's like, I won't wear it. It doesn't really fit anymore. And like, but I'm like, no, but I want to, you know, and she wants me to get rid of some stuff. I'm sorry, I'm just trying to stage an intervention before it goes too far.

So you want me to come down on the side of Henry? You need to stop buying so many t-shirts. If Marriott condo came to your apartment, Henry, she would draw a gun on you. How many t-shirts are we talking here, Henry? 200. No, no, no, no. I refuse to this lie to be spread on talking simple. It's got to be at least 500.

So because 200. Okay. 375 is the number of subtle. 200 was a shocking number to me. I want to tell you that 200 was a shocking number to me. Where do you keep them? Do you have a storage? The ones I don't wear regularly are in the closet behind me here.

Henry, you've turned this podcast into a house of lies. Well, okay. I would agree it was 500 once. I did get rid of a lot of T-shirts before I moved to Seattle a few years ago. Then more T-shirts have been bought since then. I have to admit. So that's why, okay, 375. Let's agree on that for now.

Okay. So you don't do the one in one out. No, I really, Kate. It's a problem. And you realize time is linear and more t-shirts will be arriving. Do you buy them all? Do you buy them all in person? Are you ordering some?

It's about half and half. It often is like, oh, we're visiting someplace or we went to this concert. Let's buy a t-shirt. I have last year I cut down on Facebook or Instagram. showed me a t-shirt, I should buy it. I stopped myself from doing that as much. Yeah, because they will get you. Like, it can't be too difficult, right? You're going, you're surfing. They know exactly what you like at this point. You've bought shirts from them before. They know how to get you. And it must be hard for you to resist some of those, I would imagine.

Mata can really get me and I hate it. I hate that it knows me that much. Yeah. What would be the number one shirt? Like, if you can imagine, is there something that would like really, really get you that you don't have? Is there like, Like a dream shirt? It would have to be an extremely obscure Simpson's joke made very well. That would have to be it, I think. Yeah. Like the poochie shirt, but now I already own like two poochie shirts. So it's getting harder to think of it.

Okay. This is a situation where it's like you have achieved your goals. You're living your dream. There's no aspirational thing here. You've gotten what your greatest shirt ever. Yeah, I think so. I've climbed every mountain of shirt so far. And when I say mountain of shirt.

Is King Ragland of T-shirt Mountain? Well, when I say mountain of shirts, I mean that literally. I'll call myself out for being very boring because, look, I'm just wearing an olive green shirt because I'm pulling back from graphic teas. I've found that if people notice a graphic tee and they're like, oh, yeah, what is that? I get deeply embarrassed because all my attempts to try to explain it amount to nothing. So I will often just default to, oh, it's some internet thing. And then they'll be like, okay. And then they'll move on.

And I'll think, God, I don't want to be noticed. I want to remain anonymous. wearing a podcast t-shirt is that like i have had that at a party of like what's this thing it's like oh well you know this podcast this comedy podcast you've never heard of well in one episode they said this thing and then they made a t-shirt out yeah no no no but it's not funny like just on it so but you have to understand brad like for brad to say this is absolutely outrageous and then they're just like oh okay now our t-shirts that we sell on t-public they will never lead to awkward encounters so make sure you buy them multiples of them for your

entire family. Well, I mean, they're going to be some type of Simpsons reference still, right? I mean, how do you guys, how does that work exactly? You can't use Simpsons characters, maybe, the IP and stuff, so, like, or can you? We draw around it. Yes, we do things that are legally distinct. Rather, our artist Nina Matsumoto does, like our logo or certain expressions we've used on the show.

So we do need a new t-shirt, I'll say that. But Disney has not come knocking down our door quite yet. Actually, Bob, that's a great point. You are married to a person who does what Bart does, except with all. art instead of just text. That's true. And they don't ask her to write jokes on the t-shirts. My wife does design t-shirts for the company fangamer, by the way.

Oh, that's very cool. Yeah. We do T-shirts for our podcast, too. We do them like, you know, we have just somebody who prints them, like an independent screen printer who prints them. The thing that we try to do, I don't think we always succeed, but we try to, like, make a shirt that somebody could look at and just find funny without knowing the show, you know? So it's a reference that's something that people get, but then also just a good shirt.

it's kind of hard to do that. But yeah, that's kind of what we go for to try to avoid those situations where someone's like, so Brian used to suck on titties a lot when he was younger and like, oh, Brian, he's this guy from Ohio. And yeah, I do totally get that. Well, this episode, what came, it's creation written by Joel H. Cohen. He says he can't remember. He wanted Bart having a midlife crisis. Then he gets rich and then Homer gets to retire early and then get sad. In the original draft, it was some other business, and then they came upon the t-shirt one, which they did say, like, they didn't realize how hard that is for the animators to, like, draw the Korean animators to draw moving English text on a t-shirt. Like, that's not so easy.

Oh, that's interesting. There is a reference to the Korean animators as well in the episode. They get it in this episode, yeah, despite all their hard work. Yeah, all those t-shirts. Yeah, they make all the hardest animations, and then they get ripped on in the episode. No, it's not really. It's a funny little joke they make. I just want to say, I mean, I grew up watching The Simpsons. It was a huge influential show, my favorite show in the world when I was a kid. I did stop watching and I think I stopped watching before this episode came out. So I think that right before, like probably 2001, 2002 would have been when I stopped. I would have been like 18 or 19. But the thing that struck me was just the amount of gags.

Like I didn't remember just how many gags are. It's like it's like airplane. You know, it's like that same sort of is just like every single thing is a gag and so many of them hit. It's wild to me, the amount of jokes that are in. And I think maybe earlier on, maybe there was less probably. Like when I was watching initially there might have been less. Are you guys, was it always like that? I think they are more interested in jokes than telling stories in this era, especially.

And on the commentary, they do complain a lot about how many times they would have to break up to write all of the t-shirts and to write all of the like fake product names there were a lot of just like list gags in this episode so this one more than others has a lot of those rapid fire jokes just like constant visual jokes at every second yeah it was constant i was thinking as i was watching and i watched it this morning so it's very fresh in my mind and it just struck me that i don't think there was a you couldn't go 15 seconds in the episode without like a full-on joke being made just every single scene was a joke after joke after joke i love it it. I was all in for it. I was like, some of them made me genuinely laugh out loud. And yeah, I might actually get back into, I have a child who is almost two now. And it made me sort of excited about the idea of him getting a little bit older and showing him the Simpsons and watching along with him. Yeah, well, I will say like outside of the pacing and the more rapid fire joke attempts made in this episode, it does feel like an older episode because semi-relatable plot. It's Bart stops being a kid.

He loses touch with the childish things of his past. He becomes an entrepreneur. Homer feels like he's been supplanted. He starts bonding more with Lisa. That all checks out. But then in this era, especially, we have a crazy third act because they feel like the audience is losing attention. So this episode ends with the threat of nuclear annihilation by a homemade bomb, which, like

I said, that is a very traditional part of this era, just the very desperate, sweaty third act with suddenly the stakes are huge and, and, like, life-threatening. Yeah. I think you're right. It did sort of have that feeling of an older episode, even though it had all the jokes. And like the grandpa stuff, I thought was really, really funny. He had a couple of like, really, you know, there's spiders in the boxes or whatever. Just a couple of like really, really funny classic lines. And I enjoyed the episode a lot. I never thought about it until you just said it now. But that is true. It's a very much a very normal episode of very believable things that are happening and at the end it's completely outrageous.

And you know, we have to talk about the episode itself by playing the clips and everything and talking our way through it. But it feels like an old-fashioned episode because it starts with a joke that was cut from a season three episode. So this whole thing with the Miss Lucy game, the Patty Cake game where you almost swear, this was going to be in When Flanders failed, the season three episode. they didn't have time for it so they held on to it for I don't know 13 years that's wild how does something like that happen

did you have any insight about I have a theory yeah Bob this got me to I kept waiting for them to tell the story on the commentary and they don't because they're having silly time fun games with the guys on it but I then got me to

pull out my season three discs and put on the commentary for when Flanders failed and it's so funny because like Al Gene is, they say they're working on season 14 when they're recording the commentary. And then he's watching it and saying, okay, guys, this Miss Mary Mac thing is a reference to, wait, where is it? He didn't know it got cut from the episode, from that old episode, because they think that the animation,

like, it was an episode famous for a lot of animation mistakes. And they said, like, the timing on the girl's hand clapping thing just didn't work. They just ditch the whole joke. And so I think on that DVD commentary you can hear in real time, Al Jean go like, oh, that joke is good. I'm going to bring that back and finally use it. I see. Yeah, that totally makes sense. So he was going back.

Because it would seem odd for them to just be like, you know, every season makes think we could squeeze it in here? No, no, no, no, not yet, not yet. And just hanging on to it. Yeah, it makes more sense. He's going back and looking at something in the back. It's a good gag. It's a really good gag. Yeah, it made me laugh.

sure. And I don't know if this filth made its way to Canada, Chris, but in my neck of the woods, this song was called Miss Susie. It's often known my many different names, because it's like an early, it's a pre-internet meme, basically. Oh, yeah. I mean, I heard that when I was younger, definitely. My sister taught it to me. Yeah, I don't remember where I heard it, probably somewhere in popular culture. I don't know that it was like around the schoolyard or whatever. I mean, all jokes aside, we got all the stuff that you guys got, really, pretty much. Looking back on those rhymes, I heard them on the playground as well And I like them because

Or looking back on it, I like it Because it was like a girls thing That was filthy. Like little boys had so many filthy things. Little girls didn't have as much filth. I mean, I didn't know why Miss Susie and her boyfriend Were Pulling Down their flies. I would learn that much later.

Oh, I see it was, so you were dealing with one That was a little more Randy. Yes. And it would end with Miss Susie and her boyfriend kissing in the dark. Okay. D.A. R.K.E.A.R.K. Dark, dark, dark, dark. And kissing is not going to be the end of that encounter, I'm guessing. The song cuts off there.

Then you use your imagination. Yeah, and I'll tell you what, I've got a good imagination and comes to that type of thing. Butterfinger, Grandpa. Well, stop it. Okay. Oh, this dog got plastic underwear. Bite my Butterfinger. From Nestle.

Fox Friday, it's the holiday's biggest surprise. The Lost Family Guy episode, never before aired on Fox. Change me. Leak through my pants and I won't face him wet. Plus a second Family Guy for a full hour holiday event. Don, we now are gay apparel. Doesn't get much gayer than this. You are discretion advised.

Family Guy, a full hour starts at 9, 8 Central Fox Friday. Welcome to the break, everybody. It's Henry Gilbert wearing an ironic t-shirt. And a big thank you to our guests this week, Chris James, from Guys, a podcast about guys, as well as other great stuff. It was awesome having Chris on. We've had on Brian Quinby before. And now we finally have had a Chris on.

to talk about this episode all about being a kid who gets scammed for selling crazy t-shirts. And you should know that me and Bob have been on guys a couple of times. So go back in the back catalog of guys, a podcast about guys to check out us chatting with Brian and Chris about it. Thanks again, Chris. If you enjoy our podcast and wanted to get Talking Simpsons a week early and without any ads like this one, sign up today at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. Me and Bob only do this as our full-time jobs. Thanks to the support of our patrons.

