Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Krusty Gets Kancelled

Episode Date: February 1, 2017

We wrap up the fourth broadcast season with the arrival of Gabbo, the fall of Krusty, a cavalcade of guest stars, and even the sweetest plum, a special surprise in this week’s podcast…

this week's talking simpsons is brought to you by audible and you can go to audible trial.com slash laser time and get started with a free audiobook and a free 30-day trial i heartily endorse this event or product product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, where we slaughter the Special Olympics. I'm your host, Bob Mackie, that guy who always wears a shirt, and this is the LaserTime Podcast Network's chronological exploration

of The Simpsons. Who else is here with me today? Hey, it's Henry Gilbert, and I thought I'd get in shape by drinking milkshake. And who else? Chris, Ray J, and T-Stone. Oh, we're going to learn all about Ray J. Johnson in this episode, which is Crusty Gets Cancelled. Gabble, gabble, gabble!

And it is. He'll tell us what to do. Yes. We learn from his teachings. Very happy. And in the middle of the show, hey, i know some of you skipped the breaks we got something very special from our buddy uh eric nagel of it's eric nagel on sirius xm good previous thank you so much eric yeah he has quite he gave us quite a treat which you will hear in the break you just gotta listen to that incredibly special and unprecedented yes first of its kind you will not believe who you will hear. We are not overestimating.

Yes. It is not fake and it is real. Krusty Gets Cancelled aired on May 13th, 1993. And Chris will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real life history. Oh, my, my, my, my. You're not going to believe this because the brand new Pentium ship has spawned a line of new PCs. It's announced that Dan Rather will be joined by co-anchor Connie Chun. And apropos of this episode,

Bette Midler announces her first world tour in over a decade. Wow. Right, wow. That's awesome. And now Rather is just retired. No, no, no. Rather was written out of office

by a witch hunt. Yes, that is true. But now he tweets a lot about things. He is the best Facebook. Oh, Facebook. Hey, we're going to cool it on the politics people. But if you're into that, follow Dan Rather. He's America's dad.

Yes. He has the best Facebook page. Now he's America's grandpa, I think. But I'll just say this really quickly. Some people took exception to a thing I said last episode. I apologize. And I'm sorry about that. But if you want to see my full thing about it, it's on the web page for last week's episode in the comments.

But again, sorry. You got to go. You got to go. That was an offhand remark. There's going to be many of them. You're not always going to disagree with them. And everybody's very sensitive. And we understand that.

So we're going to try and write it. These are dark times. And I can't believe I was only that unhappy on inauguration day compared to now. How unhappy I feel. And we're recording this the Monday before it. Whatever. I don't want to mark this. Do it again.

Hey, that was the top. How about this? Here's a clip from our latest president. That ought to hold a little SLBs. Oh, man. Here you go. He's doomed now. Yes.

Yeah. So I want to tell you guys a little story about this episode. So Krusty Gets Cancelled is one of my favorites. Dude, it's really good it is really good but after you're watching it it's it's not in my top five anymore but i did really love it but it is a personal favorite of mine because my uncle eric knew i was a huge simpsons fan he also is he's he's my favorite uncle because he's the one most like me on my mom's side who was like a like on my dad's

side you're a little younger than your dad um only slightly yeah but he's so on my dad's side it's just like a bunch of hunters and good old boys on that side and i just have nothing in common with them except for video games they didn't play video games with me but on my mom's side my uncle eric loved comic books loves the simpspsons, and him and his wife always get all these cool Simpsons things. But he got me, on a trip to L.A., a Simpsons script. Whoa. A for-real Simpsons script that was being sold at a convention, and it was for this episode. Wow.

I didn't hear about this. And I've been saving it for this very episode. Oh, my God, Henry, you diabolically. I lost the script a long time ago. Oh, Jesus. But I committed it. I memorized so much of it. Was it a table read script?

It's not this episode in a lot of ways. So on the commentary, they talk about, well, celebrities dropped out. We wanted to get more celebrities. We wanted to get first and next person Y. And so that means the script also went through a lot of drafts where they have to pull in and out celebrities and in this draft of it it was not the red hot chili peppers i believe it was rolling stones in it but the one i remember so well is there's an entire subplot that one of the celebrities has to move in with the simpsons and it's bill murray in this

one whoa he's a total of course he said no. And he's a total mooch who is taking everything from them. And the joke of Homer opening, trying to open up the couch and tearing the couch apart, that was for Bill Murray in this script. Wow. And he's constantly eating their food, which there's no jokes about that in this episode.

And there's even the line at the end, I remember this crystal clear, Homer is talking with Bill Murray even the line at the end i remember this crystal clear homer is talking with bill murray at the party at the end and he and bill murray's like hey it all worked out right homer and uh you don't mind if i stay a little bit longer homer says you're wearing my pants and then bill murray runs away in classic simpson style and that and i think that you're wearing my blank joke definitely got reused it got reused i checked it on frankie act the closest thing i could find was it got reused in the next

season when homer and skinner are together uh right in uh being sequestered right sequestered so is it only now we know how foolish it is to write anything for bill murray and expect him to show up yes i guess we didn't know that before but not to get too far ahead of ourselves that that was going to be carson's character yeah. Yeah, so from reading that script, it also let me know just how much they traded around jokes of, okay, take out that celebrity, put in this one, and just cycle through it. And that's how, yeah, that Carson didn't want to be a mooch. So then they give the mooch jokes to Bill Murray. And then Bill Murray drops out, and then they're just like, okay, Krusty stays with them,

and they just kind of insert it into it. You're right. Man, that sequence is really short. It really is. It really is. This episode flies so fast. Watching it yesterday, I'm like, no scene lasts more than 10 seconds. This might be the most fast-paced episode.

It's actually paced like a Halloween episode because they have so much content, so many characters to cram into this, and just one solid story to tell throughout. If you have a good memory of it, it'll feel like an hour-long or movie-like episode because they have so much content, so many characters to cram into this, and just one solid story to tell throughout. If you have a good memory of it, it'll feel like an hour-long or movie-like episode because there's so many things that happen. But it was amazing to read that script. I wish I kept track of it, I think, because I was like a dumb teen who was like, I'll just tear through this or whatever.

Drawing your Spider-Man Halloween costumes on the pages. Well, no, the staple fell out of it. I was like, eh, why put it back together?-Man Halloween costumes on the pages. The staple fell out of it. I was like, eh, well I put it back together. It's just a pile of pages. But now I see it's a document that just shows you how much one episode can change before you see it on TV. That's crazy. They sold scripts at the

studio? I wonder if somebody just was selling it illegally. I think you're not allowed to sell scripts. You can find them at lots of conventions and bookstores in Hollywood and stuff like that. Just these loose table read scripts. I think you're not allowed to sell scripts. You can find them at lots of conventions and bookstores in Hollywood and stuff like that. Just these loose table read scripts. Because once they're done with them they just get rid of them. So they give them to fans. But for animation it's not the same as

a shooting script for a live action. They change so much. So one thing I wanted to mention in this episode is they've been casually creeping towards making Krusty into Johnny Carson. Making his show into The Tonight Show. In this episode he Johnny Carson, making his show into The Tonight Show. In this episode, he is Johnny Carson and his show is The Tonight Show. I think in I Love Lisa, his 29th anniversary special, they were setting him up to be a talk show host.

Now it's like, who is Krusty? Why do kids like his show? Why does he know Bette Midler so well? I mean, it doesn't make any sense unless you know about Johnny Carson and know who they're directly mirroring. And Johnny Carson basically quit his show or retired the year prior, like almost a year prior to this episode. Made huge waves. Yeah. He said he retired.

And so this is – he retired in like his – what was it? Like 39th or like 42nd anniversary. It was right after 30. Because everybody, as i recall everybody's like no we just did your 30th anniversary and they're like well it's now 32 that movie the late show points out the late shift late shift that uh a lot of slander was put in the paper to call johnny old hack and washed up even though he didn't have any intention of retiring but all of a sudden there was critical pressure for him to retire even though his ratings weren't

bad yeah i think he said once they start making fun of you that's when you quit yeah because you're a joke yeah it's true and those were planted by jay leno's manager according to the late shift that kathy bates she's so evil i love the late shift it's really good i actually was going to talk about it later in this one but yeah this was this was the full transformation of him into johnny carson even meeting johnny carson though to show how different he is but also gene and reese reese especially when i've heard him on non-commentary tracks fucking hates johnny carson he hated everything he he like he hated all his time working on him i don't want to put words in his mouth but yeah

uh if you listen to like on the gilbert godfrey podcast other podcasts he said hated every minute working on carson he was a jerk who fired writers for no good reason and he didn't get why jokes were funny and every bit that you like of carson he just stole from somebody else yeah and they worked on the show for maybe 18 months and met him twice maybe two or three times and so also when you see the crust has, there's jokes in here of like Krusty, it's a recurring gag where Krusty says, I gotta steal that bit.

I'm wondering now if that is just that. Yeah, Johnny stole everybody's bits. I've always thought Krusty is the stand-in for any kind of media entertainment person.

That Springfield needs to tell a joke. It really, he's really just a character that can embody any old Hollywood story, any old TV story. But in this episode,

he's specifically a Johnny Carson figure. He is specifically Johnny that's because he's elvis he's elvis briefly but i think that's because they they needed a recent template for someone moving on and getting yeah like basically any celebrity scandal can be embodied by crusty in some way throughout the course of the series weird because like on the surface it's about a warring kid show uh warring kid shows but it's not even he's not really even on the surface, it's about a warring kid show, warring kid shows. But it's not really even on a kid show in this episode. It's so strange. It is on 4 o'clock and kids watch it. So this was also meant as a sequel of sorts to their softball episode. Oh, yeah.

