Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - In Marge We Trust With Nina Matsumoto

Episode Date: December 19, 2018

This week we're banished to the land of wind and ghosts, and we're joined by talented artist/Simpsons expert Nina Matsumoto to explain it all! Yes, this week is the iconic Mr. Sparkle commercial, but also Marge starts being a professional Listen Lady, Timothy Lovejoy explains why he doesn't care, and Ned Flanders might have his skin eaten! Now, this is no place for loafers! Join us or die, can you do any less?!?!? Get your tickets for our January 16 LIVE podcast in San Francisco with guests Allie Goertz and Julia Prescott!! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! This podcast is brought to you by the streaming network VRV: home to cartoons, anime, and so much more! Visit VRV.co/WAC to sign up for your FREE 30-day trial and kick a little money back to your friends at the Talking Simpsons Network!

hey everybody right before the show wanted to let you know we have an update to our patreon a brand new monthly movie podcast is available now for ten dollar and up patrons at patreon.com slash talking simpsons you want to hear me and bob talk all about mask of the phantasm the best batman movie of all time you can hear all about that in our long almost three hours long podcast patreon.com slash talking simpsons, proudly sponsored by Donnie's Discount Gas. I'm your host, lead boy, Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who else is here with me today? Henry Gilbert, and I'm going to start slacking at any moment.

And who is our special guest? Nina Matsumoto. Join me or die. And today's episode is In Marge We Trust. Homer, the Lord only asks for an hour a week. In that case, you should have made a week an hour longer. Lousy God. Today's episode aired on April 27th, 1997. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my God! Oh boy, Bobby. X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter debuts on the PC. Romy and Michelle's high school reunion goes

underrated at the box office. And this week, Ellen officially came out of the closet in the classic puppy episode the second you mentioned that video game i expected cat bailey to just appear in the room through the wall someone say x-wing versus tie fighter i enjoyed that game quite a lot uh as well as when the first pc games i really played because we didn't have until 99 i think was when we first got a game playing pc so mine could barely handle it on the lowest settings but it was a lot of fun i loved putting the shields in the front

and then as i'm going back by like okay all power to shields in the back business up front party in the back it was good times yeah the one where you're in the cockpit and you're flying an x-wing do you get to pilot the tie fighters as well yeah this, in the first one that's just X-Wing, you only play on the Rebel side, but this allowed PvP in it. It added a technical element to Star Wars that George Lucas never planned, so the developers of the game just had to make it up.

They just were like, well, how does power work in this thing? It's funny that you bring that up, though, because I think there's an X-Wing in my Airbnb room. Oh, really? Yeah, like a giant X-Wing, and I couldn't figure out if it was... I keep forgetting what's an X-Wing in my Airbnb room. Oh really? Yeah, like a giant X-Wing and I couldn't figure out if it was... I keep forgetting what's an X-Wing and what's a TIE Fighter because I'm not that knowledgeable at Star Wars.

Oh come on, one's an X and one's not an X. But the wings are closed. Oh, I see. So I'm like, oh does this like fold out into an X-shape? So they're in S-foil position if I may be super nerdy. Oh, okay. I don't care for this. Okay. There's also a shuriken in my room what's going on with the interior

it's a very nerdy Airbnb but Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion is a really good movie I love that movie it's super funny directed by former Simpsons showrunner David Merkin he did a lot of direction before this mostly on shows like Get a Life

and probably The Edge too I'm guessing and this was like his first movie one that kind of he's he's still on and off of film director he actually just got hired for another film that's right uh but this is the kind of movie that lisa kudrow spent her friends power on you know she was a huge star she could make whatever movie she wanted after friends got big and she had this thing she did in improv of romeo and michelle these going to their high school reunion so she wanted to make it as a film though her co star from improv couldn't get cast in it so they instead i hate when that happens yeah i know so they had to go to the movie star in uh mere servino yeah oh i i've always wanted to see that

movie i heard it's really good and i heard this the is very Simpsony. Oh yeah, it's mean as hell. I like it. It is a dark movie. Alan Cummings is very funny in it as is Janine Garofalo. Yeah, I love Janine Garofalo so I wanted to see her in it but I still haven't. It's perfect Janine Garofalo of the 90s. It's what you expect

or want from a Janine Garofalo. And Lisa Kudrow is a really good comedic actress too. She's pretty underrated, I think. She hasn't done much lately. Was she a groundling? I believe so, yeah. She dated Conan O'Brien. Really?

Did the groundlings just disappear? Now everyone is from UCB, but you never hear like, oh, they were in the groundlings. That used to be where everyone came from. I think UCB became the cool new thing. Also, dropping some Frasier knowledge again. Go ahead

Get your impressions ready Lisa Kudrow was originally cast as Roz in Frasier And they in fact filmed a pilot episode with her But then things didn't work out and she was recasted Whoa And so that freed her up to be on Friends I guess then Maybe does that line up with the timeline? Yeah Frasier is 93 Friends is 94 Wow Imagine if she was Roz and she wasn't on Friends, I guess, then? Maybe. Does that line up with the timeline? Yeah, Frasier's 93, Friends is 94.

Wow. Imagine if she was Roz and she wasn't on Friends. Was she on Mad About You before that? As Ursula? Ursula, yeah. And they're actually, like, canonically twins who don't like each other. If you look back on those shows, then you'll see NBC knew who

they wanted to have cast and stuff, so they start doing guest appearances in other sitcoms before that. Like The Single Guy appeared as a walk-on role in an episode of Friends 2. Oh, The Single Guy. I actually liked that show. It was an all right show. I like Carolina and the City the most of all the Friends-like shows. I remember that, Matt, about you being part of the Seinfeld universe too, right? Is that correct?

And they got some weird Seinfeld favors, like Kramer appeared for three seconds to get his mail or something. Paul Reiser was old buddies with Seinfeld, so he could get Kramer. Seinfeld didn't play ball with friends. They wouldn't make friends appearances, but Paul Reiser was able to get the hook up with Seinfeld.

I enjoy this sitcom multiverse. We don't get those anymore. Oh, and you know, Ray Romano was almost cast. He was cast in the pilot of News Radio and got replaced by Joe Rogan. Oh, my God. I mean, Joe Rogan is so great on that show, but what he's become, I kind of wish the time machine existed where I could give Ray Romano that job again. There weren't some of the people on News Radio who were not great people.

Yeah, yeah. Dave Foley is an innocent, pure man. He's a national treasure. Yes. Well, not our nation. Yeah. Dave Foley is an innocent, pure man. He's a national treasure. Yes. Well, not our nation. Yeah. And in the Ellen episode when she came out of the closet,

a big, big deal. The first time a main character of any sitcom was gay. And she played around with it for such a long time. And you got to see all the celebrities

they got in that episode. They got Laura Dern. They got Billy Bob Thornton. Oprah. Did that not air in your town, Henry? Were you saying it didn't air? It did air in my town. It had a warning. There were some thoughts

it wouldn't because my ABC affiliate was one of the ones that didn't show NYPD Blue because they felt it was too dirty for us. But they did air Ellen. I think it had a warning. Warning, some women like women. Warning, no Lisa, boys kiss girls.

If your child were to watch this, they might realize they could be gay and it's all over. That's a really good episode, though. I watched it when it first aired because I was also into watching Ellen. And I wonder how it holds up now. I think it holds up pretty good. It's also interesting, though, that the show ended within a year after that. And I think it's because it was a huge ratings bonanza the first time. But then she just kept talking about being gay.

And that just turned everybody off. How dare she? There was a great Mr. Show parody of that in which I believe Bob, sorry, David came out as being bald. Yes. And the joke was like, we all knew Ellen was gay. I mean, everybody knew. Yeah. I remember at the time, Scott Thompson was one of many out gay actors who kind of wasn't as celebratory as possible because he's like, I've been out this whole time. Ellen got to get successful while being in the closet and now she wants to come out.

There was some backlash within the gay community to Ellen coming out, but mostly it was positive. I'm positive about it, too. I recently watched all of the Larry Sanders show for the first time, and there was an episode where Ellen comes on, and she has a one-night stand with him. Oh. That's really weird. Oh, that is so weird.

That was before she came out. Yeah, I was going to say, she also, not too long before that episode, she starred in that movie Mr. Wrong. With Bill Pullman? With Bill Pullman, yes. Yeah. Not Bill Paxton, as Homer would have corrected correct so our special guest yeah three pete guests nina matsumoto is here is this the first time we've had a three pete special guest on our show i think so

and she's here in person yes finally in berkeley well i shouldn't say finally i was here for the first time that's true but too uh but you, I called in last time because it was appropriate for that. Yeah, we needed a phraseologist. And in this case, we are asking you on this one partially because of your background as a Japanese person. Wait, she's Japanese? I thought I was called here because I used to give advice at the church. Yeah. I thought Matsumoto was a very Italian name. I get that a lot lot i do like pizza i've seen it i mean this is the mr sparkle episode even though this mr sparkle like takes over this episode from marge yeah i've got some issues with how marge is treated in this episode yeah but it's

it's just like the pretzel wagon one yeah orange gets their story taken over by homer and his more fun craziness marge fails something and it's not her fault yeszel wagon one. Marge gets her story taken over by Homer and his more fun craziness. Marge fails at something and it's not her fault. Yes. Yeah, ultimately. But we'll get into that more later. But yeah, Nina's here because she is a Japanese-Canadian. How do you say that again?

A Japanese-Canadian. I got it right. And technically Japanese is your first language, right? It is, yeah. I'm ESL forever. You were watching The Simpsons this episode when it was new. What was it like seeing this episode all about an interpretation of Japanese culture? I was delighted by it.

Actually, I think the very first time I left a comment on Talking Simpsons was for the Fugu episode. Oh. Because you guys were talking about, like, oh, I wonder how Japanese people felt watching this episode. And I commented saying, actually, like me and my family, we weren't offended by anything. We were just like glad to see some kind of representation on TV. Like back then, you take whatever you can get. Even if it might get things wrong, like it's going to happen.

It's hard to look things up back then. Like now if you get things wrong, then, you know, shame on you. There's the internet to get things accurate. But back then, I didn't mind if there were some weird inaccuracies and like i said like any representation is better than being treated like you don't exist at all right and that everybody's white yeah and the show usually did a good well i don't want to say usually but they this episode does a good job of hiring japanese-American actors to say the words. They're not native Japanese, I think, in either case.

I mean, the show's always been good about that. Every time they have Japanese characters on, they get Japanese actors. Sometimes. I think some showrunners are better than others. But I think Bill Oakley and Joshua Weinstein especially, they would be the ones who'd be like, if someone's going to speak this language, we want to find out the actual words and not make a gibberish. Algin and Mike Reese sometimes would not do that in certain scenes. Actually, I had done what Homer does of Akira in this episode.

I had asked Nina for help one time in the Critic Crossover episode. She was our expert. Is Bart speaking Japanese here about the maps? Yeah, every time they have Japanese on here, it is actual Japanese. And I really appreciate that because a lot of other shows would not do that. No, no. In the 90s, it was still, even by 97 when this aired, you could get some pretty broad caricatures in those shows.

I really want to know who their Japanese consultant was for stuff like this. Especially for this commercial. Well, you know, Richard Sakai is a producer on it, though. I don't know what exactly his background is. I do remember, Bob, in one of your most viral tweets was those notes on Black Widower where Matt Groening said that Richard Sakai felt some of the drawings of Japanese people

were insensitive the first time. So he helped some there. So I wonder if he's done that in the past too. Could be. Yeah, that weird woman in the kimono and the blue hair and the chopsticks in her hair. Yes, yeah. It was kind of odd, but still.

It's a weird design. I could tell they were trying at least a little bit because they got actual Japanese actors. I think my parents got a real kick out of hearing Japanese on The Simpsons. And meanwhile, for us just we were Bart going like raw fish. What?

What? I was just like Doug funny when he couldn't eat sushi. Was there an episode about that? I think so, yeah. Oh yeah, no his grandma wants him to try sushi

and he's afraid to do it. His cool hauling ass to Lollapalooza grandma showed up with her motorcycle. That's right. Was she a cool grandma? She was and she was like just think of the sushi

like little tires because they were little rolls. That's right. Talking Doug. It, just think of the sushi, like little tires. Because they were little rolls. That's right. Good talk. Talking Doug. It's turning into the Doug show now. Oh, no.

I'll see myself out. Goodbye. Before we start the episode that I want to talk about, we have a new writer on this episode. Donna Carey. So like a lot of Simpsons writers, he was a Letterman guy. And he wrote for Late Night with David Letterman from 92 to 97. So he followed Dave from NBC to CBS. And he was the head writer before he left. So that's a pretty esteemed position to be head writer with David Letterman from 92 to 97. So he followed Dave from NBC to CBS. And he was the head writer before he left.

So that's a pretty esteemed position to be head writer of David Letterman. It feels like almost a step down to be like staff writer on Simpsons from Letterman. I mean, not everybody's let in to be a staff writer on The Simpsons. So it's a big name role, but still. Yeah, but I mean, that is also like almost a daily, like four days a week writing, having to control new jokes being putting input on the air. So it could be just a ton of work that burns you out. This was a job that let him move to LA when he'd be working in New York City the whole

time. That is true. So he worked on the show up until the kind of the end of Mike Scully's run. He had maybe like four or five years, I'm guessing, on the show. And then he did some other cool stuff. I know people like the show. I have no opinion about it, but he was co-executive producer of Just Shoot Me. So that show's all right.

He helped run that show. And I think he helped start that show. And then he was executive producer. Sorry, he was co-executive producer on a lot of things that I have mostly not seen, but I know are good. Like Bored to Death. I heard that's very good. Yeah, that was a good show.

It's like a nice Ted dancer and revival before The Good Place. New Girl, which people said is a good traditional sitcom. And also one that I really like is Parks and Rec yeah he was a co-showrunner on parks and rec so all really good things it's also funny that that means he hired he hired mike scully after mike scully worked with him on simpsons the simpsons mafia and uh so now he's doing stuff like consulting gigs on things like silicon valley and what astounded me is that he's also a consulting producer on CBS's reboot of The Odd Couple, which I didn't know existed, and it's in its third season. Wait, what? I've never heard of that. I totally forgot. It's Tom Lennon and Matt Perry, Matthew Perry.

Oh, really? Yes. Oh my God, Tom Lennon is in, okay, wow. That's why Tom Lennon isn't on podcasts podcasts anymore because he has a regular high-paying sitcom job that never happened to me folks i've plateaued at this uh podcasting level and one other note uh uh the commentary for this episode is not like fantastic just because we don't get really enough like japanese information or where they got the japanese you know commercials from who was their consultant but i have to say now that he's dead uh it's great it's great to hear alex rocco on a commentary it's so weird why is he there so funny i love this they clearly recorded it right after they recorded the poochie commentary yeah it's everybody from the poochie commentary plus

donnick carey so they they just stuck around which is it's i kind of like those it's it's a fun feeling but yet also alex rocco kind of has like cute grandpa stories to add but not really too informative on it i like that alex rocco is just this old man enjoying the cartoon so good yeah yardley's really enjoying the cartoon too she's like this is so great who thinks of that that's it's it's nice when yardley says it though she doesn't add too much like insight but but she just sounds she just sounds like Lisa enjoying the show, and it's really cute to hear her. Oh, and Donna Carey also created Little Bush.

Oh, I left that off my list because I didn't want to give him that. Look, I mean, hey, it was the 2000s. That sounds really familiar. What was that again? It was like Little Archie's but starring the Bush cabinet. And there was no better year than the year before he left office. Yes, well, that's when it was safest yeah and it certainly uh holds up to test it no it doesn't look it's whatever it's gonna be one of our mini series but i just remember when when that show premiered it could

advertise itself as from a producer on the simpsons oh they did do that that's right he's also a nantucket native which he brings up multiple times on this. Really? I couldn't tell if he's, that puts him in the Harvard region, but no proof on if he's a Harvard guy or not. But he is a man from Nantucket. I didn't know that was a real place. I've heard stories about men from Nantucket, and frankly, they seem untrue to me. Wasn't that a setting of wings, too? The sitcom wings?