They also get tons of bonuses, not just the early and ad-free podcast, but also each month we cover Futurama and King of the Hill, just like we do The Simpsons. You could have heard us talk about 100 episodes of Futurama and now we're deep into season four of King of the Hill. And that's just the most recent ones we've done. We also have in the back catalog. We've covered every episode of The Critic, every episode of Mission Hill, and many of our favorite episodes of Batman, the animated series. Sign up today at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons to see what you're missing. But if you want something as elegant as an Osama bin's scratchy shirt,

then you need to sign up at the premium level of patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons because that's where we cover an animated feature film each month in basically three extra podcasts that you get on top of all the other stuff you get at the $5 level. What I'm talking about is our What a Cartoon Movie Podcast, the premium one where we chat a film. And this month we started the years we have so many times before by covering a classic Disney film, this time, Sleeping Beauty from 1959,

a very interesting and gorgeous film with a real fun background to it. And this month, at the end of it, you're going to hear us chat about the complete opposite of that Shrek 2. And that's just the most recent of years and years of what a cartoon movies we've covered. You got to hear a full version of one of those

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So Homer passes out at hearing all of this, and then the rest of the game between Lisa and Janie gets interrupted by spitballs flying. It turns into a full-on parody of like saving Private Ryan, like the camera moves, the zoom-in of a headshot. Though when I see the shots in this, I'm like, I forget that it's so directly from saving Private Ryan because like every video game, every first person shooter after it just copied it

that I think that it's like, oh, this is like Battlefield or whatever. I didn't clock it as, and I've definitely seen Saving Private Ryan, but I didn't clock it as that because I just clocked it as being like, yeah, just like torn from every sort of like battle scene that you would see kind of, yeah,

just like a run-of-the-mill battle scene. But yeah, again, it was constant. I mean, just constant gag. So was this a big parody era as well where they were, or is that always? Is that always? Kind of always, I'd say. I think it's more of a montage era, more of a licensed song era. I think there are at least three of them in this episode.

Yeah, there's definitely one where he's like getting all sad. And I thought to myself, I remember thinking of myself, hey, it is kind of cool that they're, you know, doing so well financially so they can get some of these popular songs, you know. Yeah. After all of the spitballs fly and we see that Lisa has, she is a little girl playing Miss Susie Paddy Cake game, but also is writing her own novel, They Promise Me Pony. I like that title too because it goes back to her long forgotten motivation of wanting a pony. And then we discover that there's blood in Bart's mouth. That's because he's losing a tooth, disgusting animation of his wiggling loose tooth. But I do like that Lisa convinces him to harm himself and he's, and he's He just goes like, of course I can twist it. I'm great. Yeah. You only get that satisfying feeling of a loose tooth popping out so many times in your life.

And then you never want it again. It's a problem if it happens again. You guys could probably see I have a black eye right now. That's from my young son hitting me in the face with a like a wooden truck thing, like a pulley thing. And it hit my tooth and chipped my tooth as well. Oh, really brutal. Really sucks. Like exposed a nerve on my, you know, so it's like it sucks.

I can't drink cold. stuff. But it also sort of made it feel a little loose. You know what I'm saying? And oh, it was such a bad feeling even just having that because I just, I remembered back to the, you know, of a tooth coming out and that bad, weird feeling of just as it dislodges or whatever. You're right. Even though it was a cartoon, it was still pretty gross for sure. Especially we see it like a shot of inside of Bart's mouth and the camera's like in his throat basically and he's wiggling it with his tongue, realistically in the socket. And seeing that much detail on. And seeing that much detail on. on a Simpson's mouth is already disgusting

because they usually omit those details. Yes. Yeah, it's usually everything is very simply drawn. So, yeah, I think they obviously did that on purpose, right? I would think. And it definitely, yeah, it worked. It made me a little squeamish. So this is where in our first clip,

Bart decides he's got to do something about this tooth. This is my last baby tooth. That's the money tooth. I heard the tooth fairy pays triple for it. Then let's hurry up and rip it out of my head. Best driver just totaled my Camry. Can I offer you the use of my mercure? Filled with your Burger King cups and wrappers?

No, thank you. Lousy, drawer. Potato mash is stuck in small spoon slot. What kind of madman would do that? Nah! Ooh, Bard, honey, I'm so sorry. No problem. Huh, no harm done.

I wouldn't say that. Boy, now that I know you just got hit in the face by something too, Chris, this probably is traumatizing. Yeah, a little bit, a little bit. By the way, I've been working on a Homer impression that I was hoping to bust out on here. So I've really been working on. You guys may help me on it. Let's hear it.

Merge. It's getting there, right? I know it's not there yet, but it's getting there, right? Marge, March. I would email Disney with a wave of that included. I mean, do you have any direction? direction because that's what I was literally practicing it like this morning I was like doing it like meh merge and I was like trying to but then I thought maybe you guys could give me a little bit of

direction is there anything that you could I think it's way easier to do the early homer because it's just a kind of a voice anyone can do so if they eventually decide we don't like the current homer voice let's go back to season one homer I think there's going to be a lot of competition to get in the door there well yeah I've lost that I've gone Kermato yeah yeah Yeah, it goes Romano Kermit a little bit. It does. It can go a little Romano, you know? It's just, you got to watch out that your Homer doesn't go Romano.

It can easily go Romano. This bit about Skinner's Mercure, that also feels like Classic Simpsons in that they found a brand of car I had not heard of and had to Google. So it's a very deep reference. Yeah, I thought it was a mercury or something. And it was like a play on that he has like a rip-off version of it. I didn't even know that there was a Miracure. either. So yeah, I like these types of gags in The Simpsons as well, though they're not just, you know, they're not gag gags, but it's just like, you know, superintendent chalmers being that you with all your rapper and you're just picturing his dirty, disgusting car. No, apparently the Mure was only the Edsel was a bigger failure than the Murekir.

What's the Edsel? I guess it was more notable at some point in time, but it was one of the most, it is the most notorious failure of a car model. As soon as I'm done with this, I'm going to look up that car model. Let's see. Was there. Did it fail? Was it like an awful looking car or? I forget what was wrong with it. It looks kind of cool, but you would hear more references to the Edsel throughout the like 80s and 90s,

and I think people just have forgotten what it is. Much like with silly T-shirts, I would also be lying if I didn't say that like back in 2004 when this aired, I was driving around with Burger King rappers and more rappers than Cups. Yeah, most definitely. I mean, anybody that's going to like, if you're going to work, were you working? It was like the Burger King,

I knew my exact rapper. to stop at a Burger King on the way to the movie theater I worked at. Oh, you worked at a movie theater? That's fucking awesome. I always wanted to work in a movie theater. That was always what I wanted to do. And I never did.

I even thought about, I almost applied, like recently not even needing work necessarily. I just thought it would be cool to work a couple of shifts at the movie theater, like one shift a week or something. And just like watch movies and just be around people who like movies. But I have a child and it's not really smart to be filling your day off. You can use your Finn Wolfheart connection. to get a job at the park.

Oh, hang. I mean, I, listen, he would not probably even remember me, but the park is an actual place. That is somewhere I would like to work, and now an independent theater, and it might be cool to see if I could work casual there and pick up, like, a shift or two a month or whatever. I might look into that.

I saw a video of Finn Wolfhard there, I think, this last week or two, because I want to say he hosted or appeared for a screening of the last episode of Stringer Things at that theater. That's correct. the finale before it aired or whatever. I've been to that theater many, many times.

I went and watched Elvis there. I took a bunch of magic mushrooms. And I hadn't taken them in a long time. And I took way too many with my girlfriend, now wife. Well, now anyways. But mother and my child and live in partner. We're not actually married, but essentially wife. But we were just dating at the time.

And I got so high on mushrooms. All these old people were there watching Elvis. And I just wrecked it. I just wrecked the film for them. because I was blown away at Tom Hanks the way he was talking and he, you know, have you guys seen the movie?

It's insane. It's insane the way he talks in that movie. And I was losing it. I was laughing so much and like pointing at the screen. And like I just remember everybody, just old people turning around just like, and I knew I was ruining it. You know what I'm saying? And I didn't want to be ruining it,

but I couldn't help it. It was so preposterous to me the whole thing. I thought it was going to be a bad trip where the Tom Hanks figure would emerge from the screen and start flying around the theater or something. Oh, I mean, it was, honestly, it was close. It felt close like that to me. And it was like a big moment.

I loved it so much that I did a live show like the next year and I performed an Elvis song at it because I'm so indel. Like that Marge kind of represents the writers who go like, oh, we got away with Marge hitting Bart in the face. And there's no problem. Like there was, they made up a plot reason for to accidentally bash a tooth out of Bart's face. Yeah. And I found weird was this is after the thing, but almost like a deleted scene. At the end, after the credits, is that? There should have been a trio of jokes of like Bart tries three times to lose his tooth and then accidentally does. But they cut one of them and then instead of putting a deleted scene on a DVD, they instead put it over the credits.

Yeah, I found out they're starting like right around this time in the show. I don't know how long it persists, but we've covered a few of these so far. Yeah, that stuck out to me because again, yeah, I stopped watching. I never had seen that. And I was like, oh, they're doing deleted scenes now, which I guess. It's like you goof about it. But yeah, they are. They do have things that they cut out in the same way, right? But would they animate them and then cut them out?

Yeah, yeah. They often have like maybe two extra minutes of animation. And I think, too, in their budget they have like, sometimes they have a discretionary budget of. This joke isn't, doesn't work totally well. If we cut it and animate 20 more seconds of something, they have it in the budget. I see. Occasionally can do that. Potato masters, I think, I've used mine twice ever, and they're only there to get stuck in drawers.

Like, they are. They're totally used. Yeah, totally. Just use a fork, man. Just use a fucking fork, seriously. I was going to ask you guys if you remember your last tooth falling out, because for me, it was very unceremonious. They really wanted to get braces on me early. I got used to dental pain at a very young age because I believe in three or four sessions.

They just ripped out all of my baby teeth to get the permanent ones in there as soon as possible. They knew what kind of Ferengi mouth I was going to have. And they wanted to get cut, like nip that in the butt, I think. I had braces. I grew up and definitely had braces. And I had them kind of older, too, which sucked, you know? And not super old, but I was like older than other people at them. And I absolutely hated them.

As you can see, or I have a big gap in my teeth because I didn't wear my retainer either afterwards. I definitely had the regular set of baby teeth that fell out. But I think like a couple years after like that, I had the extra. extra canines, it's not unheard of that you end up with like extra canine teeth at the top. And so those fell out like I lost those twice. Oh my God. My final ones of that. That's brutal.

You feel like you've already lost them and they come back? Yes. Or you have like double teeth. Like above your canine is a second one poking out. Did you get tooth fairy money? So this was this like a situation where you maximize profits? I would later find out that I was being handed. old Kennedy had 50 cent pieces my parents had no use for.

Not two quarters, but a 50 cent piece, which seemed more special. Is that legal tender? Oh, yeah, they got to take it. Oh, great. Well, not nowadays for crying out. I'm going to be like one of these old people. Oh, oh, they don't take cash. Oh, excuse me, it's cash.

It's legal tender. You have to take it. This is when Bart makes his prayer to the tooth fairy daughter of God, it turns out. And when he wakes up, he is disappointed. Many times over in her next clip. What the? The tooth fairies made a donation in my name to the United Way. That gossamer witch.

Maybe when the tooth fairy saw it was your last baby tooth. She realized you're not a little boy anymore. So she gave you a grown-up gift. I'm not going to grow up. Oh, yes, you are. Why, in the right light, you're starting to get your own muzzle. I thought it was chocolate milk. Yeah, that's how it starts.

I'm still a kid. And what do kids love? Kid stuff, like this. Roong, groan, groan, room, room. What you're realizing, jerk? That I'm not a kid anymore. That's harsh. I knew I was an adult the day the judge said,

we're trying you as an adult. Now, Kearney is an adult, right? Well, that's the thing. Tough to say, right? He has a child, right? He has children. El Jean is not a believer in that reality. I think he wanted to go backwards of Kearney being a kid again.

