Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Separate Vocations With Nina Matsumoto

Episode Date: February 15, 2023

We're thrilled to be joined once more by the gifted artist Nina Matsumoto as we discuss an episode all about gifted children! While Bart is told he'd make a wonderful fascist/cop, Lisa is told that she should be a homemaker and stop using her stubby fingers for jazz. This sets both on a topsy-turvy path that threatens to destroy the school. All that, plus a deep dive into the career of George Meyer, so grab your copies of MAD, Cracked, and Crazy, and listen along! Support this podcast and get over 100 bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

This podcast is brought to you by patreon.com slash talking Simpsons. Head there to check out exclusive podcasts like Talking Futurama, Talking of the Hill, the What a Cartoon Movie podcast, and tons more. I heartily endorse this event or product. and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who is here with me today, as always? Earning his 18 grand a month, Henry Gilbert. And here with our special guest today in person... Simpsons analyst, Simpsons analyst, Simpsons analyst, Nina Matsumoto. Hey, that's our job. And this week's episode is Separate Vocations.

Act 2, Death Drives a Stick. This week's episode originally aired on February 27th, 1992, and as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh, my God. Oh, boy, Bobby. Kurt Cobain marries Courtney Love. The competing Elvis Stamps debut from the United States Postal Service.

And Fish Police makes its big TV debut on CBS. Wow. And to never be seen again, except maybe on Cart cartoon network in a couple years right even even that barely like it surfaced even less than capital critters like yeah fish police comes four months after capital critters it's uh three months it's another of those shows it's like we can do the simpsons and it's also hannah barbara they hired uh to do it too though in their case they at least went to like an original comic artist like Matt Kroening.

That's true. Instead of just going like, I don't know, rats in the... What's Stephen Bochco have to say? Rats live in the White House? Like, yeah. And it's because of the Fish Police guy that we have Sam and Max because he talked Steve Purcell into doing a comic version of his Sam and Max characters. And that's why we have them today.

We did a Sam and Max episode. Check it out, folks, on the What A Cartoon feed. I'll always be thankful to that unnamed creator of Fish Police. I don't want to look up. Fishy Joe. But yeah, the show got canceled in four episodes. Two more got burned off in the summer. And there weren't more episodes re-aired if it went anywhere else.

So I'm not sure if six episodes got commissioned or if it was the full 13. And seven just never got shown. This had a lower profile than family dog yeah did you ever manage to watch it on tv fish police or family dog fish police only for the sake of finding out what it was just looking up a youtube video and yes any five minutes of it has like 30 fish puns it's like so you never actually caught it on TV when it was airing? Never, no. No, me neither. It's sort of like, I mean, it's not prehistoric times, but you know how the Flintstones, five minutes of the Flintstones is like 30 rock puns? Five minutes of Fish Police is like 30 water or seafood or fish puns.

And that's all there is to it. And I think John Ritter's in it? I think you're right. He's the lead fish. I didn't catch it either when it aired new, though I was aware of it just because they spent a lot of money on advertising it on the back of Marvel Comics for a while. They put it, it was on the back of Marvel Comics for at least a full month or two. I associate it with a lot of 92 comic books I own. What's the point of them being fish? Do they fire guns underwater?

Can they do that? I think that was a big criticism of the show there's no reason why they're fish they're doing all the same things humans do except they like they just like swim around and uh essentially that's it and uh kirk cobain and courtney love i'm sure they're gonna be so happy together no problems coming their way they got about uh two years on this relationship. Courtney Love was just in the news recently because she was talking about how this came up in her WTF interview that Brad Pitt would not leave her alone to get the rights to make a Kurt Cobain movie and she wouldn't give it up. He then used that against her to get her fired from Fight Club.

She was going to play the Helena Bonham Carter character in Fight Club. And Brad Pitt, this is what Courtney Love, I believe, said in the WTF interview. Brad Pitt got her fired because she wouldn't sell the Kurt Cobain movie rights to him. And he still is bugging her for it and she still won't do it. I've also heard that after the People vs. Larry Flint, she was just too impossible to ensure as an actor. And that's why she couldn't really get any movie work anymore. Because she would like disappear in quotes. I'm sure as soon as she passes away,

someone will make some kind of biopic about them. Yes, Rock Band will come back if only to make every member of your band Kurt Cobain. You'll be singing like Mbop and Walking on Sunshine. That was so sad. Maybe that taught her too of like, oh, I okayed it once and it blew up in my face. She did not understand what she was

agreeing to with rock band allowing them to basically reanimate his corpse to sing any song hey she needed to pay her dog walkers i mean how rich can she be that's very important uh and yes the elvis stamp controversy parodied in the classic season seven episode where crusty fakes his death and they they're gonna make two stamps one of alive crusty and one of him exploding i say that election was stolen we could vote on this as citizens of america right yes yeah i thought so uh yeah it was there were gonna be two elvis stamps one that looked like older fatter elvis and by older i think we mean like 38 was how old he was there or uh young youthful elvis and of course the people were mad they even had the choice. And of course, young Elvis won handily in that. And we're all thinking about Elvis now

because it got nominated for a few Oscars, though. Obviously, everything, everywhere, all at once is the big front runner at the time of this recording. I don't know if these stamps are still in circulation at all because I guess there were just more stamp collectors in 1992. And this is why something like this was important. But whenever I I buy stamps it just has the American flag on it it says forever oh yeah I always get the forever stamps I know there were like some Marvel or Star Wars stamps somewhat recently they you can still get special stamps yeah I think so did you ever get those

Simpsons stamps Nina I did yeah okay they're great I love them I love that they're not like the glossy you know merchandising version of the characters. They're drawn by a guy who can't draw his own characters. Yeah, they're drawn by Matt Groening. That's why I love them so much. That's awesome. Yeah. I think that's great.

I didn't know that Groening made sure it was him who drew the stamps instead of, you know, I don't know, Bill Morrison, perhaps. Yeah, you can tell he just like scribbled them on some piece of paper and they scanned it. So the line work is very rough. And then someone else colored it in so currently you can get a full two sheets of the elvis 1993 stamps 40 stamps for 35 on ebay so not that collectible no not really not that collectible but so yeah that's uh that's uh all the news that happened this week joining us today though is nina

matsumoto i don't think we talk enough about Nina's accomplishments on here. But Nina, of course, she is the artist behind all of our stuff on the Talking Simpsons Network. Mostly all of our stuff, our t-shirts, things like that. Also, Nina, you were behind the Simpsons comics for a lot of years, probably a decade of doing Simpsons comics. Yeah, I penciled for Simpsons comics for 10 years. You're the artist behind the Sp sparks trilogy of children's graphic novels yep currently out and you also do art for uh riff tracks and you work for fan gamer making video game merch i guess i've been doing a lot of things yes yeah that's she is very we mina is such a

great friend but yes she's also an incredible artist that we are lucky to know and her biggest accomplishment is she married a podcaster it was was very brave of you to do that. That's kind of how we met, I guess. You approached me to, well, before that, we had a weird altercation online. I wouldn't call it altercation. That's to make it more dramatic than it actually was. But you hired me to do artwork for this podcast. I mean, in recent news, there's been a lot of bad things happening about, you know, creators DMing fans.

Well, when I DM Nina, it was all above board. You were a gentleman. Yeah, I didn't say anything racist either. No, Nina's the best. And, well, that's also why I wanted, or I thought she'd be great on this episode, too, because this episode is about, you know, it's easy for us boys to view it through the Bart lens, but this is a Lisa story about, you know, her having dreams. And then, you know, especially in a sexist way growing up, like society is like out to crush her dreams. And, you know, Nina, you're living your dreams as an artist.

And I was curious, like, have you ever faced these kind of trials that Lisa goes through here? Well, first of all, I wanted to point out that when I was given a list of episodes I could appear on for season three, this was one of the ones I said I wanted to do because this was like my favorite episode for a very long time. Like when I was in elementary school. By that, I mean, like, I think I was like grade four or five. So there weren't that many seasons of The Simpsons out yet. So which is a weird choice i

think to have this as your top favorite episode because it's a really solidly written episode but nothing crazy happens in it it's not like a super notable one i don't think many people quote it that often either except for like i don't salmon gutter that's the most quotable line it's kind of like quietly very very good uh i wouldn't say there aren't standout moments but i just think it's just so solid like nothing really rises above the rest of the episode yeah and i think it was my favorite episode because like lisa was my favorite character back then and also she goes bad in this episode and i've always loved it when a good character goes bad and i also love a role reversal that's what happens in this one like for example one of my favorite episodes of seinfeld is the opposite where george does everything the opposite and that gives him great

success and then meanwhile elaine uh gets worse and worse luck and she turns into george by the end you know that went around recently a lot of people were attracted to elaine in her george form really i did not see this they're like oh i'm into this i i do think of that george one a lot because i've i've been through moments in my life where it feels like every choice i make is wrong and it's like well if you what if you did the opposite of what you would normally do maybe everything would go great i i don't like that people were attracted to elaine when she was downtrodden like what they don't like it when she's too confident i i think elaine's plenty sexy normally. But yeah, I could see a certain chic to George Elaine that some would find.

Sorry for turning this into a Seinfeld podcast. But anyway, yeah, I've always wanted to be an artist ever since I was little. And I always knew I was going to be an artist. I'd chosen my career path since I was a kid. And that's the path I walked along. I knew I didn't belong in university really after graduating high school. I'm like, I have no need for it.

Like I just want to go to art school, some kind of art education because I'm also not good at school. Like I did well in school. Like I was a goody-goody like Lisa. I try my best. I got like good grades except for in math and some other subjects when I was doing French immersion

because it's very hard to learn things like history and science in French. That sounds tough. Yeah. So I'm definitely one of the lucky ones in that sense, that I always knew what I wanted to do, and I managed to make it happen. Because after high school, I went to animation school for a year,

and then I just did commissions online, and then it got discovered. It's amazing. And hey, that doesn't leave you with any bad student debt i would guess then to that that path no that's good she's canadian so wait yeah what am i saying there's far less debt in general i mean i wish the school was expensive still uh you know i always like these stories of like the nerd going bad too i because you know i i definitely can identify a little with lisa in this that like she

mine was more of just being a gifted kid and then getting frustrated all of a sudden in life and like in in high school and being like passive aggressive in class in middle school or whatever just grumbling the the way lisa does and feeling like oh i'm not gonna be this feeling of like oh i guess i won't be the next great american novelist or something or whatever and just feeling and and pushing those feelings onto the world too yes uh most podcasters are recovering gifted kids and you should feel very bad for all i was also a quote-unquote gifted kid yeah and i can also relate to uh lisa getting laughs in the uh in classroom by being snarky at the teacher because i was like always a very quiet kid and i started getting more laughs from people when i started being like sarcastic and it's fun well for me when i would get laughs with

that in class it was because people didn't expect that of me like uh i think it's part of it yeah or also when i started like swearing in school which i swear i know i swear too much but i don't swear i'm a good girl that that surprised people like wait henry can say these were i've uh it was that easy to be cool yeah it's like if a dog started talking all of a sudden like what get a load of this well that's why it was so easy for south park to make an impression too because like oh wait cartoons can say the f word like same i same principle with me yeah that's how i got away with i got away with that say a dirty word in class thing where you write a fake name on something and it is mike space hunt and so then when somebody reads it they say mike hunt and they didn't know who wrote it and i stayed silent because i was

like no one's gonna suspect i did it excuse me i'm michael hunt well henry i would not have been impressed if i were class me i would have just shaken my head at you and thought what an immature guy i could do better than than stealing that joke from some adam sandler thing i probably i was kind of a stick in the mud when i was a little kid look it's not that uh it's not that hilarious one you know also one of my other favorite shows as a teen was that freaks and geeks show and part of the appeal was that it was like well obviously the male geeks on it i absolutely identified with but i thought linda cartolini's character in it she was so good as like the a student who goes bad who just and by

go bad she wants to hang out with burnouts and not like waste her life or and wants to waste her life instead of going to mathletes things and and i i always found that kind of appealing i i had a period of hanging out with the burnout types uh who they they don't uh nothing much good happened to them after high school can i find them on find a grave.com well i hope not i think uh now criminal records may be but uh i like i never i never broke bad like lisa here but i i feel her frustration in that uh I was really good at school I know big whoop but I was so good at it because I mean honestly most of school is like just showing up like it's all about uh showing the world that you know how to like go

to a job every day but it's just like training for that so like show up they don't want to deal with you for another year so they'll do whatever they can to graduate you. So if you know those rules, it's easy to play by them and do very well. And then I just kept doing more school. I was addicted to school. I am so good at this one system. But you find out it's a walled garden and nobody cares about your GPA outside of academia. Nobody cares about your GRE scores. Nobody cares about i i was on the the journalism team and i have the certificate nobody cares and finding that out and being unemployed for a long time after grad school i almost went bad i almost became the batman of failed academics or rather the joker let's say the joker that's a lot of batman villains like many comic super

villains are nerdy guys who then uh life fails them and they have bad luck. Yeah. For me, I was just not really good at quizzes and tests. And that's where I would like lose points. Like I would do well throughout the school year. And then as soon as there was like a final exam or whatever, I guess like the pressure would get to me. Or I just couldn't remember certain things. Like say I have to remember a certain year in history class

i was bad at that because i was bad at remembering numbers i don't like that system like you shouldn't be testing that kind of thing like when i went to animation school and i went through animation history class our teacher made it clear like he doesn't care if you memorize names or dates or whatever because you can easily look that up whenever you want what's more important is like what they contributed why they're important things like that yeah i mean most educational professionals would agree now that like rote memorization is pointless especially in an age in which we have the source of all information in the known universe in our hands at all times yeah there's no point in knowing like a date i mean it's fun to know it and good for you if you can pull it out of your head but also i can do

that in three seconds if you can't so it's's like, you don't have the advantage on me. Same with spelling too. Just like, there's no spelling tests anymore or there shouldn't be because why, like everything we type into tells us when something is wrong. Yeah, so like in animation history, I did well in those classes and those tests

because it was more about like, why should you know these facts and why should this matter? But when I was doing like, like say life drawing classes in animation school and we were quizzed on the names of muscles and things, we could like, I could remember what muscle was where on the body

and why it was important, what it did. But when it came to like the name, I'm like, I don't remember. Does it really matter? Yeah. I don't want to go on too long about this, but I remember like the worst example of that was like my one,

one of my English teachers who was mostly fine, but she was like 70. And this was like the late nineties. And one of the things we did as a class, like for two days, everybody memorized the, the famous speech from Julius Caesar. And we recited in front of the class. This was not a drama class. This was a, an English literature class. What purpose did that serve? It ate up two days, but it was all about like, can you memorize this very very complicated speech i don't know what that did for my brain and my understanding of the play

which i still like don't even think i i really fully understand or have read but we just had to read that isolated speech in front of the class uh and it was two full days of watching other people read it oh man when i was like i think 13 years old uh which is grade eight i think i at one point knew the names and capital uh capitals of every single country in the world and i could point them on the map in french what that's crazy but now i know i've like lost all that info and also why did i have to do that they were preparing you for your role on where in the world is carmen san diego in french yes like the canadian version carmen san diego okay uh i took spanish i have no help here i uh no my biggest problem in school was homework i hated doing homework so much i never wanted to do it i wanted to go home and play video games or watch cartoons that's what i uh or endless sitcoms too not just

cartoons so yeah i would put off homework i'd skip homework i wouldn't do homework until the start of class all this stuff then when it came test time i would i would usually push myself so hard at the very end to prove this this is what made me a bad person at doing things at the right at the end of deadline it's because in high school and middle school i could prepare for the test enough and cram at the very end to get like a b or an a and level out to a good grade in the class and you know my honors and gifted teachers would would always rag on me for that but i thought i proved him wrong because i was like well i passed didn't i and i got the highest grade on this one essay, didn't I?

Henry, I resented kids like you when I was in school. Because like I said, I was good at everything else. I was just bad at tests and quizzes. But you were like the opposite, I guess. Because I knew classmates of mine who would like skip classes constantly or they would just not do the work. But then at the end, they would just ace the test. I'm like, dang it, why can't I do that? that well i wouldn't say ace the test but i would usually i never there were a couple times

where they were to me like you're you're not coming back to honors for next semester if you don't get a b on this and then i'd get the b it was only a couple times did i get a's and but yeah i know i mean i was a born procrastinator that. It's the thing I've been fighting, fighting all my life. I think finally with this job that all of my teachers would probably think is fake, I think I finally unlearned a lot of my bad work only at the deadline, cram till midnight the night before thing. I actually have a pretty normal work schedule most weeks and am not working late into the night.