Was it? Who cares? Exactly. the uh wasn't that the setting of wings too the sitcom was it who cares exactly and this episode is also so you know it fits into the bill and josh style in that uh they do a lot in their seasons and one of the things that they do aside from destroying canon and doing major status quo changes is um sorry i meant reinforcing canon they're exploring a seemingly one note character who doesn't really have a backstory yet who doesn't really have a lot to him. He's just like, what's up with this bored reverend? What's his story? And this episode looks into that more, like how did he get this way? And in their first episode of their run, Oakley and Weinstein, we see the runner of Ned calling Lovejoy and Lovejoy being into his model trains as a way to relieve stress and to get away from people.

So they were building things about Lovejoy in their season from the very beginning, in their run from the very beginning. Well, Ned calling Lovejoy goes back as early as like the second season. That is true, yeah. So maybe they were just like, oh, that was a fun idea.

Let's do more of that and let's give Lovejoy a little something more to do. They were great at rediscovering runners that had kind of lost stuff in the later, in like season four and five and six. And then the calling stuff really worked well with then adding his HO model train. Yeah. Why do you hate my train? I should have looked this up, but has there been another Lovejoy-centric episode since this one?

Okay. Pulpit Friction. That would be the next time he had a major appearance in it where Reverend Lovejoy on Pulpit Friction from season 24 sees Ed Norton arrive as the cool new pastor who's preaching and taking over for Lovejoy. I remember that episode, actually.

That's one of the few, quote-unquote, new episodes I've seen. Wow, I have not seen this one. I don't know much about it. That's like Ed Norton's second guest role on the show. It is? Yeah, he played the... Yeah, wait, he was the con man.

The grifter, yeah. Oh, man. And that was the one that ends with the big surf contest of them just giving a middle finger to the audience, like, yeah, here's the end. Pulpit Friction, that's written by Bill Odenkirk, another of the Mr. Show guys. He's a Futurama, too.

Also a Harvard man. Yeah, I love Joy seeing him back in this, too. This is when it really hit me how oval his eyes are and how he really stands out from everybody else. Just the weird season one remnant that no character will ever be designed like him again. Yeah. That means his eyelids are really long, too.

Where do they go? Oh, yeah. Where do they go? They should make a lot of noise when they're rolling up into his head. When he's shocked, there's like a giant pile of flesh sticking out over it. It just, there's,

there's so many characters that I love how they look, but they would never be designed that way in like season three, like Barney and Lenny and Lovejoy. They just aren't following the same rules as a lot of the other characters. I think Lovejoy's design holds it pretty well though. Yeah. Yeah. He's not one of the weirder ones i bet they've made some subtle changes from like season one to season eight with him just to make him work same with like alex rocco's uh character

george myer jr is so extreme blue hair yeah blue hair big long nose huge eyes like yeah he's uh jay lauren prior too would also look really weird if you were to see him walking around in the show now i guess we'll see him in a few episodes and lisa sex won't we we'll test then how much he's changed i don't care for him but this episode's also really about wacky in japan too which i mean when was the first time you guys got to see crazy japanese commercials as a child i mean i i used to take vacations to Japan when I was little, so there. Well, I'm glad you guys talked about the lolowacky Japan stuff in the K-9 Mutiny. That's right, the pachinko machine stuff.

It was so nice to hear that because, yeah, I also do get sick of people saying, like, look how crazy Japan is and not realizing that it's crazy to them, too. It's supposed to be funny. Yeah, it's one of those crappy lost in translation things. And I don't mean the movie. I mean the subject. That's a great movie. How dare you?

I do love that movie. But yeah, I think that we, as jerk-ass Americans, we can sometimes make the assumption of like, there's no way that people in Japan know this is crazy. They think this is normal. This is why I'm laughing at it. You're not laughing at a comedy intended to be funny. That's the wacky Japan stuff that some people laugh at. It

feels like it comes from a negative place of feeling of superiority to another culture. Being very patronizing. Yeah, which I don't like. I think, I mean, I was into Japanese things when this episode aired. I was probably watching anime. I was definitely watching anime. Yeah, me too. But I didn't really see any Japanese commercials probably until the i had like cable internet could download them and i remember one of the earliest ones that everyone was into

as like you know ll wacky japanese commercial was the commercial for choo-choo rocket the uh the dreamcast one just a fun song about uh you know the mice go on the rocket and the cat chases them and stuff like that video game commercials were some of the first i saw two that were wacky japan another was um like 98 99 an ad for a white sega saturn which was just had this uh your typical anime buddy girl singing a song about how all these things are white including the new sega saturn was like shiro shiro shiro it's But it also, I was watching it a little bit like, this is so wacky in Japan. Look at this. Yeah, I mean, I'm guilty of falling into that trap and being patronizing.

I don't do that anymore. But I mean, I wrote video game articles for a long time and I was writing for the internet for a long time. So I'm sure if you go back and be like, wow, what will Japan think of next? It's crazy. I mean, I've had to deal with a lot of preconceived notions of Japan a lot growing up, obviously,

because I am Japanese. My parents are from Japan, but I was born and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia. I will say I'm very lucky to have grown up there because we have such a huge Asian population in Vancouver. Like as of 2017, 43% of Vancouver has an Asian heritage. Wow. And that makes Vancouver the most Asian city outside of Asia. Second place is San Francisco at 33%. Wow. And that makes Vancouver the most Asian city outside of Asia. Second place is San Francisco at 33%. Wow.

So, yeah, I never got, like, bullied for being Asian or whatever because everyone was Asian. I did not meet anyone who was Asian until, like, my second year of college. Oh, wow. That's crazy. That's how white my area was. Sometimes when I travel to the States, I play a little game to myself. I'm like, okay, let's see if I can find one Asian person around here. It usually takes a while.

Yeah, no, in Jacksonville, Florida. Well, actually, I mostly didn't see Asian people growing up in Arkansas or Georgia. When I moved to Jacksonville, Florida, there's a bigger Asian population. They're mainly Filipino, like in other island folks. But yeah, I didn't really got super into Japanese culture with anime and video games, but I couldn't even, like this feels very dated now, but at the local colleges, which were not high name ones that they were like.

Gudger. Yes, the Gudger colleges in my area, they didn't have Japanese language classes, which I totally would have taken there. Oh, me too, me too. And they just didn't have access to it. My freaking college had Russian. Go to hell.

So like, when I say I was not offended by the depictions of Japanese people on The Simpsons growing up, I just want to say I don't speak for all Japanese people, obviously. Like I said, I was fortunate to live, grow up in a place with lots of Asian people. So it's not like, oh, I have to endure bullying at school.

And now they're making fun of Japanese people on the show I love. It's like, no, it was nice to see. And I was never bullied for my heritage, but there were still people who were ignorant about Asian cultures and Japanese cultures. And I didn't want to be like a Japanese stereotype. So for the longest time, I actually did not watch anime because i didn't want to be like oh the japanese girl who watches anime and people will always be like oh you're japanese oh do you like draw like sailor moon dragon ball all the time like i don't i don't even know what those shows are and oh my favorite is like oh what you're japanese but your voice is so low oh god people think all japanese people have like high-pitched voices you have not seen evangelion or cowboy bebop yeah i haven't. Or One Piece. What's going on? I'm a terrible Japanese

person. I'm sorry. Well, I've gotten better since. Yeah, but for a long time, I'm like, I don't want to be a stereotype. But now, you know, I draw manga and I watch anime and I do martial arts. That's cool. But in my junior high, I would have been an insufferable kid to

a Japanese student of saying like, well, hey, have you heard of Rodma? I think Rodma's really cool. Like, that would have been. I would get some people whining to be my friend just because I'm Japanese. I would have been that well-meaning idiot. Yeah. And I apologize. I apologize to all the Japanese people in my youth.

I'm sorry. I did see some of those commercials once YouTube opened up more. Those got shared. Yeah. There is something what I do love about the Japanese commercials that they're funny. And there's been some really funny ones even recently I watched. Like there was one for this like it seemed like basically a taffy like grape rope commercial that was basically like a 10 episode installment of this love story over grape rope. It was really cool.

But in other ones, Nissan Cup Noodles has some very funny, expensive, high-budget commercials. Like they did one of Final Fantasy XV, except it replaced everything with forks and cup noodles. And Attack on Titan, right? Oh, yeah. They did one of those too.

Where the mystery meat was human. Oh, wow. Yeah. I'm glad you brought up the Nissin Cup Noodle commercials because one of my favorites is for milk and seafood. Have you seen that one? No, I haven't seen that one. I'm not going to tell you what it is.

Well, we both watch the same YouTube channel that just puts out a compilation of Japanese commercials every week. I forget the name of that channel. Yeah, I do. The best YouTube channel for Japanese commercials is 2, as in the Japanese character 2. I don't think you have to put that in there. J-P-C-M-H-D.

Or just search Japanese commercial raw batch number 063 or whatever. You'll find it. Every week they do a compilation. I don't do the weekly ones. Whenever they put out the yearly one for the last few years, I've been watching those and just like, wow, these are so good. They had one of, Nissan had one of Yoda boiling with like he was force holding up a giant boiling tea kettle that poured into a giant bowl of a cup of noodles but unlike the mr sparkle commercial i i feel like japanese commercials

are even quicker than american commercials they just have a very simple idea and often a very absurdist humor you know idea that's communicated very fast. They're almost like Vine videos. Yeah, yeah. Well, the celebrity aspect of them, too, always did interest me because you have these stars who, for American products, they'd be like, this is too low for me. I can't do a commercial for batteries or whatever in America. But in Japan, for the big price tag, they'll do it there. And there's something magical about watching these commercials like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Leonardo DiCaprio or Hulk Hogan.

Tommy Lee Jones. Tommy Lee Jones, that they never expected anyone outside of Japan to see. And now we're seeing them. So there's a really interesting angle to it of that, of just like the secret commercials that movie stars didn't want you to see yeah actually that was one of my wow i really in japan moments was when i saw a commercial at a softbank place that was like softbank meets tommy lee jones coffee boss coffee yeah it is boss the guy on the on the can just looks like him tommy lee jones was advertising it too so it was him with the soft bank family for this like kind of cross promotion the soft bank family the father is a white dog too but not a shiba right yeah it's uh something else an

akita it's not an akita either i can't remember it's like shikoku can or something uh yeah tommy lee jones being in the boss uh coffee ads i think they mostly did that because famous japanese comedian uh tamori would do ads for boss coffee. So they got Tommy Lee and Tamori. Oh, that's clever. And you've probably seen Tamori. He always wears sunglasses. Yeah. Actually, I just heard of him because I watched Conan O'Brien's

Go Into Japan thing he did. And somebody on the street compared him to Tamori. Really? Because he wears sunglasses? I guess. I don't know they just one of the people on the street

compared him to that if Tamori wants to be not recognized on the streets does he take off his sunglasses? he's like Cyclops he'll just fire lasers everywhere

actually one of my all time favorite series of Japanese commercials stars Jean Reno and it's the live action Doraemon ones oh wow

and French actor Jean Reno plays Doraemon it's delightful. I haven't seen that. Oh, you've got to look that up. You've got to look that up. It's so good. We have to watch these.

I know he's huge in Japan. They love him there. He was in Onimusha 3, I think. Yes. Oh, yeah. And he did a movie called Wasabi, I remember, that was like a Japanese-French production where he eats a, in one of the scenes,

he eats a giant glob of wasabi and just doesn't react to it. That's an action scene. Show how tough he is. The Simpsons will be right back. We hope you're enjoying this episode 100% because we 100% loved having on Nina Matsumoto for this week's episode. She is the amazing artist behind so many of the Talking Simpsons images, including the brand new poster we have for our January 16th live show. Go on Patreon or check my Twitter right now

and you'll see the awesome art she did for it but it is an amazing show we have planned for you guys on january 16th 8 p.m in san francisco at the gateway theater who do we have it's a live crossover podcast with our buddies at everything's coming up simpsons ali gertz and julia Prescott will be there live to talk with us about Principal and the Puppet, one of the most controversial episodes in Simpsons history. We'll have cool surprises and tons of fun live for you Wednesday, January 16th at the Gateway Theater. If you head to Patreon, you'll find a post that'll show you how to get to your tickets or you can go to sfsketchfest.com and check out the schedule and you'll see us on there January 16th. So we'll be sure to see you January 16th, 8 p.m. at the Gateway Theater in San Francisco. some people have a dream about falling we have a dream about doing the best simpsons podcast in

the world and me and bob are doing it thanks to the support at patreon.com slash talking simpsons if you join the talking simpsons network there you can listen to next week's episode right now you could be hearing it ad free as well just for five dollars a month and you'll get the same ad free and week early episodes of our sister podcast what a cartoon where we go through a different cartoon each week not to mention you'll get to hear our many simpsons expert interviews where we chat with folks who have worked on the show almost from the beginning, including Mike Reese, Bill Oakley, David Silverman, Mark Kirkland,

Josh Weinstein, and so many more. You should check that out. All for signing up at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. And at the $10 level, we have a brand new monthly movie podcast just for the premium folks, where me and Bob will go through a different

animated film each month we did batman mask of the phantasm last month this month we're doing kiki's delivery service you can hear all of that if you just sign up at the talking simpsons network at patreon.com slash talking simpsons. This episode is, again, another Marge one. That's why Donnick Carey was given it for his first one. Punishment. New guy, you get the Marge story. And yeah, I do feel bad for Marge that two times in a row,

Homer takes over her episode. Though Marge gets some fun, but by the end of the episode, just like in the pretzel wagon one, she's just a bystander to the conclusion of her story. That's true. But in this one, Mr. Sparkle's B plot doesn't meet with the A plot at all. It's conclusion of her story that's true in this one like this mr sparkle b plot doesn't like meet with the the a plot at all it's kind of weird the closest it does is the japanese tourist at the zoo like that's as close as it gets i feel like they would be better about having more connective tissue or having the stories meet in some way uh earlier but i think this is

the end of their season and they're very tired maybe they try to think of some kind of connecting point then they're like, ah, screw it. I associate isolated B stories more with like season four where it's just like, where was the swear jar? Where was the Bart getting mauled by the wolf? It has nothing to do with anything around it. B plots are pretty rare in Bill and Josh episodes. So I wonder if they put that in there

because they didn't have enough material for the A plot. I think there's several times, especially in the Homer B plot, where it's just padding, like the long phone number gag, which is great. That also fills a whole minute. Then the commercial, it feels like they jammed together like four different commercials just to, again, fill another minute of the episode. Which was all great, but it also does take away from listen lady yeah yeah i think a lot of people forget that this is the mr sparkle episode because of that yeah i i kind of forgot until because you just see when i was planning it out on our schedule i just see the title in march we trust i don't think it's mr sparkle at all

i mean we'll get into it but i feel like Marge's story doesn't even really have an arc. There's nothing for her to learn. She doesn't really make any mistakes. It could have been handled better, even though I love Mr. Sparkle. But I mean, this is still a really funny episode, some really classic stuff in here. But you're right, it is like the twisted world of Marge Simpson, where it's just like, what's Homer doing? Let's check in on him. Well, and also, speaking to Filler, this begins with about a a minute long Itchy and Scratchy cartoon That's true Which they also

Bill and Josh didn't really do all that much Itchy and Scratchy They appear a lot in their episodes But this feels like a kind of season four Well what if we put an Itchy and Scratchy At the start of this Yeah usually Bill and Josh's episodes Were so long that there was never enough time

For an Itchy and Scratchy to begin with I do find it somewhat odd That in this episode that's about japanese culture it starts with a nuclear bomb exploding i do find that kind of strange in france well it is yes it's it is a it's really about france's continued nuclear bomb testings that was happening in french polynesian colonies up to january 1996 it was very controversial that they were still doing it. Like they did them in 95 and 96 right up until an international ban on nuclear weapons testing was codified. It felt like France was just like, no, we still can't, we'll blow up all the bombs we

want. Fuck you. It does start with a Venda couch gag though, which is very fitting for a Japan centric episode. Oh, that is true. Lots is very fitting for a Japan-centric episode. Oh, that is true. Lots of vending machines in Japan. Oh, man. I miss vending machines every time I leave.