And recorded in the same way. They're just like, they recorded all those MLB stars whenever they came into town from LA, but they were planning it for a really long time. So I think they were also like, well, let's just give us extra time to record every celebrity we can get. They tried to get a president. They couldn't, they tried to get a living president.

They couldn't. They said the closest they got was actually Reagan because Reagan was friends with Elizabeth Taylor and she just old Hollywood buddies. Jesus. Like, so she tried to hook them up and they said that Reagan did send them a letter of like, sorry, I can't do it. But it was like from Reagan's personal pen and John Schwarzwelder priced it so highly.

And so they couldn't get that. People dropped out like Bill Murray, the Rolling Stones, other famous people who weren't in the draft in mind. And they had to like get it a lot more modular than it was or they had to also reuse voice to do voice actors on that and that's what i did i totally forgot about this because the opening is them watching television springfield squares yes ringier wolf castle to block oh ringier wolf castle star of mcbain and the upcoming film help my son is a. My son returns from a fancy East Coast college and I'm horrified to find he's a nerd.

I'm laughing already. It's not a comedy. I thought that had Barry White in it. It does. I thought the clip did. Oh, okay. He's in there for like four seconds. Apparently they threw him in here.

They go up to a square. I wonder if they paid him twice for that. I think they have to. They have to. Yeah, with two episodes yeah two episodes to be a sag show they'd have to do that well this this whole joke revolves around uh charlie weaver who is a character i couldn't read that um okay this is such an old lost time reference you know what hollywood squares is oh god they did have they did have the wookie gold whoopie goldberg show that's almost 20 years old wookie goldberg Goldberg. Is that a Lazer Time Forum's username? Whoopi Goldberg? So they did have that show, but this joke predates the revival of it.

This is mocking the 70s one, which is why Wally Cox is in there, even though he had been dead since 73. He's in Springfield Square. Yeah, I mean, Charlie Weaver, he was played by an actor named Cliff Arquette. He started on the Jack Parr version of The Tonight Show, playing this very folksy character with a straw hat, suspenders, and these, like, horn-rimmed

glasses, and this is who they're making fun of because he came back in the 70s. He was, like, on The Tonight Show in the 50s, and he came back in the 70s on The Hollywood Squares, and that's, he was always center square, I guess, or just always on the show. And he refused to leave his square, but his steadfastness to not leave a natural disaster is actually a parody of a real-life tragedy. Oh, my God.

In 1980, Mount St. Helen exploded. It was a volcano in America, though it was just a mountain. And then occasionally this will happen where mountains become volcanoes. And people were evacuating. But one man, Harry R. Truman, not to be confused with the president. No relation. Held up a newspaper, refused to leave. He lived on the Spirit Lake Lodge, and he said he would never move.

He was like, I'm not moving. I'm west of the mountain. I'm north of the mountain. Not going to affect me. I'm not moving. And he didn't make it. Everything's gone. And so, this is a clip about him and a song written in tribute to Harry R. Truman.

I ain't afraid of no roller coaster. Weeks and weeks of anticipation, waiting for the mountain to blow but old harry truman made his declaration no way in hell was he gonna go if i leave my home i die in a week this mountain's where i buried my wife yeah so he had about a week to live anyways i mean they make a good point he's like he was an 83 year old man what he was an 83-year-old man. What, he was going to leave his home and then, what, live three more years? That song's written like 15 years beforehand? So this reference is so deep, we're looking at the fossil record of it now.

It decarbonated on me. And now you get it, right? I hope. And Homer's... I love the meanness of Homer's, well, he's dead now! Yeah. And they start cackling, yeah. Also, a first in that clip

mcbain had never been identified by his actor name to that point that was the first so we also may have entered the time of mcbain is not a character anymore on the show because the mcbain film exists and they were told by fox legal they couldn't do it. Well, there is that joke, Magic Ticket, My Ass, McBain, in this season. People still call him McBain, but he exists in the world as Ramiro Wolfe. There are no more McBain movies being made. Or Mendoza. It is true, though.

We are two episodes away from Late Night with McBain. Right. Maybe you're all homosexuals, too. And we played this early in the show, but... I was trying to think. I felt like there was a lot of analogs to that. Like something marketed, but they wouldn't tell you what it was

for what felt like weeks at a time. Well, on the commentary, I think Al Jean says, this all comes from John Schwartzwelder, who worked in ads for a long time. So he knew the strategies to get people excited about something without them really knowing what it was. So maybe this is something that he had a hand in. Maybe he knew about ad campaigns that did the same thing.

The only one I can think of off the top of my head, sadly, is like on this date, McDonald's grows up. And for a month, there was like these videos, like security cam footage of Ronald McDonald walking on golf courses and like washing his car. For the big, were still called the arch it was eventually revealed to be the burger with the grown-up taste the arch deluxe which of course is gonna let people down if you're like teasing something as a i just don't see that happen at all anymore it felt like a very 90s tease sorry video games do that still but that's that's what felt like that's true yeah they do that's what

felt like modern day coverage of pop culture things in that homer's reading a newspaper like who is gabbo and lisa's just like they're not giving you much to go on yeah it was like that maybe i'm just identifying that as somebody who has to write an article out of nothing for a tease but it's just like that newspaper was the same deal like well we well, we know the title of Star Wars, The Last Jedi. What could this mean? But who is The Last Jedi? I've got to get to 400 words. This is why we have, well, Jedi is plural, man.

Relax. Anyway. It's true. Anyway, I'm pretty sure there was something specific that happened just like this. But it's on the tip of my tongue. It's hard to Google. I couldn't figure it out. But that's why we have comments.

Lasertimepodcast.com. Yell us in the comments. this but it's on the tip of my tongue it's hard to google i couldn't figure it out but that's why we have comments laser time podcast comments uh and also well there's a great sequence of the whole like all of spring and that's why i love this episode it gives like all the characters of springfield a moment and great one from reverend lovejoy everyone is saying gabble this and gabble that but no one is saying worship this and Jericho that. Was this about Gabbo? Was this about Gabbo? Gabbo is coming. Yeah, that Burns,

it was a bit of an easy Burns joke. They had it better this season. You see that? Gabbo is coming. Which almost, that seems like, Burns is so old, he should be like that harlot, Gabbo. She's not as good as the person who, that young strumpet she's no mary pickford there you go hey you wish i was there uh but finally gabbo is

introduced i can't believe it our first glimpse of gabbo he'll tell us what to do hello i'm gabbo and i'm arthurrandall. That's easy for you to say. You don't have a hand up, you tookus. Oy, hey! Oh, Gabbo, you'll say anything. And you can watch us every afternoon at four. That's the same time as Krusty the Clown. Uh-oh, that cute little character could take America by storm.

All he needs is a hook. I'm a bad widow boy. Ay caramba! Okay, wait a minute. I am dying to explore Gabbo. We have to go to a break real fast, but we got a special treat for you and we're going to go out with a full Gabbo song so enjoy that. We'll be back in just a few seconds. You're gonna like me!

You're gonna love me! Cause I can do most anything! I can do the holly golly! I can imitate Vince Scully. Let's take time out from this triple play to talk about farm and dance, pure pork sausage. I'll give out shiny dimes. I'll travel back in time. You're gonna like him.

You're gonna love him. It's the greatest show in town The Simpsons will be right back. How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there. You see, our new Net Zero Hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels and much more. Making your usage clearer, your trips greener,

your home cozier and your world brighter. and much more. Making your usage clearer, your trips greener, your home cozier, and your world brighter. Find our net zero hub at electricireland.ie. Thank you so much, Talking Simpsons listeners, for listening to this season four finale of Talking Simpsons that has almost no meaning given the kind of show we do

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Lazer Time's weekly bonus show exclusively on patreon.com slash Lazer Time. Here's a taste of what you've been missing. Oh, speaking of tech, there was a clip I didn't get to use with him. You will be sucked. You will find us many other games. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You will find many more enemies surrounding you compared to the other hack and slash titles.

This is not the original hack and slash anymore. This is an extreme. Extreme. I love Takuji. I love him. So I honestly can't remember if I was there or not. I think I was there, but it's also I've heard the clip so many times now. I'm like six years of that stuff is just like a blur.

Because it was like you'd go to a conference, and the moment one is over, you are either running or trying to get a cab or trying to like cram a $9 pretzel while you walk fast and drop shit to get to the next conference. After six hours of conferences, then it's like time to write stuff. Well everyone goes and parties and you're like who the fuck is partying? Who's writing all the stuff that I see? Oh it's me.

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You'll help us live and we'll do our best to help you never be bored again. Coming back in with one of the most 90s themes of all time, the Melrose Place theme song. I love it. We'll tell you why in a bit. Can we talk about Gabbo? The Gabbo thing. I love it. We'll tell you why in a bit. But, okay. Can we talk about Gabbo? Gabbo.

So the Gabbo thing got me watching it. Like, when I, not got me watching it, but I mean, I was also like, what is Gabbo? When, in first viewing as a kid, I was so excited. I was disappointed in the reveal, even as a plot device. I was just like, what? Why do people care about this? Do people like this? Yeah. And it's him doing, it's Azaria doing is Jerry Lewis, is extreme Jerry Lewis.

And it is a reference to a classic film. Yeah, it's a reference to The Great Gabbo, a 1929 early sound film. And I was watching parts of it today, not at work. It's about a ventriloquist played by Eric von Stroheim. He's the butler in Hollywood Boulevard. A fantastic actor. I used to be someone. Exactly. And it's about his spiral into madness.

And he has a puppet named Otto. I don't think the puppet is evil, but it's a pre-code film, so it's pretty spicy. If you want to see women who are dead and sexy, and dead sexy, please watch The Great Gabbo. It's on YouTube. Somebody put it up there. At this point in The Simpsons, Gabbo's not a puppet. Gabbo's a human who is a puppet. A living puppet?

