Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Simpsons Tall Tales With Mike Carlson

Episode Date: February 16, 2022

This week we welcome back Podcast: The Ride's Mike Carlson for a big old slice of Americana! As the family befriends a hobo, they are regaled with a trio of American fables, all recasting the family giant woodsman, pioneering buffalo killers, or mischievous boys on the Mississippi. Follow along with us and you might just learn some facts about Disney theme parks too in this stabby podcast! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

I heartily endorse this event or product. I'm your host, the certified no-bo, Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons, who is here with me today, as always. Hey, it's Henry Gelber, and this podcast is powerful fun. And who do we have on the line? It's me, Michael Carlson. I'm returning. And this week's episode is Simpson Tall Tales. The Simpsons are going to Delaware! I want to see Wilmington! I want to visit a screen door factory.

Yep! Delaware's got it all. This week's episode aired on May 20th, 2001. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my God. Oh boy, Bobby. Star Trek Voyager's finale airs on UPN. Shrek takes Ogre the box office oh no and uh joan laurie makes her final appearance as china in a wwf wrestling ring so yeah a lot of a lot of things ending

as the shrek era begins in uh in 2001 very uh i mean china's life not uh it's a sad one it's uh you know who'd have thought that when her wF career ended that all the bad stuff that would happen to her. Well, I think we can trace the retirement of China and the end of Voyager to the release of Shrek. Yes. It's a ripple effect, people. Well, yes. That circle of life, really. People said, we found the perfect entertainment and here it is.

I don't need wrestling and I don't need Star Trek. China Hall of Famer. Come on, put her in oh yeah yeah i mean like solo i mean yeah i know that not just sneaking her in with the dx it's like i mean she was a huge part of why dx worked uh honestly yes more of a reason than triple h i'd say you know oh yeah she deserves she deserves a lot more glory yeah no it's it's really it's really sad that'd say you know Oh yeah she deserves She deserves a lot more glory yeah No it's really it's really Sad that and then you know and On top of that she had all that all the stuff WWF WWE sold

Like that literally was porn But then later when she did porn They're like oh no we can't Touch that like That was Gross that they did that to her like yeah and she yeah and she had a lot of problems too yeah which is sad sure very sad yes and yeah but vince any of the pornish stuff vince did it was fine oh yeah that's the fine stuff yeah but or horrible stuff

he did behind the scenes that had nothing to do with porn. Nope. Yeah. And Star Trek Voyager, I watched like the first episodes out of duty, I guess. Yeah. But I never, I didn't stick with it even when everybody was, you know, saying, oh, now Seven and Nine's on it. She's great. Give it another shot. But I, unbelievably, it lasted the seven years that all the other Star Trek shows lasted. Yeah.

It feels like. I liked it. Oh, yeah? Oh, please go on, Mike. I've not seen an episode of this. I didn't... You know what? For whatever reason,

and this is going to be... It'll tie into The Simpsons 2 because there's definitely points where I didn't watch all of a season of television. I didn't watch all of Voyager, but I watched like half of Voyager. And then, I don't know, I hit puberty or something.

I don't know what happened. Did I do something after school? I really don't remember making a conscious choice to be like, I'm not watching Voyager anymore. I think I watched like a seven of nine season and that was it. But I drop a Neelix reference every few weeks. The Talaxian who was the guy in charge of the mess hall. Right.

Yeah. I have fondness for Voyager. This is where Tuvok comes from. Tuvok? Yes. Okay. Tim Russ. Tuvok.

And I know about his band as well. He had a rock and roll band. He was a musician as well. Oh, wow. See, I just remember Tuvok primarily for the little Donnie sketch. I didn't know that was a real character until a friend pointed out, no, he's on Star Trek Voyager. Yeah, this does feel like the end of Star Trek's, you know, renaissance and its relevancy with the mass media. I mean, there were the movies, one of them's good.

And then people don't really care anymore. I guess Picard's fine, but, well, actually, I don't think it is fine. I don't think it's fine at all. When I saw Picard, I was like, oh, this isn't for me. No, but they're still chasing the high of the 90s, like three series, a bunch of movies uh really the end of um shatner you know yeah no i uh you know i don't want to blame 9-11 for everything but i do think it hurt i think it hurt star trek a bit it ruined the the optimism of gene roddenberry that's yeah oh yeah and well i mean that's why battlestar galactica by a lot of guys who worked on the trek shows in the 90s

people like that more because that was more about like oh no the future is like kind of doomed and you can't trust anybody yeah yeah yeah we know but we want our like candy give us our candy back like where we just think everything's gonna be okay even picard is like now we're murdering everybody just like death and hard oh picard i can't i can't start talking about it. Season 2's coming too much. Or maybe it already has. I'll watch it as soon as it is. As soon as it goes live. I gotta see that old man run around

in space still. It doesn't matter how good or bad the show is. And me and Bob have said many four and a half hours worth of Shrek thoughts on a podcast. It's crazy to think it was just five months before 9-11. No, four months. Four months beforehand.

That is, it's been a wild ride. You've covered Shrek quite a lot. Shrek 4D just closed recently. Oh, yes, it did. Yes. Yes, it was. There's still, I think there's still a Shrek somewhere overseas, Shrek 4D. But the one out here in Los Angeles has been gone for a long time now not three or four years and yeah i

shrek obviously they're not going to be done with shrek there's so many different rumors about what they're doing movie wise with shrek so i'm assuming shrek will be back sooner rather than later and then we'll maybe come back with more of a vengeance even in the parks peacock owns him now he should be a peacock exclusive right there with the boss baby oh yes boss baby and shrek teaming up together would be wonderful there was a rumor for a while that there was going to be a whole sort of like parody of magic kingdom with like the shrek land in one of the parks i forget where it was supposed to go but that was like an idea like the castle in the distance and then kind of like a pair maybe a parody of main

street and it'd be a whole huge like kind of shrek land so i think big is what i'm telling the creatives at universal you know we're recording this maybe three months before it goes live but i feel like maybe there might be a new boss baby voice actor so if you want to play the role of boss baby get in line i'll do it i'll do it yeah yeah i mean yeah it's a it's a buyer's market right now for boss baby voices i would think will arnett's the first oh yeah that right he's like especially well does he do looping sessions for alec baldwin it feels like he probably does though he does seem pretty exclusive to netflix though and the boss baby of course is uh well it used to be on netflix and now it's a peacock thing so i wonder i don't know

but anyway yes that's what happened on this the same night as the final episode of season 12 of the simpsons and joining us today is mike carlson of podcast the ride last with us for dancing homer so welcome back to the show mike thank you for having me uh as we were discussing it feels like i did this three months ago but it was i was asking when our last recording was and it was almost a year to today. Right. Yeah. And I wanted to tell you, Mike, one of the greatest Christmas memories I have of last Christmas. I went to Canada.

I had to quarantine for two weeks with my wife to be who is now my wife. And one of the funnest things that we did was sit together in the same room and listen to the mcgruff 2 episode of podcast the ride thank you it was the highlight of our quarantine i think well i appreciate that the mcgruff i have a soft spot for mcgruff obviously uh that's the episode where i revealed i had made new mcgruff songs um for new mcgruff songs uh but it is maybe the most fun voice i'll even i'll show you guys right here this gift that was given to me oh boy i'm sure i've shown a place uh wow it's a full mcgruff puppet wow good mcgruff puppet how many cops have had their hand up that oh my gosh so many there are there's definitely like blood uh blood inside the hand slot of this mcgruff puppet i'm working right now

because it's legit it was from some schools like like somebody's found it in a school like i don't know closet oh and uh put on ebay and my friend bought it for my friend andrew bought it for me which is maybe the greatest surprise gift i have ever received like i wasn't asking for this but i opened a box and I was like holy shit it's McGruff and it is like the most fun it's the most fun it's the most fun voice to do well now I just want to see you

I want to see you make a music video for the Inhalant song with that thing yes I really should do that but it might be a little bit of a production yeah if you want McGruffgruff to say anything i will do the mcgruff voice for you excellence that's wonderful puppet is amazing folks you got to see it that's uh bad yeah that is podcast goal though you you guys have been doing so many great things

at the time this recording you just finished the another session of haunt cast the fright and i also really loved your Fear Factor Live one, just ruminating on how disgusting it was and what a sad era of our lives that was. Yeah, Fear Factor Live, the Fear Factor show lasted for many years and then came back and was just, when you read about it now,

it's like another, like a parallel universe where primetime TV had people like in a bathtub full of cow's blood. And're like what what was this and joe rugger was just a game show host and former sitcom star he was our hero for taking down carlos mencia yeah of course we all remember this you're like oh yeah that guy was that guy in his radio oh cool he said what's oh that's yeah oh cool go go for Joe. Okay. I've said it before. Yeah, I was just going to say, and then it became the new Walter Cronkite voice,

the conscience of a nation. I've tweeted this before, but I want them to use deepfake technology to put Ray Romano in Joe Rogan's role in news radio. Just erase him and stick in Ray Romano, who was supposed to be cast as that character. Better show. it's hard to go back to now sure yeah well it's well it's also like it's like oh andy dick probably i he actually upsets me seeing him more on it i feel like then i don't know it's one or the other but and then and then you got to see a murder victim

in there too oh boy in his last days it's so sad yeah secretly the darkest there's a lot going on a lot going on on that show and dave foley was going through a lot too as we would later find out like yeah it's uh sure yeah and john lovitz in that last season yeah yeah but hey happy yeah i i was gonna ask uh mike where are you watching live this final simpsons before september 11th this is okay i was gonna maybe get into this is what interesting because i vaguely remember this now i'm look i'm not a special guy there's plenty of people like me and i sure have said it on the show before it's like i'm one of the guys who's like the first 10 were the good blah blah blah you know it's a take. A lot of people have it and I'm not special.