You know, we're getting all of our school gripes out up front. And I agree. Homework, down with homework, I say. I think I'm hearing from parents it's kind of being phased out because homework is absolutely bullshit because you're at that school for like nine hours. All the learning should take place within that context. Like you should not be bringing it home. And I think it's to train kids to learn like when you leave your job it's not over like you have responsibilities didn't the new president of ireland say homework should be abolished that the little leprechaun they they liked it yeah and then like your parents they're getting home from work and they have to help you it's a complete and then if you're a teacher you have to grade it it sucks all around yeah

well and also i i do like in this episode that they do make it a bit gendered too in that how lisa is treated like it's not just lisa told she's gonna be anything but a homemaker in general just being told like no you're supposed to be a mommy like that's your job like whatever your dreams were you're best suited to be a mom every time i watch like man i love this more and more just because i feel it so much like it's one of the ones that most reminds me of school and i think george meyer the writer really really is in touch with that it was great being reminded on the commentary that they're like oh yeah this barely had any rewrites like his his initial outline was almost a full script he really had a lot for this

one yeah and george meyer uh he co-wrote on some scripts but he wrote about like one episode on his own for the first five seasons and his last episode is now like 22 years old and it's uh the parent rap which he wrote with uh with mike scully right yeah which actually was there writing on the deadline right up to they're like oh shit we need a 20 second script that one is meyer this is funny this is meyer very under control compared to how he was at the end of his term on the simpsons because that was definitely defined by like oh yeah george meyer pitches the craziest funniest jokes that all make us laugh but most of the time we say

we can't use them then once he gets in like basically co-running the show with scully that's when they're doing a lot of crazy stuff some some of it works good some of it too crazy i'd say but also you know this commentary reminded me to do i hadn't reread this in a long time that new yorker profile on george meyer uh from march of 2000 i don't know if you guys read it when it first came out i read it at some point in the last 20 years it it was the first simpsons writer's name i knew because that profile like i because and it was one of those things where like my mom read it in the new yorker and then was like hey you like the simpsons read this this is an article uh rereading the article which is called taking humor seriously by david owen i will say there's some stuff in it that like oh this cast a bad shadow on the show the main one is this is his closing closing sentence to the

for you know it's it's based on like basically like five acts of a long article for new yorker the closing sentence of the first act of it is the simpsons belongs to its writers i was like ah this is the prop like this is the problem problem so i feel like this new yorker article is partially to blame for a lot of other commentators feeling like well yeah simpsons is a writer's show it's the writers do it like all of just this general feeling that makes people overlook the artists uh on the show and their impact on it which i'd say no the artists are at least if not more important to the Simpsons. You think the article gave them like a big head?

Oh, I definitely think that. Yeah. I mean, they, well, also it's funny too, that now that I'm knowing what I know, it's in the article, but I never noticed it in any other previous time I read it. The writer, David Owen, who still writes for the New Yorker to this day, he's a lampooner. He was in the Harvard Lampoon and he's writing about a friend he's known for, at that time, 25 years. I've got a pitch. You know who's great? My friend, George. But I mean, George does have a really interesting life story. We've gone over it before, but it's also interesting. They actually have a quote from, an on-the-record quote from John Schwarzwalder

in it. One sentence of him saying like, yeah, it's really hard. The grind of the writing of the show is tough and they they talk about george meyer quitting the show and also how he's kind of saying he's about to quit the show he is that he will quit for season 13 ian maxton graham had a good line in saying i would rather make george meyer laugh than get an emmy what he said but but yeah i was thinking of him with this article because it talks a ton about his childhood. That's really why I wanted to reread it. And yeah, that he was a Lisa type. They describe him as a model teenager, a straight A student, a member of the school speech team,

the editor of the student newspaper, an Eagle Scout, and an altar boy. Like that's a good, good boy. What a little wiener kid. I know. I think that's what makes him so good at being a mean comedy writer uh going on and making up some of the cruelest jokes possible like like kurt van houten's arm being chopped off i mean i can see how lisa's reflected in him because he did become a bad boy but when in the world of comedy and uh i mean i felt a similar way we'll get to it

later in the show but when lisa is told from someone in authority like i know you can't have your dream and her her own stance is like i did everything right and i was in the same place when i was trying to get a job after getting like a master's you're like no i followed the rules and they're just like we don't care they also do describe him as usually wearing a white bucket hat which is wow he was drawn in the poochie episode he's never changed yeah so uh also it's interesting too because they talked to a what they they talked to the woman who he is currently still with uh not his wife but he's been with her for the in the article they mentioned too he doesn't believe in marriage and they're still not married but in the article she is framed as the woman who just broke up with him which it's like oh wait but they're still i

thought they were still together and according to to Wikipedia, they're still together living in Seattle. So when I moved to Seattle, I planned to stalk him. I'm going to look for an aging bearded man in a white bucket hat. How many of those can there be in Seattle? That's like every Gen Xer today in Seattle. Yeah, especially with bucket hats coming back into style. I just bought an Evangelion bucket hat. You did?

Is that your second bucket hat? I have the Krusty bucket hat and now the ava one yes yeah i can't get behind this i'm sorry uh i can't stand bucket hats bucket hats are coming back guys i'm sure if you wear your bucket hat in seattle maybe george will spot you as like a bucket buddy hey you'll ask me to join the bucket hat club yeah maybe you'll get what you give. But, but yeah, there's a couple other little teeny tidbits from it that I was like, oh, that makes this episode make more sense. But yeah, I was like, I do wonder how the Simpsons writers, the other ones reflect on this thought back then of this article of like the biggest genius in the Simpsons writers room.

This is the guy, everybody, because they are constantly talking about like, he's the best writer. You, some people, I think I, when I read it the first time thought oh this guy's the secret best writer on the simpsons i've never uh whoever these other people are they don't matter uh and though i did ask i actually asked bill oakley about this because they mentioned in the article that george meyer wrote a specs not a spec script but a planned film script for David Letterman that went unproduced because it was planned that like well David Letterman's show is going to get canceled and then he'll make this movie and then his show wasn't canceled after

Cabin Boy that's his next role uh but and they said that the script lived in the Simpsons rewrite room and that people would go to it occasionally to steal jokes from it to reuse the episode and I asked Oakley like do you know anything about this and he said yeah I read that article too and I have no clue what this is talking about maybe you know we joined in late season three so maybe it it let it was gone by then I suggested that maybe it was an addition like when he came back after Bill and josh left like but he said he'd heard of that script as a thing but he'd never it was not present in any rewrite room he could recall it was like some sort of joke turkey in the fridge and people were just taking little

pieces off of it making sandwiches so yeah anyway it was an interesting article to read though i wish they'd again interviewed like one artist for it. But, you know, it's a Lampooner writer talking about his other genius writer friend. I mean, to be fair, it is a profile of a writer. Yeah. So I can understand if it was a profile of the show and they just forgot about film Roman entirely. I think that'd be another thing. But when they've got John Schwarzwalder right there, I'm like, interview, you know, George Byer is very interesting. But interview this guy, man.

Maybe they tried. They don't talk. We our we got our source welder profile though much much later also in the new yorker yeah actually is that behind a paywall right now all that stuff you know this new yorker one was it maybe it's uh i think new yorker might be on it's like you know the three free ones a month or whatever. How do they track that? Yeah. The Simpsons will be right back. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm

standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. We care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Care, care.

Did I mention that we care? Thursday, Bart Simpson on the side of law and order? Has the world gone topsy-turvy? Not in my hall, bub. Bart gets a badge. I know what I want to be when I grow up. A cop. Your father wanted to be a policeman, but they said he was

too heavy. No, the police said I was too dumb. And Lisa gets an attitude. What are you rebelling against? What do you got? What in the world is happening? Do you need straight A's to be a cop? The Simpsons, Thursday at 8 on Fox 29. Hello, everybody.

Welcome to the break. It's Henry Gilbert. And no, the world has not gone topsy-turvy this week's podcast is visited once more by the great our amazing eisner winning simpsons artist pal we always love having her on especially for an episode all about the childhood of a gifted kid and of course please check out all the cool stuff she does at space coyote on twitter space coyote arts and all that out there on the internet please check it all out links in the description of this episode also if you enjoy

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Over six and a half hours long. We cover everything from Akira to a goofy movie, Beavis and Butthead to the universe, to Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse. Please check it all out for yourself. All of that you can see at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. what all right i guess uh we should get the episode uh itself which of course begins with a trio of thought balloons homer at the bat was the episode right before this one which started with the same gag so they're really getting into the stop balloon era.

Yes. And they're going to do this again in Black Widower. Wow. Yeah. So they three-peat this three-peat of jokes. They're really into this joke format. I mean, it's fun, you know. It works for comic strips.

It works here. I think in the future, these would be crazier fantasies because Sherry or Terry's fantasy is just a happy little elf giving people ice cream elf it's very pleasant nice yeah the alligator wrestling would be fun to watch too her pulling off her head to be an alien that's all right but bart's reaction of i knew it like he's he's been thinking she's an alien this whole time uh but yes they are given a childhood aptitude test which uh sorry career aptitude normalizing test or can't. That's a good joke.

I mean, this is certainly what's written by Harvard dudes who define their life by test taking. Yeah, and I don't know if you took these, Henry, and I know Nina didn't because she was in Canada. But can't is a parody of the Iowa test, which is why these tests go to Iowa. And the Iowa test is very old. It was developed in 1935. It's now called the Iowa Test of Basic Skills or ITBS. And I took a lot of these in my schooling. But the thing is, it was great for me as someone who could do these standardized tests very

quickly because it was an entire week. And I just like sped through the test and got to read a book for the rest of the day. And it was great. Like I loved doing these. I didn't know this was a. Like I loved doing these. I didn't know this was a real thing. Yeah. Yeah.

You're right. I never took a test like this, but I would have loved to because I always love personality tests in general, even if I don't believe in them. It's just fun to see what kind of mold I fit into. Yeah. And in this case, they didn't like tell you what, you know, your best career would be. It would just tell you like you scored this in reading and this in math and this in geography or whatever. And you get to learn your stats yeah yeah yeah i was like totally like one of the best uh like skyrim characters you could get at the time if you rolled like a smart child that

would be me i i definitely did take some of these though they were not iowa-based because i grew up in the south and i think at least in my area, they were usually sent to Texas, not Iowa. But the same principle held. There were weeks of standardized testing years and years in a row. And also it was all about the number two pencil, which is why there's an entire Clone High episode about the number two pencil plan to get all the kids to buy number two pencils. Number two is number one.

And Henry and I went to school before No Child Left Behind. uh plan to get all the kids to buy number two pencils number two is number one and henry and i went to school before no child left behind and i know that like standardized testing really took off in a bad way these were like uh consequence free standardized tests because i think they were just to evaluate like the knowledge base of your the children in your school and you can get like free testing materials and stuff like that it was just like for the sake of like evaluating your own curriculum and seeing what was working and what wasn't it wasn't like your funding depends on this like no child left behind you hear a lot more stories of teachers putting more pressure on the students for that though i think there were i can recall some pressure from teachers as well

similar of that of like guys were judged on this like you have to do better at this thing do you know like do you remember what you guys scored highest on definitely like reading yeah i think reading or whatever the essay uh well in similar tests i always scored best on essays those are my favorite oh they would make you write an essay for these on a couple well these were in high school but yeah yeah those those were always my favorite like you get to tell a story like i mean this is this again is why we're podcasters and also before that article writers i i like this happened to me more than a few times in my schooling and usually happen with these like i would finish the saturday test and the teacher would not believe i was done and they would be very upset about that and then i would often have my book taken away from you and i'm thinking like

how messed up is that geez like you think you're so smart give me that red wall book that's that's basically miss hoover telling you to stare at the wall yes exactly but I just remember uh a few teachers being upset like you're not finished with that it's like I'm done you can check it out but like they couldn't grade it themselves so they had no way of knowing if I just filled out circles randomly what would you write an essay about uh it was just like read this paragraph we're gonna ask you questions about it usually something like that or like here's like a three-page short story and explain that kind of thing or i remember my ap english test it was uh here's a long quote like from oscar wilde and now explain what he means by this and uh yeah i specifically remember it's an

oscar wilde quote i don't know where it's, but it's him talking about it's this attack against naturalism that was very popular. And because he's like, everybody wants to sit under the tree. Humanity found a way to build a chair, which is much more comfortable than a rock. Like we should be sitting on a pro chair. Anti-rock. Yes. I just remember having to answer those in a way that no one actually writes or speaks, which is the way they taught us how to answer questions like, what do you think the moral of Robinson Crusoe is? Your answer would be, I think the moral of Robinson Crusoe is, instead of just saying, it's this.

Nobody talks like that. Nobody texts like that. Nobody writes like that. I don't know why they taught us like that. It's crazy. I was taught to never write like that, though. Better schooling. Different country. Better standards. they taught us like that it's crazy i was taught to never write like that though um better schooling different country better standards you you had to like no paragraph one has to say this like or it doesn't count as your first paragraph like yeah i would score good in math uh to a point i had a

good math brain up to eighth grade and then came in the past algebra algebra did great everything after algebra geometry that type of stuff physics no couldn't do trigonometry no no no like in first grade when they introduced adding and subtracting i did it instantly and i i was treated like a genius which uh probably gave me a big head in a bad way but now yeah i mean i've come down on proofs before and people have gotten my business about it but when someone says prove this is a triangle, that's not my responsibility. I shouldn't have to be doing this. I mean, I'm not building anything. This is not going to kill people if I get it wrong.

That was driving me crazy, too. Like, prove this is a triangle. Yeah. Like, what do you mean? I can tell just from looking at it. That's why I'm an artist. I'm not a mathematician. It's got three sides.

Yeah, here, a triangle. Here it is. But, yes, this is when the kids are given their test in our first clip. It's called the career aptitude normalizing test, or CAN'T. Some of you may discover a wonderful vocation you never even imagined. Others may find out life isn't fair. In spite of your master's from Bryn Mawr, you might end up a glorified babysitter to a bunch of

dead-eyed fourth graders while your husband runs naked on a beach with your marriage counselor. First question. If I could be any animal, I would be A, a carpenter ant, B, a nurse shark, or C, a lawyer bird? Question 60. I prefer the smell of A, gasoline, B, french fries, or C, bank customers. I love those leading questions. It's such a great joke about bad test writing questions. This sounds more like an anime character you test online. Or like, which Ninja character are you tessie yes or like which ninja turtle are you what food you like the best like pizza you're introvert test like i am a smart intelligent be stupid and loud yeah i like to sit alone at a party talking to the dog

yeah a better in test uh you wouldn't see the result coming yeah i also love they have to make up a thing like carpenter ant is a real thing and then they just have to go like a lawyer bird and same with like bank customers like bank customers have no particular smell they just couldn't think of another thing they could have said money like i like the smell of money or coin they also could have said like what's this what that secretary bird? Is it just called secretary bird? Yeah, that could have been a good joke, too. Maybe they didn't know about it. They weren't watching Aggretsuko.

They had no idea. I want to be a lawyer bird. Those birds with the nice eyelashes. Secretary birds, that name needs to be canceled. It needs to... Administrative assistant bird, right? Yeah, that's better. They're known for eating snakes.

Why are they secretary birds? I don't know. Because they're, like, long and sexy i guess so some horny scientist yeah they are sexy though look at them yeah i mean luscious eyelashes no animal has more beautiful eyelashes i think you know i haven't looked at the real secretary bird i'm just thinking of uh what what what's her name i know gory but it's gory's friend i forget the character's name now in in a gretzko also like lisa talks to janie twice in this episode this has to be a record of times in one episode lisa talks to jd right she's i mean she's supposed to be lisa's friend

best friend but i think it's better when i don't know but i mean this sounds too mean but i like when lisa has no friends and even janie is making fun of janie is whatever whatever the script calls for yeah either a friend or a classmate or best friend or she hates lisa janie is a fair weather friend sometimes she'll spend the night or read non-threatening boys magazine with lisa other times she'll mock her for having a saying a doll is sexist or that she's gonna marry a carrot i think they weren't going as dark with lisa they wanted to at least presume she has a friend and then in the future they'll be like well no she has zero friends by the way i've never worked in an office uh but i've heard from other friends of mine who have even people in the uh video games industry who said they had to take a myers

briggs personality test for some reason oh man i think it's to see like how well they would work with other people i guess wow i've never their teams at an office job i never i never had to do that but i will say my first office job was very informal how i got hired so uh when i worked at blockbuster video i had to take like for real a 40 minute digital test on a kiosk and when i applied to a job at target i didn't get i had to take one of those too like a personality test pretty much yeah those are really i don't think anyone's looking at the answers but they're just there to let you know like here's the kind of faceless automaton you have to be if you can endure this then maybe we your spirit is broken enough to work here well

i'm an intj by the way and then myers-briggs you put that in your profile? I do not, no. I don't believe in it, obviously, but like I said, I like taking those kind of tests. It's just kind of fun. It should be like wife, period, and then your Myers-Briggs abbreviation. And then my zodiac sign. I also like astrology, just for fun. Again, I know it's all BS. Astrology's fun. I like that. I like being

a Virgo. Do I seem like a Virgo to you, Nina? I would say so. I'm like Scorpio Sun, Virgo Moon do I seem like a Virgo to you Nina? I would say so I'm like Scorpio sun Virgo moon Scorpio rising for all the people out there who are very interested in my astrological signs I'm a Taurus so I'm powerful I saw someone in the discord once saying like

oh so Nina's a Scorpio and Bob's a Taurus that's very interesting I'm like yes it is do I hear wedding bells? our personalities are meant to kind of clash because we're both very stubborn but that also means we have a lot in common yeah that's sweet the sparks really fly everybody we're like this all the time it's no no like like it's fun up to a point i'm never gonna be like oh i wouldn't date a leo or things like that like some people go that far and like who cares

i'm going to get one of those uh dna tests and put my entire like ethnic background in my profile. Like 36% English, 14% French. You know, something that's never brought up again is that Edna has a master's degree. This is the only time I'm going to try to remember this from now on. And any joke about Krabappel is like, you know, she has a master's degree from Bryn Mawr, which is a, you know, a historically important women's liberal arts college. Obviously, I had to look that up. I didn't know that. I don't think you always need a master's degree to become a teacher, but a lot of them have them like a master's in education.