Our friend, The Real Jim's YouTuber who does Great Simpsons histories, he has negotiated how often Kearney is the same age as a school child or is 40. Okay. And is it most of the time he's a child? Now he's a child again. This joke is about him being a child, I think, right, Bob? It's very inconsistent, but the real Jim's broke it all down and how it's very weird and often creepy. Kearney is an adult and a child in various situations.

but I'm glad Chris is here because Chris, I'm not sure if you've ever seen this before, but on East Hastings, west of First Avenue, there is a place where you bring scrap metal, I believe. It's just kind of like a recycling store or something like that. But out in front of the store is, in terrible condition,

a Batman Forever little kitty car ride. Huh. That's beautiful. Still preserved in some way. I'm never going to sit in it, but it just, I guess somebody had one. They don't know what to do with it. So it's just out in front of the store,

store, it's not plugged in or anything, but every time I walk by it, I'm like, there it is. Now, this donation to the United Way thing, like, that felt so dated to me, but I didn't realize what a gigantic, name, monopolistic organization it was until I, like, peruse their Wikipedia page, but basically they're a middleman of like, why directly give money to the Boy Scouts, say, when you could give it to the United Way, and then they'll just disperse it and just take a little off the top for themselves to go run things. For operating costs and everything. When you go to a charity, you want as many organizations involved as possible.

You know? I want to make sure the brand manager gets paid before the victims of a disaster. Yeah, I mean, yeah, the victims, they'll get their money. But yes, also, you know, you got to keep the lights on. The United Way has a whole section of criticisms and controversies in their web page are on the Wikipedia, execs who have been accused of sexual harassment, them misdirecting funds, that type of thing. And they also talk about how in the current era, United Way is facing a problem that everybody just uses a GoFundMe or whatever to do these things.

So they don't need to go the United Way anymore. And it's left them kind of in a lurch. Now it's interesting. You know, now they're the ones that are in need of charity and who will help them. The joke about Bart's muzzle coming in and then he's ridiculously drawn with a Homer muzzle for a few seconds is a very good joke. Most future versions of Bart don't give him the muzzle. He does have the muzzle in the Lisa's wedding episode where we'll be talking about soon enough in season six. I like the muzzle. It feels like hereditary. Not like the movie, but in terms of just part of the Simpsons DNA, you grow the muzzle.

Also, real, real animation goof him up here. Jimbo's voice comes out of Kearney's there in the scene. He's saying, I remember that. It's the wrong voice. Yeah, they just, it happens sometimes animation team. The animators just animate the wrong mouth talking. and sometimes they have it in their budget to reanimate the scene, and this time they just are like, you know, didn't have the budget. It's barely noticeable. Kearney's voice is close enough to Jimbo's that he says one of the line of Jimbo's, right? When I watched it, I didn't notice. When you played it for me right now, I noticed because I wasn't watching it,

and it sounded like a different voice, you know, just hearing it. But yeah, they are close enough. Jokes about children being tried as adults, less funny every year. More of that, like, I haven't paid attention to the news thing. But, you know. Then Bart has his imagination of his Sergeant Activity toy. And this is a random voice here who is not a professional voice actor. Yes, this guy, Sergeant Activity voiced by Terry Green, who was the sound editor on The Simpsons from 92 to 2015.

He has a fun, gruff voice so they would slot him in in this era to play various characters. He first appeared as large gay military man in three gays of the condo. I believe he got the act break joke. I can't fully remember, though. That's right. He's the man taking mole man home with him. He's dressed in military garb. Like, I'm taking you home with me. Yes, Argent. He was playing out having sex with moleman.

Oh, absolutely. Military gay had sex with moleman. But I can't imagine moleman would be sexually attractive. You know, he would probably have a nasty little. It just seems odd to me that moleman would be your choice. I think moleman had reservations, but when they got home, he gave enthusiastic consent, and it was amazing. Yes. Old man being enthusiastic is just funny on itself.

Well, like these toys, it feels like Bart is playing with mid-80s, G.I. Joe's essentially, like maybe the toys of the younger writers on the staff at this point. The avalancheoids sounds like a toy of our childhood. And then he gets, the whole thing is here that it breaks into a thing about some sort of disorder, like something that you can treat or something like that. Well, life insurance. It's like he starts just thinking about life insurance.

Policy. Lieutenant Venture is there to Shilfer Disability Insurance Company. That's what we're supposed to, it's his imagination and that's all he's able to imagine now is that he's like, he's so grown up now that he can only think about life insurance. That is pretty funny. Pretty funny. This episode poses

an interesting question though that really made me think. When was the last time that you played with toys where they were part of an imaginary game or a narrative you were creating? For me, I feel like maybe around the age of 11, I would still like build Legos and build models and things like that, but

the imaginative play kind of stopped and it was mainly about, you know, playing video games. That was really where the play took place, that space. I started smoking at the age of nine. Well. And I just smoked like two cigarettes when I was nine. But I think you're right about that

time. Maybe nine or ten probably would have been when I stopped and then I got into Nintendo or whatever playing Nintendo. Well, I would probably say 16. I would bet. I think. I mean, I mean, the last time I played with toys and did that, it was very recent with my nephew. Oh, sure. I'm doing it all the time.

And it is pretty fun. And I got to say, like, I get pretty into it. You know what I'm saying? Like, when we're imagining things, like him and I will go out walking the dog or something with my nephew. And he'll be like, you know, there's zombies. And we have the umbrella gun. And then there's, like, people that are going to be helping us, these, like, dogs that are like, you know, made of cement or whatever. And I get into it.

and I start to like really imagine it and I'm like kind of feeling it and I'm like boom, I just got one and hit it out into the water and stuff. So I feel like it's still inside me and I'm excited to do it more to be silly and goof around with toys. Then they have a joke.

Is a joke about how they have to occasionally change the names of things to not be a title. So Bartchis list basically eight different toys board games in row. I think these have all existed within the Simpsons universe as the real items as well. But yeah, like we were saying earlier, There are so many jokes in this episode

that are just a bunch of list of joke names or a list of joke t-shirt slogans or fake products. Parchuzi. Ravenous, ravenous ridoes. What was the one that the Rockham? Knock them, rock'em. Oh, Sikobob cyborgs.

And yes, we were talking about montages. We get Kansas' dust in the wind here, an expensive song that Disney's lost to pay for when you watch it on Disney Plus. That's the one I was thinking of when I saw dust in the wind. I thought, I'm real glad those Simpson guys are doing well that they can afford this kind of thing, you know? I'm sure the Robert Frost's State gets money for the quoting of this Nothing Gold Can Stay poem.

Right. Yes. It feels crazy to hear a song like this now because now only the most expensive TV shows like brag about having a big part of the stranger's things like promotion was, oh man, the songs we license. And in that finale, in the last 40 minutes of it, they play like eight songs that I'm like, well, that had to be a $100 million of your budget to play these eight songs. It's really showing off. And do people, I guess people must like that. Like, to me, I guess I kind of like it. If I'm being completely honest, like I don't always like it. But I can be a bit of a sucker for that where I'm like, oh, hey, I know this song.

You know, like, hey, I know this song. He's cool. The song's in here. I mean, if they're paying all the money for it, they must be crunching the numbers a little bit and figuring out that this is a good thing to do. I really think the working premise for all of these montage. in this era is they choose the most on the nose song. So the song choice itself is a joke that is supposed to make you laugh.

Though I will say, when you do an ironic I'm Too Sexy montage, it's not too far from a sincere I'm Too Sexy montage. It feels like they didn't complete, like the bridge to Irony Town is built, but they didn't finish it. It's not a complete bridge to the irony. It often feels to me of just like Al Jean lazily picked a song like Dust in the Wind. Though around this same time,

was the film Old School and that comedically uses Dust in the Wind in it too and I felt like it communicated it better in an ironic way in live action than The Simpsons does. The old school dust in the wind sticks out to me. I like remember that. That was like

I don't even remember what the like why it was there but I just remember that being so funny to me like that scene with Dust in the Wind being so funny to me. It was at the funeral for their boy Blue who died in one of the pranks or whatever. Yeah. So Bart gives a Viking funeral to all of his toys, burns them with a magnifying glass in a very childlike way.

Sea Captain is a very lonely man in this little clip here. So Eden sank to grief. So dawn goes down today. Nothing gold can stay. Yarr. Hey, sea captain. Giving your toys a Viking funeral, eh? I really don't want to talk about it.

If you change your mind, I won't be far. Thanks, but... I've been told I'm a good listener. But when you're a captain, you never know when people are just flattering you. He's gone. Darn it! I just want a friend who isn't a work friend.

Too needy. Yeah, that one hits hard. I mean, that is, you know, when he says, I'm told I'm a good listener and then he's sort of reckoning with that idea himself when he realizes, but can I even believe that? Do I have one single friend who's not a fake friend? and who I don't employ, who doesn't rely on me for their income.

Yeah, he's having a real crisis here. That's not regular for sea captain? He's a complicated guy, I think. I mean, he has two glass eyes, has tons of gay sex on the boat. He's gay? Well, he's only gay on the sea. Yeah. Oh, he's bisexual?

He is bisexual, yes. I base this on the joke of this pornography will stop my. men from resorting to homosexuality for about five minutes. You're one to talk, they say to him. And then he goes, ooh, and does a limp wrist. So he can't see. How did it even know? I guess he knew Bart's voice.

Because if he has two glass eyes, you can't see, right? I think they did not keep the glass eyes as canon. But they can kind of do whatever they want with him, including making him a needy stranger. Yes. Yeah, and it works as a sea captain, right? I mean, you know, the idea of a sea captain out of sea by himself is there's certain loneliness to it. Definitely. Also, he began as a restaurant owner. He wasn't really a sea captain for the first year.

He had a name when he was introduced. Oh, that too, yes. So we come back from break. Bart is feeling depressed. I do wonder, I was like, okay, what's the age of the writers on this? Because Bart's going through full midlife crisis. Joel H. Cohen, not related to the Coen brothers, but Joel H. Cohen, his birth date is not listed on IMB or Wikipedia, but he did get his MBA in 19, So I am going to say that in 2004 when he would have been writing this, he'd have been in his mid to late 30. That sounds about right. Is that when you're supposed to have a midlife crisis? If you're a Rich Simpson's writer, it probably comes on sooner right back. Yeah.

I'm trying to think I'm maybe having a midlife crisis. No, I guess maybe I'm 41 years old. And so I feel like maybe I went through a midlife crisis. I don't know that I have like, I just have done comedy and podcasting though. So maybe it's hard to tell. Casting a midlife crisis can sometimes be the same thing. Exactly, yeah. And being a stand-up comedian is like,

I just watched a whole movie called Is This Thing On with Will Armette. Oh, you what? Oh, wow. I went to it last night and watched it. Yeah, it's very much about somebody having a mid-life crisis and starting as a stand-up comedian as he's going through a divorce. I mean, if there's one guy who knows stand-of-comedy, it's Bradley Cooper. Bradley Cooper, you know what Bradley Cooper did? It's not a bad movie, I will say that before I start ripping on it.

It's pretty good. Dern is fantastic in it. She plays that. But yeah, he really annoyed me for some reason. Bradley Cooper puts himself in the movie as this like wacky friend named Balls. What the? His name's Balls. You know what I mean?

It's like, come on, man. I don't know. It just annoyed me, like putting himself in there. Like, yeah, I'm the silly, wacky kind of sidekick guy. You know, I assumed Henry's joke was going in a different direction. I thought he was going to say, if there's one guy who knows divorce, it's Will Arnette. Oh, sure. Of course. No, Will Arnette doing a movie

about like a divorced guy to a blonde woman that everybody loves like where did he find that but also i think it's ridiculous that we all have to just agree like yeah that's well arnette's hair like look it's fine if he wants to pretend he grew hair oh do we have to all live in this lie that he has more hair now than when he was on a rest of development he's pivoting i will say there's a couple of scenes where he's on stage and his hair line is showing and it is really far back on one side at least it's like very far back but i agree he's also the rest of that he's got like this luscious locks of hair that they don't really seem real at all.