But I'm really trying to remember because I do remember this episode, but it starts to get these last few of like this season is where my memory gets hazy with them. I guess really what it is, is I probably did watch this a lot or soon after. It's just that I didn't watch this 50 times in syndication and it's similar to voyager where i got i don't remember like a conscious decision but maybe i was doing something after school and i stopped watching the syndicated versions ever in this i never even had a chance to come into rotation so i've maybe seen this once i've literally maybe seen this episode once and not in 20 plus years i've seen this one a lot for some reason because i was still watching syndication up through the early aughts and for whatever reason

my syndicator was just showing the later ones so i saw this one a ton and i remember so many of the jokes compared to other season 12 episodes yeah it's interesting because i'm watching i was watching it and i'm like i've seen this but i don't know any of the jokes which is rare if it's one of the first so many seasons because i know every joke almost yeah i i think i probably saw this one more than most season 12s because i uh and this one wasn't one that made me mad i i told a lot of like oh this ending made me so mad when i was a teenager but i think uh conceptually i was already ready for like oh it's another trilogy that's not halloween they've done this before so it's you know it's more of the more of the same and i think

bible stories was the first one this is the second one yep this is uh pretty much just the sequel to bible stories you know and it's uh i i don't i also don't you know consider this like the end of innocence or whatever but because to me the distance and time in my memory from watching this to watching the season 13 premiere is like 10 years like it just feels so much once i watch that treehouse where harry potter's in it like it's almost a month it's a month and a half after 9-11 so it just feels so long in between those two six months after this yes yeah like it would be so interesting if somebody was there and this is not realistic to document everything that happens to you growing up because things months are the years like in our brains or like such seismic shifts happen in our lives at that age that

there are as you're saying moments where like it was two months but it felt like one i actually guess i said the same thing at the start of doing this podcast just i'm always fascinated by that like people i know feel 10 years older than i knew in high school than people i know now who are actually younger than that does that make sense like a friend's sister yeah a year older in my mind is 10 years older than me now even though she's a year older actually like it's so weird how stuff like contracts and expands in your mind i think the the depressing scientific reason for that is as you get older you have less new experiences and less ways to

demarcate that time so everything is new when you're a kid everything is memorable it's why i can barely remember the past two years just I recorded 500 podcasts and now here we are. Yeah, yeah. I would just love it if it was like somebody's taking a, like, you know, in June of 2001, you learned an important lesson about love and it changed your brain forever. Like if somebody could document all of these things, it would be really interesting to see. It's not realistic. I'm just just this is

a real fantasy i'm going off on here but well and uh i guess too another reason it felt so long between this and then season 13 premiere was i think i graduated high school like a week after this aired and i'd started college and had been like through six weeks of college by the time the next one aired and yeah i just uh even though I was living in the same place and everything, and I just, yeah, it all, that summer waiting for college felt like a long one too, I guess. And also, Mike, I was looking up like, you know, oh, what things happened around this date for theme parks? And unfortunately, nothing opened in may everything like dca was

earlier in the year in 2001 you have to tell people what that means sorry disney california adventure yes yeah i know what it means and mike knows what it knows what it means but it can't be this since i can be inside with simpsons references for our audience but i i gotta uh disney you also have to explain wrestling references like if you use the word shoot or a jobber you gotta let people know all right i will i will and then disney c was a little after this tokyo in tokyo and and universal japan in the same year so it was 2001 a big year for uh for theme parks too right before they all have a bunch of problems thanks to september 11th so the like the worst park for disney california venture 1.0 and then the best park

tokyo disney sea open in the same year like designed by the same company yeah pretty insane but yeah this this episode they came up with as a sequel to simpsons bible stories that in season 10 showed them that they could do basically a treehouse of horror but not set during halloween which i think now at this point they've done like at least a dozen of those oh yeah that are not halloween related like they did one for thanksgiving they did one they did one for christmas at least one for christmas they did one that was just uh stories about revenge yeah yeah oh and the one that was just books that uh the the only one of them i remember was the fountainhead one where maggie was voiced by jodie foster which uh which at least though had lisa at the start of

it going like ayn rand sucks like why are we doing this one but then they did it anyway wow yeah um that's that's wild wild some of the stuff yeah because i have not seen every you could you guys could be lying to me about a lot of this well you know mike i've heard how much you love haunts now and i was curious if you saw the relatively recent uh simpsons one that was set during basically halloween horror nights i have not seen this i'm so so i should have you should give it a give it a while it's called halloween horror from season 26 it's one of the better modern simpsons ones is written by carolyn omine who you know uh she got her start in season

10 and it's still on the show so uh she does a real it's a really good episode about how scary and anxiety inducing halloween horror nights can be to an eight-year-old. Or a 37-year-old. Oh, I've never been to it. I have been too scared for Halloween Horror Nights. I've never wanted to get near it. I assume you're referencing I had an anxiety attack during a smallish escape room haunt this year, and I had to sit out.

I had to bow out before we even went in because i was breathing too heavily in my mask i was like a like a lady in a kroger when the pandemic started like i can't breathe in my mask like freaking out but in a grocery store uh but mine was a good excuse i was gonna go in an escape room and they were gonna put a bag on my head and there was a minotaur in there somewhere yes there was a minute it was something about a minotaur now again i have to stress i was not afraid of whatever like 21 year old was playing the minotaur it was the small enclosed spaces wearing a mask and then like them saying it's going to take like 90 minutes to two hours and i didn't even like and then my brain was like you don't even know what it looks like in there it could be like the smallest little box possible and my brain sabotaged

me and yeah well you're still braver than me for even going near those haunts me too yeah i wouldn't i wouldn't yeah horror nights honestly horror nights you guys they run it through they run you through like a conveyor belt it's like there's so many people going in and out you get like yeah you do that a lot that's fine it's honestly that's like a breath of fresh air compared to some of the other smaller ones so if there's eventually if you ever have an opportunity and it's like horn that horror night's like the best one to do because again this if the scares are personal i think that's way worse if If they're scares, you're seeing, oh, I saw that guy get scared. Okay, I saw a guy behind me get scared.

And then once in a while you get scared. It's not as bad. And your brain will get used to it and go like, oh, these are just like character actors yelling at me. Got it. Okay. You eventually learn that. The Simpsons will be right back.

Next Sunday at a special time, it's a giant Simpsons season finale marathon. Good grief. Featuring the all-new Simpsons Talk Tales. Where's Lenny? Hello? I think I found a Wii U. It's not pretty, but it'll do. The Simpsons Marathon next Sunday.

How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there. You see, our new Net Zero Hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels and much more. Making your usage clearer, your trips greener your home cozier and your world brighter find our net zero hub at electricireland.ie welcome to the break everybody hobos and nobos. And a big thank you to our guest this week, Mike Carlson from Podcast The Ride. He's always awesome to have on, especially for one so full of Disney-ana. And him and his co-hosts, Scott Gairdner and Jason Sheridan, were so nice to host me and Bob for a podcast.

If you haven't heard it yet, you should really check out me and Bob a couple weeks ago on Podcast The Ride talking about The Simpsons Ride. You're going to have a lot of fun. It's very cool. And if you're enjoying this podcast, you should know me and Bob only do this as our full-time jobs thanks to the support of listeners who sign up at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. And for five bucks a month, they get access to a ton of exclusive content. Each month, they get a brand new episode of Talking Futurama and Talking of the Hill, where we cover a different episode in chronological order of Futurama and King of the Hill once at a time. Plus, the entire back catalog of exclusive miniseries over 100 episodes, us covering shows like King of the Hill Futurama, as well as Mission Hill, The Critic,

and our 10 favorite episodes of Batman The Animated Series. Check it all out at patreon.com slash talking simpsons. But if you'd like an even bigger treat than a giant flapjack, you should sign up at the $10 level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons. You get all that $5 stuff I just mentioned, but you also get once a month, our premium podcast, what a cartoon movie where we cover an animated feature film,

super in depth, just like we do with the Simpsons this month. You're going to hear us talk about South Park, bigger, longer at uncut the 1999 film chosen by our patrons and the previous month, Lion King 2 Simba's Pride. There's a giant back catalog, over 220 hours of exclusive water cartoon movies of us covering films, often for over four hours long.

As diverse a list as Beavis and Butthead do America, to Akira, to a goofy movie, and everything in between. Check it all out. You can find an easy list at patreon.com slash talking simpsons and uh in this episode uh also at one point they thought jim carrey would be their big guest star playing the hobo right i guess uh it didn't work out with the schedule every time they say a schedule thing i'm like well he said no like he said somebody in his group said yes and then he

saw the script and said no you want to be the framing device yeah can we get you for like six seven hours and a promise for you know audio pickups if we got to do it like yeah i've got a real beef with tall tales than i always have because as a kid they're always promised to be these are the craziest stories you've ever heard these characters are just wacky and amazing and super powered the problem is they were written all before comic books came along. So they just seem boring to me. And, you know, these promises never came true because as a kid, I was watching a show where a brain from another dimension was fighting turtles. A guy planting trees around the country.

