Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - I'm Spelling As Fast As I Can

Episode Date: January 17, 2024

Starting 2024 with one of season 14's better episodes, as Lisa becomes a champion speller and Homer follows around fast food. Learn all about the many references to The McRib, The Paris Review, secret conspiracies, the seven sister colleges, Requiem for a Dream, and tons more in this new podcast for the new year. Listen now before we expel Boogerman! Support this podcast and get over 150 bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

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. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, where it's always wanking time. I'm your host, the young and what can sort swiggles into words, Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who is here with me today, as always? It's Andrew Gilbert, who's way cooler than the woman who dated Charles Grodin. And this week's episode is...

I'm spelling as fast as I can. I can't just sit here watching this junk. That's better. This episode originally aired on February 16th, 2003, the same night as the 300th episode. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my God!

Oh boy, Bobby. Also this very same night as I said in the last episode, the pilot for Venture Brothers debuts, Old School is about to change U.S. comedy with its release, and the Great white fire kills 100 people and injures 230 wow where did this take place i'm behind on my fire news oh well this you

know i forget where it was but this was one that did like change music venue safety in america this was the 80s metal band great white they did yeah a... I was going to say, I thought you was referring to the magnitude of the fire. Oh, it's the Great White Fire, but no, it's the band Great White. There was a fire at their concert. Okay, thank you. I think the wiki goes by the name of the venue, maybe to not blame Great White for this, because I think some argue that it's the venue's fault for doing fireworks or pyrotechnics in a very small venue that causes a fire.

But yeah, it was a horrible tragedy. 100 people died, 230 more injured. I don't think in America there's been a concert tragedy like that since then, of that particular scale in a smaller venue. Even Woodstock 99, very few fatalities. But a fun thing is the Venture Brothers. Isn't it nuts that the Venture Brothers pilot is that old? Yes, and the show just came to an end this summer with the direct-to-Blu-ray movie. One of three that Adult Swim released, and one of three surprisingly not canceled and thrown into the Warner Brothers tax hole,

because we have the Metalocalypse movie and the AquaToon Hunger Force movie. The second one, they were part of a trilogy of movies released during the summer. Again, surprised they actually made it into the world. And Aqua Teen still getting new episodes, too. Their season didn't get canceled. It seems like Adult Swim had better protection on its budgets than the Cartoon Network regular department within the Zazlav business. But, by the way, this will be old news when you're

hearing this in January but the crazy thing that just happened right before we're recording this is thanks to Hulu you wouldn't know this Bob in Canada but in America the U.S. Hulu has now been integrated into Disney Plus if you're a Hulu subscriber so you can watch Steven Universe, OK KO, Rick and Morty all these things that used to be on HBO Max. They're now on Disney Plus for some insane reason. It's so confusing. I mean, I'm in Canada now and our Disney Plus is great because we get a lot of Hulu things. So when you turn on Disney Plus, you can see Darkwing Duck and Freddy Got Fingered on the same page if you want. But the Venture Brothers, like its pilot is interesting because it is, you know,

adult Johnny Quest. It's the most of that one type of joke. Even Jackson Public, Christopher McCullough, he expands on quite a lot by even the second season. I remember there's one joke in it where they completely abandoned where it's like, oh, is Doc Venture like hitting on Brock in one scene? And it's like, no, nah, you don't need that. It was pretty played out at that point. Yeah, the pilot, I was never a huge fan of it, which made me wonder if this series would be good. But then by the first episode of the first season, I was on board.

So I'm happy they improved so much, even in terms of animation quality, from the pilot to the proper series. If the entire series looked like the pilot, they could have produced twice as many episodes in the time they've done it i'm glad they didn't though because it is one of the better looking adult swim shows and yeah this is the landmark night of the 300th episode although strangely enough the 301st episode has a somewhat view as a lesser guest but it's much funnier and much better i'm so glad this aired at the same time as that one to immediately pull up the average of the night Oh, by the way, wait, we didn't even talk about old school

Yes, thank you So yeah, I guess we take for granted now that Will Ferrell is or was a huge star But he had been percolating at this point, you know, popping up in movies here and there Austin Powers, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back He was the male lead of Superstar, remember that movie? Oh yeah So I have to assume that people never assume that he would be such a money maker for the box office but this is his

breakout role in terms of making him a big star and then he's in the rancid movie elf later this year which it's okay if you like that movie i just saw it for the first time not too long ago and not a fan but i do love will ferrell and i was rooting for him ever since he appeared on SNL in 1995 though after this year it's like he's not the fun underdog anymore he anchor bands next year in 04 and that's the first he's the real lead in I mean technically he's like the sidekick to Vince Vaughn and Luke Wilson in this movie which is like insane when would Luke Wilson ever be ahead of Will Ferrell in any movie from this point forward yeah the lesser wilson what's he been up to i last saw him in some phone commercials

but i feel like he must be doing something i'm sure he's fine i'm sure owen has a big couch for him to sleep on yeah everything's okay you know he wasn't even in asteroid city was luke wilson so you know oh yeah i'm thinking like will ferrell he was a pioneer in comedy in some ways in that he was behind Funny or Die. And if you want to hear about, you know, the ups and downs of that site, friend of the show, Scott Gairdner, has talked about it a lot on his podcast, Podcast the Ride, because Scott did work for that company for a bit. Yeah, I think Will Ferrell washed his hands of that. There's some evil people behind the scenes on that that i don't think will ferrell planned to be involved with in that also old school really mainstreamed well further mainstreamed i'm not saying it invented it but male nudity as joke

is just like this man is naked that is the joke because his streaking scene in the movie that was the era i think it was coming to a close or maybe in certain parts of the world it's still happening where the funniest joke a man could do was just show you his penis and that's kind of where it ended yeah yes exactly if it was an erect penis different situation entirely but hey you know what it beat in the box office the life of david gale horrible horrible movie sounds very Well, it stars the multi-talented Kevin Spacey. That's right. I believe it was one of the most hated movies of Roger Ebert that year.

Okay. David Gale, is this a real person or is this just a fictional biopic? It is a fake story fiction. A fake story? It's about an anti-death penalty guy who then murders someone and then goes yes the death penalty okay i totally remember this i think some political podcast covered it at some point in my lifetime maybe our michael and us pals and if they haven't they should i remember roger ebert hated it so much he spoiled the ending in his review because he's like you need to know how horrible this is

based on the ending what a little stinker so we are in the first week of december you folks are in the first week of jancember you folks are in the first week of january happy 2024 we don't know if kevin spacey released his annual christmas video that's full of secret messages so please let us know in the comments if this happened i'm sure we were all watching it when it went live if it did i'm sure he's got some homespun wisdom about some other powerful person maybe he's taking his aim at bill clinton this year the zodiac killer letters are now just fun videos and their fun future that we're living in but anyway that's everything else that happened on the same night as the 300th episode which was actually the 302nd episode and which aljean has

to tell that story for like the fifth time on this commentary it is funny that when aljean would say you know well it's not the 300th episode and the Fox execs would just say, lie, just lie. No one's going to care. But then they tell on themselves because they feel bad about doing it. This episode, though, I feel like we've been in a bit of a slump. Pray anything, not so good. We also covered barding over. And, you know, I feel like the real Jim, he is honest with his opinions about later seasons and by that I mean anything after season 10 but he also tries to be positive when possible but even that was too much for him but here I feel like oh this is a fun episode for season 14 I have no real complaints and this one was still memorable to me when I rewatch I was like oh yeah I remember a lot of these jokes and George Plimpton is very funny so I feel like we're heading back up on that roller coaster or however the metaphor works. Yeah. I was laughing at stuff all over this one. And also I think Nancy Cruz is a really good director and doing the best work that a Simpsons show can get at

this point animation wise. And especially for there's like some Sim Sakuga for a couple seconds in this episode. Yeah, I think this was full of great, great jokes in it, especially I think Marge and Mo both have several lines that just made me for real laugh. We'll get to him, but it introduced me to George Plimpton. And to date, I really only know him from this and something else. But his lines from this are all baked into my head. And I use one of his lines from this show multiple times throughout the past decades and I'll point that out when we get to it but yeah I like that this is a good one finally in season 14 I feel like we've been in a bit of a slump and

it's nice to praise a comedy I feel like the last time we praised a season 14 episode very directly was the end of act two of strong arms of the Ma. Act 3, different story altogether. This episode, though, I did want to go over a few preamble things here. The title, I looked this up for the first time, the title I'm Spelling as Fast as I Can comes from the 1982 film I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can, which was based on the memoirs by Barbara Gordon of the same name. So this is a biopic about a famous documentary filmmaker

and her struggles with volume addiction. Although I feel like the book was probably more popular, especially to a writer of these folks' age, because the movie was a massive flop. Right. So I don't think the movie went on to be notable, but just this set of memoirs and the compelling title stuck in their brains for whatever reason.

It is a fun saying i think of that saying separate from the book or the movie of just thinking about like that somebody who's trying to lie or at least keep a lie going would be like i'm dancing as fast as i can here folks she created a saying and i also wanted to say that they didn't talk about this on the commentary but the timeline is kind of correct for this to have been inspired by the 2002 documentary spellbound that is about the 1999 scripps howard national spelling bee and it was a hit at various film festivals throughout the spring of 2002 so that would be if it was playing in la at the time maybe some folks saw it and got the idea but my wife nina showed that to me for the first time a few years ago, and it's great.

The kind of kids who enter Spelling Bees are fun to watch, let's say. Yes. And the amount of pressure on something so frivolous is also entertaining. And I hope all of those kids went on to become balanced adults. Yeah, those poor, oh my God, the way those kids. I haven't watched that movie in 15, 16 years, I think. But I remember putting it on when i worked at the video store and just seeing the children destroyed and long time listeners may know i had

a millhouse like moment as well so sometimes watching that spellbound movie hurts in its own personal way i guess uh you can bring up that story again when we get to that point but i totally forget what that story is oh i mean it's just very small it's on the same scale as millhouse too but you're right i didn't even think of that though for this timeline but it totally fits it so both the a and the b plot were taken from relatively recent events going on in the u.s then and one final thing this is the first full episode written by buck bundy himself the late kevin coran so there you have. We covered him in the Treehouse of Horror episode from this season and his entire career and his, you know, untimely death. But this is his first one.

And he is on the commentary if you want to hear the voice of Buck Bundy or the first voice of Buck Bundy talk about this episode. You know, I'm glad you mentioned that too, because as we talked about on the previous one, Barting Over, this, then the Married with Children reunion special. And I thought that was extra funny because it's like oh buck bundy's episode is followed by a married with children reunion special i pulled it up on youtube to see for myself like hey maybe he even appears in both what if they interviewed him but this is the disappointing thing about that married with

children reunion special no writer or producer is in it it's only the actors it's all the actors which is impressive but they don't talk to anybody but an actor in it and if you look at the credits no producers except for the production company that mainly works on commercials are named in it so yeah yeah it's just like inside the actor's studio but with married with children clips right yeah yeah and it's all of them talking about the craft which hey that's cool especially like everybody but bud bundy are great actors on the show and i care about their interest in how they acted dunk on david faustino he's now a notable voice actor did you know that i did not know this yeah maybe I should

respect him a little more I mean he was working on his craft back then but yeah you can watch that special online and it's fun to see oh this is what Katie Segal looked like 20 years ago and she basically looks the same now oh yeah and Ed O'Neill always looks old yes he's looked old since he was I don't know 34 and starting that role or however young he was in playing Al Bundy in the first season. Though it's also funny because the format is the one that got stolen. Well, not stolen, but if you watch the Friends or the Fresh Prince reunions that were done for HBO or Max, the one to watch, it's the same format of we rebuilt the set, sit around and remember things. They even have Steve. The actor who played Steve is back.