So we come back from the commercial break. Bart is very sad. And Lisa tries to talk him out of it. And then Bart hits us with some very of its time homophobia in our next clip. Bart, if you don't get up now, good luck getting a pancake. Dad's pulled his chair right up to the stove. Lease, I think I'm having a midlife crisis. If you're feeling depressed, do what I do.

and write something, a novel, a play, or I could write something that's not gay. Oh, Bart, someone wrote something cynical on your shirt. Mm-hmm. Let me wash it off. Leave me alone. This expresses my rage at the machine. Well, I like t-shirts with a nice joke, like support our troops. Bart's shirt is a classic, Marge, just like keep on trucking.

As if I would ever want to stop trucking. Whoa! Whoa. I wish I had that shirt. It's clever, funny, and would cover my boy boobs nicely. I'm 264 on my shirt. Yep, that's what I was talking about earlier. Yeah.

I feel like they discovered the concept of man slash boy boobs in this episode because there are two jokes about that. It was all the rage to him. It's like calling things gay as meaning bad. Those two things were all the rage. Did he mean it as bad, gay as bad? I guess there was like a pejorative part of it. What was he saying literally, like those are things that a gay person would do, write poetry? And what are the two things that she says?

Or a novel or a play, yeah. I mean, Bart could think those are literally things a homosexual would do. But I definitely think he's being written as an accurate 10-year-old boy. And this is not apologizing for a homophobia, but an accurate for a 10-year-old boy to be like, oh, that's gay. I'm going to do something that's not gay. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

When I heard that, I was kind of a little bit shocked because, you know, I don't really remember them doing that, like, saying, like, that's gay. Like, I don't know. I just deleted it out of my head. Maybe in the episodes I watched, they didn't really say that. But, yeah, that, it seemed, it was, it's a little jarring to hear Bart Simpson being like, yeah, maybe something that's not gay, like, yeah, they're making fun of, I mean, in this instance, I feel like they want some of the audience to be like, yeah, that is gay.

But years before this, they were making fun of little kids saying gay as an insult with Lisa Kilsing Nelson and the bully say, oh, you kiss the girl. That's so gay. That's a great joke about it But yeah One feels like you're supposed to be with Bart Like Bart's so funny calling that gay He's like more people should be saying

Things are gay like Bart does I do love Martin's reaction that someone wrote something cynical On your shirt like it was a He got like bullied or something And somebody wrote it on there Don't have a cock man That's homophobic Bart That boy boobs thing too

Like I would have cut that because I think there's a funnier joke They lost instead. This is one of the only other deleted scenes in the episode. It's very quick. Otto says more than just whoa when Bart walks by in this quick little clip here. Whoa. Now there's a matto for Atu. How'd your shirt think of that?

All you ever talk about is Blue Oyster Cult. And he looks down at his, because you'll notice Otto is not wearing his normal shirt for that shot. He's wearing a purple shirt that says B-Y-O-C or Blue Aster Col, whatever those initials are. That's on his shirt. I see. Now, okay, so Chris mentioning homophobic t-shirts reminding me of an event in my life.

When a male friend and I were driving through Pittsburgh, we were lost. This is pre-smartphone era. A guy's walking down the street. We rolled down the window to ask him for directions. And he was nice to us, but his t-shirt implied he would not be nice to us because he was wearing a shirt. The Tricks Rabbit was on the shirt. And it said, silly, F-sler, dicks are for chicks. And as we were mid-question, we were like, okay, we're two men alone.

in a car, what is he going to do to us? We just saw the T-shirts. He was like, oh yeah, you just need to go on there, get on the highway. It's Pittsburgh. I don't know what kind of accent he had, but he was very helpful. So there are very nice homophobes in Pittsburgh, or at least there were in 2008. Yeah, maybe it was a

pro-trans shirt as well. It's kind of the language on it is a little bit strange as well, but yeah, that's the kind of shirt I remember, you know? That kind of awful, like, yeah, using some IP to make some terrible homophobic reference or whatever. This guy wanted everyone to know that a penis goes into a vagina and that is it.

End of story. Yeah. Or like maybe a butt. It's got to be a lady's butt. And he's playing into your love of cereal so you'll agree with him. So I'll have to ask, was it not starred out? It just wrote the F slur fully. Yes, yes.

I didn't want to say that on the air, but it was just the big bold word. We all know what it is. Well, because sometimes people walk around with like, you know, bullshit, but the eye is an asterisk or whatever, you know. Nope. Wow. Yeah, I feel like with this one, you kind of need it because otherwise you think it's something it's not well-known enough.

What am I, a Fitbit? What's going on here? Yeah. Yeah, what are we talking about here? I love a 2004 joke that March saying that support our troops is a comedy frame. It's not meant really. Now, again, so many jokes are written for this episode. There are about like 20 t-shirt jokes in this episode, but they are not trying to be too

funny. They're thinking, Bart is writing these. What would Bart write? I wrote them all down, but honestly, I don't think one is funny enough to even recite on the air here on the podcast. I like that this shirt sucks going all the way to sucking sucks. Though that sounds like a shirt, the direction man would be wearing as well. I hate that direction man.

Sucking sucks, unless you're a lady, that it's okay. Everybody's loving Bart's shirts. That's where we get the opening bit. I did wonder why they didn't reference any of Bart Mania with this. Like Bart's making a T-shirt, but there's no real reference to I'm an underachiever and proud of it or any of the like, I mean, that was 14 years ago when this episode aired. So it already was ancient history. Maybe that's why they didn't reference it. Though they did bring up puppy go-goo, its second appearance since the Barting Over episode in

season 14, the 300th episode. So now puppy goos is a lot more beat up than the last time we saw puppy goo-goo. Yeah. And at one point puppy-goo was a real dog. Yes, it was like his pet dog too. Yeah. And then it became a toy. And then in the treehouse 31, episode, parody of Toy Story. Puppy Goo joins the other toys who murder Bart's in that one. The Toy Gory, I should say. That was their parody of it. Though Bart's attitude is, of course, for sale.

It's been on sale since even before the show was a show. When it was just the shorts, Bart's attitude was for sale, heavily merchandise successfully sell. Chris, did you growing up, did you own any Bart's shirts? Do you recall at ages six to eight? Yeah, I had some South Park shirts for sure. that was more of my speed but I definitely had one younger I had maybe one where he was a rat oh red yeah like I might have had I'm trying to think I definitely had a Simpson's shirt I just don't

remember I like it might have been yeah it might have been him as like where he's chewing on the side of the thing even I think were they making deer rat boy shirts at some point I mean I could be completely wrong but I definitely had one I definitely had like a might have just been a standard like Bart Simpson don't have a cowman or Bart man or something like that, you know? One shirt they get away with Bob is when Bart has his stand full of T-shirts. They get away with Poe Buddies Shurficked knithead. I mean, it's not truly a swear, but you would think the sensors would have. You can do the math.

Yeah, the one T-shirt I had, the one Bart shirt I had growing up in the peak Bart days, it was Bart on the shirt with a skateboard saying, cool your Jets man, which according to Frinkiac, he said once. in season one. I had a Bart man and around somewhere in a closet I have just like the Bart Simpson. I think it is the unachiever and proud of it, but it's definitely the with him facing forward with his slingshot pulled back, that classic shot. I didn't eat Butterfinger.

I couldn't fit the entire shirt over my head now. That's how old that shirt. I ate Butterfinger bars, even though I hated them because of Bart Simpson. I'll say that. Like I didn't think they were good at all compared. Like, there was much better chocolate bars, but because Bart was on the ads, it was like, I have to eat these fucking chocolate bars. I would, like, force myself to eat them just so I could be like a cool Simpsons kind of guy. Worked on me.

Me too. Lightly. But now, you know, in my older age, now I like Butterfingers as a light dusting over ice cream. That's my favorite way to have a Butterfinger. That sounds kind of nice, you know? Like the chocolate, too or just the stuff? Yeah, chocolate too. The chocolate too.

Yeah. On some vanilla, just some vanilla ice cream? I had it. When we went to Universal Studios, the fake Springfield for Simpsons, when me and Bob went there a couple years ago. I went and I had some of the worst fucking food I ever had in my life at that fake Simpsons restaurant or whatever. Which food item did you hate? I mean, it's like touch and go there.

The pizza is pretty nasty because it's just reheated frozen pizza. But like, I guess the burgers are just like any kind of burger. Okay. That's what I had. A crusty burger or whatever, right? They're crusty burgers, I think. Yeah, yeah. We had the animal substitute, well, the impossible version of a crusty burger.

Holy shit. In my opinion, that sounds like I can't even imagine how bad that is because of how bad the original burger is. But maybe it's better. Who knows? But yeah, it was like, I just remember being like, oh, this is, they're openly ripping us off here. They don't really care. Like, they just know that we're going to buy this because it's a crusty burger or whatever. And they're not even trying to make it halfway decent. I guess the nice thing about an impossible burger is that it tastes the same everywhere unless it's really overcooked. So you know what you're getting. Yeah, it would be a better bet probably than that. Yeah. I remember. remember whatever the side was was terrible as well. But yeah, the fries weren't so great. I remember that. And then, you know what? We reviewed it on doughboys. Listen to that. Listeners,

you can hear our whole thoughts on it. Now, when Bart is selling stuff, first Ned reads, get bent, deemed that it must mean praying. And then we get a joke of Moe asking for Calvin peeing on things. And this might confuse some people that Calvin and Hobbs used to be a comic strip people liked, not a drawing of a boy pissing. It used to be there.

Yeah, it's no. I loved Calvin and Hobbs, yeah. I loved it. Had all of the books. And I never laughed at it. Never made me laugh one single time. But for some reason, I loved it and read all of them. And like was, yeah, I just, I liked the relationship between Calvin and Hobbs. We loved it. When did they, have they stopped making it entire? Like, there's never been another iteration of it since back then or what? Yeah, we just hit the 30th anniversary of the final strip. It was December of 1995. So no Calvin and Hobbs for 30 years. Bill Waterson just put out a book that he, He wrote with another author, and apparently nobody cared. Nobody showed up for the party. Yikes. Now, do you think there's a chance we get, you know, what this horrible world we have now? Do you think there's a chance we get some really terrible live action Calvin and Hobbs? Or do you think Waterson would be a dog?

Oh, he is not doing it. He won't give an interview. He won't even be on a documentary for Calvin and Hobbs. But I will say that we have reached the end of this era. And I think this era has come and gone many years ago. the Calvin peeing on Hobbs, sorry, Calvin Peeing on Anything era. I don't see that on cars anymore.

And I think this was peak Calvin peeing on things. Of course, Bill Watterson never drew that artwork. I believe it's repurposed artwork of Calvin filling a water balloon. Yes. So I did read up a little history on this. Several articles are out there of a history of it. Yes. In the June 5th, 1988 strip, the Sunday strip,

Calvin is filling up a water balloon. Now, if you were to erase his hands and change his face, slightly, then it looks like he is holding his dick and peeing or, and you can put a line of piss over that. So the history of it, nobody who did research on it could find the first person to make this. It always was illegal. It wasn't licensed or anything. But one reporter found the earliest they could find of media talking about it was November 26, 1995, when Calvin and Hobbs was nearly done. And of course, it comes from Florida. I'm a Floridian. I'm a Floridian. I can say this.

The first thing was, it was Calvin pissing on the logo for Florida State University. I was going to say, it's got to be a university sports reference. Yes. I hope we don't need permission to make fun of Florida. Well, you know, to let people know, I'm not just being hacky, being like, oh, Florida, man. Like, I earned it. I live there when this episode aired. It's true.