You know, I learned in Florida that this is one of these. I was just having this chat with somebody else who's not from America who was like, what's with this bullshit in every state has all these different rules i was like yeah when i was a kid in in high school a teacher could only teach for two years and then she this teacher i liked i couldn't take her senior year because she's like well yeah i have my teacher's license for that works in 49 other states but florida demands you have to have a specific florida. So I have to stop teaching it now until I get that license. Weird. Yeah. It's like you have to deny birth control exists.

I mean, oh, I could tell it. Here's a quick funny story. We did go to a lengthy homophobic safe sex seminar for kids, which just was abstinence, only abstinence, and basically telling you if you had any type of sex you would die if you're a woman who has sex you are bad and obviously gay sex is the most disgusting thing you could possibly ever do and they only mean that between two men obviously they're not even thinking about uh same-sex relations otherwise it's like that sex ed class

and mean girls yes it was exactly when I saw that like three years after high school I was like oh yeah this is the exact same thing and then a kid in class later joked about condom use and teaching condom use and the teacher this is in gifted class where you're a little looser and the teacher's like please stop even

this joking if I even comment on what you're saying I can be fired like just stop she dove on him like a live grenade to even recognize the existence of condoms you just need one shitty narc kid in that class tattling to their mom uh and say like we learned what a condom was today in class like that teacher is fired gone that reminds me not to go too deep into this but something i always think about is like we had one of those abstinence uh presentations and like the woman was like now imagine there are six planes and you get on one of those planes five of them are going to go to disneyland and one of them is going to crash are you going to

get on a plane and my thought as like an 11 year old was like this is the only way i'm getting to disneyland like nobody's taking me to disneyland i'm gonna i'm gonna roll those bones but it was really like one out of six people that you have sex with will kill you with their diseases that was the analogy yeah that's crazy you will get aids 18% of the times that you have sex or something i didn't i didn't know how sex worked really until uh grade five because i think we had like really good sex ed in my elementary school grade five was when like we watched a video and it showed like a diagram of like like oh the penis fits in the vagina like this i was like oh so that's what sex is okay it was it was really informative they never did the abstinence thing to us i i had to learn from television and it wasn't until

my community college class that they actually like it was refreshing that they just said like well and of course sex is this and contraception. I was like, oh, OK, this this is the difference. Three months from May to September made. They're treating me like an adult. Yes. Yeah. But yeah. So there's a great joke of the test being picked up by armed guards.

And I love that one of the armed guards has his hand over his gun the entire time, like ready to shoot any any of these children if they make a move uh then we head to the iowa non-international airport uh for the debt to go the national testing center controlling your destiny since 1925 it's a nice touch that there is basically corn in the background of every outdoor scene on this journey it's all iowa's for corn and tests you know i i definitely there there must have been some Iowa tests in my school, but around that time, at least for the South or where I lived, Texas was taking over and a lot of this stuff was getting shipped to Texas. more types of, hey, do you know that Texas controls what's in just this small number of people who publish most of the textbooks in America is controlled by a bunch of conservative people in Texas. And that's why they talk about how the civil war is about states rights, or they cut off history teachings when Martin Luther King Jr. shows up.

I know there's a King of the Hill about that. That's very funny. All right. Right. Yeah. The tests are going through bart's test breaks the machine i love that it's an old it's emma the old machine they got to hit it with a broom a couple times when we see there's like a ton of names flashing on the screen as the tests are going in the caviar belt i did not look at every one of those but i did notice uh tuck tucker layout artist he's one of those guys like paul wee with a fun name so when it comes up in the commentaries i'm like oh tuck tucker so there you go it sounds made up it does yeah you would think it's fake yeah the same with they didn't they didn't stick in the gammels this time tom gamble didn't get which in the in the new york article they they do say it's gamble and pross that saved uh george meyer a life of not

being a hollywood comedy writer because he was like washed out and didn't know what he wanted to do. And then Gamble and Pross were writing for Letterman and told him like, hey, the funniest guy in the Harvard Lampoon was George Meyer. You should hire this guy. So if it wasn't for Tom Gamble, we wouldn't have this episode of The Simpsons.

He's got an interesting voice. He seems like a nice guy too. Yeah. So then it's the triumphant return of jay lauren prior first speaking appearance since bart skits an f and he won't speak again until season nine's lisa sacks i feel like he's oh really this is it this really is it yeah and it's just for him to show up again and say like oh yeah lisa has no future or well actually in that one he does support her uh intelligent i wish i got to draw this guy at least once when i was working for bongo i got to draw the hypnotist oh really yeah which the last

appearance was homer uh at the bat i think yeah also the santa class teacher right he also taught the santa class yes that guy i got to draw him for one comic because in bongo comics they usually would like go through old episodes i think the writers would go through old episodes go oh you haven't seen this character in a while and like stick them in there so like i would draw like i drew him and mrs pommel horse oh right who has had more appearances i think than the hypnotist i i think like later seasons i think so yeah definitely more than the hypnotist he's i mean he really stands out it's like with his pencil line beard and and pinpoint head i think he does not fit in i had to modernize him a tiny bit but this guy uh jay lauren prior i never got to draw him it's so funny

he if for one episode he was on the same level as skinner and krabappel and and he's not by a guest voice so he could have appeared that much but i think when we did his first episode and definitely in bart's gets an f we identified that anything he can do pretty much can just be done by Skinner or Edna so it'll be funnier too it'd be funnier and his personality is just like being quietly patronizing which is not super funny when you can have someone like a stuffed shirt like Skinner or someone who's like very jaded like Krabappel I think too it's that Matt Groening lost some of his power and he was the one who really had the axe to grind with uh guidance counselors I think theance counselor humor really went down. I only met my guidance counselor once, and that was because I got in trouble, and he was just the guy giving me a write-up.

Which, again, I said I was a good boy. I followed some bad boys to just vanish and hang out with them during a fire drill. Which, fire drills, you're supposed to stay with your class the entire time. And my teacher was not happy. And I actually got detention from that. Oh, I love talking to my guidance counselors. I was such a nerd in school. God, we're talking about this.

I can't stand it. I think they were like excited about me. I think they saw that I had a bright future. We booked Nina for this afternoon. My guidance counselor in high school there was never any guidance counselor before that but uh i guess she vaguely helped but not really she was a nice woman but she shaved her eyebrows and then drew them on again huh and that's all anyone could ever talk about and when you met with her that's all you could just do is just stare at her her

drawn-on cartoon eyebrows that's probably so she could adjust um her emotions depending on how she was feeling at the time like oh she's trying to she could adjust her emotions depending on how she was feeling at the time. Oh, Bob's coming in. She draws angry eyebrows on him. Yeah, exactly. Aiden, did your guidance counselors have photos of Einstein behind them the entire time? No. I think she had vaguely inspirational things on there. I don't remember what advice she gave me because no one knew what to do with me even though I was doing well in school.

Probably the same for you, Henry. It's like, well, you're not leaving this town like yeah yeah forget about your dreams here's something that is kind of applicable to what you're into yeah pretty much i uh you know i mean the most guidance i got was from teachers and they would be the the cool teacher or the jerk teacher and who i'd fight against usually honestly i did some of my best work spurred on by a teacher who told me i couldn't do something which again taught me the wrong lesson i think but i i feel like einstein is only behind him just because in the first episode it's behind him for a visual gag where

he says well you don't have to be a einstein to figure this out but instead he says you don't have to be a bart simpson to figure this out and in this episode too i noted that ralph is really getting downgraded he's on his he's on the sliding uh slope downward in intelligence though he's not he's not special yet we'll say he's not it's fun you catch on the commentary grading is almost he's saying uh i like when ralph is innocent and i think we get away from that a little with he's he's all but saying they're doing short bus humor with ralph and that i i definitely don't think raining liked that short bus humor and how leprechaun tells him to burn things yes yeah that he's he's a pyromaniac uh i mean we're phasing out jay lauren prior i think we're phasing out this lisping kid oh yes yeah

unnamed lisping kid he was like he would be given a line every like 10 episodes until this point, and he might be gone after this. Yeah, yeah. I wish, you know, I wish they'd replaced the Lisping Kid with that cool kid with the sunglasses. Or the boy or the girl. There's one son, or maybe her glasses are just supposed to be like old 50s lady glasses. I think they're like those cat glasses. Oh, okay. And Milhouse, meanwhile, he's told that he's going to be a military strongman

so here's a funny i don't tell many fun stories involving my dad on here but here is one we'll be the judge of that at the time when this episode aired before it aired i would ask my dad what his job was and he wouldn't tell me or he would be needlessly unspecific it was part of the game but he would but he would tell me his job is systems analyst and i would say well what is that and he'd say we analyze systems and it was the joke would be he would just not tell me even though i want like you know my friends i know what their dads do and so in this episode when systems analyst becomes a joke it then became a whole thing in the family of just like systems analyst, systems analyst talking about my dad's job.

But then when I looked up what a systems analyst is, it is like, well, yeah, it's just a made up job of like, you know, consultant would work just the same or like, because this is how a current HR site describes it, analyzes business process issues and or problems and provides consulting assistance to system users like it's just fake i mean honestly my dad's job was just a job his friend got him after a savings and loan dried up that my dad was working at in the dried up or was like investigated hey look he's innocent i i know that much but he he wasn't high up enough to steal enough from it but yes my dad worked at a savings and loan before they all shuttered in the simpsons joke we'll get into that in lisa's first word

episode but yeah so i always associate the systems analyst job with what my dad's job was at the time yeah which uh the joke is no one would dream of being a systems analyst unless you're a dweeb like martin you'd you'd always want to be a systems analyst uh and uh yes this is when lisa and bart find out their futures architect a third salesman salmon cutter military strongman systems analyst systems, systems analyst, systems analyst. Systems analyst. All right! Homemaker? Mm-hmm. It's like a mommy. Police officer? Well, I'll be jiggered.

If you'd like to learn more, I could arrange for you to ride along in a police car for a night. Hey, I don't need you to get me in the back of a police car. Well, I really think you should consider this. You know, before I saw these test results, I had you pegged as a drifter wow a drifter lousy sheriff run me out of town he's lost my vote cool you know that was adr on that joke and i bet it was something much darker oh yeah you think he like killed somebody or something like some sort that. Some sort of drug problem.

Now, when you hear the clips, I know why they phase prior out. He just sounds like a more gentle Mr. Burns. It just sounds like a non-angry Mr. Burns. Yeah, yeah. It was maybe Shearer. Well, Shearer did that voice before he was Mr. Burns because he was the only Mr. Burns when episode four was about to air. Or really, well, episode one of production, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know the story.

He's kind of like Van Driessen. Yeah, yeah. Very soft-spoken. But they didn't make him an ex-hippie. I mean, there is an ex-hippie Simpsons teacher, but they have like two jokes for him in the entire series. I think they could have explored him more. Yeah, I want to know his story.

I want to hear what his life in the 60s was. We see a ton of different teachers in this episode that we never see again. Yeah, I think the teacher with Marge's voice has like one more line in Dog of Death. And that's it. When they're talking about the lotto money together. But yeah, I think the prior is nice and supportive, but also like, but when it comes to lisa he's like like a mommy just shuts it down when he sees that bart could be a cop i mean this is also about living in a society man or they're just enforcing prior is the happy face of these strict things being put upon you

like no no you should just be a cop you're a cop when i was in my my last couple years of high school i went through the international baccalaureate Program or IB program, which I didn't need to go through because I didn't want to go to university, but whatever. It requires a certain amount of volunteer work. And also you have to job shadow someone at least once. And even though a friend of mine and I did not want to be police officers, we claimed we did so that we could follow the school constable for a day. And that's what we did. We got to like ride in his police car and visit the Vancouver police station, which was interesting. But also nothing particularly interesting or exciting happened.

I just thought it'd be cool because I was like, oh, it would be just like on TV, right? No, it was not. Wow. So you did a ride along just like Bart. Exactly. Yeah. That's so crazy. It wasn't at night, though.

I don't know why it's happening at night. To it more exciting for bart i guess but yeah yeah it seems dangerous this episode has a lot to say about police that i only really notice as an adult and it is funny how it's like well this this boy they're walking down a dark path with skewed morality he's the perfect future cop i know i totally didn't get any of that when i was younger yeah it's so great it's so great as a way to i mean it reminded me i think maybe it didn't get any of that when I was younger. It's so great. It's so great as a way to, I mean, it reminded me, I think maybe it didn't click until after later in life. Let's say I was 19, late teens. I finally watched Clockwork Orange and that the movie, I started reading the book.

I did not finish the book. But when I watched the movie, I realized what a powerful statement it was that like, oh yeah, two of his droog buddies become cops and they act exactly the same to be a cop. And it's it's the same kind of message as this episode, too. From my understanding, the back third of A Clockwork Orange is like the Droogtionary. It's just it's just a list of the words the Droogs use and the definitions. OK, yes. It's like it's like the Klingon dictionary.

Yeah, but it's not it's not a rhyming Druc-tionary. So Burgess was just really a Tolkien-like figure then, except for the Dru way of speaking. I think so. Did you guys ever job shadow anyone? No, no way. That was not a thing? No, I don't think so. There wasn't money in the...

I mean... It seems annoying, like bugging someone going, hey, I'm in high school. Can I follow you for a day as you do your job? We didn't even do take your kid to work day or anything like that. That was not happening when I was a kid. This is digging up one memory I had. It was more like for the gifted class of about under 20 kids, we went to like, I think now is about to learn how businesses work

to make you want to be a business person. But it was like we went to like i think now was about to learn how businesses work to make you want to be a business person but it was like we went to like three different restaurants to see how they worked and like the manager talked us through and the only one i remember was it was this place that it was a pizza place that their whole thing was they said they cooked the fastest pizza in the world like as in they could cook a pizza faster than any uh business that oh how do they do that that it was something about they could get their oven hotter faster than any business that cooked pizza. Whoa, how do they do that? It was something about they could get their oven hotter faster or something. And it cooked it faster. And of course, as a kid, we were just excited.

And then you get to eat the pizza. I remember eating the fast pizza and thinking it was a fine pizza. Nothing too special about it. But that was the closest to a job shadowing I can remember as a kid. About a decade ago, someone asked if they could job shadow me once. I guess he wanted to be a comic book artist when they grew up. And I had to decline because like it would have been so boring. All I do is like I sit at home suddenly drawing hunched over my Cintiq tablet and it's not fun to watch. And then I take breaks to do like chores and grocery and cleaning and things like that. Like there's no point in anyone following me around doing that yeah no one is going to shadow me when the if a kid was shadowing you

they'd interrupt the podcast you were listening to by asking you questions that's true well i wasn't listening to podcasts back then ah you know nina when you asked us uh if we ever shadowed anyone i think you should be noticing at this point our schooling prepared us in no way for the future they weren't concerned about that at all just like realistic situations you might encounter as an adult no way learn these capitals i see i i wish i'd say i took one semester of home economics and i regret it that i didn't take more of it because i did i learned how to fill out a check i learned return addresses i did learn how to use the sewing machine but that's gone now but uh i never went through the the take your kid to work day thing i don't know if they didn't do that in canada but i know um friends of mine who have had to deal with that

happening like at the office they work to uh work at what's annoying about that is uh apparently when guys bring their kids to work they then stick them with their female workers their co-workers here you you're a woman you must like kids right watch my kids for a while oh i do work those are part of the allegations against like aaron ehas former simpsons writer and avatar last day i've ever had a guy like he would be doing that in his office oh yeah hey watch watch these kids well it's not just him who does that no no but it was like the laundry list of why he was bad to women at work it's apparently a very common phenomenon it sucks it's worse than

bringing dogs to work now that could be fun but if you're in an open office often there are just like too many dogs walking around and they're barking at stuff i would love that though nah well it's kind of old you know it yeah i guess it can be disruptive if you're just trying to concentrate on work yeah look i love i love petting somebody else's dog but also i do know that some people have real phobias of dogs. Right, yeah. And they might be feeling like they can't even express that because like, well, but I want to tell somebody to not bring their dog. You've got to be mindful of people who are allergic to dogs or, like you said, are afraid of dogs.