So it's the chicken's husband, Steve Rhodes rhodes and jefferson darcy yes thank you yes i'm the true mary with children scholar of this podcast maybe that info will come in handy one day i noted that christina applegate she's wearing much more conservative clothes than they dressed her up in on the show and i think it was her trying to make the statement of, I am a real actress, you know. I wasn't just the hot girl on the show. Speaking of her, she was an anchorman. I remember being surprised by her in that movie. Like, oh, I thought she was only in bad studio comedies,

but here she is in a good one, and she's great. She is great as Mrs. Corningstone in that, yeah. Sadly, she just recently retired from on-camera acting, unfortunately, due to a diagnosis of MS, which is too bad. But she says she'd still be up for voicing Morningstone and they sadly she just recently retired from on-camera acting unfortunately due to a diagnosis of MS which is too bad but she says she'd still be up to for voicing a animated recreation of the Mary with Children show so let's do it or you can be like office ladies it could be Kelly and Bud Bundy doing recaps of the show I'd listen to it or also the Sopranos kids did their own one of those too

yeah but there's like 300 mary with children episodes so they have a lot more content than office ladies or the sopranos boys or whatever that show is called yes yeah the gobble ghouls it's nuts there were two sopranos ones like first they had bobby bacala and christopher maltisante and i'll only use their character names because they're not actors. No, no. But those two guys who play those characters, they hosted a podcast, and then the actors who played AJ and Meadow, they then did their own podcast. I have heard that the one hosted by Michael Imperioli is better because he actually was a writer for the show too, so it's not just the actor perspective it's a writer producer actor perspective though the guy who played bobby bacala apparently he bogarts the

mic a lot even though he is not half as insightful as michael imperioli so it's it's it can be an annoying listen from listening to a couple of them yeah those can be a real crap shoot i'm hearing nothing but bad things about the 90210 recap podcast starring starring Jenny Garth and Tori Spelling. Imagine Tori Spelling phoning something in. But she could have such an interesting perspective as, you know, she got so hated on the show, but also her dad created the show. So it's like, you know, she probably would have interesting stuff to say

if she wasn't phoning it in. Tori Spelling, try harder is what we're saying. Well, I guess with all that preamble, the episode begins with something That I didn't clock I am disappointed in myself As a joke in the previous episode The fact that it said 300th episode Over the start of Barting Over

I didn't realize it was meant to be a setup For a joke that would pay off in this episode That it starts with 301st episode Yeah I giggled at that As like a little snotty joke Where it's like yeah so it starts with 301st episode yeah i giggled at that as like a little snotty joke where it's like yeah so this is the 301st who cares about these numbers they're not actually accurate anyways and maybe we'll do it next week on the 302nd episode who knows after that then we head into the first bit the matinee of blood and commercials this is a funny way to start the episode i am a fan of booberella but maybe it's just because i love the source material yeah booberella this is her debut

in this episode so dana gould is not on the commentary and you know your go-to for this parody is basically elvira right and i would say that's partially accurate but because of dana gould's connection to the original vampyra I feel like it's more a parody of her. So a little Vampyra bio for you folks. She was the original horror show host from the 50s. And we got Elvira from an attempt to revive that show in the early 80s. So the woman who played Vampyra, Myla Nurmi, was on board with this reboot in the 80s. And then she found out that she wouldn't be doing the lead character anymore.

She stayed on for a bit and then left over creative differences and we got Elvira basically as an unlicensed knockoff of Vampyra in 1981 so she is the originator of that brand and of that kind of character and she is notably in Plan 9 from Outer Space. And then in her later years, Dana Gould would sort of be her unofficial caretaker. And he's told a lot of stories about her on his podcast over the past decade plus, if you want to hear more about her. But he had a really strong connection with her. Yeah, that's her story. But, you know, obviously Elvira lives on longer in pop culture

because she has been more recent and she's had a couple movies and she's kind of always been around it's a sad story about Vampyra in many ways but it's funny that the character of Booberella she does seem to fit more of the Vampyra thing which is you know actually like doing a Vampyra voice or playing a Vampire character which Entress does a great job with that that's not Elvira alvira is like a goofy jokester like she always has a great one-liner she's basically a valley girl in the vampire

costume and she's playing it that way too yeah yeah cassandra peterson the real person she plays it perfectly i love her as alvira she is so funny like every time I ever see an Elvira clip of her hosting something in my feed pop up I'm like oh this is funny she's saying funny jokes about how like oh that's the wolf man give me your phone number or whatever you're just my type of guy those kind of jokes which I feel like people were too busy distracted by some aspect of her to not appreciate her comedic timing yes her tiny dagger yes yeah we're all it's so shiny we're all staring at it and you know she's hung out with mario and luigi she's been all over the place and you know she still is very well preserved i'll say she recently came out and

her memoir is having a girlfriend now too so good for her she already was i would call a queer icon but even more she broke my heart but but I'll let her live her truth. I'll let her. I think she says she still don't take dudes too, Bob. You still got a chance. Okay. No, no. This was very public knowledge before. She was very good friends with Paul Rubens. I just watched an old interview with her talking about how the two of them had known each other forever they came up together in improv comedy but also that nobody else could understand each other like them because

they both basically live the gimmick in pro wrestling terms and they own their characters so they can be their character all the time but also people think they are their character when both are silly drag performances by the way i wasn't trying to be a creep earlier i do want to point out that i recently did a retronauts live show you were on it henry in october of 2023 and we were looking at various weird appearances of mario and because it was halloween i played the clip of elvira on the super mario brothers super show and i was trying to explain to people imagine this woman is put in front of you and you're a

heterosexual little boy at age eight what is it doing to your brain chemistry and programming I had no choice but to fall in love with her immediately I was never hit with that much sexuality ever in my life until that moment like her hair is not positioned more over her chest than usual like they did not change her presentation in any way to be on this deke kid show which i would assume is because also like despite it being a kid show that show needed to record like five hours of footage a day and they don't have time to think about like hey can we change your outfit any or should elvira be on this and in that clip she starts by being stuck in a sewer the top half of her is stuck in the sewer opening.

And I feel like, well, they just landed on a fetish like decades before pornography makers would find out about that. You were just like Bart being spellbound by seeing Booberella on TV as well here. Well, and Elvira has one other honor that is in common with us. We both performed at SF Sketch Fest 2023 three days apart from one another wow wow yeah i assume that she would have been on the schedule at some point but yes i do consider myself on the same level as anyone who plays at that show that's right yeah now did she have it sold out in the castro theater and we didn't maybe but we sold out too yes we certainly did was that theater about an eighth of the size? We'll let you decide.

It doesn't exist anymore. You can't check. But yes, Bart is watching Booberella, who is hosting a movie full of commercials, which also like this is, you know, similar to all the stuff Dana Gould and the Boomer and Gen X writers of the show grew up with, which were two hour terrible movies that turned into four hour terrible movies because they were hosted by a local clown or a vampire we lived through the second wave of that which was boomers making their own version of that with shows like mystery science theater and then in certain ways beavis and butthead and dream on and syphil and all and

things like that just like what if yes exactly what if like we didn't have to pay for all of the content we're showing you here's some puppets here's a hot chick etc previous talking simpsons guest dan hausen should have that similar job too he should have his own show on tnt hosting movies joe bob is retiring right yes yeah actually dan hausen's been on the joe bob stuff as well let's not ask about joe bob's current politics let's just remember we've known about them for a very long time yes yeah i mean yeah but okay so we get booberella she introduces something which also we just talked about in our tv funhouse christmas day episode too yes we are all about doing parodies of the harlem globetrotters cartoon in the early aughts because

futurama did it with time keepss because Futurama did it with Time Keeps on Slippin', Upright Citizens Brigade did it with Thunderball, right? Yes. And then we have TV Funhouse doing it with their Christmas episode, and now we're doing it here. And I'm sure there are a lot of other ones I'm missing from this time period, but I feel like everyone who grew up with it hit the point where they wanted to make fun of it on TV. I do wonder if this is very specifically about the Gilligan's Island movie crossover with the Harlem Globetrotters, but I like that it's against the Wolfman and the Washington Generals.

The Washington Generals still get to be in the title of the movie. Yeah, and Frankenstein is on their side. But of course, Ray Romano, they have a very specific joke about him, probably just built around, Dan can do a pretty good Ray Romano, but who can't do a good Ray Romano, they have a very specific joke about him, probably just built around, Dan can do a pretty good Ray Romano. But who can't do a good Ray Romano? Debra. Yeah. And then, I mean, talking about Venture Brothers, who was one of those henchmen but Ray Romano voice?

It's henchmen. I said it wrong before. It was 22 and 24. And I said the wrong one when I said i wanted to be like one of them somebody pointed out no you don't want to be like this one i won't spoil venture brothers for people you want to be like the other one who did go from an overweight guy to a buff guy who still has a little bit of a gut i was thinking about ray romano's older dirtier jokes which he couldn't do as soon as he got a sitcom and i was thinking about he did. Katz, where he's getting ready for a long

lovemaking session with his wife. And the joke is, unspoken, he comes immediately. And I could just hear Ray Romano going, you moved. You moved. You know you moved. You moved. Yes. His defeated way of going like, you moved.

Put the cookie down. Sorry, I'm turning into barney rubble i need to summon my ray romano energy another of my favorites he did from dr cats was talking about his daughter who's probably like 38 now yeah saying his daughter's like what are you thinking about candy you know she said candy when was the last time you could think about candy he's turning into fozzy bear yes yeah mine is more fozzy but that's gotta be down here down here okay we're just gonna do this for the rest of the hour folks so strap in this is why we're 30 minutes in the episode we can okay so after that i do have our next clip but but I guess though, based on how it is, there was a giant deleted scene after this moment, but before the first commercial break, wasn't there?

Yes. Al Jean later used it three years later, and I believe the season 17 episode, The Monkey Suit, but it was a whole deleted scene about all the things Bart needed to do on the last day of summer before school began. And there's a brief mention of a back to school sale in this episode which has nothing to do with the rest of the plot isn't it also weird that in February is an episode about the first day of school like why is that yeah it's kind of a bummer actually if you pull up the monkey suit on Disney plus like I did the first two and a half minutes of the episode is that or that's when it ends so if you count the

opening it's more like two minutes but they cut that much out of this episode that's crazy and yes there is a parody of the natural the baseball film from 1981 happening in 2003 it's incredible that it's a ton of slow motion it's exactly the same as what they just did it two seasons earlier in The Hunger Strike. We're not even talking about Homer at the bat. This is them trotting the same territory as Homer breaking his hunger strike in. No, that was a season 13. That's not even 12. That's 13.

Man. And remember, folks, we watch The Natural. Please don't. No. We tell you everything you need to know about it in that episode of Talking Simpsons that was another one that roger ebert hated and spoiled the ending of in his review what a great mean review that was he saved us so much time but also in it he wins a baseball game he does a curtain call for greece he then has a summer fling which he kisses a girl and then the girl she checks off her own list of kiss 100 boys and then the way they wrap it up in

the season 17 episode then lisa ruins everything by asking them to go to a museum so it's another well-trod territory take that lisa's beliefs but that's why this episode doesn't have any deleted scenes on the dvd because they're all in the season 17 episode, The Monkey Sins. Yeah, they carved out a pretty big chunk. You said that's two and a half minutes, right? It's nuts how much they cut. It is the reverse of what we are talking about in season four right now

of how every episode is too short. The Sentence will be right back. In a city where chaos rules, only one man can save humanity from total destruction. It's up to Homer Simpson and family to save the world from a diabolical plot as they run and drive to unravel the conspiracy. Black Finch!

Critics call it the best Simpsons game ever. That's a lot, dude. The Simpsons Hit and Run, rated T for Teen. I am Evil Homer. How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there. We'll see you next time. home cozier and your world brighter. Find our net zero hub at electricarland.ie. Welcome to the commercial break. It's me, Henry Gilbert, and thanks so much again for listening to this week's episode. We are starting off the new year right me and bob with spelling as fast as i can and we had

a lot of fun digging up a lot of secrets that you'll hear later in this episode but we can only do this into 2024 thanks to the support of listeners like you at patreon.com slash talking simpsons subscribers there get tons of bonuses for those five dollars a month they get to hear next week's episode of talking simpsons a week at a time and ad-free. You can hear it right now. And you also get a ton of bonus podcasts you only can hear if you're a Patreon subscriber. Last week, you got a taste of what you've been missing in the Futurama world because me and Bob do Talking Futurama once a month.

You got to hear our awesome one we did with Andrew Jupin from We Hate Movies. You could hear all the other ones we've done we're nearly at the end of season four if you sign up today you can hear all the previous episodes of talking futurama plus a new one each month and a new one of talk king of the hill us covering every episode of king of the hill just as in depth as we do an episode of the simpsons not only that but if you sign up today you get all the previous ones we've done for every episode of the critic of mission hill plus many of our favorite episodes of batman the animated series check it all out for yourself at patreon.com slash talking simpsons but if you want something even nicer than a hot plate you need to head on

over to the premium level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons because you get all the five dollar things i just described but also our monthly premium podcast what a cartoon movie where we cover an animated feature film just as in depth as we do an episode the simpsons often for over five or six hours we've covered so many animated classics this month we are covering bambi one of the most important animated feature films of all time. The month before that we did The Emperor's New Groove, which is awesome in and of itself, but is also a very interesting story of the creation of an animated movie. Before that, we've covered so many different movies, including many Pixar films, many films by Hayao Miyazaki, and tons and tons more.

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It's pretty funny. Now for the first of our 82 commercial breaks. Then you can see more of my boobs. It's nice to see a realistic single woman on TV. Hello, Springfield. Come to my back-to-school parking lot blowout. School's starting, Bart. Aren't you excited?

This year you'll learn about local history. We've got first-rate school supplies at third world prices at the Quickie Mart where we believe in America. Please, don't beat me up anymore. Bad news. Ray Romano has sued to prevent the showing of the movie.

Watch this commercial for Krusty Burger while I appeal this temporary injunction. There's a lot there to unpack. Yeah, so we are getting some of our first post-9-11 jokes here. And this is a good one, I think, because I definitely noticed in my town in Ohio all of the establishments run by non-white people. I didn't investigate what their nationalities were, but regardless,

they all had the biggest American flags basically on every window. And I totally understand why. And this is just pulled from real life. It's such a dark joke to do with Apu, but in a good direction of this is them doing, I would say, yes, quality 9-11 satire. And the joke is Apu has been horribly treated because he is a brown foreigner in America, which you don't need to hear the gory details. But yes, in America, there were many horrible hate crimes done to people. And often it was directed at people who were Indian or Indian Americans, Sikh even, who are not even Arab or Muslim or anything.