But, yes, that the Florida Southern college rivalries are some of the stupidest there are, because Major League sports aren't in a lot of Southern American states. So it's just colleges. And yes, the Gators versus the Seminoles is one of like the most heated, shittiest, meanest, spirited rivalries. So it's not surprising that perhaps they invented Calvin pissing on the logo of the Florida State University. Imagine if you were the guy who did that. It's crazy that he never, he must have passed away or something before it became big. Because otherwise he would have taken credit, right?

have to come forward. It becomes this huge phenomenon and be like, hey, I was the first person to do that. And we haven't heard from them, right? If it's Florida, I'm guessing a TV accident, right, Henry? I can see whatever I want about Florida. Yeah, I'm from Ohio. Yeah, you're from Ohio

you have a friend, your good friend is from Florida. So you have lots of Florida friends. And Ohio, I have a friend who lives in Ohio, actually, in Brian, who I do a podcast. Apparently then from Florida, from Florida college sports, it easily then trickles over like

you're in into NASCAR because it's then it's pissing on the NASCAR numbers of drivers you don't like. I see. And then it blossoms from there. And there's a separate... So they would Calvin counterfeit logo, counterfeit decal of Calvin praying, which is unique original art not based on

a Waterson strip, which is unfair because we all know how devout of a Christian Calvin was in those comics. They could have at least taken one of the many panels of Calvin in church, Calvin helping baptized children. It ended up Bill Waterson not wanting to license anything. Ended up like working against him, I think, with this because the United Press Syndicate,

who does own the right to Calvin Publishing, they did try to sue over this and prevent it, but you really can't stop it once it becomes like viral back then. And if Waterson had said licensed his stuff out to people who made official decals, then that horrible corporation could have fought on his behalf to make them not around. but because he had no business partners, he had no other rich guys to defend him against the smaller rich guys selling the pissing decals and T-shirts.

But he did okay, though, right? He got real rich from it still. Well, from the book, the book sales. And if you want to support Bill Waterson, I'm sure he needs it, but his book has never been cheaper. His newest book, The Mysteries. It's called The Mysteries?

Yes. He got together with another author, another artist, I believe, and put together this book. Nobody knows what it's about. nobody has read it, but it did come out in 2023. I was just saying it's a bad title, the mysteries, you know what I mean?

Like, that doesn't invoke anything. The book should be called, hey, it's the Calvin and Hobbs guy. Yeah. Yeah, hey, you know the pissing that was based on a thing that I did? I'm the guy who started it, not the pissing thing, but the actual thing it's based on. From the creator of piss boy comes his latest book. Mental Floss a few years ago

did the magazine or online site Mental Floss actually did do a, I'm pretty sure, through email interview with Waterson, but they actually did ask him they said, have you ever peeled off one of those stupid Calvin stickers from a pickup truck? And then he replied with, I figured that long after the strip is forgotten,

those decals are my ticket to immortality. Oh, okay. So he has replied to at least one email. Yeah. So he doesn't hate it then. He's coming to terms with it. It sounds like decades later he has come to terms with it. So when Moe is asking,

what do you have Calvin pissing on? you can see Calvin pissing on any possible thing in 2004. It is sad that it is the legacy of it. But there's your history of Calvin pissing. Started with Florida football. Continued to NASCAR. And now he's pissed on every possible thing you can and prayed to everything he can too. Then the cops show up and bust him.

Obviously cops would never be this like violent in their communities. But it's funny in a cartoon. Not to children. Fiction. Yeah. Yes. Fiction. It's great.

You know, I feel like the joke, though, either Wiggum should say proud newbie and princess or he should just be wearing his shirt that says it. But if he does both, I think it hits the joke. It lessens the joke by doing it twice. I don't know. What do you guys say? Maybe calling too much attention to this. I think they thought they had too good of a joke maybe or something like that.

You know, like this is so good or something like that. That we need to really hammer it. But you're right. If it had just been like, now do you have, what I'd really like was and then it just cuts to him wearing it, you know? I don't think the joke's great, to be honest. I don't think it's that funny. Well, because he's not Nubian.

That's funny. Or a princess. Oh, hang on a second. Yeah, that one didn't really hit it for me. I don't think it would have worked even if they just said it once for me. And this is also a joke about Wiggum wears a 7XL shirt. I did wonder, like, obviously, there's very large shirts out there for people who need large shirts. But I wanted to go like, okay, what's the biggest size you can get at pro wrestling teas?

I no longer I'm addicted to pro wrestling t-shirts, but that was the site I went to a lot. Wrestling fans, you would think, they need big, shirt sizes, but the highest they go to is 4xel. Yeah, when we do our shirts, that's the most you can get, I think, is a 4xel. Like, we go to the distributor, like the, you know, that people actually make the shirts, and I haven't seen much bigger than that. So I think that is the biggest. They make another big shirt joke in this as well, the comic book guy.

Yeah, I wonder if that's why comic book guy is, like, bored with a joke. Because we're like, yes, it's another fat shirt. Yeah. My thing, though, is that could be vanity sizing. Those could actually be seven XLs, and they're actually, they're just listed for X-Ls because if you go to some stores a small, especially at a theme park, a small is actually an extra large.

And so the people visiting like, wow, would you look at that, I'm a small! And then they go back home and buy clothes. Like, wait a minute. It's like Bobby Hill at the Husky Boy store and King of the Hill. Like, I'm a media. Bart is now ruined. He can't pay bribery to the cops and Nelson.

And so this is where he comes up with a new idea. Thanks to his good friend, Lisa, who can beat him up. It's no fair. I just started and I'm out of business. Why don't you go legit and sell your shirts in stores? But I'm just a kid. You're a kid no longer, Bart. You've become a man. Hey, you're right. I am.

And as an adult, you'll be needing comprehensive insurance. I'll just leave these brochures. So how can I get my shirts in stores? I bet you could find a distributor at the Springfield Novelty Expo. That's right. It's tomorrow. I love that joke. Like, oh, that's right. It's tomorrow.

Like the huge convention that would be so helpful to me, it's tomorrow. I'll just go there tomorrow. Yeah. So now it turns into kind of a parody, not just of like silly t-shirts, but of the Spencer Gifts industry of the era

and other wacky stores. And I had friends in Florida. Talk about this. Florida friends who, two friends of mine, one was an assistant manager, one was a manager of the local Spencer Gifts in my town. The one that got me,

gave me a laugh was the poison cubes. The fact that they had free samples that I thought that was a pretty good gag but goes along with the fact that yeah, this episode was just gag, gag, gag, gag, gag, gag. And this is another example of that where you're just running through all of these gags over and over again.

There's a bunch of novelties they have to make up and then there's a bunch of new Bart shirts and then there's a bunch of crusty shirts, although I do kind of want Osama bin Scratchy. I would buy the IchBob Scratch Pants one as well. I think. Yeah, pretty. good visual gag too where like the thing expands and actually physically knocks

barts they like destroys his whole stand or whatever we also get to see that Apu gets to be high status for a change is he is the buyer wearing his retailer pin at it everybody is sucking up to him and he tries a mood lollipop and walks right by erotic ash trays it is funny the idea because he just owns a quickie mark the idea that it could change anything is a pretty funny joke you know, he's like, runs this one single small convenience store or whatever. That's going to be life-changing for some business. If he bought 20 mood pops, it would save their marriage.

This is where there's another deleted scene, and I think I know why they cut it. But Apu looked at one other thing after the mood lollipops. Listen, a smoking monkey is only funny until you've seen a monkey breathe through a hole in his neck. He is being sold plastic smoking monkeys. that are the exact design of the Smoking Monkey that Lytle Hudson is trying to sell in season four. And I guess Apu has seen a monkey with a laryngectomy before, and that just ruined the gag for him. I would bet they just cut it because they're like,

oh, wait, we did a smoking monkey joke before. And it's so much funny to hear Lytle Hut say, better cut down there, Smokey. Krusty overshadows Bart very big once Bart is trying to sell his shirts. T-shirts. homemade t-shirts. My mom thinks they're good. Krusty Show T-shirts are made

for kids, buy kids. And we pass the slavings onto you. We've got all your favorite characters. Itchy, Scratchy, Poochie, Austin Powers Itchy, Itchy, Scratch Bob Itchpans, Confederate Itchy, and Osama Bin Scratchy. That sucked.

Well, at least I've still gone. About my health. Oh, my golly, graciousness. Bad car. Apologize to the poor little boy. You know what? Now it's Austin Powers Itchy. That's the shirt I would wear.

I want that shirt. That's the new dream shirt. Actually, Chris, you asked. That's a new dream shirt. Austin Powers. Itchy is a pretty funny. That's made for four kids by kids was probably my favorite joke of the

episode. I really liked that. I like Krusty's wink of when he says slavings. He's very proud of his pun on using child slave labor. And we have this Willie Wonka character whose I guess outlandish behavior is slightly down to earth.

They're all things he can conceivably do with props around him. Yeah, they don't want him to be magic. They want him to be a weird guy who can do things but doesn't break reality, right? Yeah. All those shirts that are just mashups of other popular things and doing that to keep him going.

Like, I feel like every t-shirt is just a mashup now. Like, it is like Harley Quinn and Deadpool riding the cat bus to see Freddie Fosbear. Like, that's all of the t-shirts now. This joke is now far out past by reality. The Goose Gladwell guy, they credit Ian Maxstone Graham for that one. And I feel like they thought he could be a recurring dude, like especially because it sounded like on the commentary, they pitched it as Hank Gazzeria, not a guest star. Yeah.

which you would think is then planning for the future. He doesn't come back for an episode, but I was reading that he came back for a couch gag, and I don't know what that, I didn't bother looking into that episode, but he is in a couch gag eight years from this air date. Wow. They should have used him for another thing.

They credit Ralph Sosa for a lot of the fun Goose Gladwell animation. He was one of Mike Anderson's top dudes because they co-directed two episodes together, one in season 18 and one season 19, and then he would direct two episodes, one in season 20 and one in season 22. and still works on the show. If you work on the Simpsons,

like Ralph Sosa, who started in late Simpsons in season eight, you will be there for 30 more years. Bart also takes it very well being hit by a car. Like he is twitching in a very realistic way. Famously, he was hit by a car before and bounce back. I guess he's pretty used to it now, right? Yeah. It hits him hard.

It hits him pretty hard. Hank Azari is very funny here as he's making a deal with Bart. The name's Goose Gladwell. Of goose's gags and gifts? That's right. I've got 20 stores in 30 states, and I want to sell your shirts in most of them.

Do you really think my shirts will sell? Absolutely. Here, take my card. Sorry, that's my old number. Let me give you the new one. Darn, it's out of ink. But my phone number's on the pen. Oh, but it's my old phone number.

I'll call you. I now remember too, Bob. Another person we know who or have heard of who did these, what Bart's job is back in 2004, I think even, was the writer for Rick and Morty and community like Ryan Ridley. He did Bart's job. Yeah, I believe he made a mince on writing one t-shirt and getting the profits from that. It was the t-shirt. I do all my own stunts. It says that on the shirt and you walk around with it.

And despite the fact that there would be a million places that would sell that t-shirt without ever paying him, the ones that did pay him a royalty for it, actually made him enough money that he just like moved to California and didn't need a job while trying to become a comedy writer for years. He went from writing T-shirts to writing Renfield. That's right. Oh, he wrote Renfield? He wrote Renfield. I liked Renfield. It was kind of fun.

Somebody had to write Renfield and he was available. You know what? He did a pretty decent job with Renfield. I got to say, it was pretty good. Yeah, that's wild that you could just make one single shirt like that. It could blow up. Like, that feels like that incredible level of luck. It's like being on a domain or something, those people who would get a domain early and then be able to sell it, you know, and just like, it just seems like being at the exact right moment, no disrespect to that guy, whatever his name was.

But it's not like the most clever shirt in the world, right? It's not like, and it just happened to be, yeah, people liked it and it hit a little bit and now he makes a bunch of money. I guess a shocking Ryan Ridley fact that I discovered, I don't know, five years ago, at least in the most recent iteration, he is one of the Battletoads. He plays rash, I believe. Nice. In the Battletoads that nobody played because Battletoads was never popular. Right. The Xbox one from a few.