Just keep them leashed up a little bit or ask people, hey, are you comfortable with having this dog around? The secret of the dog office people are because you can't really take smoke breaks anymore you gotta be like oh my dog's got his shit i'm sorry i'll be back in about 45 minutes man i have seen those people take their long walks with a dog yeah i have seen i mean the last not to go on about this but the last office henry worked and i worked in was not a real workplace and like people were just like going to the gym in the middle of the day what was up with that do you remember this yes yeah they'd go to the gym shower too then come back like yeah i will defend the dog walking because sometimes you do have to wear your dog so it like sleep while

you're working or sometimes a dog just takes forever to go poop or pee yeah yeah hey and you don't want to if your dog's gotta go better take him for a walk than leave him in the office. We should not be in offices in the first place is what I really want to say. Like be at home with your dog. But now everybody's forcing people back to the office. It's pretty much happened now. Even Bob Iger is forcing people back. Some offices have like dog daycare services.

Wow. Or they hire dog walkers to take care of the employees' dogs. Wow. That's impressive i i have not heard of a no people i know work at a place like they have that at ea games that i know for sure the one in uh in burnaby or vancouver oh okay burnaby is a part of vancouver i was like i don't know i knew a couple people who worked at ea and redwood but uh yeah i mean meanwhile every every game developer is leaving here to move to a different state they nintendo shut down their offices i've heard ubisoft is closing some offices

all right but anyway it's also great bob you've pointed out so many times this is the great runner of bart loving a hopeless future he dreams of himself it's so funny cool and what a great i think it's such a great they give lisa homemaker which adds this extra wrinkle of tension between her and marge like a lot of writers don't give a crap about writing anything between marge and lisa going on but this creates a great thing of like marge marge wants to both help lisa and and tell her you know hey believe in yourself go through your dreams but also marge does feel offended that lisa hates would hate to live marge's life yeah i know some people who like honestly like being a stay-at-home mom like they love raising their kids or like homeschooling them no and that's fine if that's what they want to do i've i've known some dads who have enjoyed like

oh wait i give me a stay-at-home dad. And once they can toss the toxic masculinity behind them, they're like, man, I do get to stay home all day. This is pretty nice. It worked much better for a couple friends of mine once they were miserable in offices. And once their spouse, who's a woman, became the breadwinner, too, they're like, well, you know, I can just stay home and raise the kids. That's fine with me. But, yeah, I think if it works for you you should do it but yeah this i mean i can see why lisa has more of like the i don't want to say women's lib movement but definitely the feeling of like you know the reason homemaker was rejected so much by at the time was because you weren't given the option to be that if you wanted to right like for for many women i don't

know if my mom would have wanted to be a homemaker or not but like money wise we needed a two parent income i think it's most like if you can have a stay-at-home parent that's a huge luxury you know most people can't raise a family on one income unfortunately i could totally understand lisa feeling crushed by this news though well friend Matt Christman has pointed out that all these traditionalist values coming in that like oh it's destroying the family they never go against the businesses that make it so you can't

like it always has to be two parents out of the house you can never have maternity leave doesn't buy into the back to family values bullshit I think part of why uh lisa didn't like hearing this is she's seeing what marge goes through that's true yeah like to her that's what a homemaker is like living marge's life she's very perceptive about how unrewarding

uh the the job can be for marge and all the extra work she puts into it that goes unnoticed also with all this family stuff i I was thinking of the George Meyer piece because they talk about how he did not have supportive family. Like the entire plot of You Ruined Thanksgiving was, they mentioned that in his profile of like, yeah, it was every holiday would be deciding which family member ruined it. It would be just, and usually it was George,

his sister said in it. But the parents are being much more supportive here than they were in George's life. Though also George, like he didn't want to, he, I believe to this day, I don't think has kids because he said like,

I, he was the oldest brother and he's like, I raised all the kids, not my parents. So I don't feel like doing that again. Lisa's dreams go all the way to like she's gonna be uh not successful in america but appreciated in france she's not gonna do drugs but she will have to work love affairs and she may or may not die young and marge is just very

supportive of that like whatever you want to do honey yeah she is her whole like uh autobiography planned out in advance and uh no one wants to be homer and that's uh i you know they start with crickets i'm glad they have a howling wolf you need crickets you gotta top that you can't just have crickets but this is when lisa thinks she's gonna find more inspiration from a music teacher but here's some bad news can you tell me if i have what it takes to be a blues musician sure can show me your chops. Uh-huh. Yeah.

Cool. So, you think she has talent? Huh, sure. Oh, do you think she could be a professional someday? Oh, Lord, no. But I'll practice every day. Yeah, well, I'll be frank with you, Lisa. And when I say frank, I mean, you know, devastating. You've inherited a finger condition known as stubbiness.

It usually comes from the father's side. Oh! Stupid fingers. You're wrong. You're wrong. You don't need long fingers to play the blues the blues come from in here my god they are stubby uh i love it uh by us i mean devastating that's a great foley of a carbonated beverage sinking into carpet that's extremely good they had to have gotten like a square of carpet and just like poured beer on it or something.

If I ever drop something, I do think of Homer's stupid fingers and I kind of wiggle my fingers and look at them. Well, Nina, though, as a professional Simpsons artist, are any fingers drawn stubbier than any others as a rule? I mean, when I try to think of different fingers, I only think of Mr. Burns having really different looking fingers. Marge's fingers are pretty long and slender compared to the rest of the families okay i just think of her big ropey muscles in her arms i never i should look more at her fingers there's the guy with the giant hand of course of course yeah wait what marge's big ropey muscles well yeah i just think i i always remember homer saying like uh these kids have bony little arms not big ropey ones like you oh right but but yeah because when lisa says my god they are stubby

i always look at that drawing like are they stubbier than any other kid in the show like they all have similar fingers yeah maybe for that that scene they drew them like uh slightly smaller well also i i have other i have other simpsons artistry questions later in this but the that stubby fingers thing apparently i don't know if they got this from it but elton john has mentioned in many interviews i could not find one source because when i searched this it was like oh it's like from 100 different interviews he says it a lot when he was 11 he was trained in classical piano and he was told he had two stubby of fingers to study classical piano like i'll never be great at it and so that's when he then got into uh the evil rock music of the devil in the late 50s and he said soon the whole world

will know the name reginald dwight i started learning piano when i was four years old and i think it actually made my fingers longer oh just through the training and exercise i think so it must do something to your fingers right if at such a young age when you're still your body's still developing playing guitar uh while my body was developing yeah my left hand is like crazy and weird and very spindly i think there are like certain like uh physical limitations when it comes to certain instruments like i wanted to learn guitar too at some point like later in my life and i just couldn't with my fingers like my fingers weren't strong enough i'm sure i could train them to get into those crazy positions and hold them but it would have helped if i started at a much younger age i'm sure oh interesting yeah i when i also was searching

stubbiness with music on google like playing it there were there's whole like a wiki how and multiple articles of like stubby fingers with guitars here's what you to do and it was like i bet there are really good illustrations of that i think using a pick is a big part of it just like just use a pick but uh but yeah that lisa is just crushed here being told like at 11 by a jazz guy who she's hoping to be told and marge is even like so you think she can be great right and he's like no no just fingers too stubby just not gonna happen even though she just played like that's original music there that's also lisa being a musician and writer too like she's composing there also she's only eight years old yes she still has

room to grow like literally her fingers can grow so much more but yeah apparently uh elton john his fingers still are kind of stubby i think by but he's he's dealt with it pretty all right when you went to his concert did you get your opera glasses were you looking at the stubbiness like they are stubby my god they were the opera glasses were light up star ones too just uh they they were selling a lot of uh we did actually buy light up sunglasses there too i haven't seen those yet you gotta be wearing these somewhere well it's hard to put them over the glasses i see yeah but sorry nina you were gonna say oh yeah speaking of fingers uh henry i brought this up before i think whenever you do a peace sign with your fingers they're so wide i don't know how you do

that yeah how do you do that it's like a right angle i i don't know i can stretch crazy. I can stretch. I do them. I should put it more under control in it. But when I do it, I'm just, when I do it for photos, I'm like just so excited. Like, yeah. And I just do it. So it's your excitement. Yeah. Wow. It's not a contest.

Yeah. Like, like you do the peace sign a lot in pictures. Like, so do I. But like anyone can look this up. Just like, look at the fingers. Or so like, I'm trying to do it as wide as you and I can't. Yeah. I don't yeah i don't i don't know why i guess i think it's cool though growing thank you i when i was growing up i was

told like i should start playing piano because i had fingers for piano i was told this yes no that that's totally that's totally true i was thinking about i was like wow if you can stretch your fingers that wide like you can reach the keys easier. Okay. You know, maybe later in life, start playing piano. My husband, he actually, I don't think as much as you, but as a kid, he also learned some piano, too. He tells me he could still play, well, not chopsticks, but the step above that, he probably, if he sat down at a piano, could do it. But I think they probably drove me away from it because I felt I was told by too many friends parents like you should start playing piano i was like i don't wanna like i i should have given it maybe you were born to play piano you just

never went for it uh you know the keys i play on are the keyboard as i write notes for uh podcasts in another timeline like everything everywhere all at one style you are like a professional pianist uh man i love that that movie man i i was just uh well obviously because you got nominated for all these awards today i was thinking about it but that movie made me cry man that was a great movie honestly though it wasn't it was the husband love section that was the part that got me the most like oh so okay lisa is broken meanwhile homer is visited by the cops it's really funny because the next we've already recorded it but the next podcast you're going to hear also has a joke about stealing copper wire that's right that's right

in furious yellow in that one we see a guy literally rip it out of the wall here homer i guess went to like a work site and just stole a spool of it he didn't immediately throw marge into the bus which he would in about five years. Oh, yeah. He would just say Marge did it. It's also great that it was right by the door. Like, okay, I got it right here. It's a fun, like, I don't even know how much of a joke this is, but it's funny that when

Bart comes out, he just slams the door on Homer and he's out of the scene. You know, one time my Muay Thai teacher gave me a ride home. And on the way back, he spotted a bunch of wires, like copper wires inside a dumpster. He's like, oh, hang on. I got to get these. He parked the car. He jumped out. He like went to the dumpster and like grabbed them.

And he was, I didn't say anything about it. I'm like, okay. And then he was awfully like defensive about it. He's like, you know, like as a man, it's hard to make money sometimes. It's what I got to do sometimes. I didn't say anything. I wasn't judging you. Where does one sell copper wire?

Recycling centers probably take them. I guess so. Well, I'm thinking of the start. There's kind of a plot of that in the first episode of The Wire. That two unhoused drunk users who are lead characters in it. You follow them for the day going to places to steal or take out of garbage cans the things like copper wire and then sell it back for money that they buy drugs with that was the wire from the wire it's a titular wire it's not a metaphor

for something it's about copper wire they really got away from that after the first episode copper keeps getting like more and more expensive right like that's why i think canada phased out pennies it was more expensive to produce them i think that's still the problem here too we need to get rid of those pennies you should now every time i see pennies now i'm like whoa wow they still exist huh it's like seeing a ghost a little tip for our listeners here the money is no longer in stealing copper wire what you need to do is snap off those catalytic converters on cars. Now, that's some good chump change in your pocket right there.

Really? Yes. Don't do that, obviously. Don't do that. It's a major problem in cities in that the precious metals in those things are worth money, and it's easy enough for someone to slide under your car, rip it out, and take it with them. Wow.

And we saw someone under a car on our walk while you were here, Nina, and I'm like, they could be working on their car, and they could also be stealing the catalytic converter. Either way, I'm not a cop. Hey, it's none of my business. Yeah. See, you wouldn't be as happy as Bart is to be picked up by the cops here in our next clip. Ah! Look,

I didn't steal that copper wire. I just thought they were throwing it out. Here, take it. No, no, sir, we're here for your son. He's coming on a ride-along. Good for you. Maybe this will straighten a boy out. Wow, can I see your club? It's called a baton, son.

Oh, what's it for? We club people with it. Well, it's about time. So, you guys like being cops? Oh, it's great. You get to run red lights, park wherever you please, hot and cold running chicks. And when you go home at night, you know you've made a difference. Hey, Bart, you see that caddy over there?

Uh-huh. That's Mayor Quimby's car. Tonight his honor is polling the electorate. How would you like a street named after you? I mean, we've seen Mayor Quimby being, you know, publicly amorous about women, but this is the first time he's straight up like cheating on his wife. Yes, this is an affair happening, right? Polling the electorate flew right over my head as a kid. Oh, totally.

I like Bart whistling as if he's seeing what's happening inside the room also whenever i see a street name that i'm like well that's not like a famous person or like you know most in vancouver when i stayed there i walked by tons of streets that were like each was named after a different province meanwhile here there's tons are just like every street feels like a california name of like urbana or whatever but occasionally i will see a street that's like a person's name and i just think like do they sleep with the mayor to get this street name how they get this I also like too that they describe it as park wherever you want run red lights hot and cold running chicks and that then he says and you know you made a difference after he described like all these things that they just take advantage of but I think one of my all-time favorite Simpsons jokes is we club people with it like yeah yeah uh because it is about the cops even back then we're trying to say like no

we're not so bad this isn't a club it's a baton uh it's like we don't club you would say we don't club people with it but instead they're like we club people with we apply tactical force yeah that's man and it's so perfect like this is why a kid would want to be a cop because they realize like here's all the power i can abuse if i'm part of his system i actually can break even more rules technically also the the mayor quimby has a vanity plate i rule you which yeah man that's all right i think i noticed that for the first time actually i like the uh the drawing of mel rollerblading and he has one of those fun, long-nosed dogs. What are that type called?

Is that a Borzoi? What was that? Yeah, Borzoi. That's what I'm thinking. I see it every once in a while. There's a couple Borzoi accounts on Twitter that are pretty funny. I love Edgar the Borzoi. He just turned seven.

Happy birthday, Edgar. Happy birthday. Was it a Borzoi? Let me look it up it up you know well it's strong very cartoony i just see the long legs and nose make me think borzoi but maybe i could be wrong when you really care about someone you shouted from the mountaintops so on behalf of dejardin insurance i'm standing 20 000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you home and auto insurance personalized to your needs weird i don't remember saying that part visit dejaden.com care and get insurance that's really big on care did i mention that we care

it's like yeah like their nose kind of curves down more. Okay. This has more of an upwards curve. Yeah, I don't know what this is. It could be part Borzoi, for all we know. Also, enjoy that line said by Sylvia Winfred, folks, because it's her, Winfield, it's her second to last line in the show.

They move away a new kid on the block in the next season. Yeah, pointless character. We will have Mrs. Glick, right? She's not in the show they move away a new kid on the block in the next season yeah pointless character we we will have we will have mrs glick right she's not in the show yet uh no she was in the comic books we've done the comic book that was mrs glick yeah mrs glick is okay yeah but this is winfield because they call her al gene it messes up he calls her mrs glick on the commentary but clearly because she's watching from the window as a neighbor it's sylvia winfield not not click i'm i'm so used to uh tress mcneil doing the voice that i forget that she is also she's also chloris leachman in her first appearance oh yes i'm so used to the tress

mcneil uh you know 90 just candy those kind of lines it's interesting how they gave this character like a canonical out instead of just phasing her out without saying anything about it they didn't say that jay lauren prior moved away they just uh but in winfield yeah she actually gives a speech don't we're like yeah moving away i mean so then again once they give them new neighbors they don't do anything with them either yeah yeah it's just the ned show there They have one great episode, but one, yes. Bruce comes back a few times at least. Most notably the muscle lady episode.

Oh, God. We're getting close to that one. Season, yes. To steal a line from a previous guest on the show, The Real Jims, in his season 14 review, that is a season of large transformations. Yeah. We're about to approach she's like a cat woman a big boob lady and a muscle freak yeah this is the first in many times

snake has robbed apu that we see first in the background apu has mentioned before you know each bullet wound is a badge of honor but we've never actually seen him be robbed by snake we did see him robbed by crusty this is one one of those positive stereotypes of Apu that he as constantly striving immigrant store owner that he takes being robbed constantly in stride and he's just used to it now. This is not a traumatizing event for him. But of course, this is where the fiction comes in

where the cops actually catch somebody who's committing a robbery. You never see those on t like all these videos you see of robberies being stopped at convenience stores it's always the customer like beating up somebody you know like that there was there was that recent news story about the cops who got in trouble for playing pokemon go in my own opinion of that was um that they that's good for them they should be they should be occupied with that and not like hurting people wait what happened here uh two cops were like on duty but they were spending their time chasing down rare pokemon and pokemon go and people were like what an outrage

they're on the clock and i was like no that's the best use of their time possible yeah if they're bored uh they should be catching pokemon instead of like looking for uh someone to arrest yeah hey that guy yeah instead of trying to find uh someone to arrest yeah hey that guy yeah instead of trying to find a guy who's like taillight is slightly smaller than another one i mean if they've got a phone in their hand they're not holding a gun in it that's what i said yes exactly if they were like more irresponsible i guess then they would be out arresting people just who are just trying to play pokemon go i'm sure people will call the cops some people just oh like with their phones

looking for pokemon i mean yeah when the game was brand new wasn't that one of those stories of like trespassing was happening at some point people were like falling off cliffs oh yes yeah that's the hey that's why they put their warning in there don't trespass to play pokemon go so there's also a great joke of bart letting impressionable children like us watching it know cops definitely do not have straight A's. I was also thinking that of Homer saying like, no, no, no. The army said I was too heavy. The cops said I was too dumb.