Gabbo, every other scene outside of his song, he is a puppet. He's a puppet in those scenes. No, he smokes and acts on his own accord. Off camera. What I do like is that he lives as a puppet. Arthur Crandall's insane. He's an insane man. I want to say that because some of the best animated sequences involve that Gabbo song and this is a beautiful animated episode David

Silverman directed this so you can see him all over this episode so Chris you must have loved the as a kid you must have loved the song and answer known it was Pinocchio like you yeah yeah but what I've got no strings yeah I know you're a Pinocchio super fan. I love Pinocchio. One of the dumb things I collect, people, and you can help me out with this, is every kind of Pinocchio home video format. Wow. Laser discs, reel to reel, anything. I don't go looking for it. When I find it, I buy it.

So when I was 10, this was another one of those magical, I get this moment when I saw that song and dance. Charlie, what's his name? More of a send up of Charlie McCarthy. Charlie McCarthy. Maybe Howdy Doody a little bit. I mean, yes, but no, no, no. The character of Gabbo is, but the Gabbo song.

Oh, yeah. The Gabbo song is I Got No Strings. It's I Got No Strings. Like when the Cossacks come in, you're just like, yeah, this is exactly. I love that jets fly from backstage. It's like the Blue Angels come out or whatever. This is a pre-drone world. That joke is great.

It is amazing. And I think it's a great piece of animation, and I think it's a very TV writer concern of, oh, no, Krusty's in danger in his time slot. What is he going to do? Like, the drama comes from a time slot. This episode is going to be such a time capsule. And when you have a show like this with this premise, you normally don't show the very impressive thing.

You show the reactions to it because you realize I can't write something that lives up to what I'm promising. But in this case, it kind of does. It kind of goes a lot with the animation and the stage production and everything. And he does do Vin Scully who just retired last year. He's still alive. And when he says,

I can even do Vin Scully, then it's just cheerers Scully. Which he does pretty naturally anytime he's announcing a sports game. A sports game. So Vin Scully was the announcer for the Dodgers, correct? First the Brooklyn Dodgers, and then he went with them to LA, and he

just retired, did his last LA Dodgers game. When their season was up, he did his last one. A barrage of pretzels knocking white. That's definitely him. So of course they love Scully. They love Vin Scully. At the Simpsons, he's the LA announcer.

The sausage reference is the fact that he would promote the sausages they were selling, the Dodger dogs, in the stadium. But this is him talking about Lucky Strike, which will not kill you. When the red legs come up to bat, it means we have time, too, to wax eloquent about Luckys. And that's an easy assignment, will not kill you. Wow, I love old cigarette commercials. And no filter means more tar. Delicious tar for your lungs to chew.

Delicious tar. Good old cigarettes. That's great. I say smugly as I take a hit off my vape. You're going to learn how that kills you for another five years. Well, speaking of smoking, Krusty is chain smoking this idea. That dummy doesn't scare me. I've had plenty of guys come after me, and I've buried them all.

Hobos, sea captains, Joey Bishop. Don't forget the Special Olympics. Oh, yeah. I slaughtered the Special Olympics. Slaughter. Just the joy he has in slaughter. Also, beating Joey Bishop, another Tonight Show reference. That's right, yeah.

Joey Bishop went up against Carson, lost badly. Not even the Mafia could save a show. But his sidekick Regis Philbin still is doing things. Won't be using the death jingle for him many times. Nope, not yet. Cross those fingers. And Penny Candy was back and

actually got a line. Her last speaking role for I think like 20 years. I just love this clip of Quimby. He loves Gabbo, too. I admit I used the city treasury to fund the murder of my enemies. But as Gabbo would say, I'm a bad little boy.

That is so extreme. Yeah, just admitting to murder. Accessory to murder. The murder of my enemies. The murder of my enemies. The murder of my enemies. Give us hell, Quimby. My favorite thing, because I only recently ordered this on Deep. Henry, you tend to buy shirts of everything you've ever loved.

I'm not jealous of any of them, other than Worker and Parasite. Well, kids, this is where you would watch Itchy and Scratchy, except they're on the Gabbo show now. So, here's Eastern Europe's favorite cat and mouse team worker and parasite what the hell is that i love worker and so much. If you've ever watched Soviet cartoons, they are this. I don't know that it's directly based on this, but it's available to buy in a DVD collection. But the Tom and Jerry streak of Gene Deitch?

I think that's his name, yeah. Yeah, back when all the studios shut down their theatrical animation divisions, MGM wanted to keep Tom and Jerry going, so they farmed it out to Czechoslovakia. To a bunch of untrained animators. There's a lot online about it now because I think he just wrote a book or published a book. And it's like, because he hated the characters initially. He thought they were too violent. And you see these things now.

You know what I found out? What's the creepiest thing in the world? Cheaply produced children's entertainment. And these cartoons are so unnerving, these Tom and Jerry cartoons. The sound is off. The sound effects are off. The music is weird. They seem to be using existing MGM sound on, like, recorded badly and sent over to them.

Or recording their own in an echoey room. Just everything feels so dire and weird and haunted, housey. And it's Tom and Jerry trying their best to be Tom and Jerry. That's what I loved about the horrible sound in the worker and parasite cartoon, too. You got to. If you smoke pot, look up one of these cartoons, turn the lights out, you will get chills by the horrible dog and cat noises they add on to the MGM stock noises. I actually interacted with the director of those cartoons on Facebook a year ago. I have a friend that's an

animation historian. He wrote the Ren and Stimpy book we talk about on here a lot. I think he was talking about it or he was posting about it on Facebook and I was just mentioning those cartoons. I was like, oh, I hated them. They were terrifying to me as a kid. They're so ugly. And then the next post is that director who's in his 90s kind of being like, oh, you know,

we worked really hard. We didn't have that many resources. He was just sort of apologizing for his work. And I was like, I'm so sorry. You're still alive and I treasure you. Thanks for working on these. He was a big deal at his time. He created a bunch of cartoon characters over there that I've never heard of. But as a result, once you know how they're made, they're

beautiful. Yeah, they were really made against adversity. Yeah, they're not Tom and Jerry cartoons. They just happen to feature them. But they're really surreal and interesting to watch. But Worker and Parasite does remind me of about 10 years ago when I worked at a video store, this DVD came out, which was a collection of Soviet cartoons. It was all the Soviet animation, which was paid for by the state to talk about how evil capitalism is. And I agree with them. It worked on me.

No, but it was. I, for one, welcome my Russian overlords. So there were a couple, but there were some in there that were like, oh, this looks so cheap. And then there was actually a couple that had sub Disney short animation, but good animation. And they were just kind of amazing to see. But one of them definitely had that background of unhappy workers that a worker in Parasite bounce in front of. If you've been fortunate enough to see films from that period, it all concerns the proletariat. Almost all entertainment.

It's real weird. It was really relevant. On the Soviet cartoons, they also got it America for its racism, which is just guys have your own you guys got your own business to deal with racism in russia but anywho uh if you want to get your own worker and parasite shirt they sell them on threadless the best they sold out well maybe that's why i was jealous of you i was trying to get it i'd seen other one i seen the other one i bought on threadless still threadless has the best because they're all references to the good seasons you like and they don't have a dumb joke on it of, like, girls like it when I bleh or whatever. Say hello to my little friends, and it's a picture of Bart and Milhouse and Martin.

I hate all that. Well, and speaking of Milhouse, I noticed this in this episode and in the next one. They needed a third friend for lines for Bart and Milhouse. And so they're just like, it's Nelson. Nelson will be the third person. It's the first time he's just playing with them and he's not trying to beat them up or trying to get something out of them. And by the fifth season,

the next time Nelson is there, he will be the combo of like, I will hang out with you, Bart, but I will also punch you in the stomach. I want to think that he bonded with Bart over their moms both being in jail and they became friends over that. And they are correct that slot cards are boring. This is one of my favorite...

Go ahead. Well, first off, let's deconstruct that Krusty had such a terrible deal with Itchy and Scratch that they could just leave for Gabbo. He should have had like a year exclusivity. And we've talked about those old... All those children's shows of like the late 60s were to repackage theatrical shorts.

So they'd get a clown usually to host a children's show. They were not new cartoons. So they could play Popeye cartoons. It's sort of like when the king of cartoons would come in for five minutes to waste your time. And also, but they weren't married to the show that they were on. So they could leave. But Krusty's own ventriloquist doll scared me when I first saw it.

That shit is so funny and doesn't... Him in the stands with the shrieking children is one of my favorite images of the entire episode. I didn't get until re-watching it as an adult, like, oh, his mustache is really long to hide his mouth when he's doing ventriloquism. Oh, I didn't think of that, actually. That's why he has a stupid long mustache. He's not even alive. He's dead.

Crack. I did just find somewhere in the episode, Cabo or Krusty broadcast at a KBBL, normally the radio station, but the TV station is called KBBL, which normally is just Channel 6. Yeah, well, Krusty films out of, well, he films out of Krusty Loose Studios,

which is attached to Channel 6. In my hometown, the TV station and the radio station, one of them had the same letters, call letters. There was a WKBM radio station, WKBM TV station. I mean, everybody in my town, Tallahassee, Florida, was tripping over the right to call themselves WFSU. Beat your ass every year at the National Bowl. I don't know shit about sports. Go Manatees. So the failure of Worker and Parasite is the end of the show.

But if we, that's the end of the act. But if we had watched, as we would see in the 138 special, they then had an extra scene where Krusty actually gets canceled. Like is directly, the actual title of the episode happens. Otherwise, Krusty gets canceled off screen. It's the empty audience then cut to gives it the illusion that he threw the towel yeah yeah and so that's what this clip is and it features one of like why i think it's such a great animated episode well that's it we've been canceled i think

we can be proud that we never did a bad show except for that week ray jay johnson was my co-host you could call me ray and you can call me Jay. That thing was funny for about three seconds. But the important thing is, we're like a family. Go on, Steve. Shut your hole! The animation moment is Mr. Teeny takes a swig of a liquor flask and then gets the liquor shakes.