Not that that would be okay either, but... No, no. No. Yeah, it's unfortunate. Of course, it still happens, but definitely happening a lot more in those hate-filled days. Now, slightly less hate-filled, although I don't want to talk about certain things that are happening

that were a month from this episode going live. Who knows? Who knows what's going to happen? But it does feel like we're kind of in the same i feel like they could to do this joke about up who begging people to not beat him up anymore could be done today too but yeah i mean i don't want to go too far into this yes but i feel like there's a concerted effort by our government by our i mean the u.s government to kind of renew that hatred and none of us are buying it anymore or at least way fewer people

are buying it or we're just too distracted to care like have fun with that i gotta go to my second job now in nicer things i love how tress plays booberella like the way she says boobs like a scary vampire rolling the tongue on rey romano oh yeah it's so good but i mean just like then you can stare at my boobs like the way she cackles after saying boobs that has stuck with me i think that's made bubarello one of my favorite modern simpsons characters she has about maybe like 10 appearances here and there some speaking some not but they latched on to her in a way that they don't normally latch on to secondary characters and she's part of the tapestry that real jims uses to define season 14 as perhaps the horniest season of simpsons ever yes hey we all had to heal from 9-11 some people just got hornier

after that then comes another did these notes take a little longer for you than usual because man is there a lot of references in this one but i'm not complaining yes references up front because we get this crusty burger commercial and it makes me think you know aljean is back in the watching old episodes mindset i was just thinking about lisa's first word where crusty is the spokesperson in the commercial taking a bite out of the food yeah although this time he's gotten used to like he says i don't mind the taste yeah so we'll get into all this though but a parody of the mcrib but it's housed in a parody of the 90s chevrolet commercials with i think the bob seeger song like a rock yes yeah and i remember that ad campaign because i've seen the mystery science theater episode the giant spider invasion a million times and whenever you

see a shot of one of the characters shitty pickup truck i think crow just goes like a rock oh man thank you yes that was such a good one i pulled up one of the old like a rock commercials they're not worth playing because it's just like a rock but occasionally they do pause to have a voiceover person say, America's built on individualism and we should all buy this car, whatever. Though in one of them is Alec Baldwin doing it, which reminded me that like, oh yeah, he was the Will Arnett of his time

doing voiceover for car commercials. Yes, now he has better things to do. Like answer questions. Will Arnett's picking up the pieces and he's less of a killer performer as Alec Baldwin, perhaps. Will Arnett is taking our lunch left and right every day with that smart list show i'm looking at these end of the year podcast rankings i don't know a single person who listens to that show i'll give the

credit to smart list and that they seemingly don't miss a week they aren't doing this like season of podcasting that celebs do so yeah i'll give that credit for not doing a season credit for also actually doing what they were paid for yes yeah yeah they stick with it in that way no also i swear i could be completely wrong but i watched a commercial for a car recently that had will arnett's voice in it i swear it sounded like ai assisted will arnett like it didn't sound like he was naturally saying words but i don't know yeah who knows with the way ai is going these days it's possible just like here you have the rights to my voice do whatever you want to it outside of you know endorsing child pornography that's the one thing also i sadly cannot answer until i get a copy of testify for myself which i bought for four dollars

on ebay but has not arrived in time i could not find any scans of the testify liner notes which might have to name the singer of this i have no fucking clue who sang this song probably some al clausen studio pal but the singer of the taste like freedom song like a rib it tastes like liberty like a rib with a bun of sesame We start with authentic letter-graded meat and process the hell out of it till it's good enough for Krusty. Try my new Krusty riblet.

Mmm! I don't mind the taste. Ooh, a new hamburger sandwich. Wow, I can't wait to pack that into my colon. Dude, take it easy on the fatty foods. You're running out of leg veins to transplant into your heart. I got arm veins, don't I? Yes, sir.

Not listed in the credits either of the episode. So a brief little spiel on the McRib. We all know it's a famous mcdonald's sandwich it was actually developed for mcdonald's by the creator of chicken mcnuggets because in the early 80s there was a chicken shortage and mcdonald's was like we need some kind of other item to bring people into our stores because mcnuggets were still a fairly new hot thing so that is why the mcrib was developed and just some history about how it was basically on again off again with off again with McDonald's with the

McRib. So it was taken off the menu in 85 and then brought back as a limited item from 1995 to 2004 after a successful reintroduction thanks to the live action Flintstones movie. I believe that is what really brought it back into the restaurants and made people remember like, oh oh yeah that was a good sandwich after 10 years now keep in mind this is about America and according to

the commentary and other sources the McRib has always been around like in Germany and other territories but Americans as far as I know they did not have it for a decade so after 2004 the history of the McRib is complicated because the sandwich has had to date four farewell tours and was made available as recently as November of this year so

they're always going to give it to you and it'll always be somewhere but I think it is just like artificial scarcity is what drives the demand for this product a product once again that has had four farewell tours in its lifetime. It coming from the creator of the McNugget makes a lot of sense because it's also shaped meat into a fake version of something. And it's fake bone,

which makes it work with Flintstones, I guess, too. And I was reading some interviews and documents about this. And apparently it's more expensive to make it into the fake rib patty, but that is more appealing to the consumer and even when i ate meat i don't think i had this in my lifetime have you had a mcrib you know i love horrible fast food like i've eaten it quite a lot in my life so i'm not acting above the mcrib

but i never really the mcrib never really clicked with me my hubby he likes the McRib a lot more than me I would say I recently the last time it came around he wanted to order it and I was like sure I'll try a bite and it's fine it's fine I've had much better barbecued pork in my life even from other like chain restaurants yeah it looks like they just cooked a doggy chew toy and shoved it in a bun and I think I didn't eat it at McDonald's because until I became a vegetarian i didn't like vegetables that much and i think there's just a lot of onions on it or something there was some part of it that really turned me off so that's the mcrib and there are mcdonald's around me i didn't poke my head in to see if it was available but it does come and go as the seasons do so that's funny bob because they mentioned it later the the McRib Locator website, which I did go to it. It's

still in operation. I looked it up. It only shows America on the McRib Locator. So I could actually get one in my Seattle area at the time of this recording. And if you wanted to, Bob, the nearest one would be about a 90-minute drive, I think, from Vancouver to Blaine, Washington, right over the border. Wow. Okay. Because I just pulled up an article by BlogTO, which I guess is some Toronto blog site. And it's the November news article about the McDonald's McRib is back in Canada, and it's only being served in select locations around Toronto. So I think it was maybe even limited to a certain area of Canada when it came back in

November so it's time for you Bob to get a train ticket to Blaine I'll take in all the sights of Blaine sorry to all of our listeners in Blaine I'm sure it's very nice Bob did you also come across that old wives tale or it's one that like myths going around that it was tied to the price of pork and that every time pork comes back or goes down in price that that's when they bring back the McRib. I mean, I've heard that, but I didn't look into the facts on that. That one I did look at just a teeny bit. It sounds likely. It's inconclusive. It was one of those Freakonomics facts that you'd hear all around the internet back in 2011. Yes, that book. Check out the podcast,

If Books Could Kill. They did a really good episode about Freakonomics and I regret ever believing in that book as someone who was 22 when I read it by the way it sucks how much it set the tone of the internet back then but yeah I read Business Insider in 2011 did a whole article about like saying it's probably it could be true but Axios in 2021 did an article poking holes in it of like the writer actually charted here are u.s pork prices it went up and then they sold the mcrib so there's some doubt on that i now think of that fact as like one of the like the doki doki panic facts of fast food that people share at parties i'm sure all of the math and market research they do to decide when

to bring back the mcriib is all just a giant secret math equation that works out well for them, but we can never know it. But I do love in the commercial, they show how it's molded into the meat shape of a rib when it's really just like highly processed pork into a shape. Also, I like it goes by so fast i miss it sometimes where they say real letter graded meat not grade a letter graded they don't tell you the letter grade yeah i love any great fake simpsons ad this is a good one again it reminds me a lot of lisa's first word but crusty has adapted to eating his own disgusting food it also is a wonderful joke of animal cruelty of the cow just shoved in me in the kiln.

Being thrown into a furnace. And hey, they're referencing a lot of episodes we just covered because there's a reference to Homer's triple bypass. When Bart tells Homer, you're running out of leg veins to transplant into your heart. That's right. That's right. That's how he explains it. Even is using a leg vein. Wow.

That's so funny. I love how Bart bart they are really enjoying bart being a like terrified child towards his dad of like yes sir like yeah this has come up before and bart has been harshly punished also the first of many great marge lines of calling it a hamburger sandwich perfect marge line there oh yeah then homer saying that booberella it's nice to see a realistic single woman on tv that's a great line too i think that's also a joke about ally mcbeal you're right yes which also futurama taking a lot of their swings at single female lawyer back then after the end of that we then go to the school for the first day of school skinner is singing a parody of schools out for summer and then he's about to be stabbed by willie who

a few episodes earlier it was set up that he might be the glasgow strangler so he's a real murderer this season we'll get to it but even on the commentary they're confused as to what the fate of ralph will be when willie leads him away oh yeah he's going to kill ralph isn't he let's hope he kills ralph oh oh oh boy man that's even darker let's hope he's just the child murderer like he was in that treehouse of horror we watched with bill oakley but i do like it does feel like classic skinner of him one asking somebody did you get my letter about your pay cut and indeed there will be budget wise of course that's good skinner yeah yeah ignoring the murderous employee right in front of him.

We also see that Nelson and Martin became space camp buddies over the summer in this quick clip here. Nelson, how was your summer? Sucked. What'd you do? Space camp. At ease, Cadet Nelson. Good to be back on terra firma, eh? How about I launch my foot into your butt?

I held your hair when you barfed in the simulator. Shut up, Commander. Welcome. A nice little zinger at the end where it turns out Martin outranks him at space camp. That's great. And he still respects it. And isn't it cute seeing Martin wearing a t-shirt of him and his best pal Nelson on it? His burly protector? Yeah, his burly protector. Yeah. Yeah. And they're both so happy wearing a t-shirt of him and his best pal Nelson on it? His burly protector?

Yeah, his burly protector. Yeah. Yeah. And they're both so happy on the t-shirt. I like whenever Nelson's sensitive side comes out or is revealed. Though how could he afford space camp? I'm guessing it was a scholarship. We also find out that Jimbo's dad is rich.

I guess we've seen his home life of Corky. He seems like he is secretly a rich kid when he's watching that movie soap operas yeah yeah the soap opera with his mom yeah and the pta disbands yeah it seems like a fairly nice house but we do learn skinner is talking about he was a maitre d at the springfield country club and jimbo's like my dad says you were a bus boy and this is when skinner fires back you mean your dad the raging alcoholic immediately shuts down jimbo but then realizes he went too far he's like okay all of this they have no other first day of school jokes after this which i mean they covered it pretty well in the lisa kudrow episode they did where it's the first

day of school lisa trying to get in but all of this is just set up for and now to do a spelling bee on the first day of school just straight into the spelling bee and I guess the real issue is so spelling bees depicting them in a comedy it takes a very long time just in terms of the format and then it's hard to make them funny so I give them a lot of credit for getting through the boring stuff and finding new jokes. And I mean, Spelling Bees, it's so well-trod territory. Like it's the main plot of the Charlie Brown feature film, the first one, which all of the writers probably saw when they were kids. And every show, if you have kids in your sitcom,

all of them will do a Spelling Bee episode at one point, or at least subplot. Yeah, I wonder if the parents can let us know, like, what is the importance of spelling these days in terms of teaching kids? Because we had, you know, spelling tests and everything, but ultimately, the way to get good at spelling is by reading a lot. So I read a lot as a kid, and I was always, at least in grade school, the second or third best speller when we had, you know, the annual spelling thing but it all comes from that and now gmail will just write you an entire email you don't even have to like type the words wrong they'll just say here's what you want to say to your boss and you're like

okay that's fine and you know whenever you write something wrong in any word box on any text box it's underlined immediately when it's incorrect so i wondering, what is the value when computers can't stop correcting us? I bet they're still having gender bees there. Ooh. I kid. I guess the one problem is, you know, mixing up the different forms of its, and, you know, there and there and things like that. Things that a spell checker might not be able to get

or a grammar checker. But I feel like we don't even opt in to having our spelling checked anymore. Computers just do it. Remember when you would write a paper and then you would run the spell check? Yeah. Oh man. Yeah. That takes me back. Having to hit the spell check button and then do it all at once instead of just in the middle of a sentence, even when something actually is correct, but you haven't written the next word. It's like, Hey, that was wrong. Yeah. Oh. And also one other gripe

i have the other things weren't gripes here's a gripe i have when your spelling is corrected for you and you don't want it to be and then you have to tell the computer or the web browser like no i want to spell it this way or this is the word i want or if you're say trying to be funny and intentionally misspell something for like a written article somewhere, as we used to do in our lives. So Matt Chrisman has been on the show a few times, and whenever I type his name into like Twitter or whatever, it always is like, oh, Matt Christmas. You mean Matt Christmas, right? God, what a nightmare that has to be. Already your name is Christman, and now it's like also it's like, no, you mean Christmas.