That's not really hitting the same marks for me. So, yeah, just always thought they were uninspiring, which is why the third story is just like, who cares? Tom Sawyer. Yeah. I yeah, it always thought they were uninspiring, which is why the third story in this is just like, ah, who cares? Tom Sawyer. Yeah, I, yeah, it wasn't like in kindergarten. It was like, oh, yeah, who are your favorite characters? And I was like, oh, I like Ninja Turtles. And then somebody was like, oh, Thunder. I like Thundercats.

And somebody was like, I like the Ghostbusters. And somebody was like, I like the giant Paul Bunyan. That's my favorite character that's available to me as far as I know. Like, yeah, that doesn't. However, how would any kid ever be that interested in Paul Bunyan? 80s, 90s, 2000s. The concepts are mostly tree-based because one guy plants trees, one guy chops down trees,

and then there's like Pecos Bill who, I don't know, made lightning happen. I forget. Well, in all cases, they're all 1800 stories about the taming of the West in a way that doesn't involve like, you know, genocide or slavery, just all the, all the happy, exciting things about American expansion. Well, I mean, also this is such a like Disney version. Like these are parodies.

These are parodies of, of public domain things, but in all three cases, they feel like specifically parodying the Disneyney versions of them that were either in like the paul bunyan uh short or the johnny appleseed one that's part of melody time or just the general huck finness that is done in a million disney things so it feels specifically about disney's versions of these which is how i knew him anyway like i when i still see paul bunyan or johnny appleseed in my head it's the disney cartoon version of him i saw growing up yeah yeah i mean disney has like done such a smoothing over of all of this stuff i'm sure there's if you told me paul bunyan was like committing genocide across the land like if that

was the original version it would not be a shock to me at all i'm not saying that's what he did i don't know that i'm just saying if you go do you know what disney did they cleaned up the story of paul bunyan be like oh yeah makes sense yeah totally yeah i i i also read a good argument for why disney loves to keep expanding their public or the what becomes public domain because so much of their like the first 50 years of disney content was just using public domain stuff so they know how much public domain is worth and they don't want to expand what that is but for sure yeah so well first off this episode begins with a science with a chalkboard gag that is accurate uh because in 2001 bart would have been 21 because he was 10 in 1990 and so that would also make

Bart 42 at the time you're hearing this podcast so we're dealing with much worse math today yes I think this is more of this season 12 stuff of them feeling the show's age they're just like boy we've been out a long time at 12 years of The Simpsons. Yeah, for sure. And Bart at 42. I know they've done episodes where he's that old, but I don't know. It would make more sense. I would actually maybe like it better if he was just 42 on the show.

Then you could get to old Bart. But Homer would be just dead of heart disease at this point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not a good end for him. Yeah, fine. And we get an NYC subway couch gag. Did the Simpsons predict 9-11 with this? I wonder. No, I...

But, yeah, so the episode is cut up in chunks as well between three writers. The first segment is Don payne and john frank uh though selman says he wrote the wraparounds for him so uh which i think that's why it's all the hobo stuff is well frank and pain are getting those song payments because they've got a credit at the end i see no other writer for their segments wrote songs okay he puts away the guitar or the banjo rather yeah what the hell know what? He should have been singing all three segments. That's laziness on the parts of the other writers, really. Or maybe they were told, you can afford one segment of songs.

We can't write more than that for this. So then we start out at the airport. The Simpsons are going to Delaware, as our opening clip played, which is an internal reference because in the season finale of season 11 in Behind the Laughter, it ends with them. The joke is that the show is out of ideas because the Simpsons are going to Delaware. And so now a year later, they're like, yep, we finally come to that.

The Simpsons are going to Delaware. This will be the last season. Yes, yeah. And just like in Simpsons Safari, which we just covered recently in this podcast they won a contest yes yeah i love hearing march go like i can't believe we won another contest fat tony's moving around bodies the really he should be delegating this to legs and louis you know like this the boss can't put himself at risk for this

stuff that's why you have the goons he's taking a hint from wiggum who does everything uh you know yeah the two of them we are they function as equals against one another that's true very funny there's also that was uh making fun of the lax airport security i guess yes yeah yeah actually it's so funny these airport jokes are like their last episode for 9-11 or the last time they can do airport jokes like this i'm like yeah everybody just milling around the airport nobody checking nothing you just walk walk up to the gate and meet somebody all the things we miss now but but yeah we get to hear how delaware's got it all which yeah i've i've never been there either even though it's the home of our 46th president president but still never felt the need to go i it's a tax shelter yeah but i oh yeah

i guess i also i knew delaware as a joke of a place no one goes to from uh wayne's world they had the joke too of like yeah that we're in delaware there's no specifics to make fun of with delaware it's just it's a place yeah delaware also just the name of it i think delaware is a good joke name it sounds good delaware it sounds i don't know this is this is like some old like 50s comedy writer it sounds funny that's my idea that's why they can't go to kookamonga anymore right right that's got two funny sounds uh and so homer is told that they going to have to pay a $5 tax, which here's the first of three deleted scenes in this episode. So in the deleted scene, when Homer shakes his fist, the attendant says that the fee

is to fund the yearbook for the Mile High Club. And then Homer says, I'm sure there are other airlines that go direct from Springfield to Delaware. And then it's the smash cut to him saying stupid airline industry consolidation which that's a good joke too but i prefer the joke about no fish is shaking law i mean that's true now you can't even joke in line at the airport yes yeah i've seen the no joke signs they wheel them out sometimes i know not mr jokes in the lines i keep i feel like every time I'm in an airport line, I think of a joke of like, oh, yeah, I better put away my bomb shoes or whatever. And I think like, don't even say it. It's not even that funny.

They've heard them all. Yes. Yeah. I just say funny city names that I'd like to visit. Like comical places around the world. Seattle. Yeah. But yes, the Simpsons are not going to fly to Delaware in our first clip. Hey, wait a minute.

Airport tax, $5. Sir, it's a standard fee. Well, we are not boarding that plane unless you waive that tax. Waive it. Stupid anti-fist-shaking laws. Yes. The Simpsons are riding the rails. Cool. A dead hobo.

Morning, folks. What are you going to do to us? Don't worry. I'm not a stabbing hobo. I'm a singing hobo. Nothing beats the hobo life. Stabbing folks with my hobo knife. I gouge them. Excuse me, hobo. Can you play something a little less unnerving?

Sure. I was just having a little fun with you nobos. I want to hear the full version of the hobo song. I love that. Where does he go with I gouge them? First I got, yeah. Sounds very descriptive. fun with you no bows i want to hear the full version of the hobo song i love that where does he go with i gouge them first i got yeah sounds very descriptive a lot of like locations of gougings or is this coming out there i guess you can gouge other things i only think of gouging eyes but there's lots of places you could gouge yeah yeah i don't even that would be and then mike reese is credited with the stabbing song as well that's him uh that you know he earned

his one day in paycheck there the one day a week rewrite room guy that i i feel like he earned his pay that the the term hobo knife made me laugh and i still think about it but uh you're saying this for the recording henry this is totally other writers trying to be john schwartzwelder with all his old timey stuff i'm surprised his name is not on this i kept thinking yeah yeah with these stories of hobos and tom sawyer and you know pioneer days bindles all that stuff yeah you would think it complained like derringers all these things feel exactly for him but i also kept thinking this hobo i was like well this hobo's got a name right like no he's hobo everybody just calls him uh like mr hobo mr hobo could you play something else yeah it is funny i swartz welder and i guess conan conan has

a love of obviously that old-timey stuff but it's like that put all these words in our heads for another couple like a generation now has hobo and like oh we're watching friends they call there weren't like fun hobos on friends i don't think as far as i remember yeah like there were no hobos at central perk yeah it's just so funny that that's such a fresh word if you watch the simpsons it's in your head we learned a lot about bindles as well right right uh yeah i think you know they do have george meyer around who also is a big hobo fan but yeah this feels i wish if i could trade i it should be swartzwelder he doesn't do simpson safari he does this and this the the the writing group they do the the

simpson safari instead but not that i think everybody does a fine job right in this episode but matt matt selman has a connection to hobos uh that's right he's executive producer of the show now 20 years later and apparently his ancestors in iowa established hobo days which is a festival happening since 1900 it's still going on so wow that's uh and he's big time hobo uh man then he came from hobo riches he left it all behind to become a TV writer. Mistake, honestly. Yeah.

That's fun. I really like it as a joke of they see what they all assume is a dead hobo. And then Bart says, cool, a dead hobo. And only when he comes alive is then the shocking music play. It should be the second they see what they assume is a corpse, they should be like, dun-dun-dun. But instead, everybody's fine with that. It's when he comes alive after being poked.

Yeah, I mean, that's expected, I guess, in their mind. I don't know why. Seeing a corpse? Yeah, it's like, well, we expect to see a corpse on the old Union Pacific. But they also, they go back and forth with this hobo sometimes he's completely unhinged and crazy other times he's you know pretty lucid and knows what he's talking about but uh he's uh at this point he starts his song about a man named bunion comma paul won't you listen to my tale that's 10 stories tall About a king-sized woodsman, name a Bunyan, comma, Paul

Congratulations, Mr. Bunyan, it's a boy! Oh, yes, it's a... Jesus, I'm Crow! How was it, honey? Whiskey, please. Me hungry. Me too. Born mighty big, he continued to expand. Thanks to a hopped up, a tuitary gland.