You do not need to be too heavy or too dumb to be a police officer in America. I didn't know all these things when I was a kid, so I didn't understand these jokes. And now I totally do i hate to derail things but uh i just found online the pokemon go death tracker oh god and two dates there have been 26 pokemon go related deaths and 64 injuries which is you know pretty good for a player base of what like 50 million people yeah that's true yeah and internationally man jeez i'm always afraid of getting hit by a car while i'm playing pikmin bloom yeah no it's it's why i pretty much just put on i do my morning walk every morning to get my 10 000 steps in i turn on the flowers while i walk and there's like one patch of road where i'm like okay for three blocks there there's no traffic otherwise i just

leave it in my pocket and let it go if i I need to concentrate on something on my phone, I usually will stop and go out to the side, get that done, and then keep walking. But if there's a long stretch of sidewalk where there's no one around, then I'll be planting, or not planting, or feeding my Pikmin, or looking for mushroom challenges to do. But then I'm always in the back of my head thinking, what if this does me in? And I just end up in the news as the idiot who got run over playing pikmin my my husband has warned me in seattle they are not as nice uh or observant of pedestrians as they are where i currently live in berkeley california apparently i uh you know what the three of us on this podcast here we all love sending uh postcards to each other in pikmin it's a lot of fun i just uh every time i go to an airport now i'm just like oh i i have to use i'm saving all

my gold coins for every time i go to an airport because airports have tons of fun postcards to pick up uh but yeah the jeff lynch is the director of this episode and he's one of the best action directors of this show but this episode is limited in action but when he gets to do a big car chase he does a great his team on the animation side does an amazing job yeah all the action in this is so good especially we'll get to it but the animation of bart firing the gun is is incredible you know they they had the real netty no-no of drawing bart with a gun and they're like we're getting away with it let's have it look really cool and actiony also there's some really good like little hand motions too that are needless but great when eddie says everything's it's bang bang shoot them up cops and robbers he does all this like little

extra hand acting that if it wasn't there you wouldn't notice it you'd just be like well yeah i'm just looking at his face but it's really good i love that they hand him the gun it could have easily written so that Bart finds a gun in the glove compartment or something, but no, the cop gives it to him. It's every child's dream of like, the cops want me to help. And then just a lot of times he says,

this goes against every rule in the book, but will you back us up? And then just hard cut to Bart holding the gun like very cluelessly, just looking around like, okay. But yeah, this car chase. He gets like a revolver too, right? Oh yeah. Those are super hard to fire.

It's like a Dirty Harry style gun. It's a huge man, at least from the vantage point of when it's handed off to him. Yeah, it looks like a Dirty Harry Magnum. Yeah. Like whenever I've gone to like a shooting range, I'm like, oh, I want to be like a cool cowboy and try using a revolver. And I just can't have to like use both um like uh thumbs oh man to cock it back because it's so difficult i've been i have still you both of you guys have fired guns i have still never fired a gun i've held i've held a loaded gun uh once but never fired one again i do wonder

how my dad was laughing at these because he was a former cop as well so a deputy as well in the uh in the completely useless sheriff system like that's like i i'm saying this because chapo trap has just had a whole spiel about how stupid sheriff departments are it's just we already got cops we need extra cops like we have different rules screw that is that why you got to hold a loaded gun i mean it's why he owned guns and and could show them to me yes yeah but he never made you like go to the range or anything no that's surprising actually knowing your dad well he didn't like going places or doing things showing me this gun could be done in the home and then uh it wouldn't need to like spend waste

precious gas money you're going to a firing range he didn't even bother like wanting uh trying to like bond with his son by showing him how to use a gun no i mean uh my uncle who was just as conservative as my dad he took his sons out hunting to teach them how to use guns and my dad was like man i don't want to go hunting like though i mean obviously i i am a big dorkist maybe he thought obviously by the time i was five he's like i'm not wasting time teaching this kid to hunt or he's like what if he turns the gun on me could happen it happened uh i can't find it online but i saw it was trending like a few years ago and it popped up every once in a while like the the animation of bart like firing the gun wildly and kicking back a church used that on their lcd

sign like the animated gif of that and it was like some alarmist sermon about kids killing kids or something right but like I remember that too I see that pop up the animated gif of the church sign every once in a while that's great I've never seen that I would go to that church and this car chase is meant to reference bullet which we've talked about on a podcast with Nina before in the Beck episode of Futurama yes starringender's best friend beck in in that one during the car chase in this car chase one hubcap flies off they make sure all four hubcaps fly off in the car chase in uh the back episode bend it in the wind they make sure five fly off because that's in a mistake in the

original movie right yeah oh thank you bob you, Bob. Yes. Yeah. Meanwhile, Apu is enjoying his nylon ropes, almost sensuous. Apu's developing a kink here, I think. And then that guy crashing into the milk truck, I'm racking my brain. Is this the first non-treehouse on-screen death? Because this guy is definitely dead. Like, I'm really, I mean, mean there have been some there were some accidents that happen at the plant where the germans buy it but i don't feel like i saw an actual like death if you consider ozzy smith dead oh okay yeah maybe he vanishes into another dimension uh dragon ball z

style i guess so he could come back like ozzy smith himself said he was interested in coming back to guest on the simpsons again because he said technically i didn't die that's true okay yeah and you know what and mike socia is near death but then he actually does come back on the show so clearly he recovered from did they not explain that when he comes back it's a one-off joke where lisa says didn't you get radiation poisoning and he says yeah i was given the man i was given the super abilities of a baseball manager so i turned it into a marvel comics type joke but yes bart has a gun and then it's easy to forget this snake actually does try to murder bart in a grizzly fashion here he's going

to run over bart i mean he's he's a he's a villain in the way criminals are portrayed in shows like Bullet or Dragnet. It's just like Snake has this death drive for murder. Like, he's not trying to get away. He's like, oh, I could kill a kid. I'm going to do it right now because I'm a crazy person. Yeah, there are no other circumstances that led to this crime. He just is a crime liker who enjoys crime and doing it. Yeah, is this the first time a character has actively tried to kill bart yeah before it's aicho bob so i show bob he wanted to i guess if you can't

homer strangling bart uh that doesn't count cesar and ugalon from uh chateau maison they did try to poison him yeah they wouldn't care if he died but yeah this is this is more active attempt at killing yeah it might be the first time uh also I was thinking about when they handed him this gun. Have you guys seen the, was part of the Grindhouse combo, Planet Terror? In that movie, there's a scene like this where a zombie apocalypse is happening and a mother gives her kid a gun and says like, look, I know this is crazy, but there's zombies everywhere. You've played the video games, right? You know how to use a gun.

And the kid is like seven or whatever. Then a funny thing happens that I don't want to spoil but it's very different from what happens with bart when he's handed a gun but uh yeah when i saw it in planet terror i was like oh that's it's like when bart got a gun i've seen that movie once i i don't remember that scene i don't remember much about that movie uh is death proofs the more memorable of the two films i really all i remember about planet terror is that and then behind the scenes facts about like i was rose mcgowan did a uh pole dance routine but she wanted it heavily disinfected because she's a a very a clean freak and the

character or the or the actor the actress rose mcowan. Not her character wanted to, but for her to do the scene in character as a erotic dancer. I actually couldn't finish Death Proof. I watched the first half, and then I was like, I'm done with this. It's too disturbing. Oh, but the second half pays off.

I know what happens in the second half. That's still not my thing. Okay, I understand. I don't think I could watch it. Though also in the Planetary, the other thing I remember is Fergie is in it very distractingly. And when she's eaten by zombies in it, Tarantino was one of the zombies who bites her.

I see. Of course. What if I was a zombie and I bit the leg? Does he bite the leg? I think he does. He starts with the feet. We know this. In the extended version of Death Proof, Kurt Russell's character literally puts toes in his mouth. does he bite the leg i think he does he starts with the feet you know we know this in in the

extended version of death proof kurt russell's character literally like puts toes in his mouth in uh unconsensually from the non-consensually that's where i'm looking for anyway part's about to be run over it then goes to an act break i as a kid only bought it for scary reasons like oh no what's gonna happen to part and just like when they did the title for Bart Gets Hit by a Car when this act two thing came in I didn't realize it was like a stylized thing I was like wait do they do this every episode or is this what they're gonna be doing from now on naming every act I obviously I'd never seen a Quinn Martin production as a kid to to know that I don't think those Quinn Martin shows like Streets of San Francisco or whatever got replayed

on Nick at Night all that much not really I'm trying to think of one that I did see but i don't think those quinn martin shows like streets of san francisco or whatever got replayed on nick at night all that much not really i'm trying to think of one that i did see but i don't think i was into that kind of thing as a kid i only like the old sitcoms or like alfred hitchcock presents or twilight zone cs bart is about to be run over and then in a great gag he is saved because the alley gets so narrow in the middle and it's it's such great animation too it gets slowed down and then he flies right out of it and it's covered in blood too this is also incredibly bloody for a non-treehouse episode yeah it's pretty gruesome uh this i mean this tight alleyway thing too reminds me of one of those uh one of those really cool stunts jackie chan does and i think it's project a where it's like a Nissan car is a

pretty compact cars chasing him down a very tight alley and he has to dodge at the last second to kick guys through the window we we did miss earlier uh they're going down the alley just full of empty boxes and I think Lou goes damn boxes that's a great I remember my mom thinking that was very funny and I didn't quite get but then when you watch these movies if they need a cheap thing, a car can drive through that won't damage the car or won't like hurt people in the surrounding area. Just like a cheap prop. It's always boxes. And then I remembered the MST3K movie Future War where they go to like an industrial setting and it's just like full of stacked empty cardboard boxes because the movie is made for no money. And just getting thrown at each other too.

But like the boxes when they smash into them, they make like stock like crunching sound effects right right i love the very like self-conscious joke of lou going oh good thing this alley got so narrow in the middle they're acknowledging that's ridiculous he has to say it out loud like yeah barb was never in danger uh this is when this shows you how things will change in the show soon after wiggum shows up later because obviously the chief of police shouldn't be on these regular calls but uh but this is when he gives bart his inspiration man that was close good thing this alley got so narrow in the middle oh that's nice work, boys. Ah, looks like you just bought yourself a lottery ticket

to jail. He's unconscious, sir. Ah, they can steal everything. Sir, I know what I want to be when I grow up. A cop. Well, until then, son, I'm gonna make you an honorary police officer. Eddie, give me your bag. Hey.

Morning, honey. It's so good about him that I'm stuck in the house behind the stove. Lisa, I know you're down on homemaking, but it can really let you be creative. See, this morning I turned bacon, eggs, and toast into a nice smiley face for Bart and Homer. What's the point? They'll never notice. Oh, well, and toast into a nice smiley face for Bart and Homer. What's the point? They'll never notice.

Oh, well, you'd be surprised. That wasn't their stock belt, so you need a fresh belt for that. That was so, like, it was too realistic. You could hear Dan Castellaneta forcing air there i i feel so bad for marge there that she's trying to be like hey you know you can be creative at home too and then just instantly proven wrong by her pig son and uh son and husband i think if this was a later episode like later in an episode they wouldn't care that it makes no sense for Wiggum to be on this patrol. They would just stick him in the car. Yeah.

It might just be him. Yeah. Well, yeah, it's funnier if it's Wiggum. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's yeah, it's actually just by the start of season five. They're like, no, it should just be Homer with Wiggum driving around. Why do we worry if it's like Eddie and and lou chasing after uh marge and her her friend

ross uh no i i also like uh i can still hear you like he's wig of his man that his little one-liner was not listened to it was even bad like you bought a lottery ticket to jail yes it's even like it kind of doesn't make a lot of sense either uh yeah if you examine it if he had stolen a plane ticket or something like oh you just took yourself a plane ticket to jail also it's a really great match cutter or transition of happy bart face to sad lisa face that i really like too good plating on that breakfast from marge even with a little sprig in the middle there though are we to think that these are some magic eggs bart eats a full egg three times in a row off of his plate.

And I think somebody should be fired. Maybe there are eggs hiding under the main egg. Okay. It's like a stack of flat eggs. Bart is testing out his cop abilities at home. First, he hand prints Maggie, which he leaves walking around the whole place. Then we see a joke about the degradation of homer into a food monster in the show that he's that homer has gone from a guy who would just eat a bunch of food to a guy who will jump on the kitchen counter and hover over a full cake shoving it into his mouth

eat it like garfield eating lasagna it's kind of like his college admission photo yes yeah that's that's even better those are great drawings of him eating but that's even better and uh though also homer saved santa's little helper's life because that was a chocolate cake oh that's true that dog and we also have a a cut by callback rather to homer's night out with bart taking a picture of his own butts and now it's never been easier to see what your own butt looks like bart was ready for the many important lessons that kids need to learn today about taking photos of their butt

when they're adults. When I say kids there, that sounded weird. Hey, someone, well, I guess Bart developed the picture of his own butt in the last time we saw this, right? Yeah, or he took it to the class that does all the developing where Martin worked, or not worked,

it's students but yeah he punched in that day one of the best scenes in that uh billy eichner bros movie i saw was about that a guy on grinder demands an ass pick and billy's like i don't want i i don't have a fresh one and he's like show me ass pick and it's him him going through the 30 minutes of work of shaving his butt, getting out his ring light, getting the right angle for his butt shot for it. Aspik is very hard to make. You've got to boil that calf's leg for such a long time. I get it. I just watched Julie and Julia.

That's why I know about how to make aspic we're talking about what is it like bone jelly or like animal blood jelly aspic yeah I haven't seen that movie Meryl Streep's good in that right yes she is she's excellent

Amy Adams is like okay she does a fine job I've seen her in better stuff we're going out for aspic I don't't know all that that can't be good for my gout all this jelly beef uh so so yes meanwhile lisa has become a sullen youth and marge tries to give her inspiration lisa why aren't you a band practice i quit, right now you're discouraged, but deep down you know you love the saxophone. I think you should stay in the band. If you think

it's so great, why don't you join the band? Lisa, there are a lot of people in the world who like to tell you what you can't do, but they don't always know what they're talking about. You know what I want to be when I grow up? A girl on the oatmeal box? No, I'm going to be an astronaut.

Women can't be astronauts. Why not? They distract the men astronauts so they wouldn't keep their minds on the road. There will, too, be women astronauts. It's true. And we'll all live in cities on the moon. So, you see, my sisters were wrong except about the cities on the moon i was wrong about that so well you can see how anyone can be wrong marge was his track of the moral she was trying to impart not that you can do anything

you want but then it turns into well i guess anyone can be wrong yeah i'll take that with you uh i love uh yeah i love cute little marge with her oatmeal box head too oh that design is so great that's the first time we see little marge i think no no uh in the comic book episode uh it's her doing all their chores uh and then they smoke okay though she's even cuter here i this is one of those things that you realize thanks to american bullshit we didn't know the like oh yeah when you think me growing up as a kid for the longest time if you asked me who was the first female astronaut i would have said sally ride right which that's the first american woman in space but valentina tereshkova she was the first woman in space in 1963 sally rye didn't go into space until 20 years later but obviously you don't hear

those facts uh when there's a cold war going on and you don't want to americans don't want to give any credit to russians for anything well those don't count yeah what they did doesn't count the the way you win the space race is getting to the moon that was the only that was the only part of the space race that mattered they didn't ask for our permission to go to the moon we did things the right way by the way when marge is talking to lisa while she's on the floor eating chips here there's a rare brown itchy in the background on her bookshelf you're right yeah it's like a shiny pokemon a brown itchy throw the master ball at it uh i also do like that as a sullen youth lisa's reading a comic book while eating chips like that also feels very she's eating trash food and and reading trash comics

she's giving up trash literature yeah i i like to her very kid way of saying, well, you join the band. I say this as a comic book artist who loves potato chips. And so, yeah, there aren't cities on the moon yet, but if Elon Musk has his way someday. Also, this is one of those things like, oh, yeah, this joke can't work now because Marge needs to be a little girl before uh there's even astronauts on the moon and this like this is a marge who's born in the late 50s as opposed to two years ago there was a episode about marge graduating in the year 2000 from high school currently marge is born in 1982 yes yeah like us and sadly she's only going to get younger than us in this sliding time scale.

Now we get introduced to a thing that rarely is brought up again, Skinner's love of the Puma. And I feel like the Puma appears every now and again. I definitely saw more Puma stuff in the Bongo comics. Yeah, yeah. Like in the Bartman comics, which I loved, which there was only really four of them in the original run of Bartman. Skinner had a supervillain alter ego, which was the Puma. And that was his nickname. I think it's because there was more Bart content in the comics.

Like one of the things I penciled for was for Bart Simpson comics. And so we had to mine for more school content. Was there a lot of Puma work in there? I didn't have to draw the Puma. I'm sure Ian Bo boothby wrote a few storylines centering around the puma or the puma yeah he calls it a puma like donald pleasance does in puma man i don't know which is supposed to be correct i think it's puma okay yeah i think i tend to say puma it also doesn't matter at all and if you think it matters you're wrong as as a

kid i said puma because that was also the name of a, I would say, C-list Spider-Man villain in the 80s was the Puma. Though really, he's more of a gray area guy because he is a Native American with good reasons for being a villain. I see. But this Puma thing doesn't come back until Pokemon, correct? Yeah, that's right. Puma Pride. There's an entire subplot about creating a mural

for the school based on the mascot of the Puma. And that's what? 10 years later? Yes. Nine years later? Something like that.