Yeah. Well, I guess, well, speaking of spelling bees, I should tell you my own childhood spelling bee background. Yes, I did compete in the school spelling bee, very similar to this. But basically, so this was at my Florida elementary school. This was either fifth or sixth grade. And the way our system worked was you do the spelling bee within your class. And then if you win in your class which I did then you get to do it for your grade and you do go on stage like this in front of a bunch of other

classmates and then do the spelling and so I did win in my class I'm not saying I was now I feel like I'm actually terrible at spelling and spell check has ruined me. But many times I've had to look up a word that I'm like, I should know how to spell this. Why do I have to look up this one? But I did it great in that class, but also it filled me with anxiety. And then once I did it in the class, then they give you the book of like, okay, you did fine as an untrained spelling nerd who reads enough to know how to spell regular words. you define as an untrained spelling nerd who reads enough to know how to spell regular words

here's the book of trick words and here's how you train and ask like what's the point of origin so that way you know well this is from this language then the letters would go in this order that kind of deal i get on stage i feel like i make it past the first round and spell my first word correctly by then my second word and i'll never forget it as Milhouse is also similarly scarred here. I am asked to spell finally, and I spell it with one L and I find out I have failed. And that word has stuck with me forever. It doesn't make me cry anymore.

I've moved on with my life. I'm for many years, it did haunt me and i did cry in front of my entire class after getting off stage and so you couldn't use the word finally for years yeah because always from then on i feel like for the longest time if i wrote the word finally i would spell it out while saying it of f-i-n-A-L-L-Y just to try and make up for my failure. So what happens to Milhouse in this did happen to me around the same age too. I don't think we had the budget for a spelling bee because all the spelling competitions were written. It was similar to what you did, except it was all written where

the grades would have the written spelling test. And then the top people from that would go on to a different place where they would take the final spelling test. And I would always be like second or third, but never participated in an actual spelling bee. You know, it seems like a good way to kill time in the classroom. If you don't have your lesson plans ready, just like, uh, spelling bee, that'll take the hour. God, that sounds so boring. I guess spelling bees are kind of stupid because that's not the context in which anyone spells anything if you're having trouble spelling something for even pre-computer the best way to figure it out is to just start writing you know like does that look right i mean you're not being tested in the way that a spelling bee would test you but i guess that's the extra

challenge it lets nerds who don't compete in physical sports feel the burn of competition and the pressure and the pride of winning if you're like Lisa. What was top prize exactly? Boy, I want to say like a gift certificate to something of like 50 bucks to a gift certificate at a bookstore. But obviously it escaped my grasp. I buried all memories. is misspelling on stage, sitting in my chair, waiting for being able to get off stage, because you have to sit in your failure for about 30 minutes to an hour, and then getting off stage and being comforted by my teacher, like, it's okay, it's okay.

I'm fairly familiar with the format of these, because if you recall the early odd show, Cheap Seats, with the comedians, the Sklar brothers, they would watch a lot of sports footage and riff on it. Mystery science theater style because they were big mystery science theater fans. And it's another one of those shows where we'll just do things with existing footage. And some of their funniest episodes were them riffing on kids spelling bees. And yes, they were making fun of children, but also very funny. And I'm sure almost all the old Cheap Seats episodes are on YouTube now. That was something they did in

the mid-aughts, I'd say. The Spelling Bee continues, and Lisa, for once, wins. Milhouse, your word is choke. Oh, I know this one. It's so easy. F... Oh, man! Stop laughing.

It will scar him for life. It is kind of infectious. Lisa, impugn. I-M-P. Hey, Lisa said she was... Shut up, P. U-G-N. Impugn. That's right.

Lisa Simpson, your school champion. Wow, I better make the most of this. Free Tibet! There'll be time for that later. Now you can concentrate on representing our school at the state spelling finals. Lisa! Lisa! Lisa! And here's your prize for today.

A scale model of the planet Mars. This is just a kickball with Mars written on it. For today, a scale model of the planet Mars. This is just a kickball with Mars written on it. Behold, the red planet. So once again, Lisa is being set up to take second place. But at least she gets a couple wins before that. Yeah. And hey, Skinner was correct.

It will scar him for life. Yeah, but Milhouse had so many things that scar him for life it's just part of the list but i mean hey it was a florida elementary school right henry oh yes yeah yeah how many of those people you embarrass yourself in front of are dead or in jail i'd be low estimate of ass saying like at least a dozen are dead or in jail or the don't feel so bad yeah look i really am over it if you asked me when i was 31 i might have said oh that still stings but now it fades all the more every day now but and yes lisa's screaming free tibet this is the second time it's been said on the series got said by richard gear before at least according to a 2021 vice reporting on it, this line is intact on Disney Plus in China.

It was all the news of like, this episode's not on Disney Plus in China of Simpsons. One's Goo Goo Guy Pan was the big one. But this one is, or at least was in 2021, confirmed by Vice to be intact on China's Disney Plus. Maybe it's because it's not about that, that they just weren't paying attention. You know, you can narc out this episode if you live in China, narc out on this and get Disney Plus in trouble. Email China. China at China.gov.

By the way, these free Tibet statements, you don't see them as much anymore. I do feel like partially the Dalai Lama having many bad headlines lately is maybe one of the reasons. You know, when you ask a little boy to suck on your tongue, you know, it's hard to dig up from that, right? Partially, the Dalai Lama having many bad headlines lately is maybe one of the reasons. You know, when you ask a little boy to suck on your tongue, you know, it's hard to dig up from that, right? Yes, it actually made me forget about another one where he, in the last few years, somebody asked, you know, will there be a female Dalai Lama someday? And he's like, well, she'd have to be attractive. You wouldn't want an ugly one.

Basically what he said. Yeah, maybe this vow of celibacy is backfiring on him. Maybe like a man in his late 80s has bad opinions no matter what thing he worships. Anyway, so Lisa wins a kickball. This bit here, Marge has gotten him hilarious in this next scene. Yes. It was so exciting. I actually got applause for being smart.

Marge, eh? Hmm. I see no evidence of water. Well, this is very impressive, Lisa. I'm kicking this right onto the mantle. Well, I'm not done yet. Principal Skinner said if I win the state finals, I can go to the Spelllympics. I'm just happy you're excited about something besides saving the whales. Face it, they're doomed

what a mean joke yeah it sounds like that kickball actually landed on the mantle so marge secret talent and i laughed a lot at this because i remember in the year 2000 the election was happening you know obviously i was a bagger at a grocery store and one of the cashiers was saying you know i'm voting for bush and i was trying to explain to her oh but al gore cares about the environment and her response was similar to marge is like oh that's already brewing we can't fix that why bother anymore yeah that's the northeastern ohio attitude you know i looked up in 2019 the saving the whales status still endangered but you shouldn't be as black-pilled as marge some whale populations have been on an uprise according to the world wildlife federation and

national geographic others going down but you know it's not too late we didn't listen to spock and truly save them but they're not doing so bad and hey now the whales are fighting back they're communicating they're collaborating they're sinking boats and i say hey more power to them yeah we have added good luck guys i want to see whale 9-11 happen in my lifetime also the proof of water on mars thing a hot topic back then it wouldn't be until 2008 that some water ice apparently that was when it was discovered leading to of course right after he saves x the the platform for everything, Elon Musk is going to land and colonize Mars using that water. He just needs enough drugs to do it. God bless him.

Again, we're a month out. Who knows what other crazy thing? Few people have looked more on drugs than he did when he said, go fuck yourself. Yeah. We are talking about, was it a press conference or something where he's like actually uh i don't want i don't want advertisers it was the new york times media event thing that also like kamala harris also spoke at the same thing that he's like it's like they're trying to uh blackmail me with with advertising yes by

choosing not to buy your product that's blackmail now so you know we're changing definitions every day only after he replied to a white supremacist about how like yes the jews are sending the the evil people to the other countries we don't have to go on too long about this and who knows where he'll be in a month from now but he recently became a pizzagate guy and i'm proud of him i mean he's late to everything in terms of memes and jokes and he's about I don't know six or seven years late to Pizzagate so it's falling in line with just who he is he's staying true to himself then our next scene Homer heads to Krusty Burger he meets Ribbit the rib witch mascot who's covered in dripping sauce I love Homer saying the commercials have

come to pass I should put that into my lexicon i already have the thanks to bob whatever you say billboard yes it is troubling at times i want to see those next did you see those set leaks from deadpool 3 bob oh boy oh no you know i actually i did borrow from you henry and i saw the holdovers recently and i just felt like a new man when I left. I'm like, wow, a movie just about people. And there is no, like, Shredder appearing at the end to say, I'll get you next time, Giamatti. Yes. And, like, Paul Giamatti is, like, the only movie movie star in the movie. And he's the character actor.

He's the top character actor. And it's filmed all in, like, real places. Like, it's not on a set yeah yeah i mean i was having a great time it was just a crowd who appreciated this subtle comedy and i wanted to look around and say we used to do this this used to be what a movie was i hope it's a very successful movie it reminds people what was good about movies man i want paul giamatti i don't believe has yet to win his Oscar. He could win it for this. That scene, when he's on the couch at a party, that scene just all in his face.

Like, I was like, that's an Oscar win right there. That is perfect acting. This is our Holdovers promotion. It's a Christmas movie, so it may be too late to see it. But I think you can still appreciate it in this post-Christmas time. And I will say, I looked up the writer for this movie and he started on the adventures of Pete and Pete and he was mostly a sitcom guy with things like just shoot me an American dad so unexpected from a guy in the sitcom world but still great yeah god damn man it's full of amazing

moments I love that movie I'm glad you enjoyed it too Bob and then it was good because I liked Asteroid City a little more than you but I'm glad we're on the same page with the whole absolutely yeah asteroid city it's a better trailer than a movie and i'll leave it at that i've still been listening that soundtrack over and over again though but soundtrack is great hey speaking of movies who remembers requiem for a Dream around here huh? you know what I have not seen this movie but I feel like I would not get anything out of it at this point no I haven't watched it since it was new I re-watched on YouTube

I watched the clip again that this episode parodies perfectly Nancy Kruiser animation team were asked hey could you have a ton of very quick cuts and probably 24 frames per second animation on homer freaking out to eating the rib witch yeah i feel like i mean i'm sure it's shot great i'm sure it's a lot of things ripped off from anime that people didn't know about at the time but also yeah isn't like some perfect blue stuff in that movie absolutely it is yes perfect blue yeah i dig into? Absolutely it is. Some scenes are perfect blue. I dig into this a bit in, I think it was the Millennium Actress one we did of the movie,

which please listen to that. What a cartoon movie, folks. And watch Millennium Actress. It's one of the greatest movies of all time. You know, just not to be reductive, but it does feel like two hours of drugs are bad kind of commentary. Oh, Requiem for a Dream, yes. Yeah. And I heard 20 years of dumbasses saying ass to ass long enough where it's like, well, that's what you took from the movie.

Great. I also don't want to see it for other reasons. I mean, on top of that, yeah, the Darren Aronofsky stuff, it's just hard for me to watch. I forget what the last Aronofsky movie I watched was, but I really hated, and he still did it in the Satoshi Kon documentary I watched last year, The Illusionist, which is a good documentary, really good. And they talked to lots of people who I was like, okay, if the French making it did a

good job. However, when they talked to Darren Aronofsky, they do not want to directly call him a liar, I think. So when he says, well, I met Satoshi Kahn and I told him you really inspired me and he said oh that's cool or whatever basically Aronofsky's version of events definitely he did not say I ripped him off but Satoshi Cullen when not on stage with Darren Aronofsky was very clear of like no this wasn't an homage like he took scenes from Perfect Blue and put

it in Requiem for a Dream and he didn't pay me or didn't say he did it. It's like he got caught. And then also, when you watch Black Swan, it also clearly is taken from the same place as Perfect Blue. Yeah, you lose a lot of respect for Aronofsky the more you dig into that stuff. Well his recent movie is The Whale and as far as I know all he did was take one picture of Brendan Fraser in a fat suit and that's the movie. I've only watched scenes from The Whale. I've told it was a rancid film by people who I appreciate in their film criticism of. Yeah it's a bummer because I felt good for the comeback of Brendan Fraser. We all know what happened to him and it's great to see him again but not like this no no wasn't it look we all got to see the wonderful night of like wow two encino man actors winning an oscar on one night like that was amazing but no i mean it's very sad i hope that the success the oscars love giving awards to people who wear a fat suit they

love doing that it's horrible and disgusting to me that movie sucks from the scenes i've seen and i choose not to watch more of it but yes i hope that brendan fraser i hope he gets to appear in the mummy remake i hope they finally make a fourth mummy movie with him this time it'll work damn it though this sequence of homer eating it i can't not think of every time i see it i am teleported back to being at universal studios hollywood and the crusty burger there because this is playing on a loop there oh yeah this is one of the many food clips that they include sorry this is the rib which not the mcrib yeah is there more rib which material in that compilation because i know they cut out some of the grosser scenes or scenes that would imply you're being served bad food. No, they just have the sequence of Homer eating it. They

don't have the commercial for the Rib Witch or other stuff. That is the difficulty when they want to show Simpsons food clips that, well, one, they have to not have Harry Shearer in them. And two, they don't want to be too gross. Yeah, I guess Harry Shearer is in that commercial. He's the announcer. Yeah. But also I think the reason they don't want to be too gross with it is you can buy the Ribwich at Krusty Burger at Universal. Oh, I forgot about that. I've been there, I think, twice at this point. I know they have the Clogger. Yes, they have the Clogger. They have a regular Krusty Burger. They also have the Sideshow Bob Footlong chili dog because he's got a big foot. But the Krusty Burger Rib Witch is described as a boneless barbecue ribs, barbecue sauce, coleslaw on a specialty bun. $16.49 is the current price of that sandwich at Universal. That is highway robbery.