They suck here. If you even find a vending machine, they're not good. And by the way, I always get people going, oh, don't they sell used panties and vending machines there? It's like, no, that's just a gag. Only new panties. I know. That's right.

No, I had to explain that to folks my first trip there where i was like no they really don't i said if you want to if you want to walk around san chome in the red light district and try to find one good good luck i'm not that's up to you guys you like your vacation on pervo island henry i know this is a cute opening of hiding the uh of the kids trying to not wake up their parents watching cartoons too early in the morning. I do like that. I think, though, all of us are non-churchgoers as kids, though, right? Yes. But I will say that a lot of this really resonated with me as a kid. So, I went to Catholic school. My parents believe in God. They don't really want to spend time in church or praying

or anything like that. It's sort of a Pascal's wager sort of faith where it's just like, I'll believe in God just in case he's real. So, yeah, why not? But I was talking to Nina about this, and I think I talked to you about this, Henry. When I would go to friends' houses on Saturday nights to sleep over, often I would be taken to church in the morning. That's so wrong. It's super wrong.

It feels pretty wrong. But they're like, yeah, you worship this God. Let's go. But I identify with this so much just also we went to mass during school, but it was also, you know, we would get out of class for that. So it was better than this. But I really identified with the idea of how boring church is, how you'd rather be doing anything else, and the relief you feel when it's all over. Just all of those emotions, I knew I could never be religious just because it's like, why do I feel so good walking out of church? It's like, yes,

I can finally move and talk again. We can go to Shoney's. The longest amount of time I ever spent in a church was two hours for a rock concert. Wow. I probably spent a few hours in it once for like a band recital when I was in middle school band. That was probably the most I ever spent in one. Oh, actually, yeah. I think I did like piano recitals at churches when I was in middle school band. That was probably the most I ever spent in one. Oh, actually, yeah. I think I did piano recitals at churches when I was younger. Okay. Yeah, that's probably the most I ever did. My family... I mean, my dad came from a Southern Baptist upbringing. And if you were to ask him, are you religious? He would say, he believes in God. My mom, not so much. But my dad really hates charity, and that is what church

would have made him do so and also we were all lazy none of us wanted to get up on a sunday morning i i never woke up early to watch stuff i stayed up late and tried to watch it watch stuff with the volume way down i think the only times i woke up early to watch stuff was when for a brief period gargoyles was on at like 6 a.m. in the morning. Why so early in the morning? I don't know. It was my local syndication place didn't value Gargoyles, I guess. They stuck it early in the morning.

It was on so early, the Gargoyles could have watched it. Or drank some. School was way too early, too. Like high school for me, I had to wake up at like 6.30 to get there by 7.30, which is just like, that's too cruel to kids.

It doesn't teach them anything. So yeah, sometimes I'd wake up at 6.30, but when it was gargoyles time, I actually told my mom, like, wake me up at 6. I got to see gargoyles. I want to talk a bit about this itchy and scratchy cartoon, actually. It was maybe kind of uncomfortable watching this one because one of my my good

friends suffered from hyper acoustic shock oh no yeah um like a few years ago uh she was working in a butcher shop and one of the workers slammed something metallic down right next to her and it like blew out her ear and she's had terrible like tinnitus ever since and yeah so watching this i'm like this would probably make her uncomfortable watching it you know like it's like stuff like that is not I don't want to be a bummer or anything but I'm just like this is not not that funny to me anymore and like especially since it's a it's a very invisible disease people don't realize when you know you have tinnitus and she also has to try to explain to doctors just how much how much it hurts it's hard to explain that when it's all in your head yeah when you can't see it

and people make the assumption of like, well, yeah, I know what ringing in my ear sounds like. It goes away, right? No, it's like really painful. She's had to deal with it for years. Ear stuff really gets me. It does make me cringe just seeing all the ear pain in this.

Have you seen the inside of an ear? It's crazy. There's spirals in there. I was watching Kaiji. you seen the inside of an ear? It's crazy. There's spirals in there. I was watching Kaiji. You see the inside of an ear a lot in the anime. That's why I can't watch that. Oh, I love Kaiji. He's so good. I saw that scene.

I saw that there was the ear scene in Kaiji. It's like, I can't watch this. And that's not even the worst part of the show either. I love it so much. Me too. Because it makes me squirm. To human misery. It's a lot of the work to make a big sound.

He goes all the way to Polynesia to get a neutron bomb explosion. And a specifically French one as well. And yeah, then Marge jumps up. I think it's kind of a cute joke, the Marge's clothes reveal. I wonder if they counted on people to think like, Marge sleeps in the nude sometimes. Is that why she's holding up her blanket like that? I forgot what the gag was going to be, but I assume she was nude before the gag happened.

That was really like the first four seasons kind of thing. I don't think Dave Merkitt was into Marge sleeping in the nude as much. They stamped that out. I actually know someone who goes to sleep wearing what they're going to wear the next day. Yeah, I find it really odd. Well, your clothes will be all like crumpled and sweaty. It is very

efficient though, I will say. I've hated it on like sleepovers as a kid when I had to just put back on the clothes I wore the night before. Yeah, it feels gross. Yuck. And yeah, Homer's laziness in church, he learned nothing from Homer the Heretic. He's just back to where he was before. That was at least like, what, three years ago, four years ago?

I don't know, maybe him and God had an understanding. That's true, he has, yeah. He was asleep in church at the end of that episode. That's true. To talk to God. Well, that's when God told him he was gonna die in six months, hasn't happened yet. But I hope any of our listeners that are religious aren't offended by me, but I just, I mean, The Simpsons has said it, it's like, it's as boring as church,

there's nothing more boring than church. Church is excruciating for me, I'm glad I've never had to go back. It is just, I have never learned to fold paper in so many different ways while sitting through church, like making my own arts and crafts projects out of like the little pamphlets they give you. Just like, I can't stand it. You're doing like the Citizen Kane thing. Yes, exactly. You know, the church jokes, some of my favorites I liked in Simpsons history were by Mike Scully, who I think is, I wouldn't say a devout Catholic, but a man of Catholic upbringing who wrote Catholic jokes with Mel Gibson,

which like how much more Catholic can you get? So it always felt, I liked when they came from him that it felt like he was having fun at the expense of something he believed in. That's what I like about the Scully years, church jokes. But this is classic Bill and Josh, just the humor in boringness. And the very same goes for Ezekiel, But this is classic Bill and Josh, just the humor in boringness.

And the very same goes for Ezekiel, which brings us back to our starting point, the nine tenets of constancy. Dammit! I seem to have lost my place. So I'll start over. Oh, for the love of crumb cake. Our sermon today is on constancy.

And as much as the rover by dint of our application of these principles, we can learn the auspices of constancy. Sweet constancy. We constantly... Start clapping. That is a great animation.

Just a great headbang from Homer and a great yelp from Dan too. I just love that. And just realizing you swore in church. It's just like, oh God, no. I never thought about it before, but I guess he says for the love of crumb cakes, because he doesn't want to say for the love of God. Oh yeah. Or Christ. He's censoring himself. It's cute. I should start using crumb cakes more often. Though Nine Tenets of Constancy, to my surprise, is not in the Bible, I don't think. Yeah, I looked it up too. It's like made up. It's not even religious, I don't think.

Yeah, when I searched constancy, it was like a developer's term or something. Yeah, same thing happened to me. Yeah. So I don't know. Hey, any Charlie churches out there, correct us on this. But you're right, Henry. I think Oakley and Weinstein are more into the humor of the boring than making fun of religion. Because, I mean, I don't think either one of them are religious in any real way or come from a religious background i think matt graining too like always

felt that lovejoy shouldn't be just an easy pot shot for a guy of like oh he's the religious guy but he actually doesn't believe in anything or we'll have him say profane things like yeah merkin would do a lot of that stuff with lovejoy for sure yes yeah he would just make up passages in the bible yeah in murky years but this this guy is just one who he does believe but he also doesn't care yeah at all i wonder what that disco whistle sounds like i want to hear it and uh so yes the kids get home and i do love this post-church excitement josh weinstein talks about it on the commentary yeah this is how I feel too a lot of times when I get home from work. I'm just like, pants off, time to just

laze out and eat garbage. Now that I work from home and have for a long time, my pants are always on. There's no relief. I wear pajama pants. That's my comfort. I have to put on real pants when I go outside to take my dog for a walk, and then I come back in and switch to sweatpants.

Yeah, exactly. That's, we're all, again, we're all work from homers here, too. But here's... Don't you hate pants? Here's the... But here's the excitement we can only dream of now. Oh, man! I'm glad you got out of there.

Hey, calm down. You're wrinkling your church clothes. Who cares? This is the best part of the week. It's the longest possible time before more church. Church shouldn't be a chore. It should help you in your daily life. It should, but it doesn't. Now, who's going with Daddy to the dump?

Me! The dump? Yeah, we're going to get rid of the Christmas tree. It's starting to turn brown. Want to come with? No, no. I don't feel like going to a trash pile today. You're alive.

We'll bring you back something nice. There's a present for Grandpa underneath the tree. It's very hard to read that tag. It's a cute little joke, real fast. That's why my family didn't have live trees. We would never get rid of them. We always had a plastic tree. Much easier.

Yeah, same. I have Christmas tree opinions opinions and i think live trees are wasteful and i'm i don't like the way they smell i know that's like a plus for most people but i don't like the ways they stink up the house with its awful pine smell and uh yeah i also grew up with an artificial tree i don't have one right now because i live in an apartment with not much room but if i ever move out and move to a bigger place, then I would definitely get an artificial tree. And I want to make it artificial

as hell. I want it black or hot pink. That's fun to me. I like it. Yeah. I've known people that have had real trees, and most people growing up didn't, just because I guess they were kind of pricey. And so if you didn't have to buy one, it would be better. But they just would just get shit everywhere, just needles everywhere.

And you'd be finding them in the carpet and in your socks and stuff months later. Yeah. Actually, now my stepdad, he is a real tree believer. And so it's been weird to go home for Christmas now. He's been converted. I know. Trees up. After a tree baptism. My's been converted. I know. Trees up. Like my mom. Tree baptism.

My mom was a fake tree person, but now they have. Your mom is a fake tree person? Wow. What was that like? Is that like from Lord of the Rings? No, it's the Radiohead song. Oh, fake glass of trees. Yeah.

It's a good song. I can see the appeal on a small level, but to live with it. Also, the trees are about the lights and ornaments to me. And I feel like a fake tree, it holds them up better. You can count on them being better at holding up ornaments and lights, which is what it's really about. I've never decorated a real tree before, but it seems hard. Right? Yeah.

Stuff would fall off. And then on top of that, if you have pets, your pets are going to tear it apart way more than a fake tree. And what are you supposed to do with it afterwards? I don't know how you were supposed to dispose of a tree oh actually my brother for the him and his friends for about five years straight starting from like age 18 to 23 my brother and his friends would just go around jacksonville florida collecting as many trees as they could and take them all to this friend of theirs rich friend had a beach house and they just put them all on the beach and they would have a giant new year's day tree bonfire of all the thrown out trees that sounds like a lot of fun it was a good time it was otherwise you just

leave it by the dump or you just leave it by the curb and the nature takes its course people take it for yeah exactly i've never even had to go to the dump. The closest I did was when I moved out of my old place, which was a hoarder trap. I just paid the, I had these people who might have been meth heads, but they were very nice movers. They were industrious meth heads. Well, so the professional movers I hired, the junior guy there was like, hey, you know, me and my girlfriend can just clean out the rest of this stuff

and take it to the dump for you. And I thought, well, this feels somewhat sketchy, but... Hey, Crystal, get in here. She basically was a Crystal type. It did feel somewhat sketchy, but they did clean out my entire apartment for $400, which, hey. Nice. And they got to just steal my things that I was like, these are garbage anyway.

So, hey, take this stuff. If you can sell it for more money than I was going to throw it away, go right ahead. They were swimming in Heroclix. They were. And my old PlayStation 2, I'm like, I'm never going to play this PS2 again. Just take it. The memories are gone.

Well, good on Homer for actually taking the tree to the dump then. Instead of just dumping it in Flanders Yard or something. Yeah, this is not- Well, the initiative was him getting treasure from the dump too. Oh, that's true, yeah. Homer would have dealt with that pig crap silo better if he'd been told to go to the

dump and find uh garbage treasure but then there wouldn't be a great movie it's okay it's okay have you ever gone dumpster diving no no i have not me neither i have not i've not gotten that desperate yet uh when i worked at a video store i had a co-worker who did they were you know kind of uh slumming it cheaply though they came from like they were like college kids who were living cheap though had kind of a they had uh they had parents they could fall back on but they were enjoying being poor and so they found out that like a friend of theirs worked at a panera bread and that they would just throw out dough. And so the garbage can would have dough that would basically expand out of the garbage can.

And they're like, if we just take the dough from the center, that's not dirty. That's still good dough. And then we could just bake our own bread with it. And that's what they did. Flour is so expensive. And water. Don't get me started. The only dumpster diving I do is in Stardew Valley.

Oh, really? Yeah, you go through trash bins and find some amazing things like cookies. I still haven't played that game. I know I'll play it for 800 hours. That's why I haven't touched it. It's on mobile now. On mobile? Yeah.

Apparently it's a good version. I mean, they got the Switch version out. That's all that matters to me now. That's the way to play it. Unless your Switch gets stolen. Is yours new on the way one yet? I haven't ordered one yet. Oh, you missed out on Cyber Monday deals for it. It's fine. to play it. Unless your Switch gets stolen. Is yours new on the way one yet? I haven't ordered one yet. Oh, you missed out on Cyber Monday deals for it.

It's fine. It's fine. The wounds are still fresh. But so, anyways, they go off to the dump. Marge volunteers. Can you believe it? They give you five Qs and only two U's. What a world.

It's crazy. So, what's on your mind, Marge? Sermons about constancy and prodissitude are all very well and good, but the church could be doing so much more to reach out to people. Oh, I don't see you volunteering to make things better. Huh? Okay. I will volunteer. I wasn't prepared for that. The cues and use thing, I have felt that pain of,

actually that just kind of happened with, at our wedding reception, Darren got a wedding gift of like, make your own sign thing. There's no six in Gilbert. Exactly. It did run out of letters. Like we, not cues and use, but the same thing where you're just like, how could you go so

short? That's one thing. Just give us five more letters. Would it kill you? One thing I realized upon this viewing is that prudissitude is not a real word. Yeah. I had to look that up too. I was like, wait, this isn't a thing.

It's a nice- It's also real. I think it sounds too real that it didn't become like promulant. And it also sounds too close to something like prudishness. I had assumed that's what it's referring to, the quality of being prudish. Like that's what I figure prudishitude means. So I guess most people haven't realized that it is a fake word thing because it sounds too real. Yeah.