Yeah. Michael Keaton repeats over and over again. Puma Pride. Puma Pride. Oh, and I say Puma because in Japanese it's Puma.

I think that's why. Okay. Tell them they're wrong. It's also why i say guitar guitar and video guitar video you call me an idiot so this is when lisa goes to a place that i wish ever appeared again in the show and i know nina you're a fan of the this place right the the bad girl bathroom oh am i a fan of this place i saw you do did a piece of art that incorporated one of the bad girls into it it was uh kathleen jakes uh was

inspired by bad girl dairy queen oh kathleen jock no sorry hey speaking about badly pronouncing things sorry it's i had i'd read her name many times i have not said it out loud it's exactly like the french uh first name okay kathleen jocks yeah it's not your fault henry some they call it g you don't pronounce the s okay we've we've met uh we had on bob jakes as well his name was spelled the same way so uh but apologies kevin the author brian jakes who wrote the rights to red wall books or did when he was alive uh kathleen's sister listens to the show actually oh really hello i've never alive. Kathleen's sister listens to the show actually. Oh really? Hello. I've never met you but hello I see you on the Patreon.

Bonjour to Jacques. Yeah you did I remember you did a great drawing of the redhead I like these characters a lot. They're really cool and we never see them again which is interesting. Yeah I just love there are these color choices that would only be like in the first three or four years of The Simpsons with like the wild pink hair and

they're not named. They're not named they're just the bad girls you don't revisit them or anything they should be as recurring as jimbo dolphin kearney they're they're great if they'd have been named like jimbo dolphin kearney well also there's so very few stories about lisa having anything to do with other girls and if lisa's gonna get bullied she just gets bullied by nelson or the other boys you know this episode is also full of just kind of shocking imagery for 1992. You have Bart firing the gun and then you walk into this bathroom where eight-year-olds are smoking. Yes, yeah. Yeah, like just wafts of smoke coming out of there.

I love how Janie says, that's a bad girl's bathroom. Yeah, thanks for reminding me, Henry, because I totally forgot about this like like I know I I know I did this picture like it was based on my friend Kathleen's story about how when she was uh growing up in a small town in Alberta uh there was one Dairy Queen where all the bad girls uh from high school worked at and so I just love that image of a Dairy Queen being run by like bad girls you know I just imagine like the bad girls in this episode so I drew a picture called I think it's just called bad DQ girls and I did base one of them on the pink haired girl which I also have an enamel pin of oh okay that was the other one I was gonna say yeah because in my mind I had a fuzzy memory of Nina drew the bad girls once and

then I just searched I did a twitter search for it and and the DQ one was the one that came up yeah which was great one of the girls is saying Eden get out the which is also a Simpsons line right yeah god I'm very predictable aren't I just just pump Simpsons references into everything that's why you're here that That's true. These are your bona fides. But I like that when Lisa meets up with these bad girls, she uses her brains to help them more psychologically destroy Skinner instead, which this moment then leads to another major thing for the character of Seymour Skinner. Lisa, what are you doing? That's a bad girl bathroom.

What are you doing? You want to egg Skinner's car? Okay. What are you looking at? Nothing. Then get out, because we're figuring out stuff to egg. Okay, but if you really want to hunk Skinner off, I suggest you attack the one thing he truly believes in.

I saw some awful things in Nam, but you really have to wonder at the mentality that would desecrate a helpless puma. I never thought I'd say this, but the no-goodniks rule this school. Don't! Don't get your hands off me! God, I could really use a half day. Think you're a big man with your handcuffs and blasted tasers?

Get him out of here. I'll get you, Bart Simpson, if it's the last thing I do! Now what is this all about? Well, it's quite simple, really. I observed our friend, groundskeeper Willie, burning leaves with a blatant disregard for our clean air laws. Bart Simpson on the side of law and order? Has the world gone topsy-turvy. That's the premise of the episode.

That was in the fucking commercial. By the way, Henry, the guest you mentioned, his last name is not spelled the same. His is spelled J-A-Q-U-E-S. Kathleen's is spelled J-A-C-Q-U-E-S. That's why it's Jacques. Okay, got it. Apologies.

Okay, Skinner went to Vietnam. this one-off joke of I've seen something I saw some terrible things in Nam but you really like if this then turned him into being a Vietnam vet which obviously he can no longer be that because he'd be in his like it worked in 1992 because he could be in his mid-40s as a Vietnam vet then. To be a Vietnam vet now, if he joined in 1974 at 16, he would still be in his 70s today. That's how old he would be. And, I mean, it just was the idea 34 years ago or 31 years ago that, like, wouldn't it be funny if a cartoon character went to Vietnam

and saw, like, atrocities? And then it would go on to inform like his entire past and who he is and yes they did do a lot of cheap like ptsd humor but i think bill oakley and josh weinstein really narrowed it on his like his his past in the army to define him more as like why he's so strict why he's so dull and uh they develop that more with the principal and the popper which we have discovered is a good episode. And no one complains about it anymore. Do they ever bring this past up again in recent episodes? I'm very behind on my Simpsons watching.

Maybe they just got rid of it. They had to retire it. I can't think of it in a recent one. And there's been some Skinner-focused ones. Not just the one we went to a table read for. Have you heard about this, listener? But also the recent Roblox one, which was about Bart teaming up with skinner that wasn't referenced there either well table reads are coming back we're not special anymore eventually he can be like an iraq vet yeah it'll be this this is what

happened to the punisher character he started as a vietnam vet and they had to make him in a rock vet which will always work because we're in a forever war. So you can just say, yeah, 10 years ago, the Punisher served in a Middle Eastern country for the American Armed Forces. That will always be true until we're dead, probably. I'm looking at The Principal and the Pauper and the history of Skinner that the kids put on, they do the biography of Skinner

for his anniversary of being the principal. He is enlisted in 1966. Oh, wow. Yes. So let's say he's 18 he was born in what like 1948 yeah at the latest so yeah mid 70s now uh also i love the description of a helpless puma yeah pumas are not known for their helplessness uh yeah also when i was thinking about how much george meyer and the other writers love batman and there's a batman reference more batman adam west the 1990s 1966 version this exchange between bard and skinner is batman and gordon in that show like it's quite simple really i was doing this and then the pronouncement of has the world gone

topsy-turvy like it is so a batman scene that with that kind of like arched way of talking but bart got his first taste of authority and he likes it and so after being told no more bull spit bart is offered to uh be a hall monitor and bart said i love the line wouldn't that mean squealing on other kids? That's mean of it, yes. And then comes an uncomfortable topic to talk about. Oh, oh yeah. Let's get into it, which Mike Reese objects to this joke. He thinks it's in poor taste, and I agree. He was right.

He was right, yeah. So yeah, we cut to Bart's courtroom fantasy, where he's a witness dubbed over by Steve Allen. And there's a blue dot over his face. And that's added in post i think that it was a late joke that they added for like humor in quotes um but the blue dot over bart's face is a parody of the william kennedy smith rape trial of 1991 where the accuser's identity was masked by a blue dot in footage of the trial to disguise her identity and then she later revealed her identity in interviews after the trial and um he was acquitted of all charges.

But if you look into his history, you'll notice that there have been many other accusations and things settled out of court. And yes, he's a highly connected member of the Kennedy family, which makes me think they had him on their mind when they were thinking of Freddie Quimby. Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. I mean, yeah, I mean, Freddie Quimby is William Kennedy Smith. Like, that's who he is. Yeah. I did. But the fact that they pulled it out of like a real rape trial is just like, oh, that is, it is in poor taste. It is the blue dot was on, like when I searched blue dot trial,

cause I couldn't remember the trial. I came across a archive from 91 newsweek article that was just gross because it was saying like it was basically called remove the blue dot this woman can't accuse a man of this without and she gets to say she has to stay anonymous show her face like it was a really gross art but that's how things were back then and also now yeah i think the commentary right i think the commentary at the time was like you can't make an anonymous accusation you have to show your face and we understand why she didn't of course and uh well steve allen was a very good friend of the simpsons for for a little bit so he'd appear on the critic and in round springfield though unfortunately late in life he became a real crank about violence and sex and vulgarity on tv

late in life he was the chairman of the Television Council, and he was also the author of the posthumously published Vulgarians at the Gate, Trash TV and Raunch Radio. He was really mad about Howard Stern and people like that, too. I wonder how cognizant he was. I feel like part of me thinks he was an old man being used by the Parents Television Council to get headlines like, well, no, we're not just a bunch of right-wing cranks. we've got steve allen here and yeah i mean i heard about it too because

not just his thing against the simpsons but also he really hated pro wrestling which uh you pull up some stuff from 1999 on pro wrestling television i understand why you don't want kids seeing that yeah bad but he had also not only did he do simpsons stuff and then later say Simpsons is awful. He did lots of stuff with the WWF and pro wrestling in his life as well and then went against them. But yeah, it's sad. Have you ever seen a cell of this scene of the fantasy trial scene? Because I want to know what it looks like underneath that blue dot that was obviously added. Yeah, a video effects.

Yeah, they must have drawn Bart's face, you think? You think so? Yeah, I would bet they drew the face for it but then boy extra work if they knew it's gonna get covered up i feel bad for the anime maybe you know i'm extrapolating from the commentary i think mike reese was saying they always thought it was going to be pixelated and then later they at the last minute they want to do the blue dot to reference the real thing yeah so i assume that there was lip sync and it was like a bart head but yeah you're right so yeah those cells probably exist that show what he looks like under there yeah they gotta be out there which is just bart obviously but still let me need to see now you know uh we've

shared cells with each other that we found online and there's one of those where obviously i did not buy it it was it was usually they're over a thousand dollars and too much but it was bart holding a radioactive man comic from bart's friend falls in love but you could see so much more of it you're like and you realize like oh they framed this on tv much tighter than they actually animated it and you look up a lot of cells like that you can see or say see mr burns fully nude coming out of the shower from smithers his dream sequence so obviously they did not draw a penis on mr that's going in our bathroom and you're drawing the penis on it uh you're buying it oh okay we're gonna have to raise

thousands of dollars we're gonna have to raise some patreon uh tiers the price of them we're gonna have a ten thousand dollar tier called buy us sells that's the yeah william william kennedy smith bad guy no yeah all this wiki is just like this is not a falsely this is not how i would say a wrongly accused man would act for the rest of his life i would say but uh but obviously you know these are all alleged things but uh yeah also the i keel you that was also uh written on that envelope that marge read in tales from the public domain uh earlier in season 13 that we covered and also great action on the guy pulling out his knife and running apart that's really good fluid action there but bart is then given

the sash he's he becomes a narc because of the sash uh me and bob we already talked a ton about the power of the in the allure of a sash and bobby love this month on the patreon yeah and how uh i never experienced hall monitors uh nina were there like formal hall monitors like children deputized in your school i feel like this was like a generational thing i don't know if it still happens i i thought i always thought it was like an american thing because i'd never seen it myself it was it was still at my school but it was just for mainly hall monitors were just there to escort kids to the drop off point for parents picking up their kids in cars. It seems so unnecessary. That and like hall pass thing.

That's so dumb. I mean, it's to give kids power trips and to hold it over each other. I figure I don't know how much they still have it now. But yeah, I mean, well, so wait, did you guys not have like bathroom like bathroom passes or whatever no you just went to the bathroom when you felt like it yeah like what are we gonna do what were you going to do yeah i mean no i'm seriously what are you gonna do in america you'd pull the gun out of your locker and then shoot now it's time yeah yeah yeah uh i mean we just were allowed to go to the bathroom and if like a teacher saw us in the hallway they'd be like hey hey, where are you going?

And I'd be like, I'm going to pee. And it was understood that if you're in the hallway during class, you didn't belong there. And if someone saw you, they could question you. Well, didn't you guys ever do projects in the hallways? I don't think so. Like work on creative stuff? You know, sometimes even in English class or whatever, you're assigned a project where you make a poster or whatever. Then you can just go in the hallway and work on those.

No, no. I do that all the time. They didn't trust us. We just be out drawing on a poster outside. Well, as Edna says at the start of this, in American schools, they take that glorified babysitter thing very seriously. You have to have eyes on the kids at all times. I loved working out in the hallways. There was the rare times of like, we're going gonna do class outside today they're very very rare far

more often was we're gonna watch a video wheel in the tv with the attached vcr on it uh well bart gets on his power trip and now every thanks to nina's very good comment on a podcast many uh years ago now i never not noticed the strip of flesh on a sunglasses wearing simpsons character like you you talked a lot about that uh in the das bus that was the one where he talked is that because i brought it up yeah you mentioned that nina hopped who happened to be there yeah that's right she was she was right over there and yeah all right because i was thinking like i didn't guess on that episode. No, no. But I was, like, off to the side. You were on the couch.

Where you often put me. You were the podcast monitor. Yeah, I was like, in my notes I have, this is the return of the dreaded flesh strip that appears between the eyes when they're wearing sunglasses sometimes. Well, because otherwise you'd have to draw on what? Like, just like ned's glasses where just the sunglasses fully cover the eyes just one-to-one right which you could do like sometimes they were like mono sunglasses yeah it's more like a visor the flesh strip is more often used yeah it's uh it is now back then i don't know about nowadays maybe they have more like stricter guidelines

now so they can't do that maybe i you know next, next time I watch a season 34, I'll see how they deal with the sunglasses and that. I flagged down a Kojak reference in the hallway here. When Bart goes, who loves you, baby? That's Kojak's tagline. That's why he says that. Okay. You don't need to know who Kojak is, by the way. You really don't.

I don't know what a Kojak is. Telly Savalas? Yeah. A big, bald detective? Yes. Okay. Always was sucking on a lollipop. Yeah.

That was his thing. He'd pop a lollipop out of his mouth and say, who loves you, baby? Is that where the name Bojack comes from? Kojak Horseman? Yeah. Maybe. Maybe. And then Milhouse is being tortured with a pink belly.

I maybe did get a few wedgies in my day my bullying was more psychological or no uh it would be hits to the nuts uh what happened but no pink bellies i did not get pink belly yeah this was not a thing uh it reminded me too of uh i always feared an awful waffle after hearing about it from uh salute your shorts growing up. They invented that, but I'm sure because of that, it was inflicted on many a child. Kids tried to discover it. What about when you twist someone's arm to leave a pink skin behind, which has a very non-PC name? Oh, yes.

Yeah, the quote-unquote Indian burn. Yeah, I don't know what you call it now. I thought you were talking about the titty twister. Oh, dear. That's skin. Oh, yeah. I had that one. You know, it's a good thing we have TikTok nowadays, I think.

It keeps kids occupied. Yeah. Now kids are brainwashed into thinking they're friends with Naruto they like are dating them in another dimension. Bob, you retweeted this thing of the this thing of a joke thing of Criterion's putting their stuff on TikTok. It was just a long clip from my dinner with Andre next to a streaming of an Autorunner game and somebody cutting up soap. Yes. Yeah. And it worked. I actually watched the whole thing, too. I would have probably watched the clip, too. But I was like, wow, this thing actually does work. That's not good.

We can't condone this. I'm turning into Steve Allen. We just need to sit down and read a book at some point. I'll do that again. Well, I read nonfiction. But the last time I read a fiction book was a while ago. I have to admit. It's worth it.

It uses the power of your imagination also great drawing on the uncomfortable walk by millhouse out of there uh then we have i think this might be the first joke about homer forgetting maggie i think yeah this is played as like a huge joke here but like it's probably tame compared to future jokes about him forgetting maggie the the uh oh yeah this is a great reaction like no shame at all just like right right there'd be a lot of people today with their fur babies who would be mad at homer saying a dog doesn't count as a kid oh the fur babies hey you know if you love your dogs that's fine that's cool i i like i know i just distrust some of the instagram no sorry not instagram facebook every time i go on, all they're showing me are like people with their fur baby cats and dogs on there, which is just like when mommy comes home versus when daddy comes home.

There's a lot of gender politics coming in there. Back when I had a dog, I hated being called a mommy by other people. Like, don't label me as that. I don't call myself my dog's mommy. Don't do that, please. I love the disgust in myself my dog's mommy don't do that please i love the disgust in your voice because i can't stand that yeah see all these auto playing videos uh they're what's i think exacerbating it because it is people portraying their relationships with their dogs and cats of like oh he likes this cat likes daddy more than mommy yeah

nina shudders. I'm shuddering. If other people want to do that to themselves, that's fine. Just don't assign that to me, that label to me. Don't make someone a mommy or daddy. Yeah, if I don't call myself my dog's mommy, don't call me mommy. Then we cut to Lisa's classroom. Ralph is eating paste, but he has enough sense to lie about it.