But where else can you get it? So, yeah, if you want to have a real Rib Witch, you can pay $16.49. If you go there in two months from now, it'll be at least at $17. You just went to Tokyo DisneySea, which had, when I was looking at prices and stuff, I was like, wait, that seems like a normal price for a sandwich or a churro or whatever. Oh yeah, all the prices are much more reasonable because I think people there just make less money overall and they wouldn't stand for the prices that we pay in America. And then there's the exchange rate on top of that.

So it just feels like, oh, this is just normal food. There's no insane markup because I can't get food anywhere else. It's just like, oh, a beer is 600 yen, which is like four US dollars or something crazy like that. And even if it was one to one, it would be a six dollar beer yen which is like four u.s dollars or something crazy like that and even if it was one-to-one it would be a six dollar beer which is still not bad for a beer at a theme park yeah

i forget how much that harry potter butter beer i had an alcoholic yeah yeah and it's like the instructions for how to go add rum to it were an eight-step process i had to sign a waiver i was like whatever yeah that's right yeah that's right i asked the guy so how do i get out calling it like um well you can take this and walk it into there and then you can order a shot from that guy and he can't put it in the drinks yeah it's a lot of steps meanwhile you can just buy a duff beer or uh duff select yeah uh aka sam adams yeah uh but yeah i also love how homer celebrates that it's now without lettuce, though this doesn't have coleslaw on it like the one at Universal.

Not a fan of coleslaw in sandwiches. I'm going to slander something on the East Coast. I think the name of the restaurant is Primanti or something like that. And they're a Pittsburgh chain and people were just raving about them. And their big appeal is that there's like a giant undigestible bezoar of coleslaw

in the center of every sandwich and it just ruined it for me i mean maybe that you know if that's up your alley fine but not in my alley and i'm gonna say no i'll look up the actual name of the place but i think it's permonti uh despite being a southerner i'm very anti-slaw i am not a fan of coleslaw do not like it i think it's a real trick too of just like eat your vegetables which is like a diced up red lettuce covered in salad dressing or whatever no mayonnaise yeah it is primanti you know i'm a vegetable lover pescetarian a lot of vegetables i hate coleslaw it just give me a salad i don't need this little slimy cup of cabbage or whatever's going on in here right whatever's in it so homer eats nine of them in a row and some really great

animation and then has a freak out this is after he says he was gonna lick to the rib witch frog all day which i also love his line it's so good you'll croak and yet my children think i'm a failure so yeah homer's like you seem like an impartial observer but i've been fooled by people in costumes before like a lot of great lines in this episode this is a good script then we cut to lisa going to the state which is she wins that too lisa wins states and chalmers is the host of it which is pretty good for the superintendent yeah i guess i was ignoring the fact that lisa does win twice before her loss much later so there are some wins she's racking up some

wins more than losses in this one i don't think it's intentional but it's like in the charlie brown movie first one that charlie brown gets to win twice like when he wins his school spelling b that's when it's like oh see you thought charlie brown was a loser he just won this and then he wins all the way to national but spoiler that's just to set up charlie brown for his greatest fall ever of losing in front of the entire nation i think we need to cover one of those movies because they were always on tv when i was a kid and i swear to god if without commercials they're probably 80 minutes but it felt like an entire day to get through one of those movies I think I had to tap out at a certain point you know it feels when I was a kid watching Linus Ice Skate felt like a very long scene as a

kid I was like all right can we speed this up television I think I'd pick that one or maybe Snoopy Comes Home because that was the one I probably watched the most as a kid yeah good music in that one so yeah Lisaisa wins after chalmers uses skinner as every example is mocking skinner and then lisa wins and she's promised to get to see a movie together which like lisa just won state like that's huge winning the state spelling bee i think they can do a little better than going out to a movie i assume there'd be some kind of movie parody after this but it leads to nothing and this episode is funny but there is what i consider just a stock sitcom line in here where bart's like finally a simpson has a trophy without a bowling ball on it it's like

yeah that's not really a simpsons joke i'm not going to criticize everything but it just stood out to me as like hmm that feels like a full house joke or just any kind of stock bad sitcom line yeah totally you're right yeah everybody loves raymond would not settle for that joke they'd be like hey we can do better than that uh but yes this is when homer for the first and many times cruelly abandons his daughter and i do feel like homer doesn't get enough crap in this episode for how he treats lisa i don't think lisa i'm so impressed. You're state champ. Finally, a Simpson has a trophy without a bowling ball on it.

Well, why don't we celebrate by going to a movie? That sounds like a magical family moment. I'm sorry I won't be there. Really? It won't be the same without you, Dad. Oh, sweetie, you're the most important thing to me in the world. Only very serious daddy business can tear me from your side. Three ribwiches, please. And instead of a shake, I'd like a blended ribwich.

I'm sorry, sir. The ribwich was for a limited time only. Not again. First you took away my Philly fudge steak, and then my bacon balls, then my watch of my chicken. You monster. fudge steak and then my bacon balls then my watch of my chicken you monster i'd like a large fries please and a collector's cup dude if you still want the ribwich they're testing it in other markets check out the tour schedule so here comes in the deadheads right yeah and i was wondering when lenny and carl like walk homer away to the

door is that requiem as well or is that another movie reference you know i came up short on this too i have to think it's requiem because the music too is played very similar but sadly i don't have answered i also have to throw to our commenters if you recognize this reference please help because as usual the simpsons wiki sucks at finding references they get most references wrong or they're too obvious or they come at it from a british viewpoint which gets things wrong as well yeah i tried finding out what this was and have no idea though here i shouldn't make fun of the simpsons wiki because i'm like well i don't know either but you know what i want to kick the simpsons wiki you don't have a wiki you don't

need to know yeah the deadhead stuff is fun i have zero opinion on deadhead i feel like it was fashionable to kick them and do some hippie bashing as well but they're fine i'm glad they're still keeping it going they haven't died out yet he's not on the staff at this point but george meyer like he was their chief deadhead at that time i think he still is a big time deadhead we talked a bit about simpson's connection to deadheads and by association fish as well in our episode with mike hamford where fish guest starred when homer got high oh right yes yes now yeah now i think fish is the new band people follow they carry the torch but i know there are still dead heads is the

grateful dead still touring i was speaking out of ignorance assuming that this was still a thing going on i think members of the grateful dead tour as like i don't know if there can be called the grateful dead because jerry garcia he was dead in 2003 right so yeah but i do think some members of them still tour and soak up the money i mean if you're a deadhead you want to go on tour all the time though also isn't this crazy this episode is two years after bending in the wind on futurama which is also about getting in a van and driving all around and ends in san francisco yes yes i was thinking the exact same thing so grateful dead now i looked up on my phone here now called dead and company i see um and the final tour was in summer of 2023 so there you have it wow will that be as truly final as the rib which was final or not i wonder that reminds me

as well of like i didn't truly know the beach boys deal until i listened to the podcast the ride on it that was amazing to learn about that yes what is the deal it is just like mike love and some guys mike love just basically stole the rest of the band and he gets to be the beach boys without any of the other beach boys and he's just like an asshole he's an epic asshole check out that episode of podcast right because scott gardner is a big beach boys fan he speaks from a place of deep deep deep knowledge on the subject. Speaking of knowledge, it was Selman who pitched the Deadheads going around to follow the food because he had read about the McRib Locator website. He says a Wall Street Journal piece.

I'm assuming he means the 2010 article, which is still online. Bonafide fans chase rib-free rib sandwich lovers of elusive mcrib pork patty track their sightings what okay i copy pasted this all wrong from the web page okay i was gonna say not an seo friendly title i bet it is bonafide fans chase rib free rib sandwich and then there you go subhead lovers of elusive mcrib pork patty track their sightings there interesting yeah i mean have fun with your life it seems like not the best thing to base a journey around this pork slime molded into a dog toy shape based on the current search my old town of jacksonville florida is currently the place where you can buy the cheapest McRib in America.

Ooh. Do you have a price on that? Is it under $6? Under $4. It's like $3.92. Ooh, I wouldn't trust that. Well, in Jacksonville, everybody eats pretty cheap. Yeah.

I mean, there's a certain point where I'm like, well, that's a good price for that sushi, but I don't want to eat it. A roll should cost more than $4. Also, it's funny this, you know, traveling around for the gimmick food. Like Bill Oakley, our previous guest and pal, major part of his Instagram is reviewing any of the new gimmick sandwiches that come out. Yeah, and he does a bit of traveling too to go to certain locations where you can only get certain things there. It's more fun to go to cities that have a special kind of pizza or a special kind of

sandwich than to get this mass-produced garbage i mean it goes without saying but what i just said was kind of trite but i do like now that i travel like oh what's the thing here that i can eat that i can't get anywhere else and then having it like what's the kind of beer or liquor that is only comes from here and people are crazy about i'll try'll try it here. And hey, you know, Bill Oakley, if you have anybody doing that for you in Portland, Bill Oakley is the guy to have doing that. Absolutely. I ended up eating in one of the top pizza restaurants

in the country just based on his recommendation. So thank you, Bill Oakley. Homer decides he's going to abandon his family and travel around America to eat a ribwich. And we get a quick bit of Lisa getting a double wide locker as a gift which takes away ralph's locker and it is a dark joke bob you're right an extra dark joke even on the commentary again they're asking what is going to happen to ralph what are we trying to

say here and they immediately move on because i think they know what they're trying to say but they don't want to put that on willie 10 years. Yeah. I mean, it's a dark time in comedies. They're making a joke about child endangerment. With today's eyes, I choose to believe the joke is just, I'm going to put you to work and you won't need your books there. Let's say that. That's the safer option. You know, the episode in December of The Simpsons where Bart befriends Willie he gets super detention that makes him have to spend all day with Willie and that's how he becomes friends with him so they did a similar joke in the most recent season that's the one where Belle and Sebastian appear in it where recently I felt very old because I think it was Toby Jones in our discord pointed out that

like this is the same as NRBQ, right? Yeah, and then I replied saying, oh yeah, Homer loved Bell and Sebastian after he got out of high school in 2002. Bell and Sebastian's not allowed to be old music now. I mean, look, they were always niche, but I don't like them being old. Speaking of calling out good jokes, I love this Kent Brockman bit all of it. Including this wonderful mislead where he says the companies 3M and Eminem are merging to form, get this, Ultradine Systems. It's so good. Yeah, actually, I've got all that right before.

If we still did it, I would call it the line of the episode is right after Kent's news report. In business news, 3M and Eminem have merged to form, get this, Ultradine Systems. And speaking of news stories, here's another. Springfield spelling phenom Lisa Simpson has qualified for spelling's answer to the Olympics, the Spelllympics. In a related story, the Spelllympics is being sued by the Olympics for use of the suffix Olympics. This has got to be the slowest news day ever. Ah, that's better Paris is no more

The legendary city of lights has been extinguished forever as a massive... Okay, champ I before E except after C Except when pronounced like A as in neighbor and way Really? Hmm And what about in the sentence Jim Neighbors is way cool? Well, how often is that going to come up?

It's on my apron. Yeah, I got work to do. Oh, I love all that. I mean, the Kent Brockman, what he goes out on, they've done that kind of joke before, but it's always funny where the Simpsons either turn it off or turn it on right as the news story is ending, where it's like a shot of the White House where he says, leaving the vice president in charge. In other news,

and moving on, and I do think Jim Neighbors is way cool. And you know, it's just so much fun to do his voice. He's such a pleasant fellow. I was doing this in front of my wife a lot, and I just think it cheers you up to talk like Jim Neighbors

where you're like, I just love this coffee. It brings me to life and it lets me talk about the Simpsons like I'm a professional. Man, that's a great one bob that's uh yeah it's it's kind of turning into peewee herman i gotta rein it in a little bit but uh marge's apron is just it fits her body so well i mean yes i'm talking like a southern gay man and that's problematic but jim neighbors it's a fun voice it's jim dandy well i said this when we talked about the jim neighbors character in the

roswell that ends well futurama but like i had a gay southerner voice as a kid uh that i slowly had to get rid of to fit in there is something about a gay southerner voice that is adorable to me gayest episode ever has done a lot of work covering jim neighbors his history of being in the closet and out of the closet, and things like that. So I would point you to them for more on him. But I was a big Gomer Pyle fan as a kid. And it's such a perfect line, too,

of like the spelling dork saying of when sounding like A as in neighbor and way, and then turning that into, oh, then the word way and neighbor, except it's gym neighbors and way cool that are spelled with an a like god and i love his little thumbs up on the apron yes and all of these rules are stupid none of them apply to everything because in english the spelling of the words reflects the history not the actual pronunciation so it's just through familiarity will you ever learn how to spell anything? As I am now 125 days into Duolingo for Japanese,

anytime I learn some new rule in Japanese in it, I'm just like, boy, that still isn't as stupid as so many English things, especially like, oh, shoes or shoe is the same word. I don't have to learn the plural version of shoe in Japanese. Yeah, very convenient. Though I'm starting to get back into the counters in Japanese, which that I'm like, why do I have to say three beer bottles in a different way than I would say three umbrellas? Why is the counter different? That's what threw me off.