I've never heard anyone pull it out. I was like, here are all the words The Simpsons made up. That's never really appeared to my knowledge. And I do, I love a good Marge small talk, the way she was like, it's crazy. It's so cute. Like just Marge awkwardness is some of her best comedy. And I think they take that for granted too much.

They need to do more of that with Marge, I think. And her also meeting Lovejoy's challenge, like he, apparently no one has ever helped him ever with volunteering before. You would never think of Marge and Lovejoy making a good team, but I like all the scenes with them. You would think that Ned would have offered,

maybe he's told Ned many times, like, I don't want your help or we don't take volunteers. I don't think he wants to be around Ned. Absolutely not. No, that's true. Though Ned was, he was staying in the church basement after the hurricane. That's when he was hanging out there. Oh, is it the same set? Oh, yeah. That's right. I wonder. It is the same

church basement. I bet it is. Yeah. I totally forgot about that. Yeah, Hurricane Neddy. I love that he answers the phone with church basement. But so the kids go to the dump. There's a cute no littering sign in front of the dump I like that joke There's a couple sign jokes in here I didn't really catch Until this viewing I just feel itchy seeing Bart buried in all those brown pine needles That's just disgusting I love how Homer is trying to get the tree out

The least efficient way possible He doesn't even open the door And how did he get it in there in the first place too? There's also lots of very good foley and all the walking on the garbage, lots of squishy foley. They're all filthy. They're all just covered in filth.

If I were to think of what it sounds like for a raccoon to come out of half of an old basketball, this would be it. That would be the sound. When Homer falls in the dump when that raccoon attacks him, I'm like, he just needs to shower

for days now. When they put their hands just in the goop, I'm like, what are you doing? I will say, whenever I have to draw a giant pile of trash, it's fun, but it's also hard. It's fun because I get to draw anything I want, but the hard part is thinking of what goes into a trash pile. What kind of things do people throw away? Yeah, all the different treatises on top of each other, and then it has to look dirty, too. It's not like drawing a

grocery bag where you just have a baguette sticking out of it. Exactly. Everyone buys baguettes. I heard that's actually a thing you see in France a lot, by the way, like cartoonishly baguettes sticking out of people's bags. When I first moved here, my roommate, she did buy baguettes at

the grocery store. I was like, this is like a cartoon here. What are she did buy baguettes at the grocery store. I was like, this is like a cartoon here. What are you doing? Baguettes. She didn't like having regular bread, like a regular sandwich, but she would just cut off a piece and then put cheese on it or whatever. I never buy baguettes because they're good for approximately one or two days, and then it goes rock hard. Yeah, they just turn green. I need that heavily processed bread that lasts forever.

It's on my fridge right now. Muscly bleach. But yes, here's them looking. They're going to need some bleach after going to the dump here. I found a Malibu Stacy with no head. Oh my God! Help me, Lisa! Lisa! Dad!

Come here, quick! There is something that you won't believe! What the heck is that? Maybe it's a box from the future. It looks Japanese. What's going on? Why am I on a Japanese box? What's it... What's it look like? Oh am I on a Japanese box? What's it?

What's it looking at? Oh my God, what is that? So yeah, I mean, we have to tell people, again, if you're a younger person, this is pre-internet, you can't just look up Mr. Sparkle. You know, you can't use your phone to translate the box. I love Homer's reaction so much. He's just at a loss for words. He's just whimpering and whining.

It reminds me of when he's stuck in 3D space, kind of similar to, just like Okay so I gotta talk about the design Oh yeah, please do It drives me crazy because it's wrong The Japanese is wrong, just slightly wrong, they were so close to getting it right The handakuten is missing on it, the handakuten is like the little diacritic sign you use on Japanese kana to indicate how to pronounce that character. So like dakuten is like the two little lines you

see on top of certain characters. The han dakuten is a little circle you see. Yeah, I always think of that as the P circle. That's what I told myself when I learned about kana. Yeah, so if you look at bakuru part, the ha with the little circle like ha with a dakuten, the two little lines makes it ba.

Ha with a handakuten, the circle makes it pa. So, he's saying in the little speech bubble. Yes, okay. But the circle is missing, so he's saying

and it's wrong. That's what I was going to ask you. I thought it would be like, why does it read hawa? Is it supposed to be high clean? I guess the artist must have missed that somehow. This is a very common mistake if you don't know Japanese. And you see it in tattoos, too.

It drives me nuts. So even though I love Mr. Sparkle, I've never owned a single piece of merchandise for it because that mistake drives me nuts. To do it correctly, it has to be a mistake though if you're making it look like it looks in the show. It's off-model. I've seen puns in

Japanese use the missing diacritical marks to make a pun as a typo or something like that. Like in Final Fantasy, it's a joke that only works in Japanese but the fake version of the Excalibur, it is the word Excalibur in japanese but the ba is missing the the mark you need so it's just like

you you got the crappy version of the excalibur because it's a typo yeah yeah in english i think it's called like excalipur it's pretty good yeah i know okay i i forgot you mentioned that before yeah his word balloon is just off the so i would love to own some mr sparkle stuff but it's always wrong if you get a t-shirt you have to add that mark yourself sharpie marker yeah about that t-shirt by the way um like it's it's always been a thing where people go to japan and find funny uh quote-unquote english t-shirts they're like haha look at this this is wrong this is funny

well I've seen the opposite of that when I looked up Mr. Sparkle in Japanese Google I saw blog posts by people saying like I went to America and I found this weird t-shirt with something that looks like Homer and it has Japanese on it but it's wrong Japanese what is this?

Wow the reverse Mr. Sparkle happened to these people. That's amazing. I had a Mr. Sparkle t-shirt. I think we all have it too. I did too. I wish I had one. I mean, I used to like 15 years ago. Yeah.

That's the only reason why I haven't gotten that t-shirt. And I have a short story about that t-shirt, by the way. When I was in San Diego Comic-Con in 2009 2009 i was there to attend the eisner award ceremony and i was at the bongo booth for a bit like signing uh signing comic books i'm a pencil i was a penciler for bongo comics by the way in case people don't know who i am oh yeah that's true yes and you were only you're only attending the eisner awards you didn't win anything oh yeah i wanted an eisner too okay yeah not a big deal no big deal no it's just an eisner it's only one of the biggest in the tree awards yeah um just that

so i was there and bill morrison was there uh drawing uh characters for people and at one point someone requested mr sparkle and he doesn't know offhand what mr sparkle looks like it's just a one-shot character right so my art director at the time jason he i was there so he was like you know do you know how to draw mr sparkle and even i didn't know how to draw it like from memory i was like uh and then at that moment i saw a woman passing uh walking past wearing a mr sparkle shirt i was like oh there's reference right there right there and so like uh my art director called her over and she stood there while bill mor Morrison drew Mr. Sparkle for this fan. And I took a picture of that.

Oh, that's so cool. That's what I sent to you guys yesterday. I remember that. Yeah, wow. That is so funny. Just imagine out of all the needle in the haystack, or I guess really like a needle in a stack of needles. I think the woman wearing the shirt was kind of amused by this too that's like oh cool what amazing timing wow now that it's almost like she was planted there mr sparkle doesn't follow

like the rules of drawing simpsons characters really so he's just like a distorted homer so you can't be like well i kind of know how to draw like a simpsons head and i know what features are on this character he's just slightly off it's such a great design though i love it really is the fish bulb is great i oh yeah i love the fish bulb it's so cute anime eyes and yeah his big his big eyes his his hair just everything about the giant pupils are so great and i was thinking of this because there's a new season of the jojo bizarre adventure anime that i love in part five there's a character in it named Mista, and his Kana name is spelled the same as the Mista from Mr. Sparkle.

I thought that was a cute line up there. I wonder how that detergent box ended up in Springfield of all places. Maybe a Japanese family in Springfield had it or something like that? I guess it brought it home with them? Or maybe someone in Springfield called to get a sample of it. They're very willing to send over product. Yeah. As a kid,

too, this really did give me the... When I saw commercials for this, I was so confused, too, because I didn't know, unlike Lisa, I didn't really know what Japanese writing looked like, especially not... As a little kid, I guess I knew what, like, the curvier lines of, like, kanji or hiragana look like. But the sharper stuff of katakana really confused me as a kid. I didn't recognize it as Japanese. So, it was, I was just as confused as the kids watching this episode. Whenever I am published in Japan, my name is written out in katakana, even though I have a Japanese name. Oh, wow.

And it goes, like, first name, last name as well, not the Japanese order. Because I'm not, I'm Japanese, but I'm not. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. That's actually the- I'm kind of in limbo there. Actually, that's it with the wrestler. People in the listeners don't know, but in this room, I have a wrestler towel up.

I stare at that guy, and I don't know who he is, but have a wrestler uh towel up i stare at that guy and i don't know who he is but he looks like buff tim heidecker uh it's it's kazuchika okada and he's interesting too because when he came back when he got famous there he started spelling his name in katakana instead of japanese even though he's a native of japan it was it was just an interesting character choice by him that he spells okada in katada Kana 2. But anyway, this is really getting inside baseball here. So meanwhile, Skinner, this is a weird moment because Skinner

and Lovejoy almost never talk to each other. Yeah, it is weird. Their voices are a bit similar, so I can understand why. Lovejoy here. Reverend, this is Principal Skinner. I'm facing a crisis and I didn't know to whom to turn. All right.

Mother's gone too far. She's put cardboard over her half of the television. We rented man without a face. I didn't even know he had a problem. What should I do? Well, maybe you should read your Bible. Um, any particular passage? Oh, it's all good all right thanks anyway

so yeah that joke as much as i love it it is so sweaty it's a bit sweaty yeah it doesn't i mean it's so absurd that i like it but it just uh someone had that idea for a joke it's like we have to put this in this is a very funny joke but yeah man without a face we talked about mel gibson earlier remembers this movie it was his directorial debut oh yeah and it was pure like oscar bait like he played a man who's like kind of like a two-faced thing going on like his face was like maimed johnny deformed he's a real johnny deformed have you seen it uh i have not seen it no i know it's a sad ending it's be well this was the thing in mel gibson movies he's really into uh suffering and filming the suffering of people and so usually his own and that's that was the case in all of his directed films especially like that's apocalypto was the first

film he had done where the lead character didn't die at the end of it like that's the he all the other ones the lead character gets murdered. Spoilers for Passion of the Christ. Do you know about the novel it was based on? No. Man Without a Face was based on an Isabel Holland 1972 novel, and apparently the novel

makes certain implications about the man and the boy's relationship, which Gibson did not like at all, but the movie script does not do that at all, which is why he took it on. Wow. So in the movie, he does befriend a young boy.

That's what I remember. It was so like pure, just Oscar bait, like Garbo. But wow. In the novel, he does more than that. I am shocked Mel Gibson would take on something like that.

And then just to excise it, I feel like he'd want to be even clear of something that had that to be cut exactly i just would not you know touch that project yeah 10 foot pole exactly if they took it out yeah no that's a really that's like that's like a powder situation man i feel like there could have been a better joke than skinner just going well uh goodbye It feels like so... It feels really flat. I don't know. There could have been another joke about Mother or... Or Agnes yelling at him in the background.

Or just what his solution will be. I do like the reality of him, how real it feels of just somebody giving up. All right. I've been like that as recently as last week when i went to the post office and got no help and the person who's supposed to help you just gives you

nothing and you just kind of stare at them of like you're nothing more huh society doesn't work yep you're just like yep i guess it doesn't work all right you just that felt very real to me so i did like that yeah yeah i just want more jokes and uh this marge castigates him for not caring and how he stopped caring entirely and this speech he has really spoke to me when i worked at the content mills of websites because i had this kind of speech in my head when at least three times they hired fresh face young people like writing about video games oh boy they arrive listening to the doobie brothers exactly and i want to tell them like you soon you'll be like me this this will all your enthusiasm for this will be ground out of you by video game websites and

the demands of them i like how specifically this is set in the 70s and what a cool guy like the cool minister reverend uh lovejoy was back in the 70s and you also see the origins of his clock yes yeah was it decoupage whatever that clock is i love that clock yeah it's a really really good design it was the mid 70s and I was fresh out of seminary. The 60s were long over, and people were once again ready to feel bad about themselves. I came to Springfield ready to roll up my sleeves and help my fellow man. There was just one fellow man I hadn't counted on.

Reverend, I'm afraid something terrible has happened. Well, sit down and rap with me, brother. That's what I'm here for. I was talking to doing a dance called The Bump, but my hip slipped and my buttocks came into contact with the buttocks of another young man. I see. Then the calls began. I think I may be coveting my own wife. I'm meek, but I could probably stand to be meeker. I think I swallowed a toothpick.

Finally, I just stopped caring. Luckily, by then it was the 80s. No one noticed. I really like this summation of all the decades. Luckily, by then, it was the 80s. No one noticed. I really like this summation of all the decades. 60s, you feel good. 70s, you feel bad. 80s, you don't care. It's like you're just dead inside.

I like that this is the origin of Reverend Lovejoy's eyelids. Yeah. His eyelids are true. Sleepy eyelids. Oh, my God, that's right. They changed his character design. And it's like Harry is doing a lot of talking to himself, Harry Shearer in this episode, which is always fun. It is very noticeable with Skinner.

It's never been noticeable with Ned because Ned is a very different voice. I think he gets Reverend Lovejoy even sleepier than usual in this episode too, just to differentiate him more. But I think coveting my own wife is my favorite of those lines. I'm surprised that he danced at all. Yeah. Well, he said he got pressured into doing it by someone else.

He might have had a white wine spritzer. Or raspberry schnapps. Yeah. One of those two. Does his apparent age in these flashbacks match up with the fact that he's a senior citizen? It does not match with him being 60. Well, if he's 60 in the 90s, but he still looks the way he does, it is presumable that when he was 40 in the 70s,

he'd look the same, perhaps. But also, this is still in the Bill and Josh era where he was a child in the early 60s or late 50s. So I'm going stick stick with that until we get to viva ned vegas yeah and that i don't think that canon stuck around of ned being that old really i think so i also on the commentary i wish they kept in this scene that it was jasper who hands over the church to him it's that was jasper was the old reverend there and he hands over the keys to lovejoy that was a deleted, or is that just something they wrote and never animated?

They said it was in the script. Okay. Yeah, I kind of wish they'd kept that. That would be an extra background to Jasper that I would have really appreciated. It just, all this time we've seen this weirdo, one-legged man with this giant beard who likes a paddling. Take it over my church, that's a paddling. Has there been a Jasper-centric episode? Hmm, boy.

I'm going to say there has to have been one. I'm going to ask this about every single character, by the way. Has there been a Mrs. Glick episode? Well, that one is in our past. $90. There was one episode that shows the origins of the crazy cat lady. Oh, that's true, yeah.

That she wasn't so crazy at one time. She has a name we actually we played a simpsons trivia game not too long ago it's just like we learned that all these characters have names they gave them over time yeah it was like the 25th anniversary uh special like fan made edition of trivial pursuit simpsons yeah that's why i didn't buy those trivial pursuit games a lot because i knew they would be I knew they would be questions after season 10, which just doesn't feel fair. Yeah. And you collect character cards.

And every time I redrew a card, we'd be like, what? This character has a name? What is this? That's Jeff Albertson. I would rather play the one that was made in season one, where you just get questions like like who's Mr. Largo? That'd be tough. Oh, we forgot to mention how we actually did

Simpsons Trivia Night. Me and Bob did Simpsons Trivia Night in Vancouver while he was visiting. Yeah. We got demolished. We got owned.

Hardcore. That's why I've been terrified It was tough. It was really tough. And there were some answers that we were just like oh, we should know this. We should know this. But we just forgot. It was on the It was really tough. And there were some answers that we were just like, oh, we should know this. We should know this.