There's no reason for that scene to exist but this this episode is filmed with that's gotta be just david silverman or the animator just to drive home yes the monkey is drinking he smokes cigars he drinks liquor he eats ice cream and brad bird was still the supervising director and was taking stuff in too i mean there are some brad bird drawings in this scene in this episode right i meant to mention it right when he introduces worker and parasite those are some of the david silvermanist poses ever especially when he goes but we've got worker and parasite and he like points a finger up and like that is it i know david silver you can definitely tell it's him i feel certain of that but i do want to move on to

ray j johnson who they shit all over future guests ray J. Johnson. So when they go to Branson in season 14 or 15, Ray J. Johnson is a voice on the show. That's the episode where Grandpa gets a new girlfriend and he's acting like a teenager and Homer's having to be the father for him. Exactly. It's not great. And so they go off to Branson to get married. It's not great, but

I would say it's better than any Mike Scully episode or late Mike Scully episodes because it at least has a family story. It comes from family drama. And I like the Branson story because my grandma went there a lot. And the tagline for Branson is they took Nick at night and made it a town. And Ray J. Johnson, born Bill Saluga in Youngstown, Ohio, my birthplace, where only big losers come out of, like me. You're the second most famous person from Youngstown?

I think so, yeah. Who's not a criminal. Or Ray J. Johnson. But yeah, he was a comedian. He did a bit, basically, where he didn't want you to call him Johnson. So he went through all the names you could call him because he didn't want you to call him a dick, basically. Like, don't call me Johnson because Johnson means dick. And I have a clip from King of the Hill where Bobby and Joseph, they are mystified why their parents think this is funny.

So they're sitting down and listening to this record of Ray J. Johnson being like, why? Why am I? Why? What is this? My dad never laughs at anything. So this has got to be good. Hey, Johnson. Oh, you doesn't have to call me Johnson.

My name is Raymond J. Johnson Jr. Now you can call me Ray. Or you can call me Jay. Or you can call me RJ. Or you can call me RJJ. I don't get it. What are they laughing at? And who's he talking to? Is he talking to us? I'd like to hear more from the guy who said, hey, Johnson.

So in the episode that he's a voice on in The Simpsons much later, the line he does in the song about Branson, which is a pretty funny song, he's like, you can call me Ray, you can call me Jay, call me whatever you want, I do seven shows a day. So he's kind of rubbing it in their face like, I'm popular here, no one knows about me, but they come to see me. But they couldn't get Mr. T for that song. Oh, really?

They have to sub in Mr. T t who will later be that's right yeah it's like come on mr t you don't want a paycheck for this that's so cruel to ray j like it's just like that's funny for three seconds and then following that up like they'll trash him later in this episode yeah this episode's so much but it is the most time capsule-y episode it really really is no one will get under 20 yeah both charlie weaver and ray j johnson i think are our deepest digs into references so far doing this show so then he goes to johnny carson's place and it is a magical moment because johnny carson he made three appearances after retiring from the tonight show only two of them speaking he uh he appeared at a teacher's awards thing he appeared

and said nothing on letterman when letterman went to la i believe he took down his glasses and drove away yeah oh then he came into the audience and sat at the desk and then got out from the desk but allegedly he was submitting monologue jokes all the while to david letterman in secrets yes which he wouldn't reveal letterman didn't reveal until his death. Oh, wow. And so the only other time Carson's death. Letterman is hopefully still with us

depending on when this airs. Looking like Santa Claus these days. But I guess that means before we hear a clip from Johnny Carson we have to hear a certain jingle.

Well, I'd love that it's in the show. That's true. Rossi, how you holding up? I'm kind of worried about the future. How do you deal with it? Well, you've been on TV longer than I have. I'm sure you've saved up quite a nest egg.

Oh, yeah. Do they still buy human hair down at the wig shop? I really like the mild fiction it sets up. Krusty has been on for longer than the 60s. Yeah. As established in crusty gets busted he started in 63 according to i love lisa yeah that's right yeah so he but they technically wasn't on longer but yeah though this scene it like predates late shift even the

book late shift was 94 but this there are scenes like this in the light shift movie at least i haven't read the book but of johnny playing tennis and getting and david asking him for advice like and this is but this is all these jokes coming together in not just in the i love lisa but also in camp crusty he's at wimbledon as a reference to johnny. God, there's so much Carson baking the crusty. There's so much into him. And this is also after, and it'll actually be in the next episode, too. They'll watch Carson on TV and he'll tell terrible jokes. Yeah, the carnet jokes. Yeah, the joke is like, Carson sucks.

Yeah. And yet they got him on it, obviously, because he doesn't watch The Simpsons. What's he care? So, Henry, you would know this. Was the late show business happening at this time, or was it settled that Letterman was going to CBS and not getting Johnny's? Yeah, he settled it at that point, but he had to finish his contract and then left. Right, because it was this fall where Conan takes over, where Letterman was.

Letterman goes to CBS, fall of 93. So that's all those dominoes have fallen. Yeah. It was really sped up, but Chris knows this really well, too, but it was really sped up in the late shift, obviously. Oh, late shift, sorry. Yeah, it was only a period of a few years or something like that. I don't know why I'm so fascinated by these stories.

It's a great, I love the late shift. I always thought that only I like late night talk shows when I'm a teenager, and apparently they're the most lucrative things in the universe. Yeah, and they mattered the most then, I think. And it's why when you see they announce a new talk show, you groan because you don't care, but it's worth that much money to even fail. They have to try.

And they probably had to pay Johnny Carson money to use the Tonight Show jingle as that. Like that. Maybe that's also why. Yeah, that's watching. There's a great Carson documentary on Netflix. And it was just like that. Carson created the big band noise because he liked that kind of music. So everybody else who made a talk show hired a band with a brass section

because they thought that's what a talk show is, which the Steve Allen who will also be referenced here. It's just, there's no band. It's just a, it's just a desk and a couch. It never happened before Carson. And he literally created the talk show band.

I just, I find that fascinating. You're still watching colbert come in with like blaring trombones like representative of no music being played anywhere chris i think you have to play the death jingle that is yeah me death stalks you at every turn we don't have to play it twice this episode do we uh we might i don't know i mean he died in 2005 at age 79. Notorious chain smoker.

I think one of the last things he... And womanizer. And womanizer. That didn't kill him, though. But I think one of the last things his brother said to somebody was like, those damn cigarettes. You know, just he wouldn't stop chain smoking. He couldn't. So that's what did him in.

He didn't even hide it. He did it on television, too. Wouldn't make it do that. Openly smoking on the fight show. It's really weird. So I love the animation. Speaking of great animation in this, Krusty's animation of shouting at the horse is so great.

Like, now come over here. Okay, I think I have to give that my line of the show. Because it works without any visuals. That's the joke. Come on, you stupid horse. I got my last ten bucks on you no don't look at me run no don't come over here oh boy he's looking his face that's a great joke don't look at me don't come over and it's all just one shot of crusty that is it you know've been to, I've seen live horse races many times, and that's a bad horse. Like, they have trained that horse very badly to stop galloping and then also go to the sides.

Like, that wouldn't happen. And just to give me the excuse to play the Melrose Place theme song, just because of this clip. Oh, Kyle, I just don't think I fit in here at Melrose Place. From now on, I'll be doing the thinking for both of us. Speaking of Melrose Place, thank you to Luke Perry for the shout-out. Wait, Melrose Place? Well, it's produced by the same spelling group of people. And in that scene, Krusty has on fake sideburns.

In a way, he looks really 70s. But that was the visual embodiment of those shows. Luke Perry and Jason Priestley's fucking sideburns. And this show was so huge. I mean, there was a Seinfeld about all the characters being ashamed of watching it, right? I think it was Model Z,

but it's the same. No, it was Melrose Place. Oh, it was Melrose Place. Yeah, Model Z is what the Greyhounds love watching. Yeah, and in my shitty hometown of Youngstown, there was an apartment complex,

a shitty apartment complex named Melrose Place 2. Oh my god. And you really want to live there because it will explode every season. Oh, that's amazing. Yeah. But that was a sexy show to watch as a kid. Definitely. Speaking of jokes that seem like TV writer ones, saying that

Steve Allen did this first, like that is, that was old TV writers like, ah, Steve Allen did that first. Yeah, for a little bit of setup to this clip. He did the man on the street joke. He did this joke. He did that joke. And The Simpsons has an internal fiction where Steve Allen invented everything anyway.

Yes, and he wrote 800 books. Yeah, but Bart and Lisa are watching Gabbo do a prank call that Bart accused him of ripping off Krusty. And Lisa says, Krusty ripped this off of Steve Allen, actually. Hello, is this Krusty the Cloud? Is this the callback for that porno film? Look, I was a little nervous that day, but I'm all manned. I can assure you. No, I represent a Japanese camera company.

We'd like to pay you $2 million to do a camera commercial. Whoa! Me reiki very much! Oh, I hope I didn't offend you. I need this bad. Bad enough to hit yourself over the head with a phone? Whoa, you got it! Go! Go! Ugh, God. What the?

If this is anyone but Steve Allen, you're stealing my bit! Awesome. We saw some of Krusty's racially insensitive comedy much later another fall from grace episode when he has to become a stand-up comic he's had like eight falls from grace yeah but this yeah i wondered if this was the setup for the me so solly routine that with the flapping dicky i would just like to point out it's hank azera zaria doing a george takai impression yeah she'll do again to be Akira. I think he's done it previously to this.