We're just like, so round things are counted differently. What's going on here? Well, so it's like's like oh that's not how we say four anymore that's the old four this is the new four you want to say it like this now going from jim neighbors is way cool a hilarious joke we then head into four episodes earlier in strong arms of the ma marge is training with the rocky music the free version of the Rocky music playing behind her. It's now four episodes later. They're doing it again. It's the Rocky training montage for Lisa.

I'm going to blame upcoming friend of the show, Al Jean, on this one. This feels like, I mean, he made The Critic with Mike Reese. This feels like a go-to parody for him. We just recorded Barting Over with the Real Jims, and there's like a Casablanca parody out of nowhere, and I think that's like his kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. It's just so weak, especially, it's like, I'm sorry, it should be illegal to do two Rocky training montage parodies in the same season.

That is illegal, I say. The jokes in this are funny, though. I always love when Cletus is smarter than someone in a scene. Yeah, you ain't supposed to hold her like that. And then a very pivotal moment for the future of the show happens in this little montage in Lisa's spelling training. Yeah, actually, I have that tiny clip here. Relapse!

R-E-L-A-P-S-E! That's what beer has done to me! Suck it to me, suck it to me, suck it to me, suck it to me! Hell! Yes, Drunk Barney is back, folks. And it's funny, if you go back and listen to the commentary for Days of Wine and Doses, which is the episode where he gets sober, they point out that a lot of their friends had, you know, run-ins with alcoholism and recovered and everything. They didn't think it was funny anymore, but then they were like, actually, it was funny. Let's do this again.

Isn't it also great that on the commentary is Dan Castellaneta, and so they have to talk about, like, yeah, we reversed the thing in the episode you wrote. Like, here it is right here. I mean, I don't know how well these jokes have aged now that we talk more about addiction. I still think they're very funny and very dark. And Barney is such a great character, but they didn't know what to do with him outside of being oh it's just lenny and carl but with a weirder voice yeah i mean they could only do scenes in the aa so much i don't want to say they this is like a season arc i think it's on this commentary where aljean says like we don't do season arcs on the Simpsons like in the Civil War reenactment scene he plays Grant and then Homer tells him to drink and he's like oh I didn't

relapse that's great after drinking the beer then in Pray Anything Homer shuts down the AA and so Barney has no place to go so you can chart his relapse through those jokes I don't feel it is the writer's intention but it's interesting you can chart it like that and not to say they'll never have a sober Barney again in the show but like this does feel like the death of sober Barney basically I mean even if there wasn't a plan you can feel them edging towards what if we did this again and then falling right back into it with this and yeah i'm happy this has happened i think that episode was in season 11 maybe if i'm correct so yeah we had a good like three years of a worse barney yeah yeah i mean they did what they could with them but and also this whole montage it does feel like they didn't get music for it like i think that they in this episode's got some music boy does it but i guess they couldn't get eye of the tiger or

whatever well i mean i think aljean says that fox owns the rocky theme not the eye of the tiger version oh the one from two yeah yeah the fanfare i guess this might be public domain the fanfare's public domain yeah it's the part after that yeah i do like that everybody is shouting at lisa and then it leads to i mean mo this is another tiny clip but everybody rejects lisa trying to get them to care about something and then mo yelling at lisa here is so great come on dimples spell something else for us. I'm a little tired. Oh, come on. Hey, spell Little Miss. She thinks she's so big.

Very well. Moe realizing his request was stupid. Another great Moe line. I love that. But yeah, also, I feel like Smithers shouldn't be in the group of people who can't spell kidding that quickly. Like, Smithers is smarter than that. He's the one in the group that I'm like, no, Smithers knows how to spell that. He should be smarter. Let's just say he was drunk. And I guess now it's time for the big guest star of this episode, who's pretty great. Yeah, yeah.

We could talk about him. They had to spell Olympic Village, a place for dorks. And this is where we meet george plimpton who is founder of the paris review and has had a very interesting life or had one because he passed away about six months after this aired so yeah in september of 2003 at age 73 is when he passed so the reasons why he's on this show he went to harvard and he was president of the lampoon in his time which i think was the 50s and was also a member of the Hasty Pudding Club, in case you want to know about that. Isn't it cute how Al Jean lists that he was,

like John Vitti, Mike Reese, and George Meyer, he was president of the Lampoon? And I think the story was that Ian Maxton Graham, whose blood is literally blue, was at a high society Ivy League party, ran into Plimpton, sat in from the simpsons and george plimpton was like oh i'd love to be on your show or whatever that's how the connection happened just by being in those circles so yeah george plimpton super interesting guy a ton of work to

his name he made his bones as a literary critic but he was also famous for his sports journalism written from the perspective of an amateur so he wrote a lot of books where like, what if I was in this golf tournament? What if I played on this football team? And I believe one of his more famous things is called Paper Tigers, which is when he played for the Detroit Tigers. There's a book about it and they made a movie about it. And I think Alan Alda plays him in that movie. And that's why there's the jersey in his office later in the episode. And I mean, of course, Al Jean's was one of his most famous things, but also Al Jean is going to remember it because it's Detroit sports related, which Al Jean cares very much about. Yes. And I will say he was an actor, but not in a movie called Boner Academy, although he did guest star on Wings, which might be worse.

That's great. I love that line about about boner academy the way he says he replaced my tennis racket with a rubber phallus actually ian maxton graham thinks so i tease this to you before we recorded bob this is what sent me down a weird rabbit hole ian maxton graham says he got connected via another paris review founding editor john train who then connected him with plimpton and that they were at the same party so john train he passed away in 2022 at 94 so i could pull up his obit and in his new york times obit i was like oh yeah he's also a lampooner a mega wasp which of course white anglo-saxon protestant that's what wasp stands for in case you don't know i'm not saying he was an insect. Of course, him and Ian Maxton Graham were in the same circles. Though, this was the craziest thing.

So I read in the Trains New York Times obituary, they actually point out that there were allegations of him being connected to the CIA, and that the CIA helped set up the Paris Review. And this was in the New York Times. This wasn't on a side website or something. And so they linked to a 2017 New York Times book review of the book Thinks How the CIA Tricked the World's Best Writers by Joel Whitney. And the Paris Review has some level of connection to the CIA and was set up. So George Plimpton also CIA spook. This also leads me to believe that Ian Maxton Graham even more so is a cia operative and simpsons

funded by the cia it's all coming together here folks i actually asked previous guest brendan james who knows a whole lot about cia history he was like oh yeah paris review a big time cia operation and the set up as an anti-communist rag in the cold war time that he suggested another book, The Cultural Cold War, the CIA in the World of Arts and Letters by Francis Stoner Saunders. So if you want to learn more about this and then go crazy to know how many things are connected to CIA backing, like say the Dalai Lama as well, then read this book. You will give yourself schizophrenia and we are not responsible. Now I want to say I love George Plimpton. I should look up more of what he's done, but I spent a very long time in academia.

Too long, frankly. And he just reminds me of all of these Tweety old professor types, especially because I was in literature. That's why I like the holdovers as well. Just the Giamatti character. I've known guys who are like him, not quite as harsh, but just as loser losery and single-minded and devoted to a non-practical field isn't it great Giamatti's character the stuff he likes is boring and crappy like he doesn't even like cool things except when he can talk about how like they fucked in Greece or whatever but I also love that he hates blue bloods as well like that's a great yes nice little touch all of us aging nerds, although Henry and I are too young to have grown up with this, we might know him best through a series of commercials for the Intellivision because we used to have these people, public intellectuals. You would see George Plimpton and be like, oh, hey, it's the smart guy.

He's going to say smart things. And then they thought, what if we got him to sell video games? Funny idea. And we have one of those commercials here. When it comes to space games, nobody compares to Atari. Excuse me. Have you compared them to Intellivision? Intellivision?

Sure, they've got great space games, like Intellivision Space Battle. I didn't know. And now there's Space Armada and the incredible Astro Smash. I didn't know. And now there's Space Armada and the incredible Astro Smash. I didn't know. Here, compare for yourself. Intellivision Space Games from Mattel Electronics. Once you compare, you'll know. There you have it.

It's no hot plate, but yeah, he did those commercials. I was thinking, who are our modern public intellectuals? And they've all been photographed with Jeffrey Epstein, so we can't really talk about them anymore uh that's true i did find had half remembered it but i finally found the original quote from it john hodgman did say he wanted to be the george plimpton of his time and i think he reached it but this is him in 2008 talking about it i would be lying if I didn't note that his stint as a pitch man for Intellivision was not equally liberating in my career. It seems that every generation needs its public, tweety, literary personality

to sell its consumer electronics. Oh, very nice. Yeah, I knew Hodgman before he was cool, as did you, Henry, but it was nice to see him get some fame from those I'm a Mac, I'm a PC commercials, even though they were slandering the superior PC. Those are retro. Like, those are over 10 years old now. Like, yeah, I feel like the last one is over 10 years old now, actually. But Plimpton, so funny in this, and I like what a bastard they make him. So many great line readings.

He's not British, by the way. He just is, like, very blue-blooded, northeastern United States guy. So he talks like Thurston Howell. He's not actually British. That's basically where it comes from. He's just that fancy. He's a fancy New Englander who's extremely fancy. I mean, the animators also animate his hand motion so great. He comes off as perfectly fancy. He's a way better actor than tony hawk also yes i just love and look at these graphics on astro smash yes i watched a couple other ones where it feels like they at least were getting him saying this baseball game looks so much better than the atari baseball game which that at least sells him as like the sports writer's work he did

this one is just him going like basically saying that one space invader clone looks better than another space invader clone well even though he was a member of the cia apparently i really need to look up some of his stuff because i mean i'm not into sports but his sports journalism sounds fun like what if a normal man played on a football team that's got to be great to read if you want to see a lesser work of wes anderson that's about this guy watch the french dispatch which is all about the paris review bill murray plays the george plimpton type in it wally walidarski is one of the supporting actors you know i second guessed myself when we start talking about the paris review i

thought like oh was there a wes and Anderson movie about a fictional version of it? And yes, there was. Yep, it's all right. It's pretty low on my Wes rankings, but it's all right. Also, I have to correct Al Jean when he's listing all the Simpsons vets who were presidents of the Lampoon. He skips over Lauren McMullen. She was president as well.

I see, I see. Weird omission there. You know, I do feel like he's so funny here and they love him so much he's a harvard guy i feel like he would have been back on the show if he lived longer because aljean was big on bringing people back yeah yeah he brought stan lee back like 10 years later he was much younger than stan lee then i think he was like five years younger than stan lee yeah and I love that he loves being a villain in this. He doesn't care about being like a hero or whatever. I pulled

up a clip from a George Plimpton doc that involved his family. So obviously they're not going to talk about the CIA stuff in that, but they do have a section where they play multiple of the commercials he did. Cause he also like did commercials for like a garage door was one of the weirdest looking ones I saw there. But basically then they have a talking head in the documentary that says he was only doing that because the Paris Review was losing so much money. He needed to put it all back in the Paris Review, which I'm like, I don't know.

I'd like to see the bookkeeping on this that showed that he didn't keep any of the Intellivision money and it just went to the Paris Review. Yeah. I remember on the commentary Matt Selman talks about he knows George Plimpton because he hosted a Cinemax special, which basically showed you all of the racy European commercials you weren't seeing in America. That is not on his IMDb. So I couldn't figure out what the name of that was.

I found it. I found it, Bob. Ooh. Ooh, okay. Thankfully, searching George Plimpton hbo special took me to the youtube page where somebody uploaded it from 1986 it is called uncensored channels tv around the world with george plimpton and he was like look at the astro smashers on that woman so i'm assuming it was an hour-long special it's only 30 minutes that's on the youtube upload it takes you 22 minutes before you see a naked man and woman like you're not getting any actual nudity until then it's mainly just him going like isn't this weird scene from japanese television this prank and it's like it's that thing we hate it's other

countries than japan but it's like yeah it's a japanese prank show it's weird that's not normal japanese television and they know it's weird and they're. It's weird. That's not normal Japanese television. And they know it's weird and they're making it weird to be funny. But yeah, he has stuff from all over the world. But I was like, okay, I was trying to put myself in the brain of a young Matt Selman who's watching this in a pre-internet world of trying to see any boobage in it. And you got to wait a long time to see a naked person in it. And by the time you see it you looked at george plintham for so long you're just not in the mood anymore it's crossing a lot

of wires in your brain i think the only other time i saw george plintham in a movie when this aired was that he has a brief part in goodwill hunting he's the therapist who matt damon sees early and matt damon pegs as a closeted homosexual. Hmm. Okay. Yeah. I was surprised by the sheer amount of acting roles he had, although based on his performance here, I guess I shouldn't be.

He's great. I wish he had done Boner Academy, but let's give a little listen to George Plimpton. Welcome to the games of the 34th Spelimpiad. I'm George Plimpton, founder of the Paris Review. I also play the evil Dean in Boner Academy. You monster! Why did you expel Boogerman? He replaced my tennis racket with a rubber phallus. That was awesome.

And now, in the ancient spelling bee tradition, we shall release the bees. And now, to exterminate the bees, the magnificent Blue Angels. Yeah, he's so great. And I think he knows, like, I'm kind of a ridiculous guy, aren't I? Oh, yes. Yeah. I mean, his exit line in the episode is him accepting like yeah yeah i know i know yeah that's the one i use about myself sometimes it's like what even am i what is this

that we're doing i love all of this it says a lot about us how we're much more excited about george plimpton than tony hawk yes yeah for sure or blakewood 82 yeah yeah you know what the cia picked a good guy to hire in this case. We can only hope they recruit us one day. But discreetly, discreetly, just like the Dalai Lama. I have it only found posthumously when our letters are released. And that's basically how a lot of the supporting evidence was. Like the archives of the Paris Review got like opened up like a decade or so ago.