But we just forgot. It was on the tip of our brains. It was driving us crazy. There were really hard questions too, like in Simpson and Delilah, what is the mantra Carl teaches Homer? And the only part of it I remember was, I am nature's greatest miracle.

But there were two things before that. Oh, no. I couldn't get that either. Things that specific, they were asking. And also, which pets in the Springfield Cemetery voted for Sideshow Bob? Oh, yeah. And we can remember Humphrey Bogart, Snowball 1. But we couldn't remember Mr. and Mrs. Bananas.

Oh, that's right. Okay, wait. I deserve this. I am worth it. No, fuck. Nope, you're not going to get it. Okay, it's I deserve this. I am worth it. No, fuck. Nope, you're not going to get it. Okay, it's I deserve this. I...

Yeah, you're close. You should come to Vancouver sometime and do Simpsons Trivia and feel ashamed. It's the only place it happens. Shout out to the organizers who listened to this podcast. Oh, yeah, hey. You know, now I'm afraid to go there and be ashamed as well.

You should have let me win. You should have just pretended that you guys got every question right and given you the award. But so we get to hear why Lovejoy doesn't care. And once he's done with that story, he just runs away from his phone. And I love this call from Moe because it implies that Moe has called him before and has been told to kill himself by Lovejoy, or at least pushed in that direction.

Yeah. Yeah. Hi, I'm calling for Reverend Lovejoy. Who is this? Well, this is the listen lady. Yeah, well, listen, lady. I got so many problems. I don't even know where to begin here.

Okay. Why don't you start from the top? Alrighty. Number one, I've lost the will to live. That's ridiculous, Moe. You've got lots to live for. Really? That's not what Reverend Lovejoy's been telling me. Wow. You're good. Thanks. Hmm. and Lovejoy's been telling me. Wow, you're good. Thanks. Hi, it's me again. I got another problem.

This one's about my cat. Yeah, shut up. I'm asking her. That's got to be a person doing a cat noise, right? Dan Kesslin had that. Oh, yeah, I think so. Well, Frank Welker does the baboons in this episode, so maybe he did that too.

It's got to be him then, definitely. Here's a Simpsons trivia question for you. What is the name of Moe's cat? It comesoons in this episode, so maybe he did that too. It's got to be him then, definitely. Here's a Simpsons trivia question for you. What is the name of Moe's cat? It comes up in an episode. Oh, right. Damn it. Because he remembers it, and then he says, fuck, I can't remember. Bob?

I don't know. It's Mr. Snookums. Oh, okay. It comes up in Simpsons Tide. That's right. Oh, you're right. Okay, that's right. But we are really- What? I love my cat.

We are really in the Moe suicide joke era, in the sad Moe era. It started with, I mean, Moe's always been sad, but Homer's phobia had suicide again for me. And Love Man at Grandpa's, I'm so desperately lonely. Yeah, we're in suicide town. I mean, once Dana Gould enters the show It's all suicide jokes for Mo Yes yeah Before Dana Gould joined was one of the darkest jokes ever

Of no funeral The train was already moving He just poured more dogs into the engine But they kind of stopped with those jokes With him at a certain point right I think they realized As much as we i as a person who suffered from depression i i love a good suicide joke but they're kind of dark

and could be you know a bit much for some people to deal with i don't think they're as funny anymore uh yeah but they were funny at the time because we were more naive but i don't think these are the kind of jokes that we'd make today probably not yeah i don't think so are the kind of jokes that we'd make today. Probably not. Yeah. No, I don't think so. And I was going to say Moe's cat has to be dead. But if he's remembering it later, I got to think that cat has been like eaten by the rats who live at the bar. Those aren't your rats. And so we get a quick scene to, this is the one scene where their things intersect. Because Marge is talking about, Lady while Homer stares at his garbage box.

The spaghetti looks nice. It's a very simple family dinner, but it's a cute, it's well-drawn spaghetti, not purple globs of food as sometimes Simpsons eat. And it kind of ends on another flat joke where, you know, I think it is like, what if someone is watching us right now?

And I feel like there should be something more there. know other than like yeah we're watching a tv show it is kind of clever but also i think they've done better versions of that joke before yeah though i like well i do like march proclaiming no one's watching us which would it seems to be them kind of saying this show's unpopular or something it's it's them kind of uh being uh self-deprecating this joke was also another way to fill some time. Yes. Really stretching it out this episode. It is a bit of padding, I have to say.

There's no McBain. They don't watch McBain. That's another classic padding. So they head to the Happy Sumo, last scene in Black Widower when they sang karaoke together. Wow, it's been that long. Again, another season three pull from Bill and Josh.

It is, yeah. And we get Akira, who obviously named after Akira Kurosawa, first voice by George Takei. And I said it right, right? Yeah, it's Takei. God, I get so in my head about it. I'm listening and judging. But this time it's Hank Azaria doing it,

as he did every other time Akira came back. Hi. Hi. Hi. Bye. Hi. Akira, can you read this for me? Ah, yes. This is a product called Mr. Sparker. Very popular dish detergent. Hey, he looks like you. What's he saying? He identifies himself as a magnet for foodstuffs.

He boasts that he will banish dirt to the land of wind and ghosts. Wow. Yes, you have very lucky dishes, Mr. Simpson. This soap is from the sacred forest of Hokkaido, renowned for its countless soap factories. Hokkaido, eh? That's great. Nina made me aware recently of a popular children's character in Japan

that is a ghost. He banishes children to the land of wind and ghosts. Wait, what? Yeah, there's this very, very popular children's book in Japan published in 1969, I believe. It's called Who's Still Awake? And it's a very, very simple storybook about a ghost who finds children who are still awake past nine and takes them away to the land of ghosts.

And it traumatized me as a kid. So I just, I came back from a two week long trip to Japan just recently, like just last month, actually. And I forgot to take a hat with me. I wear hats all the time. So I was like, I'll just look for a cool hat in Japan. And I came across one right away that had that ghost on it. I was like, oh, it's that ghost that traumatized me when I was little. So I bought it.

And everywhere I went, it was a great icebreaker because people would be like, oh, it's that ghost. Oh, my God. That book is so scary. Wow. Oh, that's so cool. I've never heard of that ghost story. Yeah, so when I saw this for the first time, this episode,

and he said, The Land of Wind and Ghosts, I was like, ah, Ghostland. Just like that storybook. It's just to scare kids to go to bed on time, I guess. And it works, apparently. If you go to Amazon Japan, you look at the reviews, you'll see reviews like, this book worked perfectly. My kid always goes to bed at nine now.

Wow. So scare your kids into submission people there's a whole line of these and one of them is just like come bathe with me yes yeah i don't know what that was about the ghost wants you to take a bath with him yeah yeah this this ghost leads a full life that i never knew about wow ghostly submission such interesting lives i like the high joke it but just because I've done interviews with Japanese game developers, and it's where I caught on to the verbal tick of just going like, yes, yes, or hi, hi, as you're listening, just to, I guess, as a politeness thing of showing like, I'm listening, yes, yes. But so then I kind of, in those interviews, I would fall

into doing it too. When they would reply, I would also just nod and be like, yes, yes, even though I didn't really understand them. Yeah, I mean, just because you're listening to someone speak a language and you're waiting for the translation, you just make eye contact and nod your head and be like, yeah.

It would be rude otherwise to be like, I'm looking only at the translator. What's going on with my phone? Yeah, whenever I go to Japan, that's where I get to speak Japanese all the time, which is fun. And I do have to say hi a lot, a lot. And is there an English term

for the little sounds that you make when listening to people? Yeah, it's called backchannel. Backchannel? Okay, cool. Because I had to translate that word once. I also do um japanese to english translation sometimes like i did the subtitles for game center cx collection

those are great i love those and i translated um mercenary kings from english to japanese oh wow i don't i do more japanese to english and the other way around but uh yeah i had to translate that word once and i couldn't find a term the english term for it wow and i've not heard that term back channel before yeah that makes sense i went to a lot of college why is it called back channel uh because i mean i just think it's just uh in the background and it's just a way to let the listener know that sorry let the speaker know that you're still listening it's just a way to like let them understand that you're listening to what they're saying and it doesn't matter what words you're saying,

but usually in the language, there'll be some way like hi, hi, hi, or like, yeah, uh-huh. But I think it happens a lot. I've heard from professors, when Japanese students come to America a lot of the time, they will translate their back channel and be like, yes, yes, yeah, like that.

And people will think that, the speaker will think they're being agreed with. Oh, okay. Yeah. I can see that happening. That's really interesting. Yeah. So that's how misinformation kind of spreads on stuff.

Wow, that's amazing. No, that's really cool. That was a cute little joke of hi, hi, hi, bye. They don't really say bye in Japan. They say bye-bye. Oh, okay. I wondered, I know in one anime I like, I've heard characters go like say bye in Japan. They say bye-bye. Oh, okay. I've wondered. I know in one anime I like,

I've heard characters go like, baby. Oh, yeah. But you wouldn't say hi to greet somebody at a restaurant. You wouldn't, but I guess he switched to English there. Yeah. Did a quick code switch.

Ah, that's right. Okay, so that was English. Never mind. And I also like, too, that felt like a good use of Simpsons history that the only place that they would know to speak to somebody who could translate Japanese for them is the one sushi place that also Homer could never forget because it almost killed him yeah you should be having like PTSD going back to the actually you know what I don't think um Akira was meant to be

saying hi as in hello i think he was just like acknowledging that and going hi okay i can serve you now also hokkaido i've never been there i've when i've been to i've done like six two week long vacations to japan and i love it every time it's one of my favorite places to vacation but i normally stick to the big cities of tokyo kyoto or uh osaka And so I've never been to any of the south or northern islands like Hokkaido. Yeah, Hokkaido is the giant island to the north of Japan, by the way, in case people don't know. And they're not known for their soap factories. They're known for their dairy snow and miso ramen. I've actually never been there. Every time I see

pictures of it, it looks very North American compared to the rest of Japan. And Sapporo is the biggest city there, which is the name of the popular beer in America. Oh, I was thinking of the Sapporo ramen. Oh, yeah, I had that too. When I went to Japan, it was only once last summer, and

it was Tokyo, and I had a lot of fun, but some people told me when I got back, it was like, if you just went to Tokyo, you didn't me when I got back it was like if you just went to Tokyo you didn't go to Japan. It's like oh I went to Japan? I needed a passport. There's lots of scenes in Tokyo.

Tokyo is so huge. Two weeks in Tokyo you could go to a different just prefecture the entire time. You stay on the same street. Yeah. It's so full of stuff.

Like yeah that's I hate that. I've heard that from some judgmental other tourists too. Like, you didn't see real Tokyo like me. Like, fuck you. I ate Coco Curry. It was great.

You know what? Whenever I go to Japan, I prefer to stick to big cities and shop and eat. I'll go to like, I don't know, a temple or two, but I mostly go there for the shopping and eating. That was on my trips too that, well, I am a city person as opposed to a small town person. So that's what I – Tokyo is the biggest city fucking ever. So you just get to enjoy the city and the shopping.

And that's why when I went to Osaka too, it was like, let's go to the shopping district first and buy food. Also the eating too. And then when I went to Kyoto, it was just like food. But then there's so many temples there. I like well i better go to temple so i went to the inari gates and a couple other temples there just to do it aren't the inari gates like super packed full of tourists this one wasn't so packed but it was uh it was a wet day in november there but uh it was nice i it was quite a hike i'm not much hiker but i i did the whole thing it was fun it was nice. It was quite a hike. I'm not much of a hiker, but I did the whole thing.

It was fun. And now anytime I see the Inari Gates put it in anime, I can just point and tell my husband, like, I've been there. I went there in Star Fox. I hope you're seeing that voice, too. Yeah. But so,

meanwhile, the Listen Lady is giving some advice. See, all along, I've been telling Carl I'm married to a beauty queen. Now he's coming over for dinner. Lenny, I'm sure he'll like your wife no matter what she looks like. No, no, no, no. It's worse than that. I don't even have a wife.

I just said I did to, you know, be a big shot. Well, it's time to start telling the truth. Now, when I have to tell my husband the truth, I cook him a big, delicious dinner. By the time he's done eating, he's still full and tired to care what I have to say. Wow, that's great. When Carl comes over, I'll stuff him till he don't know what's what.

Seymour, I'm getting tired. Tell them we're going next. Well, I'm not principal of the line, mother And you never will be It strikes me that all the people that he helped for Marge are Harry Shearer characters It's true Except for Captain McAllister They're very desperate Harry Shearer characters

This is when it officially resets Lenny to being single and very sad They make everybody sadder. I mean, the last time we saw him with a woman was when Homer calls him and he's being told, shave up, stupid. That was the last time he was seen as a woman.

He had a pretty nice house in Springfield Connection. Oh yeah, he did there. But now in the future, we'll see how... One of my favorite lines ever, please don't tell anyone how I look. Which is how I...

I use it all the time. I used to say that. Now you guys see my nice, clean apartment. It's palatial. I'm fine with you. We're going to tell everybody about it. I think Henry's skimming off the top on Patreon. Hey, wait.

No, no. And this also resets... This kind of is the beginning of the Lenny is in love with carl stories yeah couldn't give him a big fancy dinner and i mean the statement of stuff them till he don't know what's what yeah it could be read with sexual implications i never thought of it that way before but yeah and i love agnes shellllen Skinner. It's always funny. You never will be. So, Bart, Lisa, and Homer go to the library. Immediately, the guy has the phone book for Hokkaido, Japan. An English language phone book, too.

There are no residential phone directories in Japan, by the way. I think you can call up an operator and ask them to give you a number for someone. If their number is registered, which most people don't do because privacy is a big thing in Japan. They do have yellow pages, though. It's called town pages. I was just watching an anime, a modern romance anime, Bakuman, the one about making manga,

and they make such a big deal of like, she gave you her phone number? You can text her? Wow. That was a major moment of intimacy of that uh i think also the addresses in japan they i they make no sense oh i don't get it all like it's so hard to find places in japan because there are no street names and there are no like address numbers like when i was staying area codes it is you know when i was staying in japan i had my host address and i'm like my clipboard on my phone so i can just paste it in Google Maps whenever I had to get back home because it was a lot of information.

Thank God for Google Maps, I've got to say. No, I went there right – I never went there when I didn't have a smartphone because I needed that at all times. And the only time I was in trouble with that was when I landed the first time. I hadn't got my Wi-Fi hotspot yet, so I didn't have Wi-Fi on my phone to look it up. And I was sure I memorized it, but then by the time I got there, I was like, crap, I don't remember which exit. And so I just went to a police officer who was nearby and just said the address. And then he walked me the block to it and just was like there dozo i don't know how i managed to like get around japan before like smartphones and pocket wi-fi's were a thing like

somehow i managed i do have to ask for directions a lot though and sometimes even they're like we don't know what his place is and pick up a map and like what i think this is right yeah actually i had a man oh and on that same trip it was this kind of magical thing that happened where – that you think would only happen in, like, video games or movies. So I was there with my friend who – she did speak Japanese, but we were both still kind of lost trying to find this place in Shinjuku. And so she asks in Japanese to this woman on the street, like, hey, do you know where this place is here? And then the woman just pulls out a map out of her pocket of the area and she's like oh there it is on the map i was like this feels like a video game here like a side quest exactly yeah i found the map lady uh but so homer then calls the phone number is very long it's another real

time killer but it's also very fun i really like how when you think it's going to end it doesn't yes yeah i think it's a real laugh out of me. It's another sort of like a rake scene of the Josh and Bill era. I always wondered why that guy walks away from the computer. It's kind of in a rush. It feels like there's an emergency that he has to get away from. Maybe he's about to tell somebody like, oh, I think he's calling for a walk. Yeah, he does get away really fast. I think it was just because he is so non-aware of what Homer's going to be doing.