His body grew big, but his brain stayed small he was tree chopping friends stomping house crushing paul me hungry that's a good line and uh and so yes we begin like i think when i first saw this once it faded away that's when i didn't think i saw a commercial that told me this was an anthology one so only when it faded to paul bunyan i was like ah okay it's one of these it's one of these episodes yes we we start out with paul bunyan's birth and um a very horrifying joke about his mother like seemingly torn to i mean she should be ripped apart is uh but she just she just needs some whiskey i mean they they meant there's two jokes in this as to how uh paul bunyan can interface with a normal size vagina let's just say it right now folks let's just say that these

are what the jokes are about yes yep yeah real grotesque i definitely like winced at both of those these are these are jokes written by guys who grew up watching you know the disney ones and thinking like well wait if paul bunyan's you know hand is that big what does it mean for x y and z you know these these are the questions they all grew up with like they we meanwhile we grew uh you know people grew up with jokes now about what it doesn't mean when michelangelo the ninja turtle gets an erection it makes his shell tight as as we learned from that bad joke in michael bay one or of course or as jason lee famously asks stan lee in the film mall rats is the things dork made of orange rock yep yes we know that line that's famous yes dork is

something we all said to refer to penises weird yeah there's so many weird lines in that movie that feel like he was told like don't write like no this is how kids talk it's kevin smith and add the word dork to it yeah uh poor that was that's such a weird stan lee of all the stan lees it's like uh for like one year he had a beard and that's how he is in mall rats and so that's how i know him yes i saw that movie 30 times there's another terrifying scene of paul bunyan hollowing out a cow via its udders but the cow blinks which i guess means it's not dead but uh it's uh it's pretty bad but he does kill nelson nelson dies twice in

this episode you're right yeah and then it's other animal murder in this whole episode too though oh a lot of yeah there's a lot of death it's not halloween it's definitely getting under the halloween rules you know that too in the bible stories they got away with like so much murder as well that they're like i guess you know as long as it's a fantasy story we can get away with murder or even a joke that no way would they get away with that in this segment yeah another one things have changed in 20 years yeah but but yes we hear all about tree chopping friends stopping house crushing Paul. That's pretty good, Henry.

Thank you. Thanks. You could be a singing hobo. It's my plan. After I muscle you out of this podcast. Post Patreon. That's my plan to ride the rails. But I need to start learning the banjo.

It's got fewer strings than the guitar, I think. i've heard it's much harder to play the guitar though we're talking to a real musician here with mike i've never tried to play honestly i've never tried to play the banjo i'm not a great guitar player but i can pass uh if i can do some stuff on it but yeah from what i understand the banjo is hard it's picking i'm a bad picker as well which means you like instead of like strumming you're like picking and your fingers go, you know, they have to do like 10 things at once. So, yeah, I would like, you know, I'd like to try the banjo, but I don't have one. But yes, it's time for Paul's breakfast in our next clip. Time to make Paul's breakfast.

Hey, Paul, flapjacks. Flapjacks. Oh, Franklin. All right, let's get started on lunch. And, wait, where's Lenny? Hello? Can anybody hear me? I think I found a Wii U.

It's not pretty, but it'll do. Oh, boy. It has to be pretty scatological as well, because it's a Halloween-ish one. But, you know, as a kid, my favorite thing in bunion stories were giant pancakes because i love pancakes and just seeing a giant pancake and and thinking like oh man or flapjack specifically like was that a common element of the bunion mythology the giant pancakes okay yeah well because central to paul bunion was that he was basically i i recall this from like uh childhood school lessons but it was that he was the story of recall this from like uh childhood school lessons but it was that

he was the story of like lumberjacks chopping down like lumberjacks would say to each other oh you can eat a big plate of flapjacks but paul bunyan can eat more like he was just this made-up guy was he an invention of the flapjack industry maybe you know he used to sell kodiak cakes he's owned by lowry's Flapjacks. No, I do remember the pancakes thing, and also that being the most exciting part. Because, again, we saw Giant Man. I mean, even the Jolly Green Giant I think I liked better than Paul Bunyan, to be honest. He was more fun.

I liked watching him fight Babe the Blue Ox and stuff. That's funny to watch. Yeah, that's true. I liked Blue a lot. Yeah, that's true. I i did like blue i like any animal it was like blue but yeah thinking of these like giant flapjacks like i just i uh you know bob is uh is is on the waffle side of flapjack versus waffle they're superior i mean we've already agreed to this yes yeah but okay the skating around on the griddle in the butt with the butter too like that but that's where the simpsons is starting with the disney joke about it and then they're the

level up to it is the paul budd you eats the man and must poop them out that's the that's their next level to it bob anderson and his team do a really good job. I love the flapjack flying in the air and Homer just eating it with one bite. That's really good. In general, Bob Anderson and his team have a real challenge here because they have to draw the regular Springfieldians in three different designs for all three of them. All are kind of similar, but not like the Missouri Mo doesn't exactly look like the Paul Bunyan Mo.

You know, they're wearing different costumes, different sketches. You're right. Yeah. It's they have to do so much in the design wise. It's a lot of extra work. Yeah. It's something you really don't think of as a child. Like, oh, this is a big pain in the ass for them.

I still think more fun for the writers, I'm sure. But yes, big pain in the ass for them. It's more fun for the writers, I'm sure, but a big pain in the ass for everybody else. I still think there's some Simpsons writers who think that, well, if I just write it down, the animators draw it, it just happens. It's not more work if I write one thing or a different thing. I'm just learning now there was a 2017 animated

Paul Bunyan movie. I mean, it's public domain. I'm sure they've made a lot of these, but let's see, John Goodman animated Paul Bunyan movie. I mean, it's public domain. I'm sure they've made a lot of these. But let's see. John Goodman is Paul Bunyan. And guess who is Babe the Blue Locks? You'll never guess. Josh Gad?

Jeff Foxworthy. Oh, of course. Of course? Why did you say of course? Well, you know what? That seems, now I understand what budget they're working with there in the audience with getting Jeff Foxworthy. I get it. It means they couldn't get larry the cable guy that absolutely is what he's a prestige voice actor the why why is blue not like why does blue babe the blue ox

need to talk and say like check please dialogue like can't he just be quiet yeah why isn't he also why isn't he like santa's little helper or something oh yeah this yeah that uh yeah they don't do enough with babe when when babe shows up uh it's they they kind of they actually cut out babe's only like really funny thing he does in in the episode but this this also captures what i always thought as a kid too of like well who would really want paul bunion around like i mean sure he chops down a lot of trees but seems like you're you know losing money on the deal in the end you know this guy's just i mean we've all seen the amazing colossal man oh yeah it's a hard life yeah yeah what i mean what would you do with a friend like paul bunyan yeah he's you just yell You have to shout at him. I'm shocked they didn't do a joke

about how big his dumps would be, either. I'm shocked, but I guess that's more of a family guy joke, but... Yeah. There's a lot of crass they could do. More crass stuff. But they decide they're going to throw him out of town, just like Laura Ingalls Wilder,

who's the creator of Little House on the Prairie, which I had to look up of course i did not know that off the top of my head i knew it because i despise that television show i never watched like uh more than a second yeah show yeah but her name is up front i think okay i mean you know she was a female novelist back in her time pretty rare rare. Right. It's impressive. I'll give her that. And she was born in 1867, so, you know, kind of lines up timeline-wise, this vague 1800s-ish setting here. But, yeah, everybody just loves that they threw out her. And so they decide they're going to do the same to Paul, and he gets kicked out of town in this next clip with still a shocker of a joke to me.

We got to do something about Bunyan. We're going bankrupt just feeding and clothing the guy, not to mention the crushings. Hey, I say we get him drunk and drag him out of town. Say where we got rid of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Yeah, that's a great idea. I hated her. Hey, Paulie, what say we buy you a beer? You guys are the greatest friends a giant doofus could have. Good lord, brought down by one beer.

And a couple of these, babies. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to the bond dance. I wrote down yikes, and I guess they wanted to have the word roofie written on the pill, but that was shot down. I'm glad cooler heads prevail there. We had a good five year the word roofie written on the pill, but that was shot down. I'm glad cooler heads prevail there.

We had a good five-year run of roofie humor in pop culture before people realized, oh, this is not that funny. Actually, it's not funny at all, and let's not do this anymore. Yeah, I mean, there's so many different. I also was like, oh, okay. There's so many different. The horse tranquil tranquil i obviously old school ushered in a horse tranquilizer that decade of jokes there's different there's different things i guess you could say you put in a giant's drink to knock him out yeah but it's that the barn dance uh line that's the um yeah that's the extra well yes the time tying it to yeah yes mo's not a good guy i think uh this is

the you know i'm trying to think the last time i saw it as an acceptable joke in a in a mainstream thing i feel like it was uh the hangover i feel like that was the last time i remember hearing a roofie joke in something that everybody was like oh that's okay you know all's well all right or not not all's well but just like hey i'm watching a dirty cartoon or i'm watching a dirty movie this is just the jokes you know but they i mean they say lots of words in that hangover movie that i'm like whoa 2010 was a different time yeah yes and 2001 even more but yeah i I don't like these types of jokes done with Mo. I'd rather they be jokes about self-harm than him being guilty of sexual assault or at least planning it.

Turn the violence inwards. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Mo was, well, Mo walked so Quagmire could walk. Yes. Yes. Actually, I was just thinking of Quagmire.