When they can't get Takai, they do him. Yeah, that was great. I love that. They snuck on a joke about that Krusty couldn't get hard for the porn award. I'm all a man. I got a little nervous, but that's so dirty to get on a kid show

and that he's already going to porn, which that also makes me think, like, wait, no, you could be hosting porn. It is the steps. Like, you go to host porn, then porn. You could be in a Playboy video and still be president. I feel like it's less dirty than Chief Wickham telling Lisa and Ralph that he was masturbating.

That he had his pants off in his poison. Or that Marge likes to get fucked slow and then fast. Well, that's just pure and wholesome. Yeah, that's his parents. Two loving adults. I don't have a problem with it. But I did have to burn this one. Ah, Rex Morgan MD, you have the prescription for the daily blues.

Does that say? I don't know if that's an ADR thing because his whole face is covered. Yeah, I'm sure there was one of many comic strip jokes they wrote for that. The running gag is that Homer likes only the bad comic strips. Andy Cap, you wife-beating drunk. Oh, Marmaduke. I know, I told that elsewhere. I not only loved comic books growing up, I loved comic strips.

I loved them. Yeah, I mean, I ritualistically read them for, I don't know, 15 years maybe. Garfield Gateway, Calvin and Hobbes. I ignored talking to women in front of me to read Calvin and Hobbes after puberty. So I would ask my grandparents to save me their comics pages because they lived

in a different town that had all these different comics. And just, they lived in this, if anybody goes by Ocala, Florida, top of the world. The top of the world. It's called the top of the world. The top of the world. It's called the top of the world. It's right next to... Is that where Scarface died?

It's a community of people who drive mostly golf carts around. I believe it's the size of Manhattan. It's just where old people live in little homes all attached to one another. It's like Del Boca Vista, but writ large. It's the most Florida thing you can think of. Apparently, it borders right on John Travolta's personal airport field airport field oh yeah well he's got to live close to Clearwater Florida the home of the Scientology because they're that big they had their own newspaper so like wow I would get like because I think I want to like the fucking Lockhorns and Mother Goose and

Grimm which weren't in our paper but the rest of it was all like Rex Morgan MD and Prince Valiant and all these holdovers Rex Morgan morgan takes back to 1948 i mean i i'm sure these could tell good stories these soap opera comics the problem was they told one scene over the course of three months because it's like two lines of dialogue per day yeah that's how it was i never read those but i as the biggest spider-man fan in the world i would try to read the spider-Man comic strip, and that would drive me crazy too, because it really was,

I'm stealing this observation from Hayes Davenport, the comedian who I really like, who also was one of the first people at the JFK Terminal 4 protest Saturday morning. I was seeing him tweet. Good on him. Before thousands were there, he was tweeting about it.

Anyway, he pointed out that the Spider-Man comic strips had the problem of all those ones of, like, panel one, I will tell you what happened in the previous strip. Panel two, new development. Panel three, to be continued. And then the next day, it's like, here's what happened yesterday. New thing. It's just like, that's interminable. Meanwhile, like, Prince Valiant is a paragraph next to a single picture.

Yeah. What is this? These are insane and like unconscionably boring. And I remember trying to read them, but yeah, my grandparents

paper was filled with them, including Rex Morgan, MD, which is just something I haven't thought of. I don't think anybody said out loud in at least 15 years.

Rex Morgan, MD, everybody. But of course, we move into. Bart's got a, he's got his own plans to destroy Gab of course we move into bart's got a he's got his own plans to destroy gabbo yeah gabbo's got a bit of a plot you know the little sobs quiet oh i wouldn't want to affair the little sobs this is like fully let you know gabbo is a sentient yeah arthur crandall is crazy i think that's only thing. He's just always hanging out with him.

And then off camera, he's just like, please, Cap. I mean, this is based on a movie where a ventriloquist goes insane. So it's happening with Arthur Crandall. And this is a reference to an urban legend. On the commentary, they believe it happened. But I looked it up on Snopes and it didn't. Me too. You did too?

Yes. A radio? Because I thought I could find the clip of it. Me too. I was like, oh, let's find the clip and do it. But yeah, so. Yeah, a kids radio host named Uncle Don It was It was said that he said That ought to hold the little bastards

But it never happened it was just sort of this You know meme or whatever that got passed around And became an urban legend It was the Mandela effect Everybody told each other this happened So it's just a created memory that everybody agrees to. And Del Effect, you might remember recently from Sinbad starring in Kazam, which didn't happen. And even he says no.

And the people do not believe him. That infuriated me. Because I was like, in the mid-90s, I watched every Sinbad film. And I knew. I was like, yeah, you're getting it confused with the superhero Shazam and the Shaquille O'Neal movie. Do you know why somebody dated it back? This is deviating. Because if you watch Kazam on video, like all of us did, there's a preview in the beginning for Sinbad's first kid.

If your brain is mush and not fully formed, you think Sinbad when you think of the Genie movie. And a lot of people are like, you're just racist. You would have seen Sinbad every time you of the Genie movie. And a lot of people are like, you're just racist. You would have seen Sinbad every time you popped in Kazan. And if you're a little kid, it's understandable. But when the actor and director refute you, this doesn't exist. That's the part that drives

me crazy. You may think this is a Berenstain versus Berenstain thing, but this isn't. Human brain is fallible. Look that up, people. It's great. But of course, I love that... This is one of my second favorite Ken Brockman news.

So that's why they say it exactly. This ought to hold a little... But they say SOBs instead of bastards. SOBs is a little... I don't think I knew what it meant. I either heard son of a bitch. I never heard anybody say SOB. But this is my second favorite Brockman moment ever.

Gabbo's kind of language has no place on or off TV. And that's my two cents. I ought to hold those SOBs. What the? Brockman fired. I loved it. They already have the chyron ready. One thing I want to mention not to bring us down is I've seen this device happen in a billion pieces of fiction where a character is brought down by being recorded, not knowing they're being recorded, like a face in the crowd.

So many, so many movies, so many TV shows. We know based on real life, that can no longer happen anymore. You cannot use that plot device. You shouldn't have used it before because it's so overused. But now it's like, this person said the worst thing, now they're president. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yep. It's just proved it doesn't work well, and it it's like, this person said the worst thing, another president. Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

Yep. It's like, this just proves it doesn't work well, and it doesn't work on Gabbo. Well, that's why. I don't explain why it doesn't work on Gabbo other than- Gabbo Gaff. Yeah. Other than like, maybe people were more mad at Brock, and they just looked at Brock. I guess there was no reference to what happened afterwards, right?

I hate people like Ken Brockman who fan outrage of things that a ton of people have said. And someone prominent gets caught saying it. It's a little shocking. That's locker room talk. Well, that's just evidence of a terrible person. I understand that. I want to say this helped bring Gabbo down enough for people to get interested in Krusty again. That's true.

Maybe for a special. That's true, but that's because Krusty's got friends. Yeah. 35 years in show business and already no one remembers me. Just like, what's his name and who's this? And, you know, that guy always wore a shirt. Ed Sullivan? Yeah.

I didn't know you knew Luke Perry. No, he's my worthless half-brother. He's a big TV star. Yeah, on Fox. This is Taylor. Yeah, on Fox. This is Taylor. That Middler. That and I owned a racehorse together. Cruddler.

Hey, Bart, if we get all these big stars to appear on a special with Krusty, it might get his career going again. There we go. There's the answer. That Middler is a national treasure, by the way. I want to reference the Cruddler joke, which is something I just got maybe a few years ago, where you think if they were to own a horse together, they would combine their names to be Misty.

But they did the opposite. They did Cruddler. All right. I didn't get that. So that's the joke. The horse should be named Misty, but it's named Cruddler. Mustafsky. If you've ever gone to a horse race, every name is horrible because they're named by rich guys who just name it like,

this is 17502 or Manowar or all these things. The names make no sense because they're just named by their owners. A little bit of trivia. Before we named the show Laser Time, it was supposed to be a joke based on a Mr. Show sketch where a guy playing pool taught you about a horse race. And Bob Odenkirk yells, here comes Batman the horse. Batman the horse. Pop his delicate condition.

I think we finally don't own the URL Batman the podcast, which is supposed to be the name of it, being exactly what it is now, a show about fucking commercials and action figures. Was one of them if Mandy Patinkin was a horse?

Yeah, if Mandy Patinkin was a horse. And then just, we do the clap every time and then look at the screen and laugh. That's why you have nitrogen. Oh, so great. That's a great sketch.

So Luke Perry being his brother has been completely forgotten. They never mentioned it ever again. Krusty has fallen so far. This is more of the Elvis thing, of Elvis was in a bad place. Yeah. And that I also did love that old Jewish man man he's never been this crazy before this is the only time he's ever been a guy who dances in his underwear on the street but oh great man that's great and the and the old man dancers on the tv i like that i get that joke now that is they'll put

anything on television that was the joke but the timing of this episode though too the third act is half the run time. That's true. I don't know if you saw that. Yeah, they cram every celebrity in that third act. I mean, it's a difficult task. I want to play this one because, man, thank you so much again to Luke Perry. A horsey!

And what are you making, Sideshow Luke Perry? A 19th century carousel. Luke Perry's moment in this episode is kind of my favorite gag being shot of the cannon. It's really good. It's so good, and it just doesn't work in audio. Luke Perry put on his working boots. I'm like, some people said, you get five words from me, and then I go home. But Luke Perry was like, I'm having fun.

Simpsons is fun. I wonder, though. He never came back, and I do wonder that in the time between him recording this episode and it airing was the monorail episode, which had a very, very direct shot at Luke Perry of he's young, he's hip, he's 35 years old. That was also the hokiest Luke Perry joke that everybody was making. I'm sure it was in Mad Magazine, SNL, whatever else. It's happening to Riverdale right now. Yeah. It's true.

Jughead fucks now. He should be. But so they go on a tour of all the celebrities. I'm sad that Bette Midler doesn't have any more great lines. It's everybody. Bette Midler being a scourge to villainy? Yeah. She kills people.