He just has something else that's going on. It sells it even more. But they put in like the footsteps and everything, so it feels like there's a joke cut or something. Maybe there's a scene that we're forgetting. I guess we can get to it. It's so funny just the delivery of here's the phone book for Hokkaido Japan. Can I use your phone? Is this a local

call? And then he can still see Homer is dialing while looking in the phone book. Homer's wearing the glasses too, right? The half glasses, those are great. We are in that era of half glasses. So, here we get another of our guest stars in this episode, Getty Watanabe.

Yes, this is Homer Simpson from America. Who may I say is speaking to me? Hello, Chief. Let's talk. Why not? Hello. Why am I Mr. Sparkle? You like Mr. Sparkle? Well, I am Mr. Sparkle. You have many questions, Mr. Sparkle. I send you a premium answer question, 100%.

And that character is wearing one of those English word jumble t-shirts too that you were talking about earlier I think it says champions of winning superb yeah it's hard to read that shirt yeah those are fun shirts in Japan but I can never buy them because I am too big for Japanese shirts I don't see too much

bad English on t-shirts these days in Japan I think they've gotten better about that yeah maybe they maybe they realized it before moving on it. Jokes like this, yeah. This guy looks like Geddy Watanabe too. Yeah, so Geddy Watanabe, most famous as Long Duck Dong. Okay, so I've never seen Sixteen Candles, so preparing for this episode, I watched all the scenes with that character and yeah. Yeah, yeah.

It's not even like accurate Yeah. That's a thing. It's not even like accurate racism. It's like, what are three things I know about quote unquote Asians? Yeah. It's like he's got what,

is it like a, it's like a Chinese name? Long Rock would be Chinese. Yeah. But he's Japanese and the stereotypes are about him being Japanese. I think so.

I mean, it's not, I mean, John Hughes wasn't a worldly guy it seems no no i want to write about white people in suburbia and that's it in the commentaries they were talking about how excited they were to get him he's like he's a donger yeah they grew up with him it's the donger they was doing the bits for them too yeah they seem to think that because he was okay with

doing the bits that the bits were okay then which i really they just let's forget them let's just say you know what they let's say let's assume that they weren't meant in a mean way but let's just forget those he actually doesn't speak japanese at all okay so he was born in like uh he was born in ogden utah wow yeah well so then he's just i guess doing this phonetically when he's speaking japanese in character here, right? Yeah, and then all these roles he was put into, he put on a thick Asian accent, which he doesn't have, which Asian actors had to do a lot, and probably still do, actually.

No, it's a sad, it's a general sad thing for a lot of minority actors. If you go to their IMDB and see all the roles they play, you really get a sense of what hollywood expects from a minority and it's not a lot in many cases especially for getting watanabe also for the other voice actor in this episode satsumono like most of his acting are just like well you played a uh soldier in mash or you played a uh samurai or all very broad characters i was thinking uh who is the who's the japanese american comic artist i was actually about to talk about adrian tominey adrian tominey did a whole comic about this yeah i was thinking of that exactly yeah that he uh that

adrian tominey is a japanese american comic artist who uh is most famous for Optic Nerve. That was his series of comics. He's very good. I like him a lot. And he lived, at least, or maybe still lives in Berkeley. So when I would read the comics while living here in Berkeley, California, I would then say, oh, he drew that movie theater. He drew that Bart stop. I have a ton of his comics, and I've not read them again

since I moved here eight years ago. And so he has a very good short comic about growing up with Long Duck Dong, hanging over his life and being treated, causing a lot of bullying as a kid. And he hated that character and by association, Getty Watanabe. And then he talks about getting to actually know him and calling him on the phone and having a conversation and then kind of befriending him. But then seeing Getty do another film with another very broad character in it too

that he was just like, God damn it. Yeah, like I said, I'm very fortunate that I grew up in a large Asian population, so I didn't get any of that teasing. Oh, do you know where his nickname comes from, by the way? No. It's based on his, his actual name is Gary and his mother has a very thick accent. It sounds like Getty. Oh, wow. That's where it comes from. I didn it's based on his uh his actual name is gary and his mother has a very

thick accent it sounds like oh wow that's where it comes from i didn't know that wow so it's kind of cute his name is gary yeah it's cute yeah and uh he actually like touched on this uh issue in a interview in 2008 oh really i just want to read what he said he says about the long duck dawn character he said i was making people laugh i didn't realize how it was going to affect people. It took me a while to understand that. In fact, I was working

at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and I was accosted a couple of times by a couple of women who were just really irate and angry. They asked, how could you do a role like that?

But it's funny too because at the same time, I laugh at the character. It's an all animal. Interesting. I don't know. He doesn't see it as wrong i guess but he understands that it's affecting people negatively he is really i mean despite

how you feel about that character he's really giving it his all to play that like wacky character he's really doing it i feel for him in the way of like he was never going to be cast in a major motion picture like that if it wasn't going to be that role, which is sad for him, but it was also the biggest opportunity of his career. He got cast. He's gotten a million jobs just off of being that guy. So I can see why for him,

he doesn't want to be too negative about it. And also, especially after John Hughes passed away, people don't want to say bad things about his movies. I generally like his films, though he absolutely had issues with like women and minorities and like that i mean he was a man of his era too so it's it's very complicated i like how friendly the hakaido workers are and just send him a free promotional video i miss the age of when you could call somebody and get just a free promotional video sent to you in the mail what did did you do? You used to do that? I did that a couple times.

Yeah. Like one for a business. I forget what. And then the other was actually the Church of Latter-day Saints, not Mormons. The Church of Latter-day Saints. Way different. They had a commercial on TV that was like, hey, we'll send you a free video if you just call this number.

And so my dumb high school friends like let's call the number and so they sent us a video about being nice and not judging people and it taught me that there's actually was a saying in it that it stuck to me from now since then it's just like nobody's always something or never something don't judge people like that which like so that's why i became a mormon guys now you're're a devout Mormon to this day To this very day With me and my husband If you want to see all those weird promotional VHS tapes

By the way Look up Red Letter Media's Wheel of the Worst series Those are some of the best I do really love those Wheel of the Worst can sometimes be very hard to watch Because they get almost despicable films that they have to pull up. But that is the point of it.

It's called the worst for a reason. But Red Lighter Media does good stuff with that. So Homer's getting his thing in the mail. Meanwhile, Lovejoy is being destroyed by Marge's popularity. The Lord will hear your lamentations and give solace to your spirit. The Lord or Marge Simpson. I ain't to your spirit. The Lord Almighty Simpson. Amen to that. Yeah.

See it. Hallelujah. Um, could we please not yell out things in the church? One at a time. One at a time. Now, who has the most urgent problem? I have a recurring dream in which I'm falling. Come right this way, Mel.

Tim, hold my calls. He has the lamest problem. I like how much attention he gets. Like, come right this way, Mel. Oh, my God. Everyone except that Mel has, they're like, oh, well, definitely him. They all just stand back. It's uncontrollable falling down.

I think we've all had a dream where we wake up because we fell in the dream, right? Oh, I've had a number of those, yeah. My recurring nightmare is climbing up rickety stairs. Those are the ones that always came to me. Or I'm late for school and I just, everything I do, I can't get there on time. Oh, school stress dreams. They'll haunt you for the rest of your life. Like, the dream, occurring school dream I have is like, I have not gone to this class

that I forgot about in the finals today. And oh my God, I'm going to fail it. That is classic. That's a classic dream. It's so lame. I wish my dreams were not that stock. But so the Marge story, this is the part I don't like so much. In that Marge is doing a good job and she cares.

And she's not, there's no no hubris or pride to it. And I feel like she's ultimately punished for no reason in this story. She means well, and this has not changed her for the worse. She cares more than Lovejoy, too. The show doesn't necessarily say she stops being the listen lady though we should assume she does yeah but yeah the closest to hubris is that she just lets ned off the phone too soon or doesn't follow up on it like it's not even she it's not even that she gives him bad advice that puts him in danger it's just yeah it doesn't work out yeah she kind of gets punished i mean maybe if it went to her head or something yeah but they don't have the time for that. So maybe that was the original idea.

Like it goes to her head. She gives the wrong advice because it went to her head. But when she gives Ned that advice, she means well. And it's not that she's, you know, thinking she can, she's like,

you know, batting above, you know, her, her league or whatever. They got to make room for Mr. Sparkle though. It's true.

It's how it is. Would we give up those great Mr. Sparkle jokes for more marge stuff i don't know well it also stops being marge's story and just becomes lovejoy yeah about how lovejoy feels not marge and his i do like the saints yelling at him it's pretty funny saint dominic what dominicus yeah donicus donicus right named after donna carrie but the other three saints are real and their fates that are featured in the stained glass are accurate depictions.

Oh, really? Although the beheaded guy could have been skinned alive as well. That's what I read. Yeah, he was skinned alive. By baboons or no? Not baboons, heathens. I see. Heathen monkeys.

Who's the one getting eaten by a lion? You don't see his name on there. Was it Bartholomew? No, Bartholomew was the guy who was beheaded. I think Lovejoy name checks all of them. Oh, well, let's hear it. Yeah. What have I done to lose them?

The real question is, what have you done to keep them? Sight yell Eutherius of Nicomedia. That's my name. Don't wear it out. To inspire men, you must be brave. I introduced Christianity to Mongolia. It didn't take, but it was worth a try. Tell us, good Reverend, what great deeds have you done to inspire the hearts of men?

Well, I had the vestibule re-carpeted. I've appeared in over 8,000 visions and that's the lamest reply I've ever heard. Oh, now please, I thought's the lamest reply I've ever heard. Oh, now, please. I thought saints were supposed to be friendly. You, you're just lucky God isn't here. That's a great joke, and I love that Alex Rocco loves it on the commentary. Like, I get it. That's so good.

Until the commentary, I didn't get that as a joke to say that God has abandoned your church is what he's saying. I never got that. I mean, like, when you're a kid, that's what you're taught to say that God has abandoned your church is what he's saying. I never got that. I mean, like that's when you're a kid, that's what you're taught, like God lives in the church. When you're in church, God is all around you. So, I was like, you're just lucky God isn't here. So, see, he only says the first saint's name. It's true, but for some reason, all of these saints are named on the wiki. If you go to this episode, it has all of their names listed. And then three of them have Wikipedia entries,

but St. Donicus does not. I like his assumption that saints are supposed to be nice, which is just like, what part of the Bible makes you think that God is gonna be nice to you in this case? They were all murdered. Yeah, they're all going to yell at you for not being strict enough, I would think. And yeah, they've appeared in all these visions and they're like, God, you're so lame. You suck. And the sad man with his trains

is quite a good little scene here too. Well, this is a little awkward, but Tim came home from church so despondent today. He's just been playing with his trains all afternoon. We all need a little time to ourselves, Helen. Just give him a day or two and I'm sure he'll be back to his old dynamic self. Okay.

Attention, H.O. scale passengers. The dining car is closed. Root beer is still available, but the cost is now $6.50. If the passengers will look to the right, you will see a sad man.

That is all. I think one of the issues with how much time they have for the story, and Matt Gerani points it out in the commentary, it's similar to the Troy and Selma episode in that Lovejoy is a very slow talker. So that eats into the amount of time you have to tell his story. And now he's even sadder. His talking is even slower.

So they don't have as much time with him. Or maybe they made him sadder to pad out time. Hey, they are all professional writers. I didn't take that into the mechanics of the episode that that makes it so much slower, all the Lovejoy scenes. And also maybe, you, maybe it makes them more nervous of like, is this too slow? Will we lose the audience with this slow talking?

Yes. I really like Helen Lovejoy in this scene, actually. It shows that she actually cares for her husband. She's not being nasty or sarcastic at all. She sounds so sad. I like, even when you got to see them be mean to Marge together in the Chili Pepper episode, I like when you see that they do like each other.

Yeah, they have a nice back and forth. And I think this is the first time she's not portrayed negatively in the show's history. Yeah, even though she has to preface it by saying, like, boy, I hate even asking you for help, Marge. Yeah, yeah. That is true. That is true. She's still a little bit catty. This is the first time we've seen her, I think,

since we heard about how cuffs and collars don't mix. Ooh. I didn't want to know that about her. She's not blonde. I mean, like that. But okay, so it's time for the all-time moment in the series, the Mr. Sparkle commercial. I cut out a bit in the middle here

because it's just just a lot of japanese language that most of our audience is going to know anyway so uh just to save time but the i remember when we were standing in line for the simpsons ride that this played in its entirety on the tv and the clip package there it was so strange and it always made me wonder like what do japanese tourists who are waiting in this line think of this when it comes on especially if they've never seen the show otherwise because i know the opposite feeling when i went to tokyo disney if anything had english language on it or something with english language started like playing from a speaker i immediately perked up like oh i understand this

talking about me yeah well who is the voice of mr sparkle that's sab shimon okay i thought so he's kind of uh you hear getty in there and then there's uh they hired two japanese actresses to play the women to play the women in the scene too yes though i swear the person saying awesome power is tress mcneil oh that is tress mil, yeah. So I think they doubled that one up. Yeah, so they get the VHS. I love how the giant pile of packing peanuts that then smacked Homer in the face. That was good.

Old VHS comedy. Yeah, and the Mr. Sparkle commercial was actually animated by Alex Ruiz, who I brought up in the Summer of 414 episode. Oh, yes. Yeah, because he animated the sequence whereer was running around with the lit fireworks and he's a guy who was interested in hiring me to do futurama merchandise art after my simpsons piece went viral awesome yeah that's right so when his name came up again the company i'm like oh okay so he

did that too that's awesome i mean just like in that summer four foot two scene he's really good at just dynamic action and and all that which this is full of this and you have to get so many there's a like five different scene changes and things happen for no real reason in it the same kind of like bizarre logic you get in a lot of weirdo commercials both in america and japan i'd say too and uh sab shimoto was also born in the u.s he was born in sac born in Sacramento, California in 1937. So he's 81 years old now. Wow.

He's still with us. Yay. And he graduated from the University of California in Berkeley. I did see that. Yeah. So he's a Berkeley boy. His real first name is Cody. And he has a husband.

Whoa. Whoa. Really? Wow. I didn't know that. We've been married for a very long time. That's great, man. Awesome.

I also read he had been interred as well by America. Geddy Watanabe's mother was interned during World War II, but Sabu Shimoda was interned with his family. Sad, sad. That's one of my favorite Simpsons jokes in season nine when they go to the soccer game and Bart says, I can't believe this used to be an internment camp. Like, that feels so like the American style of like,

shrug at what we did. This used to be a war crime. In Vancouver, we have an annual fair called the PNE, the Pacific National Exhibition. And that's where Japanese Canadians were interned during the war. Whoa, wow. Which a lot of people don't know about. No, I didn't know that, yeah.

And I just knew the American side of that. That's shocking, geez. It happened in Vancouver, too. Damn. Well, so here, let's hear the first part of the Mr. Sparkle commercial. Ow! It's a videotape. Put it in, put it in.

Ugh. Oh.お、ハローアメリカンインベスターアイシー、ユーアインターステッド インディストリブリティング ミスタースパクル インヨーホームプリフェクチャー ユーアイチョーズンワイスリー マップリーズ ドンブリーフミー

アブザーヴディスカマシュロ Observe this kamashiro. I love the music, too. It actually reminds me of the anime Korocha, which is from this era. Oh, yeah. I love Korocha so much. Saab Shimono, I forgot to mention too This is his second appearance on The Simpsons He was the master sushi chef In the Blowfish episode as well

He said Mrs. Crabapple I forgot he was in that So I have a lot to say about this commercial This is where I shine This is where I sparkle So first of all, I want to say that intro With the awkward English Is like perfectly done, I think.