It's true. We will live to see the retirement of Quagmire. sure i'm shocked i'm shocked it hasn't happened yet me too like a tearful on a baseball field giving a farewell speech quagmire moves out of town yeah no i i mean we already we we talked about this recently uh that they cut the um quagmire and marge joke from hulu airings of that family guy episode that oh yeah yeah yep they it's it's finally because it should have been cut before it aired i'd say but uh now it's gone so it's censored again in this in this modern i i'm joking um but uh so yes they knock out paul they drag him out of town by his shoelaces which is pretty strong by all these people they don't drag him very far no no no just to send a

message that's what i like to they they're just like they let him wake up to know you're not wanted and it hurts his feelings and he leaves like that's what i feel really sad for. He's like, oh, they don't want me. Yeah. So he then very daintily carves himself a pal, which then he goes to sleep very briefly. The real Aurora Borealis shows up, not a house fire, but the real one. And it brings Babe to life, which they don't do enough jokes with it. When I see babe the blue ox i think of william h macy and fargo the movies oh yeah the blue ox i like to see him drink beer that is fun yeah uh and so after he's born there's another deleted scene homer says he'll

whip him from dawn to dusk uh which then Babe kicks him in the balls, which that's why that picture is over the credits. Oh, right. So they kept the only bit that was really funny to see. Just like, once you see just a freeze frame of a ball kick, that's all you need. Yeah, that's a good rule of comedy. And I think the sequence of landmarks feels like a Disney reference, too. Like, they're like, oh, and that's how this was born and this was born like that's how it explains like the great lakes were his footprints or something i believe in the original i did uh love big holes with beer

national park that's a good one i want to go there yeah yeah that's a fun a fun sign but uh but then he goes a little too far with his hobo story excuse me paul bunyan never fought rodan and his size seems to be really inconsistent i mean one minute he's 10 feet tall the next his feet are as big as a lake hey hey hey who's the hobo here i'm just saying i think i had similar issues that lisa had with these tall tales too like yeah he chopped down a mountain i'm sure yes i liked the fiction with rules i as a kid yeah it's also like the road putting rodan in there then immediately i would think as a kid you'd be like yes better yeah oh let's let's just see rodan like these are the myths of our childhoods yeah uh though i i uh

have to point out that they gave rodan godzilla's roar that is not the rodan war roar and they probably didn't clear that roar no you gotta pay for that roar disney's you know libel in this with these the roars they're putting in toho i'm still shocked they haven't they david silverman tells this funny story on another of their commentaries where david silverman is a co-director on monsters inc and they wanted to have the godzilla roar in it and they were told they couldn't and so then he's asked uh al gene or one of the sims producers how'd you guys get the roar in this and they're like we didn't ask we just we just put it in and then got away with it. They have rules.

I mean, that's also, yeah, anytime don't ask is usually better. I mean, you'll probably get in a lot of trouble, but I mean, maybe we should all put it in our intros of our podcast, just Godzilla roaring and see what happens. But I would be interested to know the contract that they signed for Godzilla Kong.

Is it a similar situation to like like hearing that jason statham can't lose a fight in a movie oh they have rules i was these crazy specific rules i was thinking about that the entire time i watched that movie i was i was not half the time i was i i enjoyed that movie it was a good movie godzilla versus kong but half the time at least i was thinking like oh kong got slightly a win here and a character says i guess round two goes to kong which like that felt like somebody in a boardroom says well you got to give kong at least like a little bit of a win we've we've agreed that godzilla's gonna beat him but let let kong have

you know a moral victory right let's see their health bars on the screen yes yeah now there's a negotiation for sure i mean i think i read an interview where the director said he's he was an old school wrestling fan so he was thinking of this in pro wrestling terms too of just this fight and he's a theme park guy because it's he said inspired by back to the future the ride oh really they're in that little via they're in that vehicle that's like going to the hollow earth oh man that that that should be a ride universal needs to get get with warner and legendary on that i guess and make that a ride and i'll say this about this uh this will be the last thing i'll say hbomx and i forgetting forgetting the gentleman's name who directed the movie but they said like they had his favorite films that you could watch if you watched godzilla kong and the first two were ninja turtles one and behind the candelabra wow my favorite movies wow man you gotta find this guy and you've got a new friend

here exactly this is my best friend uh but uh but yes this is the real rodan sound effect there you go that's the re that's really how rodan sounds yeah but but i appreciate that they just put rodan in there instead of you know godzilla is the easy one every or king kong choosing rodan even no gamera at this point yes yeah go deeper like rodan was like a two movie baddie who he wasn't even the lead guy in uh in the king of all monsters like he's the sidekick to gidora in that one great reference yes yeah uh but so yes as lisa is silenced we then get hear about an itch that a bull couldn't scratch, which is love. And I think, too, it's just really good. It's a really good visual gag. And it's extra complex that it's this perspective gag that Marge thinks that's a normal-sized man who's kind of close, not a very faraway giant.

And just them running towards each other and her then turning to run away like it's executed really well i see that's a visual gag yeah but marge at first is freaked out and then instead falls in love even after she's used as a q-tip uh she she still is in love with this guy uh marge is weird that's that's really the important thing to remember i i'm also glad they say it on the commentary they considered putting earwax on her hair, and I'm really glad they didn't. That would be too gross. Well, you know, a lot of people have this fetish, and it's coming true for Marge. It's the one time where someone can actually have this in their life.

Sure, it's true. All these giant fetishes, it can't really happen, unfortunately. But she's getting to see it here in this tall tale. I wonder if someone was really horny after Homer ate Lenny. They're like, finally, they're doing Vore on The Simpsons. There's no telling what people, like, I would be so fascinated. Like, who watched this at puberty

and it unlocked something? Well, we've all seen the ads on certain websites that show that it activated, Simpsons activated something for some people. We've all seen them. Yes certain websites that show that it activated simpsons activated something for some people we've all seen them yes that's true no need to be uncouth or bloody and talk about no please that's our side podcast uh but uh there's a cute little joke of uh marge being rained on with the museum of stuffed animals and then a guard falling on her that's cute and i also really like the animation of her like funny like oh like you're just like very like uh

she's so complimented by this giant ring put around her was this a deep impact plot part of paul bunyan uh the meteor i don't think so i don't recall it from any bunyan thing i watched i i mean there's also there's there's not a canonical love interest for him like there is for like, Pecos Bill has a girl that is like horse hates and he breaks up their marriage. I believe her bustle is so big she gets mounts to the moon is what happens to her. But I don't recall Paul Bunyan having a girl friend and stuff. Yeah, I feel like they were just like just like well what would be a big thing that would go up all bunions but like what would be the funniest thing i could do there and they

did land on like the funny i think that is a yeah i think so yeah piece of space debris and uh first though we get a joke by marge saying that uh you know uh i need a few more yoga classes is her reasoning for why they can't. Which, yeah, I mean, physically it is impossible. Like, I mean, I don't want to. I know they want us to think about Paul Bunyan's member. They're putting that in your head. Yes, yeah. It's a lot, yes.

But fortunately, fiery uh distracts us from more thoughts about that and uh i love hearing that god has sent this fiery rock to kill us to this fiery kill rock to show us his love that's a great line and i love old timey mayor quimby saying that and then it's a very like simpsons almost never does this of them say like we know who to call that like screen flip in a sound effect like it's like that's like a bewitched kind of editing yeah not do on the show yeah it was

weird to see that someone just playing with the star white machine it seemed like yeah that yeah that's a good point I didn't even think about that but yeah that is jarring you know they got I would bet they were put pressed for time like all of their trilogy episodes are, you know, like they, and so Homer realizes that when I'm crushing and killing you, you don't like me, but when I can save your life, suddenly I'm Mr. Popular,

which he's happy to be Mr. Popular. He's not saying that passive aggressively. He loves me, Mr. Popular. I'm also surprised he doesn't like kick any townsfolk or stomp on them while doing his happy jig like his feet i was waiting for someone some crushings to happen yeah yeah that yeah that would make more sense because they foreshadowed it or they they teased it earlier he uh he he did cripple a boy off screen but uh which is pretty similar to the better mr burns joke in when homer loves flanders i i know because i crippled it myself that's that's a better version of that joke

but yes and it's also with an evil or character instead of just like homer or paul bunyan being just like thoughtless and destructive he does express regret over it yeah but yes the rock does go into his ass yeah the second he shows his ass crack you know where it's headed but i'm glad it happens so fast after you see it they're not making you wait i'm thinking about like all right when's he's gonna go in his ass crack it's a tasteful asteroid in his asshole yes yeah he branches it out pretty fast and uh and destroys the city of chicago which yeah growing up did you what did you learn much about the the uh the great chicago fire mike any they didn't teach it in school

no they i'm trying to think if they taught it in school or i was told it by parents like i the mrs o'leary cow kicks the lantern over and it burns down half the city and it was literally something i went okay got it so if anyone ever city. And it was literally something I went, OK, got it. So if anyone ever asked me about it, I would say, oh, the cow kicked the lantern over. There's a song or whatever. But I never investigated. I never went. Is that really the story?

What do you that seems like a pretty neat and tidy explanation. It's a tall tale. I know for sure one of our listeners is writing three paragraphs about it right now in the comments section. The Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Yeah. paragraphs about it right now in the comment section the great chicago fire of 1871 yeah so i i knew the fairy tale like the simplest version of it and never again it felt like it felt fake like any like history you're learning in school is like that was a long time ago and then you get older and you're like the 1970s wasn't that long ago yes yeah horrifying all this horrifying

shit you're reading about was like 10 years before you were born and still went on while you were alive you know in my history classes they'd they'd always get up to like if we were lucky world war ii and then it just cuts off no more talking about it maybe that was uh my florida school not wanting to talk about things that happened after 1945 and also just like books cost money i think the last thing in my history books growing up was uh here comes reagan oh he's got elected it's like well that was like 10 years ago uh-huh yeah i that's another thing i love videotape of just uh what teachers were saying to me that i don't remember i remember the broad strokes of it but can you

imagine if you had like videotape from second grade history how many times you'd be like wincing it like oh that's not the story that's a simple that's an oversimplification of events oh that's gonna ruin some of these kids brains for later when they think america is the best superpower on earth i i saw maps with ussr on it for a lot of my me years, as I recall. Yeah, we had one or two. I think I remember that in one or two classes. So, yeah, the Miss Old Aries Cow. The episode, I was also thinking, like, it's really just like, I don't know if you'd call it a metaphor for just Marge and Homer.