He won't have enough dignity toph is eating paste but he has enough sense to lie about it he won't he won't have enough dignity to lie about eating paste soon this paste eating seems like a generational thing where i saw it a lot in cartoons but i think it was boomers reflecting on how kids used to do this maybe they made paste less tasty because no one was eating paste in in my school they were like putting it on their skin to make like cool designs and peeling it off and that was fun yeah i'm guessing uh paste used to be just made with like enough designs and peeling it off and stuff that was fun yeah i'm guessing uh paste used to be just made with like enough organic materials that it was like safe enough to eat and it probably just tasted very bland like pancake batter or something it's made out of hooves

yeah well isn't that why elmer's got a cow on it right i think so yeah no it was pretty synthetic by aries but yeah i loved one of my favorite killing time things and after school programs waiting for my mom to pick us up was putting it on like fingers or thumbs and then seeing seeing how many layers i could get on there and then break that record again i'm glad we have tiktok these days yeah yeah yeah if i had a phone in my hand i wouldn't cover my hand in glue you would watch other people covering their hands in glue and peeling it off and then think about someday starting my own glue hand channel on TikTok. You'd have to stream yourself gluing your hand for 24 hours a day.

The content, everything has to be a job, even kids gluing their hands now. You know, I briefly got into watching slime videos. It's very satisfying, yeah. I even bought some slimes made by a local artist to test it out myself. And then I tried it i'm like uh i'm bored of this already it lasted like a week my fascination with that that soap cutting that one really was getting me i was like i like uh sand videos sand cutting videos oh it's like a really gritty sound oh you might enjoy that all right uh oh but Lisa, meanwhile, tells her teacher to shove it, which I love that.

Like she's she is a bad girl now. This reminds me of when I was in eighth grade. One of the worst things I did probably. Well, which was I was a real cut up in class, of course. And we were having like free time or whatever. And I like I was on good terms with this teacher, but she realized I crossed the line. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing

20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com Slash care And get insurance that's really big on care Did I mention that we care? When, I didn't like the principal By the way, principal's name was This is not doxing anyone

I just want to say her name, it's very funny Her name was Mrs. Wiggly So you figure out where you can go with that Don't be a principal if your last name's Wiggly. Exactly. Well, I think that was her husband's name, but she chose to marry that man. Keep your own name, lady.

But I forget, the teacher said, oh, Mrs. Wiggly says something, something. And I was like, Mrs. Wiggly can bite me. And then she was like, what did you say? And I was like, oh, I thought we were cool. She was like, you go to the principal's office and you tell them what you said. And so I had to go and I told like oh I thought we were cool she was like you go to the principal's office and you tell them what you said and so I had to go and I told the secretary I was like I said something about Mrs. Wigley and they sent me here but I don't want to tell you what it was and she's like oh

you're gonna tell us and I held out long enough they wanted to go home but I held out and I didn't tell them anything and they just let me go eventually oh that's great I commend you yes I would have done the same they like they couldn't torture me so uh they just let me go eventually. Oh, that's great. I commend you. Yes. I would have done the same. They couldn't torture me. So they're like, just go home. It shows Bob is not going to squeal when the cops pick him up too. Exactly. Mrs. Wigley, I salute you.

She called my mom a bad mother because I didn't get my first communion until much later in life. Yeah, that's a B. Yeah. You shove it and bite me pretty similar uh sentimonies there and also lisa looks very cool when she says what do you got which is referencing the only moment anybody knows from the marlon brando film the wild one i don't know any other moments from it is that the wild one i thought it was rebel without a cause it uh that's james dean but no no it's marlon brando says what are you rebelling against what

do you got that's what the wild one be uh which i think was what got parodied in the hell satan's episode when homer homer is watching the film about like you never stop the cobras man like uh i gotta triple check this color me incorrect i think i think i assumed it was uh verbal without a cause because macarain loves the movie to the point where Fry is dressed like James Dean. That's right. Yeah. I think people only remember it because it's like, oh, Marlon Brando in this crappy B movie has such star appeal. He looks like a Tom of Finland character in this movie.

I'm looking at it for the first time. That was supposed to be very federal back then. Yeah. Wow, you're right. It's not supposed to back then look like a guy looking for rough trade. Lisa's so cool that now the bad girls are telling stories about her in the bathroom. And Lisa is smart enough to know not to smoke when offered a cigarette. But she also deals with that great because she's told like, okay, do you want want to smoke and she's going to be called a nerd if she doesn't smoke so she goes smoking in class i was proud of her for not actually smoking it shows she's not going to

give into peer pressure yeah i and also i love the uh horrifying design on the laramie junior pack that's a great kid the kid smoking soon lisa will become quite the enemy of the laramie corporation but yes skinner meanwhile is so happy with what bart's doing uh he says like every day is a new fight sir so this is when uh skinner thanks him for making it a police state and then he takes him to the seized evidence locker uh which bart didn't believe was real bart you're doing a bang-up job you know before there were some corridors of this school you just never go down now i feel safe anywhere every day is a new fight sir bart the school is a police state students are afraid to sneeze

and i have you to thank come with me. Madre de Dios! Legends were true! Yes, Bart. Whenever a teacher confiscates something, it ends up here. Salacious halter tops, complete collections of mad, cracked, and the occasional issue of crazy. And this fake plastic derriere. Now, to show my gratitude,

I want you to help yourself to an item of your choice. Right. Ooh, now you be careful with that crossbow. I will. Crossbow never comes back. So I was thinking of this scene because in Meyer's book, or profile two, he talks about how Mad Magazine was one of his favorite things ever as a kid and that he pried one of his most prized possessions was the night december 1990 issue of mad that the simpsons writers all appeared in yeah going back

to that it's like well that's a drawing of lg and that's a drawing of mike reese that's a drawing of david silverman like yeah i mean uh arnie conie Cogan is Jay Cogan's father and he was a Mad Magazine writer. I feel like there was a connection there. Like, let's get everybody on the show in this parody. Yeah, I would think they properly, correctly recognized Mad Magazine is going to do something with the Simpsons. So when you guys do it, please, we will help in any way. We all grew up. Mad Magazine for Simpsons writers was simpsons to us like it's

that we also had mad magazine too but yeah and uh crazy was marvel's version of mad magazine which lasted from 1973 to 1983 94 total issues uh so i was born like just as it was ending and i i don't think i've ever maybe i have seen it but i'm sure that if you wanted to find back issues they'd be cheap because uh i just bought a bunch of old mad magazines and cracks and they were all pretty cheap I'd never seen so many copies of mad and crack magazines until I started dating Bob because every time we go to like a used bookstore and there's like old issues of mad and or cracked I'm always like Bob come over here and he's like oh my god there's a reason why we're together yeah and i remember we

were in uh we were in minneapolis we went to this great comic store and they had a ton of old mads and cracks and i bought a bunch and i thought this would be a fun like card game but only i was really enjoying it if you can comment on this where i was like i would open up a page and i would say okay i want everyone to guess what did they call their batman parody and it's like nobody would know the answer and i was like what who is bruce wayne and it was like pew slain or something like that but it's like only i was getting any enjoyment out of this i don't know if you enjoyed it okay because the the actual jokes were like not that great yeah yeah or they were like too obvious i think uh some of us came up with the answers that were better than what

they had in the actual magazine. Yeah. Also, when we went to Mile High Comics in Denver, they had like a ton of issues. Yeah. Did I buy any there? You bought a few. And they were like on sale. You didn't even know.

They were cheaper than we thought. Get this crap out of here. You should have bought more. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they're so much fun. They're just so much fun. I'm just ashamed that I didn't, as a kid,

until Bob told me the first time we did this, I didn't know Crazy was a real one. I thought that was the third, because it's the third one named. I figured like, oh, Simpsons made up that. That's the topper joke. Same, I thought the same thing. Yeah, me too.

I didn't know Cracked was a real thing either. I just knew Mad Magazine. Cracked I knew, but if I could convince mom at the grocery store to buy me one magazine, it was going to be Mad. I'd be like, why bother with Cracked? Mad's the number one. I'm going with Mad. You know what?

I often veered to the edge of Cracked, like thinking, you know, they're kind of like the dark horse. They're doing more interesting things than Mad sometimes. You want to support the underdogs. Hey, and now Cracked is, I guess they're rebranding or something or oh yes yeah we heard that recently yeah they they already rebranded like 10 years ago to be the like the best clickbait farm in the world and like michael liam black was writing for them they got like celeb writers lots of listicles yeah they hey when i was writing listicles i looked at crack for like boy i need to do as good they did good listicles but i i know because uh one of the big writers from cracked

robert evans not the guy you're thinking of not the the dead movie producer but robert evans the comedy writer he was a writer for cracked and what happened to crack is what happened to every website it's like you're doing very well with writing. Stop that. You need to do these videos that cost a lot of money that nobody watches. Oh, whoops. That was a mistake. Well, you're all fired. I just know Sean Baby.

Yeah. I followed Sean Baby to there too. I really liked his stuff. The impact he had on internet comedy vibe and like so many people copied. I had to read so many when i was like editing freelancers at one website i worked at i kept saying like you're not as funny as sean baby as was my thought when i was editing people like this isn't as funny he'd be devastating insults you're no sean baby and i know sean baby ever had anything uh confiscated at school her i think i did lose a comic or two over time yeah or maybe no i well actually more often i'd bring a toy to school and then a kid

would break it or something and i'd stop bringing toys to school uh yeah for me it was one of those things where i finished a test early and i got out something to read and the teacher was mad at me so they took it away and it was like an issue of nintendo power i brought it with me i finished the test there was 20 minutes left like okay time to look at the maps for ninja turtles 3 and it was taken away from me and i i still feel the outrage of that i was reading a book in uh french science class i shouldn't have been i was being a bad girl there i was reading misery by stephen king and i was really into it i couldn't put it down so i kept reading it and then it got confiscated and then my french teacher uh called me misery for a while and he started reading it and he didn't give it back to me until he was done with it

that's great yeah it was like weeks later he was like this is very good as a kid i knew you can get away with a lot just by reading because adults were like he's reading isn't that great but i would just read the same books adults were reading and there would be like sex scenes in them so i'm reading like sex scenes in the book forrest gump and i'm like in like seventh grade math class like nobody knows i guess i'm here i'm reading about forrest gump coming and nobody knows actually reading about reading sex scenes in books also is probably how i learned where a penis went in play in well yeah once you narrow it down uh but uh one last thing about the mad and cracked and crazy covers i like that on two of the covers black is used for a parody title it's like star black and like the

black edition and it's just like oh yeah they only they only have one funny word black and they use it too much beauty in the black that was it and then the NSYNC episode would be called news kids on the black yeah which I also see that as George Myers influence there so then we have a cop montage here it reminds me of police squad but I feel like it's probably just them parodying the same old cop movies that police squad parody yeah it feels like a very noir uh movie montage especially with like the way the dates like zoom into the screen how like a lot of things are cast in shadow and uh food fight foiled fish stick seized uh also so he didn't have leprosy this they will repeat this obvious fake note joke in the boy who knew too much

where they in that one they need an entire bath computer to analyze it uh then we meet mr glasscock which they say is mike reese's real teacher's name growing up so that's how they got away with it man yeah i didn't get this when i was little i didn't get what that was what was dirty about it now it's like super obvious well we we know this henry i think he's still in the industry but there there is or was a video game writer for the press, and his last name is Cock. Yes. And when you're writing for video games,

that's not preferable to have a last name that can be easily manipulated. No, yeah, I worked with, he's still online and out there. Taylor Cock was one, a Cock I worked with, and he is proud of it. I think he moved into the the esports world i think he was working for riot though maybe he because he's stuck in the games journalism business longer than me he's it's hard to remember his job because he's been laid off by like five different places

sadly but a good guy taylor cox a good guy when there are some people with the last name but as well out there but glass cock that's a pretty great one though i always until he says it the second time as a kid i always thought skinner called him blast cock like shearer says like uh no we're teasing your name mr blast cock like i mean the cock's the important part it does not really matter what comes before that well it does sound a little like ass before cock though too, too. It's a funny name. But yes, Bart has so turned it into an authoritarian state that Milhouse basically acts out like he's in a dystopian novel here.

Hey, Lewis, watch this. Ow! Bart, do something! Let's go, Milhouse. Sure, we have order. But at what price? I just love him shutting out like it's like he's at the end of soylent green or something it's also a good role reversal because in the previous act millhouse was being tortured by kearney now kearney is ratting on bart to riding on millhouse

to bart and getting millhouse in trouble but millhouse millhouse actually goes through credit quite an arc here because he starts off getting pink-bellied, now pulled away by Bart, and by the end of the episode, he'll be the guy with the sash. That's right, that's right. And meanwhile, Lisa not having a good time in class. Now, let's correct our homework exercises.

Lisa, what 19th century figure was nicknamed Old Hickory? I don't know. You? Lisa, if you'd bothered to do the assignment, you'd know the answer is... the Battle of New Orleans. I mean, Andrew Jackson. Well, you're earning your 18 grand a year.

Stupid Hoover. I think she's so smite. She wouldn't be so smite without a teacher's edition. Okay, this was the most where it felt like me there. Her level of sass, but trying to be smart and clever with it. I mean, not just saying you're stupid to your teacher but but also rubbing in how poorly you're paid like that's such a great great line yeah i was looking this up and the average salary of a teacher these days is like around sixty

thousand dollars and eighteen thousand adjusted for inflation is around like thirty seven thousand dollars so uh if if what lisa says is true these are these are they're being paid less than games journalists you know i looked up the 92 average for a public school teacher was 35k so lisa is low balling her here though yeah maybe elementary school teachers get paid less than uh high school teachers but they'll also you know if that 35k was in line with inflation it wouldn't be 65 like you said it would be in like 75 now instead but uh so this reminds me of how i made an enemy out of a teacher because i corrected her once at the age of like nine um and it was like it always

bothered me as a kid when a teacher would get something wrong and in my head i'd be like well i'm a kid and you're an adult you shouldn't be getting this stuff wrong like it's like you're breaking all the rules that i'm familiar with and i remember it i remember what the fact was we were talking about like biology or something and i was literally nine years old and she was like well of course we all know uh they're camels have water in their humps of course blah blah blah and i was like no no excuse me teacher actually uh camels have fat in their humps, of course, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, no, no, excuse me, teacher. Actually, camels have fat in their humps. And she got very mad at me.

And after the class, she pulled me outside and dressed me down in a way that makes me think today. She was like, it really got under her skin. She's like, you think you're so smart. It was one of those. I think I cried. I think I was crying because of it. And I remember these very distinctly in my head because again it was like well adults shouldn't be wrong about this they

they're the authority figures i remember another class the teacher and i'm keeping their names anonymous uh she did not yell at me because i learned by this point don't correct teachers if they're wrong but she was reading a story about a sea anemone and this woman had never seen the word anemone in her life so she kept saying and so the sea a gnome and i was just like oh every time she did it and i got that that uh that pain every time a teacher was wrong about something especially and this is like the most like petty thing in the world especially when we were watching a film strip and they were like one one frame behind on things and they weren't paying attention and i, no, you have to advance one more.

You're behind what they're saying on the tape. It's not happening on the screen. So there you have it. You just want to run up to her and click the next button for her. Like, I'll do it. Yeah. Yeah, I had an argument with a teacher once too. And I was definitely right about this.

And it was with a teacher that I liked too. Like, I was like a teacher's pet to her uh maybe that's why i felt the courage to correct her um she said like the earth always spins on an axis and it never changes but i had read in a in a manga actually like an educational manga because i loved those when i was little uh because i learned a fact from one of those saying like it actually wobbles irregularly like over time. And it's not like enough that we notice. It's like over like billions and trillions of years. But it's not always on the same axle.

So I was like, actually, no, it's like there's like a wobble effect. It's like a spinning top how eventually starts like, you know, wobbling around. And she was like, no, it's always in an axle axis. And I was like, no, I swear I read this in a book like it wobbles and she was not having it and like what was i supposed to do like maybe nowadays kids and like look things up on their smartphone like pull up and go see this says i was right but back then all like all i could do was say like i know i swear i'm right and i still think about it to this day still bothers me that she argued with me about that yeah Yeah, I can see from the teacher's standpoint,

maybe they have such little self-respect from the students in general that maybe they're scared of like, if they question if I am proven wrong by one student here, they're never going to give me a break. This did teach me as a kid, though, like, oh, they don't know all these things off the top of their heads. They have these books, and I see the books, and i see how they're learning all the answers and i i had to design my own class when i was a grad student and teach it and because of that i didn't

have a teacher's edition but because the textbook industry for colleges is just like so corrupt so overpriced fleecing students left and right they really wanted you to use their books in your class and they would freely send you samples if you asked they would go yes we'll send you the teacher's edition of this uh this you know literature book or whatever and so i tried to get as many of those as possible then i flipped them because i was making less i was making less than eighteen thousand dollars a year as a teacher so it's just like i made hundreds of dollars legally that they were sending me samples that i did not have to sign a contract saying i won't sell them and that's how i was able to like to buy like beer and video games because

i was flipping teachers editions i'm sure the students who bought them were very happy like oh now i have all the answers that's so great oh by the way i was in in grade four when this the story that i told happened so i can understand like not trusting the word of a kidding fourth grade you know but but also what could you do at that point? Like, do you say, oh, maybe I should look this up later? Like, maybe you shouldn't say, I don't know, like, I've never taught a class and I'm not blaming her for like not believing me. But also you could just say like, well, maybe they found new facts or maybe the scientists found out that like it does spin on axis.