The way it's like, it's understandable English, but it's just slightly awkward enough that you can tell it's not like a perfect translation. Really well done. But stuff like that and also like the factory workers and all that. In the Japanese dub of this episode, like that humor does not come across at all, as you can imagine. They just sound like normal people. I bought the Japanese seasonvd set to appear wow wow that is dedication thank you no i was gonna i wanted to buy all the dvd sets in japanese at some point anyway so i'm like this this gave me motivation they do include the english dub too right yeah yeah so it's like

having well i already have season eight in english, of course, but yeah. Yeah, the Mr. Sparkle commercial, it is Japanese, but I want to know who translated it because it's slightly awkward. So for the Japanese dub, they actually redid the audio for the commercial because this, like, original audio was not perfect.

It would confuse the viewers in a way that it wasn't meant to in its original form, I would guess. This is going to be a comprehensive breakdown of the Mr. Sparkle commercial. This is great. If you don't want to hear me say a bunch of Japanese, just skip ahead like five minutes or something.

First, I'm going to say the English subtitles, then the original audio, the exact words I think they're saying in Japanese. Again, I can't capture all of it. It's slightly awkward Japanese. Some of the grammar is off. Some of the vocabulary is awkward. And then my translation of that.

And then my translation of the Japanese dub. I'm disrespectful to dirt. Can't you see that I am serious? Original audio. 赤に対してブレイダー汚れによぼる? I think. 本気だよ。 赤 is dirt, but it means like the grime you get from people.

So you might get 赤, dirt, in bathtubs, but not so much, you know, in dishes. So that's a little bit off. 無礼 means to disrespect, but it's a very archaic term, and it's more for like disrespecting like a feudal lord or something which kind of fits with this this wackiness he wants you to join him or die yeah yeah and in the dub he says which is dirt is dirt is my arch nemesis i will clean it thoroughly

wow next line uh subs say uh get out of my way all of you this is no place for loafers join me or die can you do any less and i think they're saying in the original audio uh that's pretty correct i would say uh that's kind of a weird way to put like to say loafing or whatever uh like would make. Again, this is a treat for people who know Japanese Oh, this is great. I like to know about all of this. And Japanese dub, he says, doke minna doke. It's the same as the original audio. Koko wa ikeike no otachiba janai. Ore to ushichoni arauka. Soretomo uchiji ni suruka. And he's saying, move, everybody move. This is no place for dancing. Will you wash with me or will you die in battle it's pretty cool i like it yeah i like it it's better will you die in battle yeah

yeah i like will you wash with me will you die i like that yeah like i never like when he says so good when he says join me or die i never thought like he wants you to wash things with him but it makes sense right yeah and his battle in this battle against dirt, or Aka. In the subs, what a brave corporate logo. I accept the challenge of Mr. Sparkle. Original audio, which are done by obviously not Japanese speakers, by the way, it's very, very awkwardly said. I guess because it got the female voice actors and the Simpsons to say these lines.

Isamashii homu logo desu ne. Mr. Sparkle no challenge ni oojimasu. And yeah, that's correct. The subtitle is correct. In the dub, they say, Which is, That to me feels like they thought Americans would think of a brave samurai and make a Japanese commercial say that. That's my guess on that localization.

And this is interesting. When she says Asamapowa, like obviously she's putting on a thick accent there. So in the Japanese DVDs, they have subtitles, which are different from the actual dub. So there's two translations.. There's the dubs and there's the subtitles. And the subs they put down Osama power. Osama means king. They mistook

Osama as Osama. Wow. Yeah. And in the dub she just says Sugoi Pawa which if you're a weeb you would know. It's awesome power. And in the subs In the dub, she just says, すごいパワー which if you're a weeb, you would know. It means awesome power. Go back to Chuchu Rock. And in the subs, Any plans for the summer?

Original audio, 夏休みの計画はあるですか? Wait, slightly awkward grammar there. In the dub, he says, 夏休みのプランも立てました? which is, did you make plans for the summer? Interesting because he says the word プラン in the dub. And that's something most people don't get

when they try to translate things to japanese they try to translate absolutely everything but there are so many english loanwords in japanese i yeah i've noticed that a lot too when i hear yeah when i've learned the tiniest bit of japanese and i'm watching subtitled anime i then go like oh that's they just said the word they just i thought they'd have their own word for that. And also, if you're looking to buy manga in Japan, it's called the comic section. They call it komikusu.

So if you're looking for manga, just say komikusu. And then the last line, sub-say. For Lucky Best Wash, use Mr. Sparkle. Original audio, Mr. Sparkle. Un no yo, best washu. Washuu! Washuu! I love that, by the way.

I love in Futurama when he says, アイロヌシェフル 運の用 For luck. Yeah, it's correct, but again, awkward grammar. In the dub, he says, Mr. Sparkle 奥さん

旦那さん 皿洗いに これっけないぜ Which is, Mr. Sparkle, wives and husbands, which is kind of a way to say, ladies and gentlemen, you got to use this for washing dishes. Oh, cute. I like that one too.

So this is just, I think this is really fascinating. Like I really am into like English localization, especially Japanese English localization. I think it's so cool how there's so many different translations of this commercial. There's the original audio and then the subs, quote-unquote subs, of the audio which were in the show. And then there's the DVD subs, the Japanese DVD subs.

And then there's the dubbed version. There's so many versions of this commercial. That all started from Americans writing English text that they then asked somebody to translate into Japanese to then be said by a Japanese-American actor. Wow. You could write a whole college essay on this. Someone out there should do this. Do an even more thorough analysis and breakdown of this. If I got my PhD, I probably would.

That would be my thesis. It's like an intentional language experiment, but just done accidentally through sharing of information. I've always said that if I didn't get into any kind of artistic or creative career, I would go into linguistics. And this is the kind of stuff that really interests me. Wow. That's great.

Thank you for bringing this to the show. No, thank you. No other Simpsons podcast would give me that much information on the Mr. Sparkle sequence. No way. Well, here, let's hear the last half of that commercial. Mr. Sparkle! I know your best washout! Boring.

That didn't explain anything. All I know is they stole my face and used it for their stupid logo. There's no other explanation. Wait, look! Mr. Sparkle, a joint venture of Matsumura Fishworks and Tamarabushi Heavy Manufacturing, Kansai. Hey, it was all a coincidence. Yep, there's your answer, Fishbulb. Well, it was a good ride while it lasted.

Come on, kids. Let's go home. We are home. That was fast. The Fishbulb was so brilliant. Was it Matsumura? Matsumura, yeah. I always thought that was named after a character in Gung Ho

since Kede Watanabe and Shisabu Shimono were in Gung Ho it's actually somebody that David X. Cohen knew in grad school I think like

most of the multiculturalism in this era of The Simpsons is because David X. Cohen went to grad school with different non-white people that's because he went to California

ones instead of Harvard and like computer school or in addition to Harvard. He started at Harvard. I love the names Matumura Fishworks and Tamaribuchi. Heavy manufacturing concern. So one day, I was

wondering what the world's longest hot dog was. I don't know why. So I looked it up on Wikipedia. I'm getting somewhere with this, by the way. But apparently, the hardest part of making a long hot dog is not making the wiener, but the bun. Like apparently the hardest part of making a long hot dog is not making the wiener but the bun. Like making it all in one piece. Yeah, how could you cook it all in one piece?

Yeah, yeah. And the record is 203.8 meters which is 669 feet made in Paraguay in 2011. But in 2006 in Japan they made a hot dog measuring 60 meters and it was made by Shizuoka Meat Producers and the All Japan Bread Association.

And that really reminded me of these two company names. It's like Allied Biscuit. Yeah, yeah. Apparently, it was George Meyer who finally came up with the fish bulb joke, and it just makes so much sense when you see it. But to think that they didn't originally plan that is so fascinating now

whenever you see it you just think fishball but then that was a fun reveal for the first time it it did really in my first viewing as a 13 year old i was like oh wow wow how clever i mean i i have a lot of tattoos and i've always wondered like if i were to get a simpsons tattoo what would it be and this is up there like fish balls up there. Like Paul Bender fish. Yeah, boy. That is pretty high up for me. It might be that. Or poochie surfing.

That's tempting too. I don't know which one I'd go with. I can draw one for you. Ooh. I may talk to you after the show. The cow shattering is my favorite of all the random jokes. Also the ape drumming in the in picture in picture box is pretty funny too i like that they do love their picture in picture stuff in japan yeah reaction

shots when they're showing things i know that's why it's whenever you see japanese tv like that gets aired in america that's at least live they have so many picture in picture things they show you how the hosts of the show are reacting to some of the other shows. Yeah, the 10 hosts. Yeah, exactly. Do you find that annoying by the way,

the picture and picture stuff? I can't watch. Honestly, when I've been in Japan, I don't watch much live television because it's just hard. Most shows in Japan

are that, right? It seems like it. Yeah, unless it's like a drama or an anime or like a show made separate, right? There's a lot going on in Japanese shows. There's like 10 hosts or an anime or like a show made separate right there's a lot going on in japanese

shows like there's like 10 hosts the set is always like crazy colorful and there's all kinds of crazy stuff going on and there's subtitles everywhere yeah and the picture and picture stuff yeah are all the subtitles on stuff is that like some legal thing i always wondered if yeah for like what if for deaf listeners they just have everything subtitled? Oh no, I think it's just to make clearer what they're saying because they especially do the subtitles when someone's saying something funny

and they want you to know what they're saying exactly and there's so many homonyms in Japanese that the subtitles really help. Okay, wow. I've learned so much. I always wanted because so much anime has the subtitle

their own subtitles on it not like in the openings I mean it always at least in the older ones I watched. For the opening sequence? Yeah, in the opening theme song.

I think it's because they want you to learn the words so you can sing along or sing it at karaoke. Then you want to buy the album. So yeah, I also like that Homer seems to think

that his story's over and he acts like let's go home kids it's like if we are home that was fast and that's the end of that plot line that's so meanwhile it's time to get the last act is one of the shortest in the series history too it's like four minutes i think if you take out the credits it's really fun though i it's it's tons of fun when you start watching this episode, you don't think it's going to end with a baboon attack. But here's Ned's call to Marge.

I'm in some hot soup here, Marge. Some teenagers are hanging out in front of the store. I think they could start slacking at any moment. Well, Ned, you don't have to stand for that. You just march right up to those youngsters and tell them to vamoose. Yeah, well, if you're sure that'll help. Hey, let's go over the one-hour photo

and breathe some fumes. Uh, excuse me, fellas. I couldn't help thinking it might be nice if you could, uh, vamoose, you know? If possible. Hello? Listen, lady. Uh, Marge, I appreciate your advice, but things have gotten...

Well, they're a lot worse. Now, Ned, troubled boys need rules and discipline. They crave it. You just laid down the law. I know, but they're on their minivikes and all. All right, let me talk to them. Put me on with the lead boy. Boys, there's a call here for you.

Hmm. Oh, well. I love how it suddenly becomes like a 50s juvenile delinquency movie that Ned is trapped in. But also, again, with the Marge stuff, like Marge, that's good advice. Like, hey, Ned, Flanders, don't be such a wiener. You know, it's not like she's giving him bad advice. It's just the situation is so extreme that no one could have predicted it or prepared for it. Her only mistake, I would say, is that she, her hubris, if any, is that she just lets Ned go.

She's like, well, I guess everything's fine, even though it seemed to not be any is that she just lets ned go she's like well i guess everything's fine even though it seemed to not be fine but she just lets it go and the they have the extra blub of the water cooler there just to let you know like she's more padding more padding yes yeah i love their reaction to being told to vea moose and they're just like how dare you so uh since since i used to pencil for for simpsons comics i pay a lot more attention to backgrounds now and i noticed that this is the second appearance of the lautorium since uh when flanders failed like we saw it in hurricane nutty but we only see the outside oh yeah and um so for for bart simpson comics i i penciled a story called

the gluten the bread and the hungry which was written by my friend ian boothby and i had to draw the lautorium so I got reference for it. And I got these model sheets for the Laftorium. And it clearly shows the inside. And the production note at the bottom says it's a revised background. So I have a feeling I got the model sheets that they redrew for this episode. Wow. Oh my gosh. Yeah, the first episode that it appeared in was an ugly episode by their own admission.

Yeah, one of the worst they'd gotten back, I think. so yeah wow that's that's so cool that you got this you probably from this episode this model sheet for all the left-handed gear shifters yeah yeah that sign is in there and i have some model sheets are obviously not revised and you can tell a difference between the two i like going inside the leftorium is pretty neat. I think they use one of the left-handed shears to cut his phone line. Yeah, you're right. With their left hand.

Their little mini bikes, too, are very funny. They're not dirt bikes. And I do, you know, though, you gotta be mad at the mall security, though, too. And everyone else who lets Ned be chased for hours by children. The police aren't involved in any way.

Maybe the rest of the mall is annoyed by him. Perhaps. There should have been a cutaway to why Wiggum is not involved in this. He's eating something, he's asleep, he's in his car, something's happening. Maude should have a line saying like, well, I did call the police, but XYZ happened. I'm not the comedy writer. She'd say something funny happening. Maude should have a line saying like, well, I did call the police, but X, Y, Z happened.

Like, I'm not the comedy writer here. She'd say something funny though. But when Maude comes to ask Marge for help, it's a funny way of phrasing it. Like, did your husband come home last night? Because mine didn't. And yeah, that Ned has been, you feel so bad for Ned.

This is one of the worst things Jimbo, Dolph, and Kearney have done. Chasing a man until perhaps he passes out from exhaustion. Chasing a 60 year old man. This poor 60 year old man. He's not 60 yet. Though clearly though Ned hasn't learned his lesson from

he's forgotten his lesson from Hurricane Nettie because this would be one of those things he would run somebody over in his car for. That's kind of annoying him he would run somebody over in his car for all right annoying him he should have gotten in his car but instead i wonder if really this is a lost thing here but lovejoy maybe should have told marge ah you don't realize the trick with ned is to tell him to take no action because his actions only make things worse that's what i took it as that marge's suggestion is not what

Lovejoy would have said in the past, which is what gets Ned into trouble. That is true. I didn't read that into the scene, but yeah, Lovejoy would just give him some nonsense answer that would prevent him from acting. Yeah. I mean, that's the most I can read from Marge's misjudgment there. It really does feel like the typical, Marge is being punished for no reason. Yeah, yeah. And she was trying. She just wanted to do the right thing. But yes, Marge needs some help.

Oh, I'm in way over my head. I mean, where do the helpers turn when they need help? Sorry. Marge, why don't you let me handle this? Hello, church basement. Yeah, it's Ned Flanders. The teens have been chasing me all night. They finally stopped to gas up their scooters.

Ned, where are you? I can't see the name of the station, but the gas costs $1.49 and eight-tenths. Eight-tenths? Donnie's Discount Gas. Thanks for swinging by the house, Reverend. Donnie? What? Did you see a man being chased by some young hooligans?

I see lots of stuff. Did you see that? Yes. I love that. It's like the tiniest complication that's immediately resolved. I also like the line, I see lots of stuff. Just that statement.

I see lots of stuff. What is the story behind this guy anyway? This Donnie guy. I remember... He's cutting gas prices by a tenth of a cent. When the episode first aired, I remember there was speculation among the online community

that he was some kind of contest winner because he feels so specific for such an unimportant character. Wow. He's named and everything. That's definitely Hank Azaria, though. Yeah. I just like the- Not the voice, but like-

The design. The design and name. There's just speculation. I just like the infamous gas man who has one-tenth of a set off the normal gas price. He's known for that. Well, I like that Marge kind of knows him too she's like donnie she's on first name basis with him and maybe it's like her relationship with ben i was thinking about that oh all these one-off characters that are named ones i've forgotten

about i want i want them to be spun off and i also love the ridiculousness that they just hang a lantern on of homer saying like hey thanks for getting us because they want the family to be here for this last scene even though they have no agency within it there's no reason for them to be there other than to also react to have more jokes it's like we want Lisa to say something now we want Homer to say something that moment with Donnie too it's like a million law and orders have that moment like I see lots of things but instead, all you need to do is ask, like, well, specifically, did you see that? Yes. I laughed so hard at that.