Like, Marge does not belong with this Paul Bunyan man. The giant doofus. For some reason. Yeah. For some reason, she's still with this guy, even though he's giant do for some reason yeah for some reason she's still with this guy even though he's an idiot and bad bad for her now my yeah i think we just need to take the like march has mental issues of her own and she's just like no i love this killer giant man who destroys everything i just i love her what also is like uh I don't know sexually into him as well like she's she

wants to have sex with Paul Bunyan it's just like physically unsafe for her and she's she's trying to work her way up to him like that right and she's attracted to Homer in many episodes which I prefer not always I I only when he gets to 300 pounds does she find him uh less not sexually attractive anymore but at his point yeah but uh but yes as the as the story ends they learn there's a price for every story and that's how paul bunyan started the great chicago fire boy that story had everything a giant house crushing a meteor house people got any more tall tales? Well, I suppose I could spin you a few more yarns. But first, who wants to give me a sponge bath?

I'm filthy. All right, but your next story better be worth it. Get in there good. Yeah, that's it. Don't be shy. There you go. My note for this is Homer awkwardly washes the nude stranger in front of his wife and children. Yes.

Yep. Yep. When you put it that way, he gets naked really fast, too. Yeah, he's like instantly naked. Also later in the episode when he gets naked. Also the posing of it, I forgot when he says like, don't be shy. Homer definitely is between his legs. Like he's in the zone as it were. Like he's not even inner thigh.

He is cleaning his genitals, which yeah. Yeah. How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner, and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there. Yeah. Making your usage clearer, your trips greener, your home cozier, and your world brighter. Find our net zero hub at electricarland.ie. Yeah. Homer's like full on Captain Wacky here. Yes. Yeah.

Version of Homer. This is the cleanest hobo around, this hobo. Homer has heard all the manscaped ads. He knows that hygiene down there is important. it's true that's true that there has to have been like a manscaping joke in the last few seasons right where homer like talks about self-grooming you grooming you guys know you would know maybe oh yes uh i'm sure it's happened homer has to say manscaped is what i'm saying the last so many years i would be shocked if he didn't somebody had to if anybody would be homer or maybe comic book guy maybe he said that it's been a while since i know maybe mo yeah yeah it's true or uh you know lenny he's pretty

he'd be a guy who cares about manscaping that's true lenny i could see lenny saying that if it hasn't happened yet then we're pitching it now to any writers listening like please free of charge my joke pitch for this episode title could be called the great manscape that uh because that that'd work as an episode title because it's a like 50 year old movie yes exactly yeah which always gets to be the name of the episode yeah did homer do a pod he's done a podcast right on an episode um no kent brockman kent brockman started a podcast that lisa participated in and marge and lisa super got into true crime podcasts that yeah it happened and one episode is uh the framing of vice is crusty talking to mark maron on his podcast they did that okay yeah so there's opportunity there were opportunities for manscaping ads there yeah yeah i mean well now that episode of the podcast why i just mentioned

that's where your pals the doughboys even appear on screen of course yes yes of course they're they don't have lines no no lines but they are drawn in there yeah which is pretty i'll forever be jealous of that you know one of days, we just got to get – I want to be spoofed. I demand they spoof me. You know what? Honestly, if they said we're going to draw the 3U podcast, the right guys in the background, and you don't have any lines,

I'd say, no thanks. What if they kill you in something? We want lines. We want lines. We hold out for lines, I see. We hold out for lines. Yeah. You know, maybe Weiger's thinking, like, the lines will come next time.

This is the test the first time, and then the line will come, and they'll have me back, and then the line comes. Yeah, the audience will demand it. It'll be like early crowd scenes where, like, certain characters didn't talk yet or have a personality, and then eventually. Then they move in. Eventually, Weiger, in season season 40 next door neighbor nick weiger

cut moves into town yeah but uh but yes we come back from the commercial break and we have an act out of south side jake and tin can tilly fighting over beans and bindles and then uh making out a long completely ad-libbed yeah like like the end of the episode it's true yeah uh i even though with the name tin cantilly it's it seemingly is a between a man and a woman i prefer to imagine two male hobos making out here that's i i want to imagine that he's got to finish the the miming make out though his story's not over until you know how long they made out it would it would be a disservice to his tail if they didn't if he didn't make out longer uh then the hobo decides he needs to tell a new story and he does the greatest sin that can be done in fiction gender swapping oh no yes i

wrote this down as well yes all the the your star wars anti-social justice warrior youtubers would be so upset with this episode. Only Johnny Appleseed would have the strength in his legs to do all that walking. A woman can't. It's like biologically they can't walk America. These are all bio truths. Yeah. Yes.

This is Ray Skywalker all over again. They'd be upset. Women don't understand apples on the same level, really. Studies have shown women don't like apples as much as men. She's a Mary Sue, you know. But yes, it's the tale of Connie Appleseed, which is really about killing buffaloes. Yes. Yes, it is.

Back around 1840, the great pie known as America was still cooling on the windowsill. And everybody headed west for a slice. Cleaning my gun with a safety off, safety off, safety off. Cleaning my gun with a... Whoopsie! Dad, you just killed a poor defenseless buffalo. A poor delicious buffalo. He'll be dinner for the whole wagon train.

Why'd you kill another one? Dessert. Oh, hey, I found a bullet. Man, buffalo are easy to kill. People, if you don't stop this slaughter, you'll wipe out the buffalo. Wipe out an entire species? Well, that's impossible. The buffalo laughing at that they'll never die out is maybe my favorite joke in the episode.

I just, I love their little like, they're also just these three buffalo are just laughing as they're surrounded by dozens of piles of buffalo corpses just all around them. They're like chortling, I guess you would call it maybe. Yes. Yeah, I'd just call that a chortle. Some of these are Frank Welker,

his penultimate appearance on the show. He's got one more. Man, right before they decide that dan is good enough at making sounds and they're not going to pay frank welker we don't need to bring someone in just a moo yeah that's uh yeah bob uh mike bob recently did the expose on why frank welker stopped being hired and it it's as simple as they wanted to spend less money yes yes often the case yeah but uh but yeah so i i read up on this on a wonderful smithsonian article about uh how the buffalo died out and uh so yeah it was uh at the time this episode is said it was estimated that there were 30 million buffalo and 200 000 would be be killed a year by, you know, westward expanding pioneers like in this episode. But it's actually what was killing them off wasn't that got them hunted a lot.

But what apparently really pushed them to the brink of extinction was the expansion of railroads oh because apparently that's when a bunch of assholes who did it for sport instead of food would just like sit on the top of railroad cars or from their railroad cars see buffalo out the window like oh blam and just leave them there just shoot them and go keep going down the railroad yeah and this happened to the point that by 1884 there were about 300 buffaloes left uh but they actually were saved and as of 2017 the uh estimate is 500,000 living bison or buffalo in the u.s so they they almost went to extinction but to find out that it was just like 1800 rich jerks on their train shooting them from a distance like i'm just remembering uh han sprungfeld's line uh i didn't

tame the buffalo they're already tame i'd merely shot them that's a great line that is just the cart most cartoonish version of like the average american with their excess and excess and waste where they're just shooting buffalo from the top of a train for fun yeah just to see jimmy john like jimmy john and a photo or uh just papa just papa john hunt too i don't remember all those sick freaks yeah yeah for sure yeah kill a rhino and they're so proud of it after epstein went to jail they were like what else do we do uh kill an elephant i guess i feel it almost feels the same i gotta make something hurt yeah uh apparently uh even they

on the show felt bad about how many times they were showing dead buffalo and they actually cut down it. And made a lot of the murders off screen. Yes. Yeah. There's actually a deleted scene where it's surrounded by more dead buffalo and them eating buffalo at camp. There's also a bit where Carl and Lenny are talking and while they're eating buffalo, Carl then speaks like a F Troop Native American, and he says, like, well, Lenny asks, why are you doing that? And he says, oh, I learned it from the Indians.

It's how you save time by cutting out words. So you're like two minutes back a day. So apparently that was only cut because they're like, ah, more dead buffalo. We have to show like 80 more dead buffalo for this scene so let's let's just lose that uh and as usual in this time too the joke is that lisa or connie must be mocked for her conservationalism and everyone hates her for being a nag about about taking care of the buffalo it's time for the jingle even all right this applies to the alternate version of lisa too yes take that lisa's beliefs

her beliefs being that you shouldn't kill every animal you can but uh but so lisa or connie uh decides she needs to find some sort of renewable resource which i like a bit of a tree seemingly calling out to her but it's actually mole man drowning it's uh and you know for me growing up johnny apple seed of all the tall tales i had to hear about i think he was my favorite because i liked apples i like that he you know is just a guy who walked from town to town and planted apple trees and that's all the guy did and he made things with apples he was just a guy who walked from town to town and planted apple trees. That's all the guy did. And he made things with apples.