Right, that one? Yes. I didn't play it and it was free on Game Pass. I had not played it. Maybe I should give it a whirl just to see. I liked Battletoads just fine as a youth. What is it? What's the type of a game is it?

It's just like I beat them up. And because Microsoft made it, all the Battletoads are in the IDF. Oh, yeah. Oh, nice. That's true. You wouldn't want to play. the scary levels that they have now in this game. Barts instantly a success.

He's on the cover of chestwear monthly, public cottons to Simpsons shirts. More sign gags in this episode. This is late in production 15. This is airing early in season 16, but this is late production 15. They have a lot of energy for all of these like sign and cover jokes at the end of a year. Homer's like, I've been reading this magazine for years and I never dreamed my son would be on the cover. and then Goose Gladwell comes in and the line, nothing makes parents happier

than when an eccentric single man takes an interest in their child. That feels like them directly referencing Michael Jackson, previous guest star. Oh, completely. Yeah. Still alive. I guess like around the time they were writing this,

it was the baby dangling incident. And he was in the middle of being criminally convicted, or criminally tried and found not guilty for, you know, the kid stuff. Yes. It's funny too. When I put in that season free, disc one to watch when Flanders failed, that's the same with the episode.

That's not on Disney Plus. It's on that same disc. Bart is handed a bunch of cash, which I have to think this already is the trickery of Goose Gladwell here. This is under the table. He's not paying taxes on that. And Bart is owed a lot more money than what looks like could be tops $2,000, right? Yeah, even if he's got hundreds there, it's not a huge stack or whatever. So I think you're meant to understand.

understand there that he's ripping him off a little bit or something, right? And Marge is delighted by this guy. I assume that there'd be a joke where they'd be mad they had to clean up after him because he leaves confetti and leaves behind. Yeah, Marge's what a delightful sprite gets cut off very quickly. No deleted scenes here. So now Homer goes to work and, well, Mr. Burns does not like it. And then we get the closest thing to referencing when this episode aired.

Because technically, this is a holly. holiday episode of the Simpsons from one angle. Smithies, there seems to be some sort of communique on that man's blouse. I believe it says, don't wake me, I'm working. Bolshevism, sheer Bolshevism. Wrape for the crushing. You're suspended without pay. Take your clacking balls and go.

Your way out. Remove all the feelings you got under our dental plan. You know what, Mr. Burns? I'm never coming back. My son's making so much care. in a t-shirt game that I don't have to work another day in my life. Assuming my health does not deteriorate as I age. Good riddance to bad blubber.

Smithers want to go get a cup of coffee? I just had one, sir. What the, why is everyone so insolent today? Well, today is Christmas, sir. I say when it's Christmas. Yeah, I did not connect that to the air date, but I guess Merry Christmas, everybody. The Last New Simpsons before Christmas, and then they have a... joke that it happens to be Christmas the day

this joke happens, I guess. Yeah, the joke works without it being Christmas, you know, just kind of the way, yeah, as a joke in itself, but I guess how close before Christmas, what day is it? December 14th or something? Yeah, yeah, that is definitely in the Christmas season. Unseasonably warm, though, for Christmas. Yeah. For Homer to wear a T-shirt to work even and not as normal, like,

Oh, yeah. There's no reference to it being cold outside or anything like that, is there? No. Now, of course, this is a joke. about Homer having perceived left-wing beliefs on his shirt getting him fired. Now, of course, if Homer's shirt looked like the Palestinian flag, then he would also be fired, too. Is that true? Are they, as far as what's going on nowadays? If a flight attendant happens to be wearing a flag pin or something that looks like a cafe, they have been fired and reported to their bosses for wearing hate clothing.

Yes. No, but in the Simpsons, they don't rep. The Simpsons do go to Israel in a few years. They visit Jerusalem. It's, yeah. A great episode. I like a nice limited mean burns and stuff here. It's always fun to see him.

Yeah. Also, the nice, very well-observed, like, a little thing of, like, you want to get coffee? Like, well, I just had a cup of coffee. Like, oh, the insolence. So we go home. Homer is enjoying the rich bitch lifestyle. I also was like, oh, it's surprising to see the words rich bitch in The Simpsons. Just the word bitch on the screen.

Yeah, bitch, gay. Yeah, it is definitely, yeah, it's clearly from not now. you know. I had to check the subtitles to be sure, but they call this machine Homer wants to buy the change wizard Romco. Right. Ronco. If I enunciated that properly.

Roncoe is the real thing. They make tons of the salad spinners, whatnot. Food dehydrators. Cap snafflers. Though this feels very much of the era of the coin star in every grocery store. You know, my local Safeway still has a coin star in it. I don't know how prevalent coin stars are in your areas these days. I don't know that we ever had CoinStar.

I could be wrong. I don't know that CoinStar was a Canadian thing. It would choke on a to-me, I think. Yeah, that's right. They can't handle our currency. So Homer is now begging Bart for money. Bart is his, like, this joke could also work. It makes me wonder, I wish they said what the original job Bart had was.

He could have just been like an internet billionaire kind of thing, like a dot-com bubble type joke they could have done too. So Homer gets his money. And then, oh, also on the commentary, Graining, it seems like Graining, I thought was joking at first, but then he's not joking. He's like, yes, draw every coin. It can't just look like a pile of goop. You have to draw every coin. Like, he's telling artists to torture themselves. Because they actually did it in this scene, right?

The stack of coins, each one is delineated from the other. I know. It's crazy. It's so big. Who would care? And then also, right after Graining is complaining about a background character looking weird. I was like, wow, never changed. Matt Graney caring about that is, you know, double-sided.

Yeah. I think he was complaining that the characters in the background of this restaurant weren't moving, but then I was looking at them and they were moving. Not for the one second he looked at it. So, yes, we're at the Gilda Truffle. Homer has to beg Bart to pay for everything, too. But first, it gets to see that his friends are not happy that he's gotten to retire early, which is pretty.

I would assume that would be how some friends of ours, maybe when they learn that we're podcasters are going, oh, well, though I don't sleep till noon. and I wake up in a normal time. They don't know we actually work much harder than them. Yes, yeah. Podcasting is easily the hardest job I've ever had, and my other job was stand-up comedian.

I had real jobs. I just want to be clear. I worked at warehouses. I worked at Best Buy, like I said, fired from there. I worked at a hotel. Did all kind of stuff. This is where Homer cannot take it that everybody thinks he's pathetic. After Lenny and Carl tell him to enjoy the autumn of your years, jerk.

And Homer also has to ask for an extra hundred just to pay for all of the bathroom fixtures he destroyed. Barre Gienan treats him like a child, telling him to use his inside voice. He has no insight. The waiter here is actually the waiter from the boy who knew too much, although he is voiced by Harry Shearer in this scene. They just use the same design. It's always fun to catch them realizing like, why make a new waiter? We've drawn like seven great waiters. Let's just pull one out of the old packs, right?

Yeah, and it's not crazy to think that there would be a waiter that maybe would even change the jaw, like go to a different place. maybe or like in the town, right? It's plausible. So we come back. It's the start of Act 3. Now things aren't so great for Homer. He's using all of his free time to drink slightly more than he normally does, I guess, based on all the beer cans around him. And we get the reappearance of the Eric Idol character, Declan Desmond.

And they have a very funny story about him on the commentary, Eric Idol, where he visited the Simpsons' writers' room and he pitched the idea, oh, please put me on the Simpsons. I love the Simpsons. So they kept bringing him back. And the last time he was on, he completely. about having to be on the show again. He's like, I don't know why you keep bringing me back. So they stopped having him come back.

This character disappears after 2012. And I think they were being nice to Eric Idol. He's a comedy legend, but if you know one thing about Eric Idol, it's that he needs money. He is in desperate need of money. So I guess at that point, he didn't need the money as much anymore. I don't know what his deal was. And also kind of cranky. Why did he need money so bad?

His finances were just horribly mishandled. Gotcha. Yeah, there's something about most of the Monty Python things were, made in a way that don't give him like any particular amount of residuals or anything like that. I think also he might have a couple divorces in his pet. I could be wrong on that. I want to say, you know, in the ranking of living Monty Python actors, Eric Idle still seems like the least cranky, I think. Maybe Michael.

Yeah, John Cleese. I mean, Cleese is the number one crank, right? Cleese is the worst of the worst. But Terry Gilliam, not far behind. I was reading up on Eric Idol and he says, I don't watch TV, I don't watch new movies, I don't read the news. So he is the opposite of John Cleese. Yeah. Sounds like a happier life.

Also, like, yeah, he's Eric Idol. Like, he gets to go, we look up to the Simpsons so much. And he gets to go to the Simpsons and they're like, you're a god to us. Like, you're an original Python. You are it. You're right, Bob. This is why he's so poor.

He talked himself out of a recurring job on the frigging Simpsons. That wouldn't be small money. It's a lot of royalties. So he wanted to do it. And then all of a sudden, he's like, why you keep calling me back? Was he getting older then? Was he possibly, like, You know what I mean?

Maybe, I mean, this last appearance was 14 years ago, so I feel like he was just like in his early to mid-60s. I don't know what his deal was, but I guess he was just very cranky about having to do the show again in his last appearance. So he just never came back. It's funny, too, that they created the Declan Desmond character inspired by the filmmaker of the Up Films and the Documentary Series, but it won't be until the Season 18 when they bring him back to directly parody the Up Films. Which Up Films?

Oh, 7 Up, 14 Up. the British documentary series. Not the Pixar movies. They focus on a group of British schoolchildren and then catch up with them every seven years see what they're up to and how they're doing. It's a reality show. Essentially.

Also, it was funny to hear them talk to Joel Cohen about in the commentary about how Joel Cohen was a writer for Suddenly Susan and they kind of dump on Soutley Susan and they mentioned that Al Jean sounds like he catches himself telling a story that could get somebody in trouble. So he goes like, I think I maybe heard that

but basically the character Eric I'll play he's added to Suddenly Susan to try to boost Suddenly Susan and that he named the character Ian Maxstone Graham after The Simpsons writer and the character is a mean boss to Brooke Shields' character and they apparently lightened him up through the writing of the episode because Brooke Shields complained that he was being too mean to her. It sounds like in the time that they filmed the episode they like course corrected

and suddenly he was nicer. And it's funny too that his just that there's a character called Ian Maxstone Graham on Sondley Susan after writer for the Simpsons that all the other Harvard writers knew. What I love here is that Homer realizes what he's watching on TV as he sees it. The couch is like that tree. The displaced male has two choices.

Either spend the rest of his days among the other broken down old lions. All the good graves are taken. Or find inclusion in the tribe by caring for vulnerable young cubs. Hmm. Pizza, basic cables said I should nurture you. Great. Will you play Malibu Stacy with me?

Okay. You be the girl, and I'll be the car. Dun, da-da-dun, I'm going to the organic market. B'u-poo! Screw the market! We're going to Mexico! Wee! Wee! Go, Flanderito, run him down. I can't run.

I'm wearing flip-flops. It is very heartwarming to see Homer and Lisa bonding. It rarely happens, but I don't like how he essentially abandons Lisa once he creates his bomb. I found the same thing, though. I really genuinely was, like, heartened by that as a new father or whatever, like seeing them and hearing her laugh like that with him and just being like clearly just having so much fun with him. It really did feel like a really nice moment between them that they don't often have. But yeah, of course, spoiled by the insane third act where he builds the nuclear reactor or whatever. It only lasts like three minutes tops.

He's Lisa's France. It's sad. They give up on it so quickly. Yeah. I'm glad you said that because I really felt the exact same way. When I saw that, I was like, this is really a sweet thing here. And then, yeah, I was bummed that, you know, I wanted it to stay that way for the rest of the episode at least. Once you meet a child robot, you realize reality is a little skewed in this third act.