And that's where a lot of like I started reading things. And the guy's first example is a letter one of the other founders wrote to george plimpton saying hey we both know the cia founded this we should be honest about this and george plimpton apparently did not reply to that letter he burned it on his hot plate oh then well we get screaming j hawkins like this is it's an algae music montage yeah using the most on the nose song for comedy value i would say like look into the catalog of this guy a friend of mine made me a mixed cd of screaming j hawkins in college i had no idea how cool this guy was he was one of the first jock rockers nice wow i only know this song that's cool i also like

march saying like it's like living in a dictionary. What a wonderful, nerdy, weird thing to say. Yeah, Marge secretly on fire here. It's Frank who redefines aceros, which does mean needle-like. And of course, I've only seen that word from this episode of television. And Bart admitting, I didn't bring a Game Boy. This is all I got. That's what kids had to look at before then.

I did bring my game boy to my brother's things then we get to see alex the cute boy that marge wants to tuck in at night which makes maggie very jealous that's also a gross joke i'd like to tuck that in at night also we're in early 2003 spelling anthrax everyone going oh yes yeah we're not too long for i mean 18 months or so from the anthrax letters or whatever yeah also it's funny to hear that like on the commentary that al jean admits that he changed a thing that would have been another movie reference as i was like but you love movie references that alex was supposed to be a russian boy named spellcheck and a rocky three dolph lundgren kind of character rocky four dolph lundgren kind of

character yeah i mean i like this episode how it is but that would be better my one qualm here is that alex is really a nobody yeah it has no point of view he's just like you know a cute figurehead for the competition that they need but having a character with a point of view could have made things more interesting sun moon also doesn't get much to do either other than just being like chinese i guess and then yes this is when we get to the final three which allows them to take a break and i'm surprised they didn't sell this episode as the simpsons go to calgary yes yeah why would they hold the national spelling rodeo in another country they're in alberta i think in canada that's a long way from san francisco too which is

where homer leaves lisa for and then comes back within a 24-hour period which i don't know how he figured that one out and even driving that car he gets later you know this is the other beat of the story i don't like where the emotionality of homer having to be there for lisa because it seems like lisa doesn't care and then they try to play that for emotion at the end I feel like really unearned and it would have been funny if Homer just wasn't there when he skips her for the movie one I think Yardley does play it very real like oh it's not going to be the same without you but at this point they're just kind of giving up on like yeah Homer's abandoning her like to see this thing and i mean having marge say you'll just

have to do it without him like that just feels too real of like the mother having to pick up the slack for the abusive father yeah it's the first time her feelings are her but this time she's like soon i'll be queen of the world of spelling it's a nice titanic reference though i do love the line i'm getting the shakes and the fries homer's being very cute here about his rib which withdrawal it's hard to say rib which yeah i can see why mcrib so much snappier so i also like that when plimpton calls her to a private meeting homer says that can only be good but i just love the vitriol all of these scripted tv writers have for reality tv which we didn't know at the time

would soon coexist alongside scripted TV in a very nice way, but still they're worried about all of their jobs going away for what people are really into in 2002. And I mean, television writers of 2023 do wish they had the deals Simpsons writers in 2003 had. Like they are quite envious of it. But it's like, it not ozzy osbourne

who ruined it it's the executives like david zazlov who became billionaires off of being reality show sellers yeah i guess there are still some threats when it comes to certain platforms where it clearly zazlov just wanted his prestige platform to be the reality trash platform i also by the way i this is another thing about a movie i just saw recently but godzilla minus one is a good movie do not talk about its budget at all in relation to any american production it is apples and oranges this is not the same and guess what guys japan especially its animation and visual effects industry, is not a good example of one that treats its employees well and not one we should try to copy. That's just a little aside I had about the discourse of budgets of things and what movies should or shouldn't cost. That one just drove me crazy. I was going to say, bringing it up again, I think the holdovers cost as much to make as Godzilla minus one. I think they're both $15 million movies.

Yes. Paul Giamatti is worth the same as Godzilla. You know, that movie, again, I love that movie. Godzilla doesn't fight another monster in it. That's one reason it's a lot cheaper. And also, if you're saying, how about you love Godzilla minus one and you haven't seen Shin Godzilla, I judge you. I judge you, the viewer. That's like the one Godzilla movie I't seen shin godzilla i judge you i judge you the viewer that's like the one godzilla movie i've seen that's not mystery science theater and i did love shin

godzilla the godzilla minus one great shin godzilla amazing and way better special effects and of course hideki ano famous for treating employees well and not underpaying them or working them to the bone on terrible deadlines. That's perfect. Okay. Anyway, Godzilla aside over, let's hear the terrible secret that George Plimpton has. Lisa, competitive spelling has fallen on hard times. Today's students would rather watch Ozzy Osbourne. Look at me.

I'm a drug addict. Ho, ho, ho. Some of us still enjoy scripted comedy, sir. That's a good girl. But if spelling is to compete, it needs a charismatic champion. Someone like me, back when I was a white-haired little boy. Well, I haven't won yet. Nor shall you.

What? The future of our very sport is at stake. And we want the gold medal to go to him. Who? Alex? The boy that everybody loves? Yes, he's crowd-pleasing, and he's cute. Women in the audience toss their thick glasses at him. I'm not throwing a spelling bee.

I'll die before I misspell. Be reasonable, Lisa. If you take a dive, we'll guarantee you a scholarship to the Seven Sisters College of your choice oh free college and a hot plate it's perfect for soup don't knock until you've tried it I was looking up the Osbournes and I guess you had to be there because it was a novel concept that spawned an entire type of reality show where it's like let's get somebody who is not getting work and has a troubled life and film them all the time like Anna Nicole Smith or Whitney Houston

there's like a billion of these where the people die immediately afterwards unfortunately some of them go on to live happy lives but like the surreal life was one of those where it's like let's get a bunch of washed up people in one house and see what happens there but this was novel at the time and i think to date it is still the highest rated thing on mtv ever and when it was airing it was the third highest rated cable show wow man i forgot it was that big that's wild man and i was also looking into i was hearing things about reboots in september 2000 and 2022 a reboot was announced but then the next September the most recent one in 2023 Ozzy was like it's never gonna happen I mean he's in very the only times I read about Ozzy Osbourne these days is just like

no he's in very poor health right now like he's not in reality show shape even well I remember selling many an Osbourne's bobblehead in my time working retail because the popularity of the osborns crossed over with the resurgence of bobbleheads right good that's what funko pops were i much prefer a bobblehead to a funko pop me too me too yeah no it's sad what was the last time i feel like i saw ozzy in some sort of video game commercial not too long ago just him sitting on a chair i feel like that was a decade ago okay and what sharon was like she got booted from tv for being racist or something recently i forget there's too many of these things to keep track of yeah i mean it was just like plimpton said ozzy is a character and then do you want to watch him be high in front of his family and we had not seen anything like that in our lives yes I also love how he says that's a good girl to Lisa and

then also like he says when I was a white-haired little boy so he's always had white hair apparently not really but also that Lisa Lisa thinks that he means her and he's like nor shall you like what a great fancy way of saying that oh hey I'm sorry henry this was a recent thing i must have been thinking something else but ozzy osbourne according to the website nme get ready for las vegas style action at bet mgm the king of online casinos enjoy casino games at your fingertips with the same vegas strip excitement mgm is famous for when you play classics like mgGM Grand Millions or popular games like Blackjack, Baccarat, and Roulette. With our ever-growing library of digital

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For the PSVR 2 game Horizon, Call of the Mountain. It's him being Ozzy Osbourne with a VR thing strapped to him. Oh, I see. That's the fun of him having the helmet on. It reminds me of the last year, I think it was, for God of War Ragnarok. They had what seemed like the most expensive ad of all time of far as celebs go because it's like Ben Stiller lebron and john travolta with their kids in the same ad together for god of war because it's a father and child video game

so it's them as dads with their kids but ben stiller dresses up as kratos in it showing he has the least self-respect of the three celebrities in it it is true you know all this seven sisters college shit man this is when i was like god college boys are writing this one hey when you're addicted to college it's hard to shake the habit some part of me likes that they're able to put these references into a late night rowdy cartoon show because lisa has this visually gorgeous dream where she goes to this mount olympus style place and that's where she meets the titular seven sisters the seven sisters are just a series of colleges in northeastern america that traditionally were women's colleges and according to matt selman there was a much meaner joke in here where one of the sisters had a bag over her head and they don't say this but i

assume the implication is like oh the women here are kind of ugly i mean they still have hairy underarm joke for the sportier which one was it vassar that's the one yeah it's barnard and i think aljean's current wife was a barnard girl yeah stephanie gillis who was a writer for the show as well yes i confirmed this via her wiki page yes she's from barnard and then wasn't it funny back then that like the joke was if your daughter goes to college she's gonna les out yeah there was a joke about that in something i just watched and i'm sorry it was from this era too it was the standard thing of like i think it had become more mainstream straight men joking about female bisexuality turning them on i suppose but the the seven sisters i like how they all have character designs that are unique seems like a about female bisexuality turning them on, I suppose. But the Seven Sisters,

I like how they all have character designs that are unique. Seems like a lot of work. In total, we have Barnard, Radcliffe, Wellesley, Mount Holyoke, I think that's how you say it, Vassar, I've had enough of your Vassar-bashing young lady, Smith and Bryn Mawr, and Radcliffe, he says, meet Harvard men. And I think that's because, according to my research it was absorbed by harvard in 1999 so

good place to meet harvard men yeah i did look that one up because i was like oh right radcliffe is like literally in cambridge so of course you're next to the harvard men though clearly at least the harvard man running this show is saying that well yeah if you go to harvard you date a girl from radcliffe but you marry a fancier girl from Wellesley. Hmm. Hmm. Well, I went to a state school. Jokes like this do make me miss the David Merkin era of having jokes about, like, you just graduated from the most expensive and thus best school there is.

Yes. I think they're reveling in how much they were part of this world at this point. You know, Bill and Josh, they were, well, Bill at this point you know bill and josh they were well bill went to harvard josh went to stanford which is like it's the ivy league of california but aside from making front of yale now and then they weren't so invested in this college talk though perhaps al jean was thinking about this seven sister stuff as well because his daughter would be applying to colleges i think when they wrote this or definitely thinking about it but the seven sisters i don't like that lisa is

grossed out by the underarm hair i feel like that's not very feminist of lisa but yeah come on lisa not open-minded i think the appearance of george plimpton in this dream was put in later according to the commentary and it's great i love his insistence on the hot plate and they just replay how he said and a hot plate just replay it over and over again i feel like jokes about lezzing out in college is not a thing and well i mean i feel like based on my only interaction with young people which is via social media i feel like every young person is queer anyway or at least is so open to it as they would make fun of like, oh, you're a lesbian only for college or whatever. The jokes that happen in my college age. Yeah, there's a lot.

We're talking about a lot more stuff now. And it's not like, oh, you're just experimenting in college or whatever. I had a friend who went to a historically female college in California, Mills College. And she told me they had a joke there called you're being a Millsbyan, which means you're gay until graduation, basically. Oh, nice. A new word. Yes. Yeah. She had funny stories about one roommate she knew or one person she knew was a Millsbyan. And then another was a very Christian girl who did not like being surrounded by queer girls all the time.

Oh, poor thing. Lisa's dream. It is funny. It can be a little mean, but it's funny at least. I'm glad the bag over the head was not there. It does connect with her Vassar bashing that it seems like Vassar is the one she likes the least. So then Lisa wakes up and she has just another awesome Marge line. Like this Marge joke.

Because Homer has abandoned her to go to San Francisco. So it's just Marge with Lisa. Yeah. Homer is not taking up space anymore. Marge has more time to shine. And it's just so great that he's like, well, I'll teach piano lessons. You don't know how to play piano. I just got to stay one lesson ahead of the kid.

I got such a great life she's thought about this scam it's like a marx brothers level great comedy of like hey i just gotta stay one lesson ahead of the kid then the scene ends though with something i do not like about the algin era and i feel like this is the start of it lisa shouldn't marry millhouse i don't know how many times i have to say this and how much i hate future visions where they're married yes as they said in lisa's wedding millhouse doesn't count exactly yes uh it's so lame like it's like fanfic of just like oh these characters that knew each other they got to get married to be fair they went with the funniest pairing but one that i find the most distasteful i do not like the idea that lisa when she turns like 30 settles for millhouse and is unhappy i do not

like that we cut to homer in san francisco for the summer of love of eating the rib witch with a bunch of other hippies i like that they take the drug culture and turn it into rib witch culture of like don't borg nine my sandwich which means take a bite of your sandwich instead of bogart and the guy asking him hey man, man, turn me on. And, of course, they're at the Krusty Burger at Golden Gate Park. Yes. It's not a bad-looking Golden Gate Park. I was just there.