He was just a crazy guy with apples. I could see myself like, oh, I could walk to places and plant apples. I couldn't chop down a tree. Did you like apples or did you like apple flavoring on Garfield fruit snacks? Hey, you can like both things. I could like apple pies and also apple flavored things, too. Yeah. Or a McDonald's apple pie, the crispy and deep fried thing that technically have apples in them.

Yeah. Yeah. Johnny, I mean, Johnny Apples, he'd also seem like he was like, he would relate to him like Robin. You're like, oh, this is a younger guy. I could hang with this guy. I could maybe help him out. And he's always. You can definitely see, like, yeah, you younger guy i could hang with this guy i could maybe help him out like and he's always definitely see like yeah you can definitely see being friends with this guy and uh he's more relevant now than ever because he's always getting his steps in that's true yeah

he gets he really gets a workout that guy though i know i wasn't into the uh the shoelessness implied in most uh johnny appleseed stuff oh yeah he yeah. I mean, now maybe that, speaking of activating people, maybe the shoelessness of Johnny Appleseed growing up in the 50s gave people a lot of thrills as well. But yes, Connie is trying to sell people on apples and it's not working out for her. Mom, Dad, look what I found. Oh, boy, buffalo testicles. Oh, Dad, look what I found! Oh boy! Buffalo testicles!

Oh, Dad, they're apples. Yuck! Well, that's it. I don't want anything to do with this wagon train of death. Either switch to apples or go on without me. You'll be sorry! So Connie roamed the prairie alone, planting apple seeds all along the way. She even changed her last name to Appleseeds. And her family changed theirs to buffalo kill uh that the the i guess bonanza style the map lights on fire to reveal the next that's a better

cut than the flip the screen flip i did laugh really hard and replay the animation of uh you think it's a buffalo sleeping by the fire but then homer zips his way out of it yes yeah that's great so they're using all the parts it seems like yeah you know they're not wasteful i mean homer loves eating buffalo testicles you know the homer buffalo kill and we mentioned fear factor earlier and that's definitely something i had to do on that show yep yeah all so many testicles people had to eat on those shows yeah but homer the excitement and then homer saying yuck to hearing it's an apple is so good also i uh in sound design i love that the wagon train impossibly sounds like a car peeling out yeah i love that yeah so apparently they uh on the script

level they had a scene where bonnie meets johnny pothead who's uh auto passing around weed but they they decided not not to go with that one i want to see that design yeah that would be fun i maybe they realized they couldn't have like a pot leaf or whatever that would be needed for for that but i joke play without it yeah yeah i i mean he's gonna have to smoke pot on some level you think and have a bong hat with one would expect like is that like a foam dome there's two little bongs on the side oh yeah i like that that sounds good it just sounds like you're just gonna spill disgusting water everywhere don't do that also that thing is really hot by your head that yeah that seems it

seems dangerous yeah i do like the design of Connie Appleseed with the little hat and everything. It's cute. That's cute. I mean, yeah. Is that going to be because there's a making figure. Super 7, this company is making Simpson figures. I don't know if you guys have talked about that, but I like a little Connie Appleseed. There's some good figures in Super 7, but yeah, it'll be a while before.

I figure they'll do the biblical ones first and and most versions of treehouse before they finally get to the tall tales like fun probably funco did a series of uh the simpsons as like roman characters from the last year season premiere right yeah uh which i mean i don't know if it was a popular episode but uh i assume most people more people saw this i would think so too yeah i maybe it was uh somebody on either the funco or the simpson side said let's do something from a recent thing like we can can we can we not just sell stuff for if it's a the funco people will buy whatever thing we put it on there so why don't we do something recent maybe that was it yeah

save the yeah they cut now the collector figures high-end figures those go to the men in their mid to late 30s and so it's got to be a season seven season three through eight is really the the hot zone for that i mean yeah they super seven can make a series that's only every character as they appeared in the poochie episode and i would pre-order all of them oh yeah yeah yeah i mean they have even more they they're making the itching scratchy land robots oh that's the greatest man that the unbelievably good the the the one comes with the little baby axe is just perfection you know yeah and and itchy's head comes off and you can see the why homer's robots yep other great fantastic yeah yeah i think you know the And Itchy's head comes off, and you can see why Homer's robot didn't work. Yep. Oh, they're great.

Fantastic, yeah. Yeah, I think, you know, McFarlane and NECA, they did some good Simpsons toys, but I think Super 7 took them to the next level, I think. I think they're going to go as deep as they, you know, as you can imagine. We've said it before. With that first 10 years. We've said it before. They really need to make the meme figures, like they do with SpongeBob. Like Lisa getting coffee poured we need a homer with the the whacking day hat on and the air horn

like all the famous uh images you see on the internet the guy eating the lemon well it's steamed steamed hams for sure i think is coming steamed ham playset yeah yeah i think that's for sure coming so yeah they know that too like oh there's a bunch of wolverine stuff now with the meme coming out mondo's doing one six with wolverine pining away looking at the photo oh yes that's the whole display that's exactly what the display looks like it's him on the bed that one was like i think more companies know that one was too rich for my blood just a little bit but it was it's a quality figure yeah one of us may have bought it somebody's a bigger fan i guess you know if they had a spider-man meme one it's the you know i'm

more of a spider-man guy than a that i mean yes have i do i own multiple but they were gifts a lot of them were gifts for my husband very thoughtful it was a graduation present yeah but but peter b parker from spider verse is my new favorite spider-man and i own like four versions of him and it is because it is because he's exactly my age and has weight struggles like these these are why he's my favorite spider-man they made a spider-man for me in spider-verse and i love him and i'm sure they'll continue to make more stuff and you'll have like 50 by the end of them oh yeah that stuff especially in japan they're making a lot of them in japan and those where i get the toys more than than in the u.s oh yeah yeah but yes uh they're running out

of food they're about to kill homer and eat him they it's a really good gag of wigum being the one to say you're the fattest and that should be eaten first when he is clearly fatter than Homer. And so they're descending upon Homer, but Connie's here to save the day in our next clip. You're the fattest, Buffalo Kill. Okay, everybody, dig in. Ha! Stop! I've got apples.

Delicious, nutritious apples! And there's enough for everyone! Sweet! It's like a hootenanny in my mouth! We're saved! It's a miracle! Hooray for Connie Buffalo Kill! What? So now we're not eating homa?

And thanks to that little girl, today you can find apples in everything that's good. Apple wine, apple whiskey, apple schnapps, apple martinis, a snapple with vodka in it, apple nail polish remover. Don't forget applesauce. Yeah, I suppose you could grind some pills into it homer's awe makes it even greater yeah i like the old-timey pronunciation of uh vodka oh yeah

but you can tell they're running so low on tall tale material it's like well what if the donner party happens yes yeah and the johnny appleseed story you know i'm glad i honestly i think they if you watch the disney cartoon version of johnny appleseed it is kind of a cul-de-sac for their story because it's really just like and then johnny appleseed walked around playing things until he died at the end like and he like he dies on screen uh like of old age and then is is told he's got to go to heaven to plant apples in heaven for eternity too that sounds awful yes yeah awful yeah uh geez that guy can't get a break he's hey he loves to do it he's excited to plant those

trees that's heaven for him is planting uh infinite trees in heaven that's okay uh i mean i i definitely can see why walt disney was excited to tell a story of a man who worked to death and then worked some more his reward in heaven was work yep yeah that's right uh but uh and then hootenanny in my mouth another call back to one of the like the it's like a party in my mouth and everyone's invited uh commercial line that simpsons is referenced so many times uh also i was i guess you know i was disturbed by the other mo joke but mo popping out from under homer with a chunk of yellow flesh on the end of a fork that disturbed me too yeah i don't know where it came from yeah it's treehouse of horror rules but uh i also you know bob you know i'm a fan of apple-flavored whiskey.

That's right. This lesson taught me, it stuck with me, I guess, this hobo's lesson. You can mash pills into most anything. I'm trying to think, like, cinnamon, apple, apple, was it? No, I guess Apple Jacks is, I'm trying to think of the like the craziest artificial apples taste i guess it's apple jacks maybe apple jacks has so little to do with apples it's like that whatever that's that like neon green sour apple flavor is oh yeah yeah sour apple we all right i was i just referenced a commercial we all remember that's that's fun did stephanie direct more commercials i want to know is that her only one uh but just watch just watch on youtube you'll

understand what i'm saying uh that uh i never i never liked blow pops but if that commercial came on a nickelodeon like which i think played eight times a day eight times an hour i i was i was excited for it uh you're like excavating gum from a rock yes yeah it's like it was worse than a tootsie pop i always preferred a tootsie pop to a blow pop and pulling the gum off that stick you're getting pieces of stick in there i like blow pops i think better oh the tootsie pops yeah and tootsie i like both i don't i'm not an anti-tootsie pop well tootsie blow pops better i i associated tootsie pops with getting them free in school because i and i thought of them as like oh it's a cheaper

candy but now i appreciate like my i know that teacher that gave us out tootsie pops was bought them with her own money and she won the most bang for her buck with tootsie pops so tootsie tootsie pops felt like you know your grandparents candy tootsie rolls i. Tootsie Pops felt like, you know, your grandparents' candy. Tootsie Rolls, I liked them, but they felt like you'd eat them during the Depression. Yeah. Blow Pops were the kids' future forward

snack or candy snack. Yeah, Depression candy was some kind of sugar byproduct they found. Like taffy or Tootsie Pop material or licorice just like well the machine spat this out we accidentally made candy i suppose well i suppose we'll eat it it tastes kind of sweet this is just nourishment for the war uh yeah soldiers uh and so uh act three begins and yes, they're out of tall tales. Oh, look out there, folks.