Yeah. Yeah, the child robot. Before we even get to Homer building a dirty bomb, we first get to see that artificial intelligence is completed by Martin in this next clip. Oh, you'll win for sure. You and science go together like Lenny and Carl. The science is Carl. Olizam!

Don't hold my hand. It's creepy. Hush, my pet. Good. A robot. Last year the winner was a jar of hours. Oh, you need a little help from you. your dad. Remember, I did used to work at a science factory. Well, we're supposed to do this without

parental help. Sweetie, that's orphan talk. Funny. That one made me laugh, too. I guess they don't resolve his firing at all either. No, I know. He wasn't fired. Remember, he was put on, oh, right. Unpaid leave. I think that's why they said that versus firing so that they wouldn't have to reckon with that after so they could just, yeah, he came back or whatever, I guess. I think eventually realized that it would deteriorate as he ages. I think he finally realized that. Every line of that clip was so great. Like Homer is saying that which one of Lenny and Carl is the science, of Leeson science?

I love that. And I love the ridiculousness of childlike humanoid urban moucho. Yeah, Muchacho made me laugh. Obviously, too, Chum is a reference to Chuds, the cannibalistic humanoid underground dweller. Oh, very good. Yes. You know what? I didn't write that down.

That one was from memory. Off the dome. And not only that they also were really gay enough Martin at this time, like not just that he wants to hold hands with the robot boy he built, but also that like his reply of hush my pet. Like that's like a gay superville. Yeah. Yeah.

Hush my pet. And then even the lines that he says afterwards. And then the robot, his robot that he built is also homophobic. Apart Homer and this robot are all homophobes in this episode. Yeah, Homer's disgusted by it too, obviously. Yeah, that's right. He goes, he does like a full, yeah, that's true.

Yes, gather ye rosebuds, while ye may, is the first line from the poem to the virgins to make much of time by Robert Herrick from 1648. Okay, so we get Robert Frost and Robert Herrick in one episode. Holy shit, the Robert Poem episode. So they do that a lot, I'm guessing, is, throwing in that type of thing, like old literature and poems. Well, these guys didn't graduate Harvard for nothing.

Oh, yeah, I forgot they're all Harvard. So then, I swear, the third time in an Alginn episode, they play the Pink Panther theme. No, wait, that was a Merkin episode in season five with the Capberg. But I don't think, I think they do a parody of the Pink Panther theme,

right, with that character? Is it the actual Pink Panther theme? Man, now I can't remember if it's a sound delight, but this is the real Pink Panther. This is the fourth licensed song in this episode. Man. So dust in the wind, Pink Panther Seam.

Get ready for this. I'm too sexy. Man. Wow. And they're not over yet with the songs either, I think. Or wait, no, this is the last one, yeah. But I guess they're at the end of their production season, so they have to spend all their song money.

Also, I did cut owl pellets once in a classroom. I remember doing that. It's much better to dig through what is essentially the bodily waste of an owl as opposed to, like, cutting up a worm or a, frog or something. Yeah, we never did anything like that. I don't know if it was like all of Canada or just where I was, but yeah, we never had.

I just knew about that from popular culture. We never dissected anything or looked at anything nasty. Bob, did you do owl pellets? Yeah, yeah, we would dig through them and assemble the pieces of the mouse. The owl couldn't digest. Oh, man, you want to see the mouse skull so bad. Homer walks through the science factory he worked in. Oh, wait, so sorry, before he does that.

He is building the thing at home first. And that's where we have the joke about the Koreans. The Koreans can build one of these. And they can't even animate. And then his muzzle moves independent of his body, which would be happening at this point because they're done with cell animation. This Nuclear Secrets.com is the website he goes to. This reminded me of when I was applying for permanent residency here.

And one of the questions you have to answer when you're filling out your giant book of questions and giving them all your information is, have you at any point committed war crimes? I believe the phrase war crimes was used in the questionnaire, and I had to think about it for a while, but I said no. I know some of the podcasts we make can be kind of bad, but not on the level of war crimes. Oh, I guess it looks like Bibby Netanyahu won't be moving to Calgary anytime soon.

Sorry to get political. I think it's like also have you funded any terrorist groups is another question. And I feel like if you're going to admit it, it's not going to be on that form. That's my only calm there. You know, on the American ones of those, they make you promise that you haven't, part of a communist party. That's still in there, of course, along with the other terrorist ones too.

Yeah. When I worked in Ohio, I was working for a university, and I guess something passed in Ohio where suddenly because I was being paid by the state, I had fell out of form saying I was not going to be funding terrorist groups with the state's money. You have to use your own money for that. I put a little aside. I was working, doing some lawn mowing jobs

and sending that right to Al-Qaeda, ISIS. Yeah. For the American one, a citizenship application, You also have to sign a piece of paper that says you will never try to get welfare-style assistance programs. You have to swear them off. What if you need them? Or it doesn't matter. Too bad.

Too bad. You should have tried to not be an American. You need to claim a spotter to pick up your corpse when you die of starvation. So Homer is slowly building a dirty bomb. Yeah. Also, listeners, Nuclearsecrets.com and Nuclear hyphen Secrets.com available for sale. If Fox ever owned them, they let the, domain lapse so you can get him. And Homer also says he will never tire of the bar scene.

That's a funny line. That's a very funny line as well where it's asking him like, are you a single guy who's tired of the bar scene, which is just like a classic guy? I love that. I love that. So Homer breaks into the nuclear plant, the pulse rock with a key in it, which also lets him turn a key to open up the entrance to the plutonium storage. Al Jean says again, he knows plutonium doesn't glow green and isn't a green rod. He doesn't care, it's funny. It's always funny to see Homer with a green glow rod, which he's had on his back, whenever they play the full version of the opening of the show. And it was part of his action figure. I know because Bob recently just showed off his action figure. Oh, yeah, it's bits behind me somewhere.

So Homer takes it home, builds what is essentially a bomb, and Marge and Lisa don't like it. Dad, what did you do? Sweetie, your daddy's going to show you just how much you. loves you. You know that non-functioning nuclear reactor you built? Yes. I juiced it up a little. Dad, that could explode. Oh, that's ridiculous.

That thing's gonna blow! Drop this toy and run! Mom! Dad built a device that would be deadly in the wrong hands. I want you to get that gamma radiating what's it out of my home. I never complain about your frilly pillows. Gamma radiating what they all have radiation poisoning very severely I liked this a lot because it reminds me of my podcast guys because this is how a lot of the guys talk like unironically you know it'll be like they'll have like the most insane shit ever and then they're just like I don't see anything the joke there was one post and people mentioned a lot

it's like what you ask about how many hair straightener she has you know which is a ridiculous one but like you know her shoes or whatever this is like a real sort of angle So it really did kind of remind me of so many guys I encounter in our show. I think I'm the knife guys one. Multiple of the knife guys were just defending their ownership of too many knives with like she owns so many shoes or she bought an expensive car or whatever. And as Paul, I think Paul F. Tompkins is the guest on that episode. And he's like, yeah, well they, you know, but those things can't murder someone. Right.

Those are like there's certainly a difference. I've seen single white female. A shoe can murder. a man. That is true. It really happened once. And that's why a stiletto, you got to keep them off the furniture

at the sex club. That's another reference to our podcast. I mean, those shoes are named after knives. We know they're dangerous. The crusty brand Geiger counter is a good gag there too. I love the crusty brand stuff. You know, everything is a crusty brand.

Whatever, I love that gag. Yeah. But yes, Homer Building basically a weapon of mass destruction. I understand why Lisa stops talking to him for the Yeah. And we were all thinking about this stuff during that war. It was front page news. We were told every day by the New York Times, like, tomorrow they're going to build one. We better invade. Like, we were told them. So then we go to Barton, a signing of his t-shirts and with a sign, Mr. Simpson will not say Calabunga. He did rarely say it. The Simpsons writer said, Al Jean remembered it as he never said it. They only put it on T-shirts. And then he says it in a season two episode and a season one. He says it in the most seen episode of the Simpsons of all time.

Which one's that? Bart gets an F. Okay, yeah. He's got his tobogging over his head, ready to go play in the snow day, and he just screams Kalabunga perfectly at the volume to be used in endless Simpsons syndication commercials going forward. Anytime they need Bart saying Kalbunga, they just replay that one. And he only says Kalabunga because Michelangelo said it on Ninja Turtles.

It's Bart saying it because it's the cool thing. character says. I see. Oh, that's, I didn't even realize that. But then the teenage meat Ninja Turtles, they didn't protect Kawabanga or are the same people. Well, they didn't make it up. Oh, they didn't? It's a real thing that people said. It was like a surfing guy thing in the 60s, right, when they gave it to my car. We did a whole research thing on this. I think Bob handled that one. I think it's secretly racist against indigenous people, too. Oh, sure, sure. Well, I mean, if you made up a new word before 1980. It probably was racist in England.

Yeah. This is where a comic book guy yes, has a million jokes about how fatty is. And then Goose Gladwell shows up to do something that happens all the time to creators, but he decides to do it

in front of an audience instead of privately. How many T-shirts do you have here? Just one. It takes a Marine honor guard to fold it. It used to be a dust cover for a Hummer.

I could go on and on. Graveys and Lentelman, I have an exciting announcement. I have sold the rights to the Bart Simpson T-shirt line. To the Disney Company, which will turn each one into a movie. Really? How much money do I get? You get nothing. In fact, thanks to my team of loopy lawyers,

I never have to give you another penny. All you get is a very valuable lesson. Never trust a weirdo. A zoot. I'm stuck on a nail. Oh, God, that's painful. Oh, I can't feel my... Don't worry, Goose is standing comfortably in the next scene.

Yeah, he's fine. He got the feeling back in his slide whistle afterwards. Flaming Disney. Isn't that crazy? This is 15 years before the Simpsons get bought by Disney or five years before they buy Marvel of their many purchases. So that's interesting. I want to give kudos not to the same. but rather to the Disney Corporation for, you know, being the bigger man there and saying,

hey, we will still acquire you, even though you did make a couple of nasty jokes towards us. You know, that's pretty reasonable of them. The bit that, like, each T-shirt's going to get made into a movie and Bart gets none of the money, I was looking up the history of Disney acquisitions of things then just like, okay, what can this? The closest one I could see is that in February of 2004, when they probably would have been writing this, or a little before, the Muppets got bought by Disney. That was the biggest acquisition of 0-4. Well, if Goose Gladwell was Disney, he would make Bart promote the new season of Loki or a Billy Ilish album or something like that.

Yeah. Fortnite. It's so funny, Bart just gets publicly screwed out of this in front of everybody. And the loopy lawyers also are just, he put Cat in the Hat Hats on Blue Haired Lawyer and two other guys. And so Bart is ruined. He's back to being a kid again. and this is where Homer has to basically explain himself why this plot makes sense. He has to say, like, when you grew up, I grew down, and now I can see that you need your dad more than ever.

He's explaining how this is a complete story with the beginning, middle, and end. Also, him yelling at Abe to sell him, stay out of my boxes, is pretty great. Yeah, that was I mentioned it early on when, you know, and there's spiders. Yeah, and he said, go back into the garage. And then, yeah, there's spiders in the boxes who stay out of my box. his very good classic Homer Abe interaction. I'm a big grandpa fan. I think he's rarely not funny.

Like, I think most of his jokes are hit for me. They just drop him into a scene if they want to make an extra joke. Like, in one scene, he just said all the good graves are taken, and that's all we hear from him. Oh, yeah. In the previous season 16 episode, he kind of dies on screen for one joke that he gets hit with a chopstick in the back of his neck, and then he falls down dead.

I mean, an old mean father reaching out to him and then just being yelled at is extra funny, too, of just like, stay out of my boxes. Even though he's like, first he's saying, please, there's spiders in the boxes. Homer isn't mad. He even looked in the boxes to see the spiders. He's afraid of. Yeah, he's clearly committing very serious elder abuse against his father. But it is in a humorous sort of way. I mean, the idea of locking him away in the garage or whatever.