But yeah, Ned seems to be out of the frying pan and into the fire here. Looks like we lost him. Yeah, well, we proved our point. He'll think twice next time he tries to defend his business. I'm sleepy. Let's go to school. They're leaving. The ordeal is over.

You don't expect that. That's a complication I did not see coming upon first seeing this episode. Baboon County, USA. I mean, apes are funny. I don't like apes or monkeys, I gotta say. complication i did not see coming upon first seeing this episode uh but county usa i mean apes are funny apes are funny i don't i don't like apes or monkeys i gotta say they terrify me they're super scary i don't trust a chimp yeah well i mean they can mess you up this is really before we all knew the secret of monkeys is they want to tear your face off and eat it yeah they will go for your face and your genitals yeah there's there's been a lot of horrible attacks

at zoos, which I don't blame the, unlike Marge in this episode, I don't blame the apes for because they're not supposed to be there. They've been taken out of their habitat and surrounded by people. I mean, this also predates Harambe by about 15 years. There were no trained zoo snipers on the scene. Oh, God. Like, rappel down the grill enclosure.

Yeah, I love that this zookeeper is just like, well, he cares way more about the feelings of the Bethans than Ned's life. It'd be bad for the society. Yeah, I don't trust him at all. And we get a quick Japanese tourist joke, which, I don't know, I have cameras. Nobody walks around with giant cameras anymore.

Though, I've seen more camera stores in Japan still than I do around here, definitely. Though, I think they're just called in Japan still than I do around here, definitely. Though I think they're just called camera stores even though they're basically a Best Buy. Like Yodobashi Cameras. The one in downtown Akihabara is really cool. It's quite a gigantic

store. And it sells everything and cameras as well. Yes. Yeah. I mean, you can also buy cameras. I just love its theme song. Oh, yeah. That male tourist has really nice shoes, by the way. I was admiring that. I'm like, this is a nice shoe design.

It's more complex than most footwear. Do you guys know Buntane Simpson, by the way? No. It's like a really, really weird short webcomic. I shouldn't say webcomic, but it's a comic you can see online. It's like Homer and then really weird short webcomic. I shouldn't say webcomic, but it's a comic you can see online. It's like Homer and then Seinfeld. Oh.

Mashed up talking. Wow. If you look it up, you might recognize it. It's just like bizarre. And the artist, who's someone I follow on Twitter, Brian Lee, he went to Japan recently, and he's got like a round face and like round glasses and short blue hair. So he said when he got up, when he got in the airport,

someone called him Doraemon. Oh, that's cute. Yeah, please look up Buntane Simpson if you have not seen it. Mentioning shoes did remind me, at the beginning of this episode, you see Homer in black socks when he takes off his church clothes. Oh, you're right. I feel like you never see that. Like Homer doesn't wear black socks.

He's either just barefoot wearing his cloven shoes or white socks. His cloven shoes. That's a good way of putting it. Yeah. It's especially when you look too closely at Homer's feet, you're like, these are hooves. They're hooves. In the model sheets for Homer, they're described as irons. Oh, wow.

That's great. Yeah. They also, they mentioned on the commentary too that like in the model sheets for homer silverman drew like homer's head is kind of a light bulb like he described he described it as that his head is a light bulb and his body is also like an upside down light bulb yeah oh homer's reaction to hearing about eating skin is my favorite part in this one here hey it, Landers, it's me! Huh?

Mr. Spocker, Mr. Spocker! Konnichiwa. Hmm! That came from Baboon County, USA! Oh, pal! What do I do? No! Run around in circles! No! Act like a lion.

Swipe at the dominant male. Come on, Ned, knock that monkey down. Jumping kangaroo rats. You've got to get him out of there. Geez, I'd like to, but if they don't kill the intruder, it's really bad for their society. They're going to kill him? Eventually. First, they'll eat his skin.

Ew. Ew. Ew. Even Homer's feeling for Ned in that situation. Baboons are terrifying, though. They are, like, a group of baboons is called a troop, by the way. Yeah, and they do travel in packs and they are very, very aggressive.

I don't trust apes and monkeys, but I also don't trust large flightless birds. So, like, at one point in the zoo, like, you see an ostrich pen. I was thinking, like, man, the fencing around that pen is awfully low. Like, I wouldn't want to get near that. I don't, I'm not, I'm scared of, like, ostriches, emus, and cassowaries. You got pretty close to turkeys today, though. Oh, that's true, yeah.

I mean, they're not that huge. They can fly, right? What? They can fly, right? No, turkeys today, though. Oh, that's true, yeah. I mean, they're not that huge. They can't fly, right? What? They can fly, right? No, turkeys can't fly. Wild turkeys can fly. Don't you remember from WKRP in Cincinnati,

the classic moment? Oh, yeah. He throws them out of, he does a turkey drop and he says, God is my witness. I thought turkeys could fly. Boy, I'm glad

I didn't make that mistake. Yeah, I finally saw some wild turkeys that Bob tweets out once in a while. Yes. There were some big ones and those talons are huge bob lives in turkey town i don't see any turkeys i'm in the turkey district you're not you're way out of that area as long as they're not emus i'm okay they're all giving suggestions to ned but they all aren't taken only lovejoy can

help him this is now love I guess, is the end of suggestions helping Ned, and instead only Lovejoy can pick up the baton that he was supposed to be carrying of helping Ned. He's going to use his knowledge of trains to save Ned. That is a good plot

moment. It's a good connector. That he's on a real... Well, not a real train, a different type of model train. A larger scale on a real, well, not a real train, a different type of model train. A larger scale train. Yes, yeah, not HO. I can't imagine having to lay out this sequence and animate it. They did a really good job. It's really complicated.

It's a great action scene. If I saw that in a script, even as a comic artist, I'd be like, screw you. I don't want to draw this. A moving train going in an angle to catch his arm as he swings up. How it goes around the bend, too. Like, it's so well done. Like, I wonder who animated this sequence.

Stephen Dean Moore is the director on this one. Okay. Yeah, and Lovejoy is an action star with his spin around on the thing, just knocking those two apes off like gray football. Two hairy footballs. Yes, yes. Well, let's just hear it. Thank the Lord.

He's truly watching over me. Say your prayers, you heathen baboons. It's very stock. They don't normally use stock sounds there, but that smack sound was a very stock sound effect. I like how Lisa is horrified by human beings beating up monkeys. Yes. So I think Lisa is there to be the PETA who might complain of like,

you're hurting these apes, which is like, well, these are all self-defense attacks of animals. They wouldn't normally endorse violence against animals, but this is just to save Ned. I noticed that while Lovejoy is saving Ned, Marge says, thank heavens, and Ned says, thank the Lord. Is that kind of a joke about how people will thank God no matter what? It's clearly Lovejoy who's saving him. Yeah, that's true. Hey, give Lovejoy some credit there, guys. And when it circles,

you get the now leaving Baboon County, USA, which is a great gay, or you'd see that in like Jurassic Park, now leaving Jurassic Park, they have that scene, but you then see them

circle back around to re-enter it and have the same problem. You don't see them realize that, though. They're just relieved on the train, and then we, the viewers,

see where they're going. There's a lot of momentum on that train. That's such a great joke. You could end the episode there. But I'm glad they have the true ending here with the final sermon. Yeah.

Wow. Oh, those poor monkeys. They started it. You saved me, Reverend. You really went above and beyond. Thank you. Oh, don't thank me. Thank Marge Simpson.

She taught me that there's more to being a minister than not caring about people. Amen. Baboons to the left of me. Baboons to the right. The, baboons to the right. The speeding locomotive tore through a sea of inhuman fangs. A pair of the great apes rose up at me, but biff, bam, I sent them flying like two hairy footballs. A third came screaming at me.

And that's when I got mad. No Dutch religion. So I guess you learned that you should save your parishioner's life And that's when I got mad No, that's religion So I guess you learned that You should save your parishioner's life If you have the chance And also have a good story to tell in church Have some energy Yeah, a better story

Though I would think at some point in that parable He's going to be like Just as Joshua did Or something like that Great church sign Conquest of the County of the Apes. That's great too.

Yeah, I love. There's some really, also I like the sign gag of the Miracle of Shame that he was building. That was great. And also Habitat for Huge Manatees.

That's a clever little thing. Very cute. Well, notice at the end of the church sign board, he uses a Q and a U. You're right. Maybe he ordered more. Yeah.

He's getting his groove back in all sorts of ways. I wonder if that was intentional. Yeah, I wonder. I mean, it's a reference to Conquest of the Pliny Apes, but yeah, it does bring the Q and the U back. It's just smart enough that I think they'd at least take credit of like, yeah, we've been doing that all along. Yeah.

But yeah, this episode, I love the Mr. Sparkle this episode i love the mr sparkle stuff i love the lovejoy stuff but again marge is sort of sacrificed on the altar of telling stories about other characters just like the pretzel wagon ones her name's in the title and she gets lost in it the the closest reconnection we have to her at the ending is that lovejoy thanks marge yeah she instead again though is a spectator. Thanks Marge Simpson. She's a spectator in her own story at the end of it which is too bad

for old Marge. I will admit that I mostly remember this episode for Mr. Sparkle. I mean like that I gotta say that commercial

nearly killed me when I watched it for the first time. I was laughing so hard like I could not breathe. Oh my god. I can't imagine well I mean

your perspective of knowing Japanese when you're watching it too must add even more fun to it. That just made it funnier. I did like the line. I forgot to mention it. Her saying like your Game Boy is gone. That did talk to me as a kid because I did drop the Game Boy on the

water on the beach one time and it didn't survive. It's like salt water and sand. Yeah, it didn't dry out so good. So I had to get a new Game Boy. Those things survived Desert Storm though, you know like salt water and sand. Yeah, it didn't dry out so good. So I had to get a new Game Boy. Those things survived Desert Storm, though. I've seen that. Yeah, but I mean, salt plus batteries, it's not a good combo.

Not a good cocktail either. Sounds like grog. Any other final thoughts, or do you want to talk about anything you're doing now, Nina? Actually, since I bought the season eight set in Japanese I wanted to read out the the Japanese titles for all the episodes of the season. Oh sure, let's hear those! I want to hear those real quick. Is it okay if we took turns reading these? Sure, sure. There's a lot to go through. So season eight episodes in Japanese, and I translated these by the way. Halloween Special 7 Another World. I guess they got subtitles. Oh, wow.

Japanese. Homer moves twice. Just Homer. Boy. Homer, the strongest man, burns his love test. A clean, proper Springfield? That's an exclamation mark and a question mark. A couple's crisis comes suddenly.

Her first love is a bully. Flanders' secret revealed. Whoa. Wow. That's great. The chili recipe of nightmares. Springfield X-Files. That's kind of boring. Cool on the nose. Marge's

business training. Burns and Homer's terrifying snowy mountain incident. Sherry Bobbins is here. I like that too. That's great. Homer's voice acting challenge. Wow.

Homer's Bart reform project. And the man who fooled Sideshow Bob. I love that. It's a real spoiler. Okay, okay. Hold on. I need a drink of. Okay, okay, hold on. I need a drink of water.

These are too good. The Little Sister is a Demonic Babysitter. Homer and Bart's Illegal Booze Plan. Principal Skinner's quote-unquote I Love Trouble. Is that? It's a reference to the very memorable film starring Nick Nolte. I Love Trouble? Yeah.

Interesting. It's a romantic comedy. That's grade school confidential. Wow. I don't know why they called it that at all. This next one is a real shonen anime one. Enter, a rival for Helper the family dog.

Wow. And Santa's little helper is called Helper, right? In Japanese, yeah. Burns and Lisa's Great Recycling Project. This episode, Marge's Life Advice Hotline. Next episode is Homer's Enemy advice hotline next episode is Homer's enemy

Homer the sloth has no enemies that's really wow I love that that's the opposite of Homer's enemy and then the

Simpsons spinoff showcase which is the same and then G.I. Lisa which is a good pretty clever I actually kind of like that I think I like it more than the secret war

of Lisa Simpson yeah same actually it fits more with G.I. Jane, the Debbie Moore movie, too. I like that. Wow, those were great.

Thank you. Thanks for translating those, too. That was amazing. Yeah, no problem. Awesome stuff. Thanks for reading it. So, Nina, you're a special guest. You've got a lot of stuff going on with Fangamer.

You've got your own store. You're doing a lot of great stuff. Can you talk about where we can find you and how we can buy your things? Yes, I'm mostly on Twitter as SpaceCoyote coyote that's space coyote with an l at the end instead of an e and my website is spacecoyote.com or ninamatsumoto.com that's my secret domain name fangamer has a new site design uh go to the collections tab on the top click on buy artist and click on space coyote you can see all my my Fangamer stuff on there. Most recently, I designed stuff for Delta Rune,

which is Toby Fox's newest game, connected to Undertale. Persona 5, Stardew Valley, Bomberman, and Capcom stuff like Okami and Bionic Commando, where I got to do a shirt design featuring the exploding head of General Bad. Wow, yeah. I think so.

Not Hitler. Not Hitler. Not Hitler. And it's censored on the site. Bangamer's first censored t-shirt. I kind of would love to just walk around with that shirt just to see people gawking. It's pretty gory, but I'm really happy that Capcom let me do it.

That's awesome that that's official merch of that exploding head. Yes, I had to explain myself too. They were like, why did you choose to use this imagery? I'm like, oh, everyone likes this scene. And they're like, okay. And also, I sell my original

prints and a lapel pin as well if you go to shop.spacecoyote.com Please support my original work so I can justify selling more of it and making more of it. Awesome. Well, yes, as for us, thanks, Dina, for being on the show. Really appreciate it. And as for us, you can find us at the Talking Simpsons Network if you go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons. That supports everything that we do.

And if you sign up at the $5 level, you'll get a lot of great incentives like bonus podcasts. And also you'll get every episode of this podcast a week ahead of time and ad free. And the same goes for our other sister podcast what a cartoon also if you sign up at the ten dollar level you'll get access to our monthly movie podcast where we do what a cartoon but for a different animated film our first one was bad man mask of the phantasm we don't know yet what our december one is going to be it's up to the audience so if you sign up at the ten dollar level you'll be able to hear even more podcasting fun from me and Bob. That's right. Again, that's patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons.

If you sign up today, you'll hear so many bonus podcasts you've never heard before. If you like listening to us, there's a lot you've missed in the past 18 plus months of our Patreon. So check it out, please, at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. We'd appreciate it a lot. As for me, I've been one of your hosts, Bob Mackey. Find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. My other podcast is Retronauts. It's a classic gaming podcast every Monday

and occasionally on Friday at retronauts.com or go to look up Retronauts in your podcast machine. It is a classic gaming podcast. If you like video games, we have to have talked about something that you like. So check it out. It's retronauts.com. Henry.

H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G. That is my Twitter handle. If you follow me there, you'll find out all the news when we do new episodes, when we announce new events like our, don't forget, January 16th at SF Sketch Fest, me and Bob, 8 p.m. on that Wednesday night. We'll be doing another live podcast recording, so check that out. And you'll learn about all that and more if you were to follow me on Twitter, H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G.

Thanks so much for listening, folks. We'll see you next week for Homer's Enemy or Homer the Sloth Has No Enemies. We'll see you then. You've just got to accept it. Your Game Boy is gone. It's at the bottom of the ocean. Aye. Aye. Aye.