Oh, no! Bat-Middler! Oh! Oh! Oh! Batmiller kills Snake, and whoever this was. I'll get you for this, Midler!

I love the 80s action music. That was actually part of her clause. She wanted to have her environmentalism work through the show in some way. She ran a group at some point. I don't know. I'm not aware of her environment. I'm not aware of a lot about Bette Midler. But I just assumed it was someone like an Ed Begley Jr.

that everybody associated with environmentalism. Well, I mean, she definitely has liberal causes. And she was a big early gay rights advocate. Wait, gay people like Bette Midler? What? When she was coming up in her career as a singer, she would sing at bathhouses in Manhattan, like New York.

That was a famous thing she did. What Bette Midler movie have you actually seen? Hocus Pocus, you've seen that one? We talked about her on 302010 because I had to do a little research on her that she had this huge Disney contract in the mid-80s. Of all movies I have not seen.

Outrageous Fortune, I have seen from down and out Beverly Hills, Beaches. Like a box office titan for a brief period there. And then I didn't see her in a lot after. At this point, I don't think we see Bette Midler in just about anything. Well, she went back to the stage. And should see the the film the rose is great well the song in the rose is one of my favorites i i will cry hearing it but the list of names of things chris won't see well all right well let's straighten this up with hugh hefner in a visit to the playboy mansion the salinization plant yes the grotto uses so water, the bunnies felt we should go this way.

Smart bunnies, Hef. I can't call you Hef, can't I? No. Can you believe? Of all the people who are dead in this episode, none of them are Hugh Hefner? He, I think he's 90? Clean living? No.

Not at all. Well, I will say these things about Hefner that he was, as a pornographer, he was on the edge of freedom of speech stuff and also had been early advocate of pro-life stuff. Pro-life? Yeah. Sorry. Pro-choice. That's right. Pro-choice.

And desegregating television. Yeah. But he did not wear an American flag diaper. Yes, that's true. I mean, he's just the less extreme version larry flint like same with they won't show the beaver in playboy he won't wear a diaper like that's the same but the there are good things about him but he's also gross and a gross old man and he and like the playboy empire was dying and then his daughter took it over and rebranded it for the 90s and then it died again in the 2000s.

And it's still not dead but I believe the grotto he's speaking of is a house he no longer owns. I think he might still live there. I've read a story maybe in the past few years about just how awful the Playboy mansion is. It's just falling apart. It's dilapidated. It's just the shadow of its former self.

People rent out the outside for parties such as video game reviews. To say they've been there. I mean, back in the day, it was like, you'll go here and you'll see James Kahn fucking some lady. Watch Silverstein getting his dick sucked. Yeah, it's all the time.

What? You look up people who were the regulars of the grotto. Show Silverstein! But also, the thing in playboy always was like you wouldn't as as some as somebody who's friend who was friends with people who would look at straight porn and who would look at i'd be like well this is this one's easier for me because i don't have to see all of the vagina that's nice they kind of they shoot around it i fell in love with the first playboy i ever saw featuring kirk cameron's uh on-screen girlfriend from growing pains who he then fired for appearing in that very issue the only pornographic magazine

i saw for years when i saw how good it can get outside of playboy i never ever went back well and by 90s uh i don't have a lot of need for like six thousand dollar stereos that's that is the bulk of the fucking magazine i just remember it's smelling like eight colognes. Like, that's what Playboy is. It just smells like eight colognes. Is that a bunch of inserts in it? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

Well, because that's our audience. They're selling it to you. It was always supposed to be a high-end, you know. And it was known for actually very good journalism. Yeah, yeah. I mean, when you're a kid, I think all the Playboys you see are at least ten years out of date, or at least for me it was. Of course, we all know the phenomenon of finding porn in the woods.

Yes. And that's where I found my first porn. Yeah. My friend caught me with them and was going to tell my mom. I mean, I was lucky in that I had a friend. Well, lucky. I wasn't enjoying those Playboys too much. I was more entertained by my friends getting hard looking at the Playboy.

If I want to be, if I'm being totally honest. How we use electricity can be smarter cleaner and greener At Electric Ireland we can help guide you there You see our new Net Zero Hub has all you need to know

about smart meter plans EV tariffs solar panels and much more Making your usage clearer your trips greener your home cozier and your world brighter find our net zero hub at electricarland.ie but i wouldn't tell them that but anyway uh i had two

different friends who were just like their dads were huge porn freaks who to the point were like if they took a six-month-old playboy their dad would not notice yeah the people i took it from are like he there's so many playboys the garage is filled with a bunch of unguarded porn mags well now we all have porn cataloging software yeah that makes it much easier it's just porn is so nothing and that's what killed playboy so we're not killed but as a tv as a channel it has a website that has a completely different identity from nude women yeah but but in thes, we got to see the resurgence of the centerfold, at least back-to-back,

it was like Pam Anderson and Jenny McCarthy, who became monster stars. And Nicole Smith. And Nicole Smith, too. All three of those blondes became major stars and got to own their own brand and do their own stuff just from the fame that began with being centerfold of the year

and playboy and and then they went on to then they were like well i don't have to show my tits to be a star i can do a sketch comedy show like jenny mccarthy did with with brian posain on it and john benjamin and melissa mccarthy because they're they are related there was a really i remember the only sketch i remember from the Jenny McCarthy show was where they seemed to be setting up that Brian Posehn was the male guy at Jenny McCarthy's office and he was stalking

her, but then it turned out that she was stalking him. Was that during Mr. Show? Like a Mr. Show's downtime? Yes, it was. I just remember the sketch where the puppets kept getting distracted by her and just keep saying, oh, you smell so good. Like, oh, you smell nice or whatever. I will say, at the time, she was so gorgeous and so outgoing and funny.

I really didn't like Jenny McCarthy. And Pam Anderson. Also, like she, Pam Anderson, speaking of people getting political, like she was very anti-fur big vegan big time all that stuff good friends with sam simon uh co-creator of the simpsons to bring this back this is it brings back the simpsons the playboy just about i think the last gas for playboy as a porn as pornography was when they paid in a lot of money to lindsey lowen to get naked for their thing and it's just like it was uploaded immediately it was just, nobody's going to buy these images.

Dudes do want to jerk off to it, but they're not going to buy Playboy. I ain't paying for it. When I grew up a little and did discover other means, opening up a Playboy and their interviewer, those to me are like the first podcasts. It's like a prolonged,

outrageously long, uncensored, unabridged interview with fascinating people I I forget who that guy is I but he's amazing I love the most of their archives are online I think like every centerfold is online for free yeah I don't I don't have the

screen for go out there and jerk off gentlemen but the chili peppers are here the chili peppers are here there's a great moment later but in terms of something for some every time I talk about fucking Woody Woodpecker, which you'd be astonished how much I do it with these seven podcasts I'm on on a weekly basis. Stop talking about it, goddamn it.

Brett and Dave, throw this at me. We want Chili Willie! Chili Willie's the penguin, right? He's the penguin from Land Studios. I think we already know this, but Flea is easily the best actor of the Chili Peppers. He's the worst actor in Back to the Future 2, the best actor in this episode of the Chili Peppers. I don't know if that's John Frusciante.

The Chili Peppers have like 8,000 guitarists. Yeah, I think it's him. It's before Dave Navarro joined up. But this was back when it was cutting edge, like the Chili Peppers were cutting edge. They weren't like the Grateful Dead for our generation now. The Grateful Dead for 90s funk rock. I mean, they've been ruined by John Daly to me. Like, look up Abracadabra, California.

Yeah, look up Abracadabra, California. Bing-a-bong-a-bong-a-bong Burbank. And I have a line in here I say all the time, which is, now back to the wall. It's like if I'm going to go back to doing nothing at work or doing something, I'll say, I'll end a conversation with someone like, and now back to the wall. That whole scene, I should have got it because it's really funny.

Like, can I look at the wall? Not for free. My wallet's in the car. What a funny. Would you walk to the bar without your wallet? It's like, he is so stupid. I look at the wall? Not for free. My wallet's in the car. What a funny, would you walk to the bar without your wallet? It's like, he is so stupid.

Now, back to the wall. Though the writers admit that was them being lazy of like, hey Mo, look over there. What am I looking at?

What, like, he had nothing. Yeah. I mean, Mo is normally not that stupid, but it worked for the scene.

But I'm not going to play the death jingle again, but it's first Liz, baby. Miss Taylor, a couple of grade school kids wanted you to be on a crusty special. I told them to puzzle off. Good.

I remember hoping, watching this, I remember she does have a line. If she has been in The Simpsons twice saying one word, that would be so cool. But she has one more line. That is great. I think that was one of my favorite jokes when I first saw it, that it is a parody of this episode of saying, why would a celebrity do something as children showed up?

She wouldn't. And she died in 2011, by the way. Yes. I remember writing a post about it because... But she was famous for being famous at that point. She was not. And I remember, it's not nice, but I remember my mom or my parents agreeing like, Elizabeth Taylor doesn't look like that now. No, no. But she was

pure Hollywood glamour and we miss her very much. So she was polishing a diamond I think in the scene and she had a perfume called White Diamonds or something like that. I remember that because on CBS one night she appeared on every sitcom to promote her perfume like Murphy Brown and like Evening Shade and all that shit. It was amazing because she had kind of withdrawn from not from public life but from being in anything. Pretty much. Appearing

and stuff and I remember writing about her when she died. It is really sad that if you're from my generation the most common Elizabeth Taylor ground you have is where she plays Wilma's mother in the Flintstones. Oh my god. Well I mean it has to be hard if you're known as the world's

most beautiful woman and you start aging what do you do with that identity after that what's her main name Wilma's main name I forgot

Shale Shale clever great I'm going to have to look this up you guys talk so much please watch

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf fantastic movie you can see her at her best and I just watched Night of the Iguana, which is fucking amazing. You want to see her sexiest, watch her in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. This is a hard segue back into Sideshow Mel working at the Gulp and Blow. The Gulp and Blow and its last appearance, I think.