One of my last things I did before moving to Seattle. But this is where Krusty's got some bad news. Hey, man, can you turn me on? Hey, don't Borg-9 my sandwich. Hey, don't Fortnite my sandwich. Hey, hey! Hey, it's the guy from the drive-thru. Yeah, I'd like three rib-wiches, a Diet Coke. Will you get out of my...

Look, uh, about the rib-wich. There aren't gonna be any more. The animal we made him from is now extinct. The pig? The cow? You're way off. Think smaller. Think more legs. People, we went through something magical together. And it's not important who got rich off of whom or who was exposed to tainted what.

And because you believed in my dream, I want you to fight over the last ribwidge ever made. Here. Welcome to the real world, hippies! Wow. I'm so glad you're here. in my dream i want you to fight over the last ribwidge ever made here welcome to the real world hippie wow what a long strange product rollout it's been goodbye homer immediately becomes conservative when there's scarcity i love that welcome to the real world hippies and he's just beating them up it's another of the times where homer turns into dana gould's conservative father that's yes i think it's where it comes from and the hatred of hippies also the drawing of auto talking into crusty's mouth is a very funny one too i like that yeah

calling out funny jokes in this we missed the one where auto asked lisa to spell acdc and he goes you forgot the lightning bolt it's another good one, yeah. That Homer just fully abandons Lisa isn't even thinking about her and it takes an Italian man for him to remember his daughter who he abandoned. Yeah, turning the word Lisa into Lisa. Also that they don't care, even though they are partially disgusted

by learning that it doesn't come from a pig or a cow, they still want to eat the last rib which i love the specificity of the bribe the one guy is giving he's like i'll give you three nights and four days in the comfort inn in the lower 48 states then he lists the blackout dates that homer can't use and i don't think i got the joke when i first saw it but now that i've had to schedule things and i understand what blackout dates are i was like that's very funny i love the gag and the blackout dates are realistic it's a christmas season it's like now i can't promise you it then speaking of references the crusty is what a long strange product rollout it's been

that's a reference to the what a long strange trip it's been from the classic grateful dead song truck in which is an all right song yeah yeah i yeah. I'm not anti them. I just, not my jam. Homer then trades it for a car that, I mean, I suppose it's a lease, so Homer can't keep the car, but Homer has a really nice car that he just abandons after, I suppose, driving it back to Calgary. Yeah, driving from San Francisco to Calgary, it would be a 22 hour and 36minute drive from Golden Gate Park to Calgary. Let's say Homer somehow had a supercar that could drive 200 miles an hour in the whole way. I'm realizing now I'm pretty close to Calgary. Maybe it's time for a visit. That's the cowboy country of Canada.

I think the city is more civilized. I need to visit all five Canadian cities now that I live here. I believe Edmonton is the home of the world's largest mall, the one that dwarfs the Mall of America. city is more civilized i need to visit all five canadian cities now that i live here i believe edmonton is the home of the world's largest mall the one that dwarfs the mall of america oh i'm there there better be at least one roller coaster inside that i can't promise but i do like the italian guy in his very crazy accents like i have a rabia's remorse yeah it's basically dan castellaneta doing luigi luigi the pizza man from the show but homer just like this is every episode so this is hardly a new complaint but like

homer does the bare minimum of showing back up at the last second after abandoning lisa to her face multiple times and it's like oh it's forgiven yeah it's similar to the do it for your old man boy when he shows up in Saturdays of Thunder. Actually, very similar. You're right. So Lisa has been told she's given this crisis. She doesn't know what to do. Will she take the sure thing of free college that her family can't afford or win the spelling bee, which comes with not anything really promised at all. We also see that, like, I don't think he needs Lisa to throw it because couldn't he have just given her a cheating thing just like he does to Sun Moon to screw her over?

Maybe that was his one trick he had. I mean, it's a funny bit of weather and weather. Those homophones. Lisa is given her moment and that also that Plimpton is just being very open about it. This thing is rigged and he's just like, and he says, bravo, my pet. And now Lisa shall lose if she knows what's good for her. Yeah, I think he's trying to tell on himself. There's some part of him that feels guilty.

Probably because of all that CIA money. They set him up to rig this. I do need Ian Maxton Graham if we ever get to interview him. question will be okay what are your ties to the cia be honest now i have a lot of questions about the maxton grahams this is when lisa decides to stand up for her beliefs which might involve me playing a sound effect after this a Alex, your word is rigged, as in this contest is rigged. R-I-G-G-E-D. Rigged. Bravo, my pet. You shall be champion. Assuming Lisa misspells this next word.

The word is intransigence. Could I please hear it in a sentence? Certainly The little girl's intransigence cost her the college of her choice Intransigence I Daddy made it for your dance recital, honey Dad, you do care

Damn right You're number one on my menu Now supersize it With you here, I can't fail. Attention, everyone! I was asked to take a dive, but I won't do it! I-N-T-R-A-N-S-I-G-A-N-C-E! You fool! It's E-N-C-E! Oh, my God! You're right! I spelled it wrong. I tried my best and I failed.

And now you lose everything. And I go back to whatever it is I do. Fantastic line. I'm not the Renaissance man George Plimpton was, but I have used that. And it's like, now it's time to go back to whatever it is I do. I think we've had that from old co-workers of ours. Like, well, whatever it is you guys are doing, you're doing it good. You didn't ask me for money. And yeah, this is before we were still supersizing things before the evil tyrant Morgan Spurlock shut that down. Man, that's another guy I'm glad we're done with as well. That's nice. But yeah, you're right.

Supersizing God. But I do consider this jingle worthy of a jingle I haven't played in a little bit here. Take that, Lisa's beliefs. Yeah, this episode's ending. I think it's all very funny, but I guess it's natural where Lisa's not being punished for being too confident. She just makes a mistake that anyone could make. But it is, you know, another Lisa gets second place episode. And we have on the commentary, Yardley Smith saying, why can she never win?

Yes. Yeah. I'm glad Yardley was there for this so she could say it again like why do i always lose why do i always have to lose like now this isn't as bad as when basically lisa whines and complains until bill clinton teaches her the wrong lesson of whining and complaining gets you your way this isn't like that hey i'm a pretty red president is that what he said in that yeah that's the final line of the episode when i watched that for the first time i disagree but now i'm on board yeah yeah this time like lisa it's the way what stings

the most is how she's like oh i tried my hardest and still lost like that so she's not even like screwed out of it or cheated it it really is just that she failed and she has to taste failure and the bad guys win after 14 years of tasting failure too but i guess they tried to make it a little more cheerful at the end with this coming home party where lisa is given all the applause she deserves and the ending is also very strange the last two minutes of this episode i don't like everything else before it is fine but what they end on i find just like a weird note it's very strange like so the drive home bit like the sad drive home they did that before for example when after he ruins herb powell's car business they drive home and bart says i liked your car dad so it's a similar

moment i got a good laugh at Homer saying, like that car, don't look at that one. Like that was a good joke. We see Alex with his giant trophy in the back. So here's my guess, my personal guess. And I wish that Yardley wasn't on the commentary because I bet they would have said if this was true or not.

We did hear Yardley say how much he doesn't like when Lisa loses. My guess might be that this overcompensation here could be that Yardley had complained enough of like, why do I always lose? Why does Lisa have to live in failure? And perhaps this is written to overcompensate that of like, okay, you know what? Everybody celebrates Lisa and Lisa gets the biggest award she could possibly get from the town celebrating her being second place. It seems a little sarcastic, actually, in that context, because we end with Quimby has that line about she's the biggest winner this town's ever seen.

Second only to the woman who dated Charles Grodin. And then we see that Lisa's face has been carved into Mount Springfield as a Mount Rushmore style thing. And we just pull out to see it and that's it there's no joke about it it's not like when lisa's face was carved on the giant log and it travels across the country yeah hurting people algin even admits like oh this is kind of flat so we added bart saying i carumba in post just kind of sweetened a little no after a very funny episode it just kind of falls down in these last like 90 seconds. I kept waiting for the monument to like crumble or something. It's just a long held shot on it.

Now, I do though chuckle, I have a little clip of it here. The way they celebrate second place instead of three cheers. Two cheers for Lisa. Hip hip. Hooray! Hip hip. Hooray! Now, deep breath and quiet. You mean you're all

still proud of me? Lisa, with second place, you're the biggest winner this town has ever had. Before you, it was the woman who dated Charles Groton. You have made me feel so wonderful. Thank you, Springfield. We've got another surprise for you.

My carumba! That's amazing! Thank you, Springfield. We've got another surprise for you. I carumba. Oh, that's amazing. Thank you. Yeah, I don't know. They could have just landed it in the car, I feel like. Yeah, yeah. That was clearly another episode's I carumba. Yes, yeah.

Though, I do love hearing Quimby say Charles Groudon. Something about that intonation, which... And then Al Jean says that's a Mike Reese reference, because Mike Reese is from Bristol, Connecticut, where the most famous person from there is Gary Berghoff. Though I looked at the Bristol, Connecticut notable people section on Wikipedia. It says that Bob Crane's from there who, I don't know, I guess Gary Berghoff's more famous than Bob Crane, I suppose. Bob Crane is, I would say, infamous. Sure.

Oh, but also a performer on RuPaul's Drag Race, Amethyst, is also from there. But I'd say Mike Reese is still below Gary Berghoff. But I'd say he's, the deceased crazy political guy and Ed O'Neill. And it was great seeing Ed O'Neill in the news recently because my alma mater, Youngstown State University, their board of trustees or whatever, elected some election denying guy as president of the university. And Al Bundy was the first man to speak out. Well, the most notable first man to speak out. And he returned his honorary doctorate. He was like, no, thanks. Oh, that's wonderful yes because he gave me pride for my hometown sorry go ahead no yeah he doesn't have to do any of that stuff either like he is crazy rich for an actor he can be a very comfortable man not have to do any of these things as opposed to well he's the other side of the coin from kelsey grammar in the news these days yes yes exactly and he actually he taught at the rival high school about 20 years before i was in

high school so uh he's a youngstown born youngstown brat which is why like me he flew far away and was very successful yes yeah you know retronauts and talking simpsons those are married with children in modern family yes yes exactly but they still continue to this very day what a weird ending for the last 30 seconds are odd but this was a really funny episode other than being able to complain that i feel like as usual homer gets no real comeuppance and the lesson he learns is to at least him saying i didn't miss your dance recital at least leans into like homer learned no lessons and still sucks but other than that this was a really funny episode yeah lots of

great jokes fantastic guest star it's been 20 years since this aired i really need to look out for more george plimpton stuff because he stopped producing material 20 years ago mysteriously so you know there's a bit to catch up on but it's not like he's producing more so i might go back and maybe read paper tigers or something just to see what he's all about and hey you know what it still published a lot of great writers the paris review maybe i should read a collection of paris review best articles or something like that just look out for the anti-communist ones yes don't read those maybe that's why he did those atari commercials because in the 80s as the cold war is winding down cia is like we're not investing in the paris review anymore we don't really mean we've got

other avenues and he's like well shit now shit, now I got to do ads. I guess I'll do toy commercials then. And he did. But thanks for listening, everybody. If you want to support the show and get over 150 bonus episodes that you haven't heard if you're not a patron, head on over to

patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. Sign up for five bucks a month to get all those bonus episodes and then access to everything one week at a time and ad free. On those bonus episodes, we have covered things like Futurama, King of the Hill, batman the animated series mission hill and the critic

and then for that five bucks a month you also get new monthly episodes of both talking futurama and talking in the hill and the second you sign up you get everything we've done for the past six and a half years at patreon.com slash talking simpsons and there is a ten dollar level as well and when you sign up for that you can access all the five dollar stuff naturally but then you can also access one mega long podcast once a month only for patrons of that level or higher and what is that henry bob's talking about the what a cartoon movie podcast our monthly discussion of an animated feature film super in-depth just like we do an episode of the simpsons which often means we're talking for

over four or five or even six hours about movies like for the holiday season in November we covered the Muppet Christmas Carol just last month we covered the Emperor's New Groove which has a very interesting history that led up to that underrated late Disney renaissance film and this month we've got another great one coming your way if you sign up you get over five years and over 60 What a Cartoon Movie podcasts and a new one each month and all the $5 things Bob just mentioned. Head on over to patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons to see how many we have done, including a whole bunch of Pixar movies, a ton of Disney movies, anime, even puppety stuff or stop motion,

and our longest podcast ever that we are very proud of six and a half hours about who framed roger rabbit not a second wasted in that one please one more time head to patreon.com slash talking simpson and i've been one of your hosts bob mackie you can find me on twitter as bob servo and my other podcast by the way is retronauts that's a classic gaming podcast all about old video games you can find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retronauts and sign up there for two full-length bonus episodes every month.

And Henry, what about you? You can follow me on Twitter at H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G. I'm always tweeting up a storm there. I'm also Talking Henry on Instagram. And if you're following me and Bob on the socials, please follow on pretty much every social media that matters. Talk Simpsons pod that's at Talk Simpsons pod. You will stay in the loop whenever we do new podcasts, whenever we have stuff on the Patreon, whenever we do live shows, you'll know all about it there. And if you would need an easy to explore

list of all of the free podcasts we've ever done head over to talking simpsons.com thanks so much for listening folks we'll see you again next time for season four's homers triple bypass and we will see you then No running around I can't stand Gold back in session Let's begin our lesson. This year, he gets it in the back. Willie, did you get the letter about your pay cut? Hey, there'll be many a cut this year.

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