Yeah, maybe a kid. Instead of just saying, no, you're wrong. Yeah, I think maybe a kid or yeah just saying no you're wrong yeah i think maybe a better response from a teacher would have been like oh really you know you should bring in that book yeah yeah that would have been better but well i definitely i get the sense from this episode that this does have the spirit of making fun of teachers for being clueless like actually teachers are stupid and they they just have the teacher's edition they don't know any better but it also it it has that kid viewpoint but it also has the adult viewpoint of like these teachers have so little in their lives and they're just like chain-smoking like sad people that you this episode really pities teachers yeah does not

see them as like scary monsters they get paid nothing and they have no like motivation to do this job anymore and they're all like chain smoking in the teacher's lounge the entire time i think it's like a sympathetic view of teachers yeah this uh again it struck me in the new yorker piece i learned that george meyer one of his odd jobs before becoming a comedy writer was substitute teacher so he he has been on the other side of this at least somewhat yeah so uh so yes lisa she steals all the teacher's editions hides them in her locker you know it seems like this is all done in one day because uh she didn't have a chance to hide the evidence at home or destroy the evidence these poor teachers i love when skin arrives like don't they can smell fear they're just all like

giving up like declare snow day like uh so edna meanwhile her response to it is saying that martin can teach the class and she's mad that his and his false modesty just do it brainiac this is her turning on martin she's no longer like oh martin you're the smartest boy in class now she's sick of martin too meanwhile the teacher i actually did in middle school have a teacher who was like you know what i remember the 60s like though yeah yeah i had a cool uh like nerdy probably like a recovering hippie teacher who was an english teacher and he would often talk about the past while covering up all of his drug use of course yeah and i remember uh he was like the cool the ex-hippie nerd and we were studying beowulf and he brought in an episode of star trek voyager that was like a retelling of beowulf oh wow yeah that is that is some nerd stuff man

i i've said it before on here but i am very thankful to whatever super nerd of anime in 1992 or whatever brought in a imported from japan vhs copy of kiki's delivery service and showed us the opening of it that had no dialogue in it because i had never seen anything like that before wow i bonded with a few of my teachers through our shared love of the simpsons wow it helped me connect with some of them man none of my teachers like the simpsons that's uh they'll also they'll want the the the teacher who would tell the 60 stories she would also have to pause like it would come to a story one of the stories was things had a lot of tension like some students were about to be in a fight and she had to pause

to remind us of like and unfortunately you know for this this story of the 60s this is right after segregation ended at the schools here and so obviously tensions were a little high and i was like oh that's depressing to learn about uh also until doing this podcast research i never realized what hoover said like her her mantra i always thought it was like calm blue ocean calm blue ocean like as in one word of like uh c-a-m-b-l-u-o-s-i-o-n i thought the same thing except i in my head spelled it c-o-m and the rest of the same yeah so i try to look up that word like what does that mean what is convolution there was an era in my life where i just put uh captions on for everything just because i thought it was neat it actually made me into a much better speller but

it was when i saw it in a rerun i'm like oh it's not just one word that i didn't know it's actually some some like calming mantra she's saying that blew my mind when i found out what she was actually saying and now i like think that to myself when i'm stressed out it's it is such a great when you know it's calm blue ocean it's such a great extra joke that you know that she has clearly been to like therapy or something and said, if you're going to have a panic attack, say these words and get into a calming space. And so this is sort of like on the verge of a breakdown of just like calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean. I think this is better than Serenity Now. Yeah.

These were big in the 90s. These like these calming mantras. Now Nina and I last night were just watching Family Matter the classic sitcom yes we were one thing i remember uh from that show is that like carl was having anger issues and he was taught to say three two one one two three what the heck is bothering me i do not remember that yes yes i guess but probably urkel made him say that many times he angered that man quite a bit but you know what their friendship prevailed and that's the you know the heart of family matters of course uh so yes everybody's destroyed even mr glasscock quits once more he's broken again uh bart

meanwhile uh comes out of the bathroom now it's time for him to get on the case there's a joke about them breaking into the library with a battering ram this is obviously a joke about the uh footages of crack houses that were seen on i say that in scare quotes uh put on tv back then by the news again i say this every time i come back from visiting my mom's house for the holidays because she puts she's an older woman they put on the local news the local news is meant to terrify you and make you think every person around you is going to kill you for crack it's your job to disable that channel i've had it's it's rude to do that on my stepdad would not he would not like me tinkering with you like i don't know what happened these modern tvs concern it i mean i've already

turned off motion smoothing twice in there and I've given up. Given up. They always turn it back on. They like it? Yes. I don't know why. It soothes their aging minds. All the smooth action.

Whenever we're in an Airbnb and that thing is on, I turn it off. Yeah. Yeah. It should be the very first thing you do. I can't believe they just like it and they've turned it back on. I turned it off a couple of times and I sadly had to watch the entirety of the fablemans which is a film filmed on film and meant to be seen at a certain ass frame speed have motion smoothing on it the whole time it was it was a real bummer it's a damn shame i want to underline this line that we're going to talk about

soon is that uh the teacher's editions are missing and bart wants to do a random locker search and seymour is like well the supreme court wouldn't allow that he's like what have they done for us lately now in 1992 the supreme court the 20 years before had just done like a lot of really good things and now we're in another like bad snap which will continue until the rest of recorded history but there was a time in which it's like all of this like groundbreaking legislation and civil rights and all this stuff was happening and it was like an ironic comment on that it's like well they actually have done a lot for us bart but now that's like a that's like a sincere line yeah like yes they're an evil

institution that should be disbanded they're awful yeah this in 1992 this joke is showing what a cop bart has become that he has the reactionary way of thinking of like, Supreme Court, what have they done for us lately? Like, especially the entire era of cop movies from the 70s onward, starting with Dirty Harry and also like the Death Wish films is, man, cops just have too many rules on them. They just can't. And it's because of Supreme Court rulings like Miranda and all that,

which like, I mean, those type of movies like dirty harry are still made but i can't believe it because obviously you would know from reading the news cop the problem with cops isn't there's too many rules on them no no yeah and then like and obviously a school can search your locker it's their property and you're you have your child you have no rights. And I know this because, I mean, it's obvious, number one. But number two, in my school, a kid whose father was a cop, they brought a bullet to school. And it was a big deal when the teacher found out and lockers were searched. And to me now, it's funny. It's just like, well, yeah, it's a bullet. But at the time, it was like, that could have exploded.

It's like, if you put it in a vice and hit it with a hammer or something, maybe. I don't know. But you can't, like, throw a bullet at someone. But I got to touch the bullet, the cop bullet. They decide they are going to break into all these lockers. We have a Batman 66 zoom in on Bart's face, which, graining is all complaining. Graining rhymes with complaining. But he really does, like, crap on it. It's just like, it looks kind of crummy. Too After Effects-y. But he really does like crap on it.

It's just like, it looks kind of crummy. Too After Effects-y. Well, I don't think it was After Effects. No, he says like video effects. You're right. They would love to have After Effects in 1990. But yeah, it's a bad video effect. I don't blame him.

And so they're going through the lockers as they get closer and closer to Lisa's. We hear their parody of the Axl F theme from Beverly Hills Cop. So it's not the actual song? No, no. It's slightly off. It was the same one they played in Radio Bart. I've never seen that movie, so I just always thought they took the song straight from it. It's all right.

It's good, though. Obviously, speaking of that same style of movie, it's about how the LAPD guys follow the rules a little too much. They need a cool Detroit cop to teach them to bend the rules a little bit. I see. Yeah. Those stuffed shirts. All these stuffed shirts. On the LAPD.

They need a cool cop like Eddie Murphy. This is the third time they've used this Axel F parody. I thought it was also in something else in the past. I know it appears again. I believe you're right that there's a four third use of it but radio bard is the only preceding one i can think of when he goes out to put the or to either get the cassette player or to put it in the well yeah it's him going down the well is when it plays yeah yeah though until hearing aljean's secret commentary on it track

five pull it up on your dvds folks i didn't realize that the lockers repeating so much is a proto version of sideshow bob stepping on rakes uh which is like they close the things too many times you can count that bart is only six lockers away from lisa and he closes eight lockers to approach her like it's just so they just do clang clang over and over and over and over again and then bart finds out who stole him with a great reveal of pulling away the books in the locker to see the photo of his family and he learns it's lisa who did the crime that's right it was i please why did you do it come on bart in your pre-fascist day you know the gitty thriller feudal rebellion yeah but even I had my limits looking at expulsion

for this I know I know the books Oh, answers, answers. Simpson, you just saved this school $120. Who's behind this monstrous crime? I am. I really love Lisa saying pre-fascist days. That's such a funny line. And Bart doesn't take offense to that at all. He's like, yeah.

I was abusing my power. I ruled. Now, before anyone comments uh the uh axle f theme which i think is just called bart s is also used it's used a few more times but in the classic era the third use is in march versus the monorail when smithers hides the toxic waste thank you yes oh that's great bob thank you okay so i also really love you're too too late. People have already commented. Well, they have to delete their comments. And I know you people out there who comment before you listen. And you have to cut it out, Buster.

I'm watching you. At the very least, say, I haven't listened yet. And then don't say, but you better have... Like, don't do that. If you start your comment with, I haven't listened yet, or I haven't finished the episode yet, stop right there finish it and then go back to your comment i give those comments the frowning of a lifetime uh also great gag on

how low the stakes are he saved the school 120 dollars by finding if that's that's what it would cost to replace it uh and so yes uh bart saves his sister here he takes the bullet for her and uh definitely the new york repeats does mention his closeness with his sisters, especially the sister who is married to John Beatty. That's who. They joke about that on the commentary. Because Meyer's not there. John Beatty is. And they're saying how he's like, yeah, he's a bad brother to his sister.

Those are some cheap books, by the way. Yes. Yeah. In reality, I don't think they would be that cheap no it's actually the uh well yeah like bob was saying in his his book turnaround scam or scheme uh that that would basically for that pile of books to be 120 dollars it's basically a dollar a book for what's in her locker pretty much or all right let's say three dollars a book there's absolutely no way i mean i assume this is as corrupt as the college textbooks textbook industry and it's like this like norton anthology of literature is 140 or something it's that crazy

and i'm sure it's only gotten worse i hope at least like academic book piracy is a thing and it's happening because man people get so ripped off in college on that stuff yeah oh and then i love smith's acting on i know i know like that's really it's lisa realizing like i did go to i want to be a bad girl but i actually have gone too far and i'm i'm screwed now like this might actually ruin my life and she's she's regretting it this this is kind of a scared straight moment for lisa by by bart taking the rap and also like bart says she's looking at expulsion bart is able to get a lesser punishment because of a skinner taking it easy on him he is not expelled for it uh but yes we get a sweet little ending here i've been so blind in retrospect the signs all pointed

to a rogue hall monitor sorry that i betrayed betrayed your trust, Principal Sucker. Now, Bart, in light of your recent service to the school, I've decided to be lenient. 400 days detention. Yeah, 400 days. I can do that standing on my head. All right, 500 days. Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo, big man. 600 days.

Maybe I'll just shut my big mouth. Let's go, Simpson. Bart, why'd you take the blame? Because I didn't want you to wreck your life. You got the brains and the talent to go as far as you want. And when you do, I'll be right there to borrow money. Oh, Bart. Ha, ha, ha.

Sounding good, Lise. sounding good so like i will not expose the ignorance of the faculty is what he's writing there i think on the commentary they said they were tempted to make this uh to undercut the sweetness a little but then they pulled back because i like how it ends i mean i'll be there to borrow money is about as like snide as they can get you know it tempers the sweetness a little bit but then they let the sweetness play out and i think it's nice it's not too treacly or anything yeah it's uh it's just the right note yeah it's a bart loves his sister and does want to help her and then i mean yeah it's good enough that he says he's gonna mooch off her which uh in the president future timeline that is what happens with bart yeah that's true i was thinking

of bart to the future he should be saying in that episode hey you'd have been expelled if not for me lisa you owe me for the rest of your life you know which also yeah like as president i mean after she's president lisa can do speaking engagements for the rest of her life for millions of dollars like give a little kickback to your little older brother that's all he's the billy carter to her jimmy carter but uh yeah what a sweet ending and at millhouse gets to be the military strong man he dreamed of being at the start of the episode i think this is just one of my favorites for how it displays being a kid and the pressures a kid has and dreaming of what your future is to be as a kid and and also i i love that it ends with lisa going back to her

saxophone and going like you know what stubbiness be damned i'm gonna be the best sax player i can be in her future based on most of the futures we see of Lisa, her playing the sax is just a side thing for her. She will either go on to be president or an amazing writer who wins a Nobel Peace Prize. Yeah, it's a very, very solid story. And I think it's like less appreciated or less mentioned because Homer is not really in this episode outside of a few very minor scenes.

And I think maybe that's why people don't recall it that fondly, but there's nothing bad about it. I love that it's just one story. And to let anyone out there, you might be annoyed by our gifted kid stories. And yes, we are the true victims out there. But without gifted kids, you would not have podcasts. So if you see a gifted kid out there, shake their hands.

Say, I'm sure you have a podcast now. Thank you. Yes, or you'll have one in the future it'll keep me entertained uh i think i was correct to like it so much when i was a kid because i was very gifted you see so i had good taste so many smart people in this room yeah also i think henry should give the flexible fingers that god gave him and become the next elton john okay i'll you know i'll take up. I'll have, once I moved into Seattle, maybe I'll give it.

I was thinking of going back to Japanese class once I'm in Seattle and settle down there. Oh, just use Duolingo. Okay. I've been using that lately. Okay. Yeah, learning, brushing up on my French, learning German and Korean.

Okay. All right. Well, hey, you know Japanese, so I trust this. I told Nina she's doing that, but I'm learning more words in English. It's true, but you know what? It helps to learn how to pronounce certain English words to know these other languages.

It is true. But yeah, what a great episode. Yes, thanks for joining us, Nina. Let us know where we can find you online and about what you've been up to lately, things you've been working on, so on well i'm on twitter as a space coyote i will always be on twitter i'm not going anywhere oh that's space coyote with an l at the end instead of an e by the way and i'm just gonna make this easy and say go to spacecoyote.com slash links to see every place online you can find me at which includes my fan gamer store uh i work for

fan gamer i do video game merchandise for that uh most recently i designed merchandise for ace attorney dwarf fortress hades amore and horizon forbidden west i really love your hades ones i i purchased i have it right up there i saw the the deuce up there yeah yeah i can't uh i think you got another one coming down the pike. I don't have the whip girl. I don't have that one. Your shirt of that. Megara?

Yeah, Meg's shirt, yeah. I was just thinking, what if there was a game called Dwarf Fortress? I'd play it. Tim Conway character? Neem's just looking at me. I'm just staring blankly at Bob. I'm like, yeah. We'll have a long talk about Dwarf later.

I'll show you Dwarf on golf. You know, know you mentioned Twitter I'm glad we've passed the era there was like a one month period in which we were like okay uh on Hive I'm this on Mastodon okay get a pen and paper I'll tell you what my Mastodon thing is it's gonna take a while but yes we're all on Twitter everyone was posting their tearful goodbyes like every day on Twitter. And now I don't see that anymore. Yeah, I think all the people who are going to leave for understandable reasons have done so. And then the rest of us who are sticking around, we're done with that. I say it's not understandable.

I'm trying to be nice to the quitters out there. I miss the people who left. I miss them so much. I actually really do. Come back. It's a plea for me. It's okay. It's safe.

I've had a month without Paul F. Tompkins tweets. I miss them so much I actually really do Come back It's a plea for me It's okay It's safe I've had a month Without Paul F. Tompkins tweets And I miss them I miss them So yes Thank you Nina For being on the show Ask for us

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only for patrons of that level or higher. And what is that, Henry? Bob is talking about our What a Cartoon Movie podcast. If you like how super in-depth we go into an episode of The Simpsons, we go for almost twice as long as this episode on an animated feature film. Recent ones have included,

we started the year with Disneyney's dumbo a whole lot of fun learning about that classic from 1941 this month we are talking about batman superman world's finest the first dc animated universe meaning of batman and superman and a couple months ago everybody here enjoyed tokyo godfathers it is your new holiday classic you need to check out that podcast we did on it the back catalog covers over 50 episodes of it i'd say over 250 hours including our record longest podcast at over six and a half hours on who framed roger rabbit check it all out for yourself and all the five dollar things bob mentioned by visiting patreon.com slash talking simpson as for me i've

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I'm always tweeting up a storm and if you're following all of us on twitter you should definitely be following the official twitter account at talk simpsons pod as well as that on instagram both wonderfully maintained by nina she does a great job on those thank you so much nina and if you want an easy to follow list of all our previously released free episodes of What a Cartoon podcast or Talking Simpsons and other cool info, head on over to TalkingSimpsonsPodcast.com. Thanks so much for listening, folks. We'll see you again next time for Season 13's I Am Furious Yellow, and we'll see you then. Bad dog. Very bad dog.

Mom, before you blame the dog, I think you should take a look at these surveillance photos. Oh. Oh. Hmm. Oh, Bart. I don't know how that got in there.