Yeah, this is a good, good scene. So this is where Homer confronts goose gladwell first says he's going to beat him up, but he can't because Goose used to be a green beret. That's how he went crazy. Yes, I guess by killing women and children with a flamethrower. I mean, I love his picture of him seemingly like Mili Massacre, but looking as silly as he does then. Yeah, doing it in a zany kind of way. But I love this whole, like this is a very funny, just, I joke to me, you know, the idea of like this guy being this wacky crazy, but then you find out like the wacky crazy is actually like genuine.

when, like, you know, he has real serious trauma that creates this very serious craziness inside of him. Yeah, that's really, really good. We didn't know Willie Wonka was a World War II veteran. Yeah. You know, I guess it makes sense because Roaldol actually was a World War II veteran. And now it's all coming together. Listen to our fantastic Mr. Fox podcast to learn about how Roll Doll was a spy for British intelligence, who accidentally became a popular children's author while trying to just propagandize

America into World War II. Is that true? These are true things. It's true. I'm learning a lot of stuff on this podcast. I like it. He was, Roald Dahl was an inspiration for James Bond and even wrote a James Bond movie.

Really? Yep. That's true. This is where then Homer decides he has to threaten nuclear holocaust on every person. It's a tri-county area, he says, right? Like, he's going to kill a million people. Yes, including the poor Blue Blockers guy, who is very friendly. I liked his wave. It's a nice wave.

You know, I've, back in my previous life as a games journalist, we did get sent like, I believe they were similar style of the blue blocker brand sunglasses. They were different type of sunglasses, exactly, but they were meant to like, oh, you stare at a computer screen all day. You should wear these glasses that block blue light that apparently is worse for you than regular glasses. But so I've worn blue blocker adjacent glasses. I guess when I was younger, I didn't look at screens that much. I could probably use it more now. But yeah, it was never something that came into my life. You never know when you're going to do a two-hour podcast and looking at a blue screen.

I'm looking at two monitors. My eyes are melting in their sockets. Yeah. Homer says he's going to damn him to hell, everybody else. And so he basically terrorized a man by threatening his life and robs him. But you know what, Goose robbed him first. So being handed all the money in his pocket, that makes things even. It is strange for an episode of The Simpsons Sand with like,

instead of the characters being screwed out of money and learning a lesson, Homer does walk away with a fat stack of cash. After the death threat, yeah. He's threatening innocent lives as well, and he's seemingly willing to kill innocent people for this whole thing. But then also it sort of struck me as like, this goose guy is so rich. The money he's got in his pocket ain't that much of his money,

and it's not the amount that he's actually owed. So I kind of felt like he got off all right in the end as well, honestly. This taught us all the terrorism works. learned it here. Homer terrorized him and got what he wanted. This is a pro-terrorism, anti-gay episode of The Simpsons. And it's a pretty good one, I got to say. And it's against supporting the troops. So after they walk away, I think they needed this line here in our last clip,

which also includes the deleted scene over the credits. But this last clip here, I think they need to have Homer say out loud that he didn't really think he was going to kill everybody. It was a bluff because if Homer did think he was going to kill everybody, that's like tree house of horror level murderous Homer that's too crazy for regular Homer I'll be honest though he was willing to kill all those innocent people I think he's lying after the fact that's my take on it I think he seems dumb enough to do that

or like just a little wild enough to do that but you're right they have to put it in the thing because if it's just left as that and now you're like so Homer was gonna like he would kill his whole family his own family yeah well I guess Homer you know Homer just learned that Bart lost all the money, so now Homer's going to have to go back to work.

His wife and daughter rejected his art project. He could be feeling pretty blue right now. He's just ready to blow everything. I'll tell you, in Tri-County Annihilator at this point. And I feel like if we learn one thing, it's one guy who might even just welcome that is the poor old sea captain. He might say, go ahead, you know, hands out, no, why just let him take me. Homer also gets out of the deal a wrapping toilet seat in a fake boobs. Let's hear the happy ending and deleted scene over the credits here.

Okay, okay, here's all the money I've got. Not so fast. I also want some dribble glasses, fake boobs, two of Bart's T-shirts, and that wrapping toilet seat. Yo, yo, yo, keep it on a low floor. I'm hanging this over the mantle. Thanks, Dad. Well, I'm just glad we're back to me being the father and you being the same. Are you sure that thing could really explode?

Oh, I doubt it. But we'll let the seagulls at the dump figure it out. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Yeah. There's more than one way to lose a tooth. Hey, idiot! You're fat and your mom's naked on the internet. You also smell. You've given me a lot to think about. out. I wish that would have been included.

I guess it was included technically, but you slot it in earlier. It's a good joke. Yeah, just slot it in. Why not? It's the same runtime. Or maybe it isn't. Maybe it's the way that it's like all,

you know what I mean? Like the credits have to come. Yeah, yeah, yeah. One, Nelson realizes, you know, body positivity. He doesn't need to be sad. He's called fat. And you know what?

He's learning to also not slut shame his mom. If his mom has naked pictures of her online, then that's how she makes money. Yeah, guess what? Next generation, get used to it. A lot of people's parents are going to have nude pictures on the internet, unfortunately. I mean, you know, if your parent isn't starting a podcast, then that means they have an only fan. And if they are starting a podcast, there's still a good chance they have an only fan as well.

True. You know what? It gives us a lot to think about, too, diversifying our... Yeah, hey, if the economy gets worse. Yeah, I mean, you're going to see our buttholes. I don't use only fans. I mean, I don't go on there, but I support it. I support it, you know, and I think that it's good in general.

It's probably not good to think of as a child, but it's just, I suppose it's, I think it's good overall, you know, that like, hey, we're just okay with the fact that, hey, there's stuff of people out there. You know what I mean? And it's not something that's going to ruin anybody or whatever. It's better than asking AI to address someone. If you could just pay them directly to take their clothes off. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Enthusiasmatic consent, as you said, instead of fucking groan. grock grocking our world up you know see isn't it a happier time when we can remember these jokes and chums instead of grocks i'd rather live in a world of chums than grocs me too me too yeah this episode remember the me too movement i'm just i'm kidding uh i'm sorry this episode though i guess final thoughts i do like it i do think it's funny i think chris is right this is just really jampacked full of jokes i wish the ending wasn't as crazy but i guess i i'm just very used to these kind of crazy act threes at this point in this era of the show so i won't hold it too much against it, but I would have liked to try to see them stick the landing in a way that did not involve

a bomb. But what are you going to do? It's season 16. Yeah, I agree. I think that a little more of a grounded kind of ending would have been better. And as we discussed, I liked the Homer Lisa stuff, and I wish that continued on and they didn't just have to like, you know, break that part of it up and have it stopped. But yeah, I laughed out loud a few times in the episode thought there's great gags in there and yeah just some like great gag gags and then just some really funny funny stuff as well i genuinely enjoyed it and as i said i think it's going to get me back into watching some simpsons from this era like going back and watching this era simpson stuff this episode the only thing i remembered from first viewing was the very opening joke because even then i knew like oh that's a cut joke

from a season three episode i had only just heard about on a recent commentary and then seeing it in the episode. I completely forgot and everything else that's in this. It is full of great jokes. I would have loved to have seen the original third act. I wish that script was out there so I could see if they had a more grounded ending instead of nuclear holocaust during pot up. But it's like joke, joke after joke,

hilarious gags in it. This is the best you can hope for in season 16, being able to laugh and funny things. Well, thank you, Chris, for being on the show. We know you're on guys, but there's also other stuff you're doing out there. Can you less know about that and where to find you online? Well, there is other stuff I'm doing. I'm currently running a threats Twitter account as a character named Cigar Jack Smalls, who pretends to be a cigar enthusiast and then threatens to threaten people,

says, hey, I'm going to watch yourself or you're going to get threatened by me. So you can follow that at the CJS. If it's still up, I don't know when you guys are putting this up. It's going to be suspended soon. Surely I just made a pretty credible threat against Elon Musk on there. So you might not be able to check it up. If it's still there at the CJS on Twitter, That's right. I'm still on Twitter, aka X.

Yeah, but that's it. That's all I'm doing, really. I have my own Patreon as well where I do a show with Jesse, Stefan, from Go Off Kings, DB, from YKS, and Brian. It's called The Writers Room. I do it rarely once a month, but I'm trying to do it more. And, yeah, it's patreon.com slash not even a show. If you want to listen to more of those guys, if you just love those guys and you're like, hey, I'd like to hear more of them. Yeah. We're big fans of guys.

We've been on guys. It's a great podcast. It was great having you on. I hope that you and Bob now have become chums like Martin and Chum. Oh, wait. No, not like them, though. Not like them, though. Who's the robot?

Who's the gay boy? I mean, I'm openly bisexual. Can I claim the gay boy right now, please? The homophobic robot. All right. Bob's the homophobic robot. Come check us out in an Italian restaurant. You can have one bread stick if you managed.

It'll be on one end of a long spaghetti strand. Oh, yeah. That's how you'll find this. But thank you, Chris. Thanks once again to Chris James for being on the show. Please check out his podcast, Guys, with Brian Quimby and also not even a show. But as for us, if you want to get more of our podcasts and you want to hear them ad-free. And in advance, go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. That supports the show.

And it gets you, once again, ad-free podcasts. And also access to a vast catalog of premium exclusive podcasts that are behind that paywall. We talk about shows like Futurama, King of the Hill, Mission Hill, Batman, the animated series, and The Critic. And there are over 200 episodes of those behind the payball right now, as of this moment of this recording. And when you sign up for that level, you also get a new episode

of both Talking Futurama and Talking of the Hill once a month. So a lot has been recorded in the past. More stuff is coming in the future, and it's all available to you at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. And there is a $10 level as well. You get all the $5 stuff naturally, but you also unlock one mega, mega huge podcast once a month

for patrons of that level. And what is that podcast, Henry. Bob's talking about the What a Cartoon movie podcast. It's really like we do three extra podcasts in a month only for our $10 and up patrons because that's us covering an animated feature film just like an episode of The Simpsons. We talk for

four or five, even six hours about them. We just started off the year as we've done so many times before now with a classic Disney film. This time we are covering 1959's Sleeping Beauty. An interesting film full of gorgeous animation in it. And that's

just the most recent one. The month before that, we covered My Neighbor Totero and we've done so many other Ghibli films, Disney films, we've done multiple Warner Bros. cartoons. We've done Space Jam and Looney Tunes back in action and so many other ones, years and years of it, hundreds of hours of podcasts. On top of all, the early and ad-free podcast, you get to the $5 level. For $10 a month, you get so much. Check out the whole archive at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. And I've been one of your host, Bob Mackey. You can find me on Blue Sky and Letterbox and many other places as Bob Servo. And my other podcast is Retronauts.

It's a classic gaming podcast about old video games. You can find that where you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash Retronauts for a bunch of bonus episodes there as well. And Henry, what about you? I am talking Henry on both Instagram and Blue Sky. I'm always posting up a storm there. And if you want to stay in the loop about the podcast, at Talk Simpsonspot is what you should be following. at Talk Simpsons Pod on Blue Sky and on Instagram. We'll keep you up to date when new episodes come out

whenever we're promoting stuff that we're doing outside of Patreon too and so many other cool things. You stay up to date if you follow At Talk Simpsons pod. And if you'd like an easy list of all of the free podcast we have ever released, both for Talking Simpsons and our sister podcast, what a cartoon, the Cartoon History podcast. You can find it all at Talking Simpsons.com. Thanks so much for listening, everyone.

We'll see you again next time for Season 6's Side Show Bob Robert. and we'll see you then. God, please give your daughter the tooth fairy the strength to carry my cash and the integrity not to dip her wand in the till.