Gulp and Blow. The manager here is like, for some reason, makes me laugh so much now. We're skipping over Kr manager we're skipping over crusty's weight gain which was like eight seconds yeah but i kind of hate all that it's not great but it's where they put in the bill murray jokes we talked about earlier and also he gains about 200 pounds in three weeks yeah and i also just wanted to mention it because i have a theory that they originally timed out all that stuff to Eye of the Tiger or the Rocky theme. Yeah.

Because it ends just with a straight up – the last two scenes are Rocky. But in The Simpsons house, he's beating – they're boxing in the living room. And Homer eating raw beef. That's hanging in their kitchen. I imagine there's both not enough time for the song and not enough money in the budget

considering how many songs end up being licensed for this episode. But it's silence. Instead, it's silence. Sorry, Krusty. I like it here. Mr. Johansson treats me with dignity. Is this clown bothering you, Mel? That's all right, Mr. Johansson.

I'll handle it. Here's your taco, sir. I don't want it. But this comes out of my salary. If I had a girlfriend, she'd kill me. I love all that, and I want to know more about the incredibly earnest Mr. Johansson. Okay, maybe it was the mustache, but I felt he had a

crush on Mel. Is this man bothering you? I like that he respected him. More managers should be like him. I agree. And meanwhile the, ow! That was... Very much like Barney. It's another precursor to the rake joke. Rake that uh of just

like no do it two more times so i was wrong shale was not her main name slag hoople slag hoople wilma slag hoople sounds like a slur uh wow it's same in common with all the naming conventions of steven universe thanks to the love of those stones uh but this is one of my favorite uh lines of the entire show. Love calling the clip, giving away, give it away, where they are convinced to change the lyrics of the song. Now, boys, the network has a problem with some of your lyrics.

Would you mind changing them for the show? Forget you, clown. Our lyrics are like our children, man. No way. Well, okay. But hear what you say. What I got, you gotta get and put it in you. How about just

what i'd like is i'd like to hug and kiss you wow that's much better everyone can enjoy that i love that it's it's it's based on the famous story that they told the doors and jim morrison to change girl we couldn't get much higher in that song when they sang it on ed sullivan they said they would and then he sang the original lyrics and it got them very angry and it was a very dramatic moment in oliver stone's the doors about kilmer which you if you haven't seen that but you have seen wayne's world 2 you've seen most of that film that's that's amazing that the doors was the touchstone for that movie. But the

that ain't Catcher, not Catcher in the Rye, the Field of Dreams. Yeah, oh, there's one more thing, though. This might be based on the Red Hot, I'm sorry, Rolling Stones having to change Let's Spend the Night Together to Let's Spend Some Time Together on Ed Sullivan in 67. So this happened twice. And they were supposed to be in the show.

And you can see Mick Jagger rolling his eyes as he sings the change line and he slips it in once like one time Sullivan is a very repressive force it seems but having being very knowledgeable of that song I don't remember it being much of a controversy I remember thinking like man I can't believe they're saying this on the radio but I don't remember a lot of people complaining I never until Krusty said it out loud as a kid i never got oh yeah what i got you gotta get and put it in you is three times yeah and we've mentioned the gilbert godfrey podcast a lot on the show and i have to say based on all of the ancient guests they interview you get the sense that ed sullivan was a talentless dipshit weirdo oh yeah that no

one liked yeah yeah and could not take a joke to did not understand anything about show business, just sort of fell into his position. The luckiest man in the world. You're the one guy in his suit who showed up for this thing called television. You're hired. Oh, and I like that Luke Perry says, let's do it for mom. Establishing that is their shared relation because it is hard to imagine Luke Perry being

his father, being Jackie Mason the rabbi. Instead, it's probably his mom got with some gentile and Krusty is so resentful and jealous he wants to disfigure his brother and ruin his life and career those moments of them dreaming of something and then it exactly

happens like that happens all the time in season four so many times like I imagine this and then the exact thing happens and this is more like the elvis special that's like it's a sinatra bit but from the elvis special yes the crusty letters are the elvis comeback special from 68 which speaking to gilbert godfrey podcast he interviews the director of that who pulled it all together and got elvis to lose the weight and get elvis to stop listening to

every enabler in his life and finally do something great. And it sounds like it stuck with Elvis for about a year and then he went back. To dig even deeper, this singing of Send in the Clowns was from the Jackie Gleason show. He would sing it when I think Red Skeleton or some famous clown would come out. He would sing the whole thing very schmaltzy. The schmaltz? Yeah, like this sad and posy.

From Springfieldfield the entertainment capital of this state the crusty comeback special send in the clowns those daffy laffy clown it's very touching touching. I was born right on the cusp of this style of entertainment, leaving forever, where if you're on television, you will have to sing whether you can or not. And so I find this very entertaining. And I think a lot of these drawings were done by Brad Bird.

The Schmaltz. The Schmaltz. Yeah, that's definitely Brad Bird. Like he's cupping something. Schmaltz. Though Send in the Clowns is a Stephen Sondheim song. It originates from Broadway. Which musical?

It is from the musical A Little Night Music, the 1973 musical. Adaptation of Ingmar Bergman's film Smiles of a Summer Night. Interesting. It's a ballad from Act II in which the character Desiree reflects on the ironies and disappointments of her life. But like all great songs sung by women, Frank Sinatra steals it and makes it more famous. Move over, honey. I love that record documentary where Nancy Sinatra is talking about having to wrestle. These boots are made from walking away from Frank Sinatra. Because why would you as a man need to sing this song?

This is a song that little girls sing. It doesn't make any sense. And the way Mel shows up, it's like the 17th time they've done a Rat Pack reunion show. I thought it was the Jerry Lewistein Martin reunion thing. Yeah, well, the one with Sideshow Bob and Black Widower was even more directly this. But it was the same deal. Same joke. But it's just they'veff martin would say it on

commentaries all the time like they they were just so influenced by that it was a major moment for them as children of the seven thank you for anyone under 25 for hanging in here for this i don't know why i'm so fascinated by a bunch of this shit i barely saw guide you through it and tell you why it's i love it dude and that also is when gabbo throws ray J under the bus again and just like, Ray J Johnson. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.

Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.

Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. But this Midler jam has warped my memory of the actual event.

Same here. Same here. Did you ever know that you're my hero? You're everything I would like to be. Really good singing. It's beautiful. You can fly higher than an eagle. God, that's terrible.

Because you are the wind beneath my wings. Dan Castaneda can't sing. He sings as Barney in the next episode beautifully. I don't know why he changes it the first person. Ego. I am the wind. That, again, feels like a sequel joke to the DeMoxenel episode when Marge is singing You Are So Beautiful to Me.

Homer sings it back selfishly from his perspective. And I think it's a similar joke of you're just so selfish that you couldn't sing this song back to the person from the same perspective you're like no you're singing this song about me so i'm going to change the words to reflect how this song is about me she's singing about god he's always happy oh wait i have to imagine i think is that bett midler really singing for the i think that's an original i think she sang it for them, especially to tune it out with Krusty. I mean, you know, just the last two episodes ago. Yeah, Wacking Day, Barry White sang in it originally in the booth.

And I could see Bette Midler not being such a superstar to be like, I'm not singing here. I loaded it up for comparison and I was like, oh, I'm not listening to this at all. But if she's doing it live in the Simpsons recording booth, that's fucking great. It is a Bette Midler original. She sang it for the film Beaches. It's a reference to her singing on Johnny the Carson's second to last Johnny the Carson? Sorry, Johnny Carson's

second to last episode of The Night Show. And I had the false memory you did, Chris, where I thought she sang this song and I thought she sat on his desk like she does in this episode. The last guest, the last fool, Mr. Carson, will have to suffer gladly.

She was the final guest. This is the last episode. Oh, it's the last one. Okay. Well, he is. Quarter to three. There's no one in the place except you and me.

So set him up, Joe Got a little story I think you should know So it's not that song. Goosebumps. One more baby. It's the Goosebumps because we just, and we did a Lazer Time show about it, about saying goodbye to David Letterman,

and whether or not you were a fan of him, the people who tuned even in and out, it's really interesting to watch these goodbye to television institutions. And in this clip, too, I mean, Carson seemed like kind of a dick to people and professionals, but he's crying at the end of this. He's breaking up, and it's really touching to watch. Yeah, and it reminds me of Norm MacDonald crying at David Letterman. And Norm said really like that. Norm said like,

we're not friends. Like he's not even necessarily nice to me, but he's been, he's been. But then it was funny that Letterman being the stone cold, like asshole he is. He's just like, what happened Norm?

What happened Norm? Like he wouldn't cry even in the last episode. No tears. He's just like, yep. Yeah. But Norm is crying. What is it about that job?

Or if you saw the night of the last telecast jimmy kimmel yeah on his show was like breaking i love david letterman and you should watch that and not me and we used to watch it together remember we used to it's like he's crying like yeah he has he has shots of him like with the late night with david letterman birthday cake and his first license plate was a custom late show oh i missed that's how big a fan he was and i was like that with conan as a little kid yeah i didn't know that until i read the the sequel to the late shift which was about the conan leno thing and they taught they have a introduction to all of them all of the contemporary players including jimmy kimmel that's why I found all that out. It was quite a surprise. Carson

is made to be the perfect man as I think that was them being mean back of like, okay, we'll be so nice. You'll be the strongest human that's ever lived and the perfect entertainer. Do you think that was an interpretation of maybe Carson or his people's notes?

No, I think they... When you say it like that, that's the vibe I get. The notes were he didn't want to be a mooch or they didn't like his portrayal, so they nicened it up. Yeah, I think they... They're pretty clear of that. Were passive-aggressive in that way.

Like, you'll be the nicest, strongest guy ever. Gene and Reese are really not fans of Johnny Carson. No. Like, I think there are fewer... Once Merkin takes over, the Johnny as Krusty the Clown jokes are a little less. Yeah, I mean, we see a little bit of that in season six, Bard of Darkness, where he's, again, hosting a very, like, it's more like Jack Parr's Tonight Show. Yeah, it's much more like the Jack Parr's Tonight Show in those flashbacks.

And when they're like, oh, it's classic Krusty, like, well, but it is the Krusty. They watch episodes of Krusty show that are just like this is a clown show this is a bozo show this is not the tonight show interview the Dalai Lama then throw to the cartoon like no the I didn't do it episode it is it is more like SNL

really is yeah no but he's every showbiz thing they need yeah he's whatever celebrity they want him to be anytime and then let taylor finds out she wasn't invited like i've got to fire my agent i wish you didn't have that line but it makes it funnier that like at the end of the show she's standing in the window looking at looking into mose yeah this also wouldn't be a season four episode if they didn't bash an award he's like you you should win it i like the middler went in on it like, you should win an Emmy for this. No, they wouldn't. No, nothing. Dinosaurs.

Like, hey, hey. That is them saying, F you. We're still bad. We didn't get every Emmy we feel we should get. The next episode's chalkboard gag is, I will never win an Emmy. Bart writing on it. But they won Emmys. They've clearly won Emmys. I don't

know why, but one of the funniest moments in the show is Flea yelling in Rose Bar for some reason. I guess because no one yells that loud in The Simpsons ever. You can tell the mic interference on that, but they kept it, and I love it. What's up, Moe?

Hey, Moe! Hey, you can't come in here dressed like that. Get with the times, Moe. Yeah, I say if it feels good, do it. All right. Don't snap my undies. That doesn't work. They're in their underwear.

It's a preview of season five's Do What You Feel Festival, I think. It is a Do What You Feel Festival. Which the underwear thing was not a trend. The Red Hot Chili Peppers did not start that. You don't. That's a very late. And I bet they probably, if anything, they were more famous for those pictures of them and the performances of just the socks over their dicks.

Yeah, yeah. Pubic hair bursting out like an eclipse. They could not do that on The Simpsons, I think. It would be too grotesque. They got as far as they could. Does that last clip have the sweetest plum? Oh, of course it does. That's the sweetest plum.

I'm a star again. I don't know how to thank you kids. That's all right, Krusty. We're getting 50% of the t-shirt sales. What? That's the sweetest plum, you little... Ah, what the hell. You deserve it.

Man, but t-shirt sales for that? Man, Bart and Lisa... 50% of the t-shirts. Yeah, we don't see that money later in the series. None of those mentions are like, well, wait, where'd all this money go? Unless you need to explain how they have money to fix things later yeah okay not to prolong one of our longest episodes ever there's so much to explain but the t-shirts up like i just don't see that anymore but in school and abroad everybody

would wear t-shirts commemorating where they've been and who they've seen i do not see that at all anymore that's true nobody wears i don't see anybody with wearing musicians or like tour dates they more by joke t-shirts like uh so like i'm i'm currently wearing a threadless t now i think i bought i saw dolly parton was so blown away i bought a fucking shirt i would do that i i actually just went to a one of my favorite comedy podcasts rana and Beverly. I bought a t-shirt there, and it was I'm a Beverly on the t-shirt, because that's who I am of the two of Rana and Beverly. If you like Ben Midler like me, then you will love the Rana and Beverly show. It's only one of five comedy shows where people play old Jewish folks, right? Yes.

It's very popular these days. But they're old Jewish women. That's true. It's not like Oh, Hello. Yeah. Oh love oh my god i wish bob you and me should have seen oh hello there's no time there's no time i would see that yeah it is 90 for the cheap no money left for cocaine okay cocaine but this one this episode ends on what i feel is a like a bad note it ends on an adr line from Grandpa. Is this the bus to the Civic Center?

But they're sitting on Johnny Carson's head while he's holding them all off of the table and playing the accordion and tap dancing. That's cool, but I want to know what that original line was because I think ending on an ADR line is a bad move. It just kind of ends like, meh. Well, you kind of aren't hearing the line as much. You're just going like, ah, the music's fun. I love episodes that end with the theme song in it yeah that's true those are sweet moments and maybe not even having a line at all would have been better and and speaking of how it's a sequel to the softball episode same ending softball episode ends with a shot of all the guest stars

this one ends with a shot of all the guest stars, including Elizabeth Taylor in the window looking in at Moe's. Looking inside like a hungry orphan. Which is like, what are they doing in Moe's? Like, why is... They couldn't host it at a better place than Moe's? But I say that's the sweet... I know I've said that's the sweetest blow. I say it all the time.

I say it constantly. It's the only time they say it in The Simpsons. It's used a lot. And we've reached the end of season four, but not production season four. We still have two more episodes. Oh, yes. So I would tell the listeners, we will do a season four wrap-up, but when we're done

with production season four, I know that seems like an arbitrary thing to do, but unlike even from three to four, the changeover production-wise from four to five is immense. It is an almost entirely different staff. Well, like 70 70 different staff i think like bill oakley josh weinstein um conan and frank mula frank mula that's basically it's mula gets uh the old heave ho pretty quick oh yeah he's not on for very long but and then coming after that will be greg daniels chase richdale chase richdale yeah a lot of uh a lot of big name folks but David Cohen, yeah. Yeah, but that'll... Oh, David X. Cohen.

I can name them all. I always forget about David Cohen, David S. Cohen, then David X. Cohen as a Simpsons writer because even though he was there longer than Greg Daniels. Season 6, without the X or something. Yeah. Well, yeah, he was S. He became X when he went to Futurama and Be More

Futury. But yeah, so we'll do the wrap up of season yeah well yeah he was s he became x when he went to futurama and be more futurey uh but yeah so we'll do the wrap-up of season four then after cape fear which is two weeks away but this is the end of season four it has been it is a great season i think watching it you do see sometimes like you were tired or you or you used the script you would have rewritten. Having skipped ahead to season five, I think those are the real glory days that we talk about.

Even though I love some of these episodes, but everything is firing on all cylinders in four and five in a way I thought happened in four when we got it in three.

I don't know. I can't wait until we get... It'll be just two years until we get to a decline. When we get to the 18th episode of season five, let's see if we're still saying, oh, they're all great. Because all of them get, the writers obviously get tired later in the season. Season four had a brief dip in it, but I feel like it recovered in the end.

And then there were maybe three months to work on the remaining episodes before they aired in the fall. So they had more time to spend on these later in the season. The B-sharps is a great episode and Cape Fear is perfect. It's one of the best. And controversial for some people. Some actors on the show I guess. So this has been Talking Simpsons. I'm sorry

if I've been off my game today folks. I'm sick. I think Chris gave me podcast fever or something. But you can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. I also host Retronauts, a classic gaming podcast, every Monday at retronauts.com. Find us on the internet or where you get your podcasts from. And I also write for Fandom at fandom.com and SomethingAwful at somethingawful.com. They're both fantastic.

H-E-N-E-R-A-Y-G on Twitter. That's where you'll find me. Oh, boy. If you didn't like the comments last episode you won't like my twitter but uh but hey some things are fun i did tweet out a fun a funny video of a of a dog giving all its puppies to its owner have you seen this it's so cute the pit bull gave birth to all these puppies and then it keeps putting all the puppies in its owner's lap that's negligent uh but anyway h-e-n-e-r-o-y-g that's where you'll find me i also write for

fandom.com you can find stuff there but i'm still part of the laser time family through this and uh you can find an archive of great stuff i've done on laser time podcast.com but it's all supported by patreon.com slash laser time where you'll find so many great things including our upcoming season four special we will also be doing uh that's also where the previous season wrap-ups are and the season one entirety is on there patreon.com slash laser time just five dollars a month get you access to that and a ton of other shows commentaries it really helps us out it helps us do all these other shows such as uh laser time this, hey, you like old pieces of showbiz minutia? Yes, I do. I went and dug up fucking

talk show interviews with Spuds McKenzie and the Where's the Beef Lady to show you life 30 years ago, how big a commercial phenomenon could be. Spuds fucks now. It's so implied all the time. It's real weird. But check it out. It's all about stupid Super Bowl commercials,

but I swear to God, it's more entertaining than I make it sound. We also, like, if you like that kind of thing as well, I got to recommend 302010, our look back 30 years ago, 20 years ago, and 10 years ago to this very week, like looking at movies, music, TV shows, some news. It's really, really fun.

And if you like, a lot of the stuff we bring up here is similar to how we do stuff on... Oh, sorry, the news thing at the beginning. It's like a whole show of that. And I really want to give a big shout out to Eric Nagel from the It's Eric Nagel Show on SiriusXM. The show is back on Sirius 206 XM 103, weekend

6 p.m. Eastern and 3 p.m. Pacific. Did we say he bought Henry and myself dinner when we were in New York? I've gotten to meet him a few times now. It's getting old eric but i've gotten to meet him in person yeah i've got to meet him in person in multiple things but this was the first time bob got to go with me on a trip we were in new york sick hop it was forced to be chained to this goddamn station so he we met him in manhattan he took us out to dinner thank you very much thanks so much eric but i mean we said it in person too too. Yes. We just want people

to know how nice he is. And, yeah, I'm looking, crossing my fingers, I'm looking forward to some really cool stuff we're going to be doing in the near future on Talking Senses as well. Keep your eyes peeled. That's a promise. We'll be back next week with Homer's Barbershop Quartet. Thanks for listening everybody wow infotainment and of course this episode of Talking Simpsons was executive produced by Josh K.

And many other fine patrons at patreon.com slash laser time.