That's the mighty Mississippi. Big deal. Reminds me of a tall tale about two scalawags rafting down the big muddy. Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. That's not a tall tale. It's a book by Mark Twain. Look, let's just do this thing. Yeah.

I haven't seen this one in, I don't know, probably a decade. And I was thinking, what is the third story? And then when we got to this one, I had Lisa's thought immediately. And then the show addressed it. Like, all right, shut up. We need to finish this episode. The show, every time I watch this, the show owns me. Because as they start to present it, I'm literally saying or thinking what Lisa says. And then the show gets me. They like we know weiner we know you you nerd at home they're saying this

well we're still doing it you can't stop us we're just gonna do tom sawyer and huck finn you can't stop it so yeah as a kid i never particularly cared much for any huck finn and tom sawyer i feel like there were 800 of them in it in our childhood they tried to sell it to us with like jonathan taylor thomas and uh devon sala i think so yeah but even then like no i'm not into this like i don't these are not fun adventures to me i'd rather see a boy have adventures my age who's like now you know as an adult for a brief time i got into some of the non-kid stories that twain wrote sure he's he's a good writer he's uh yeah newsflash mark twain good writer i'm just hearing about him yeah wow they should name an award after this guy he's so good i i

liked twain as an adult but not not so much as a kid uh and uh to all of this twain stuff in here is disneyland's mark twain oh yeah yeah oh yeah uh this is uh i was so glad when all this stuff came in i was like oh man i am so glad that mike from ptr is here for all this disney uh specifically disneyland twain this stuff here i i've the sand it's not saying well i guess it's sanitized but it's the it's just the cartoon twain yeah i've never done the steamboat or whatever at disneyland i still i don't know what goes on in there i don't know where it takes you i've done i've done the mark twain riverboat but i've not done the tom sawyer island or the uh the raft there. Mike, have you done it all? You know what?

Funny enough, for some reason, I have never been to Tom Sawyer Island at Disneyland. I don't know why. It never seems easy to me, even though I think it is. I've done Mark Twain many times, co-host on the show. Jason Sheridan, that's his favorite thing, is to do the Mark Twain riverboat. He's gotten to pilot it once.

Oh, wow. Whatever you'd call it. Drive it. I don't know. What do you do to a boat? Drive? Pilot? Which you don't really.

It's on a track. It's not like he could crash the thing right into the Haunted Mansion or something. But it's a nice, pleasant time to go around in a circle. Of all the boats you can ride in Disney, I's uh i like it there's uh you know a lot of places to sit you can just hear and i i only every time i've only ridden it twice but every time i'm like come on when sam clemens gonna talk here like and hey look sam clemens is on the boat too you're a bit of a writer aren't you oh yeah they do all they go mark twain and like they do all that yeah you can you could bring like some i think you can bring like a ice cream on it or something you know uh as as an adult i've

never wanted to go as a kid i didn't i was like going to those islands or any of the play place things i never wanted to do because that's like we're wasting time i want to ride a dark ride you know yeah the fun is less engineered it's like they want you to make some of your own fun it's like no sit me in something and show me things spin me around i don't care if fievel says this is a good play place i i want to ride et you know they're in a california venture they have what they call the grizzly challenge trail which is three stories and it's got like like net like the floor is nets like netting or thick rope and you walk on that you have to walk down the whole thing and i will say this i love it oh really man more more adult accessible play

areas i say that's i like as a kid i always like that type of thing you know the tarzan play place too i i think that's why i never want to go to tom sawyer island kid i always like that type of thing you know the tarzan play place too i i think that's why i never want to go to tom sawyer island because i'm like i walk by in indiana jones you walk by the tarzan one it's like what is this for kids like i i don't want to be the giant man walking through it with all these children that's uh i'm already on thin ice as a as a childless adult here yeah there's somebody already tailing you yeah well look disneyland don't worry but there's plenty of us around uh disneyland but tarzan is a tight squeeze as it is and there's no row there's no place where the floor is thick rope and netting you know

that's what i like i like the i like kind of I'm going to fall a little bit. See, I've never given that a shot. I think I've gone to Disneyland once when that Grizzly River Rapids thing was even open. I feel like it's always closed. They just bulldoze it and build more Avengers bullshit there or whatever. It's never open. I like it. I just wish there were some robots on it. Oh, sure, sure sure sure well then maybe the

avengers can start hanging out there you know but or or uh what's his name uh ursa major the bear sure character i right yeah i god but it's well okay i've never written it because seriously it's been it's been not every time i'm there it's in refurbishment, except the last time. And that time I was like, no, I have to focus on Avengers Campus today. I can't give time to Grizzly. I think it's fun. I like it. And that area, there's a little area over where you kind of can go walk and it's not heavily trafficked over by like the waterfall section.

At night, you go get yourself a drink. You sit over there. Great. Fantastic. Okay. I'll give that a shot. A little insider tip. But yeah, all of this Huck Finn stuff, it feels extremely the Disney version of it, though Matt Selman, who wrote it, he says that he listened to audio books

of multiple Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn stories, which I didn't know there was one where tom sawyer rose up to be a detective i did not know that there was one of those until yeah doing research yeah that feels like uh what is it like the box when the boxcar children became like detectives yes yeah i guess that's the second up i guess that they did happen after the first book but i i stopped at book two of yeah when i read the first book at the end of it they get adopted and i was like well then they're not even really they just have a boxcar in their backyard or right yeah that's interesting i kept that going forever i forgot he wrote that because detective

fiction was something that was new like there's these stories where people solve crimes i guess i'll write one of those people seem to like this sherlock holmes guy it's just like when jason vorhees goes into outer space. They're like, it's just him trying to keep the character relevant. Yeah. They're turning Jessica Rabbit into a detective on the Roger Rabbit ride. So there's precedence. That's right.

Yeah. Speaking of rides, I'm shocked that are still open. I keep thinking one of these days will just be the announcement of like, it's days are numbered. The ride sucks, but I go on it every time because one day it just won't be there and i love roger rabbit yeah it's odd the whole roger rabbit thing is uh roger used to be one of the like the big six in the 90s he was like one of the top characters and he's certainly been like pushed to the side in the last few decades but he's odd he still is you know his

roots are deep there you can't just clear him out you can't uh though i mean i don't want to bulldoze all of toontown especially they're about to get a cool ride there so you know that whole place is built on tragedy though yes because we covered this in our other podcast but uh steven spielberg assassinated roger rabbit in 1991 because he wanted the uh the tummy trouble short i think to go before arachnophobia and not dick tracy they didn't listen to him katzenberg said i'm gonna do whatever i want to do and then spielberg says i'm not gonna approve any more roger rabbit stuff and this is while they're building to town which opens in 93 so the entire thing is built on something that was just killed tragically there's so much weird i guess i've heard like he's like

oh disney also doesn't like jessica rabbit anymore they have a problem with her so like there's so many different versions of like what's going on exactly at disney with roger rabbit i've heard over the years it was funny to learn too about the uh the co-director of lion king like he only was available to do lion king because katzenberg had picked him of like, you're the guy for Roger Rabbit 2. You're the director. And once it got killed, they're like, all right, let's go over to Lion King, I guess. You don't get to become a live action director.

You got to stay in cartoon zone. Yeah. The second choice, Lion King. But yes, we then cut to the classic whitewashing. The thing everybody knows about Huck Finn, they know attend his own the classic whitewashing the thing everybody knows about huck finn they know attend his own funeral whitewashing and going down the mississippi river but getting in a cave at some point oh that's right yeah there is a cave yeah yeah but uh and i think it's fitting that nelson fan of huckleberries is huck finn so it's not bad but yes the uh whitewashing sucks tom it powerful

sucks and they uh instead of tricking him through you know clever wordplay they convince millhouse fancy lad millhouse to do it through bullying and dipping his head in the whitewash and uh then uh huck finn impresses uh lisa or becky uh she's's named Becky, meaning she is Becky Thatcher, who is actually the love interest of Tom Sawyer, not Huck Finn. And her father is a judge, which is why Homer plays a judge in this. So this is technically accurate to, obviously, I had to go to the old Cliff Notes to read about Becky Thatcher and Judge Thatcher. I didn't realize that until Homer said, I played a judge in this one. Yes.

Yeah. In no function is he a judge otherwise so i guess that explains why he's leading the pack of guys yeah down but uh but yes they at first they think uh well i guess there's no harm done so long as it was going to be by and by uh but uh he's and also nelson's fall animation like right on his head like ouch that is that is that is powerful painful to look at i i feel like they drew him breaking his neck they really did i i he got all the slang so right it's just fun to hear the characters talk like this uh i was gonna get a new neck off in a cat a body could break his neck like yeah all the great all the all the Mark Twain speakery here. It leads to a wedding. Papa!

Hold my daughter's hand, will you? I was going to let go, by and by. Well, I guess there's no harm done, as long as it was going to be by and by. But just to play it safe. We are gathered here today to force this man, Huckleberry Finn, into holy matrimony. How romantic. This reminds me of our shotgun wedding. Grandpa, we've been married for years.

When are you going to put down that gun? Well, I reckon you're right. Hang it all. Do you, Huck becky as your wife hey they done switched the groom with a pig no wonder he was pooping so much well henry you're asking where was the paul bunyan poop joke uh the poop jokes in the third act they were saving it for this that a pig is shitting himself the entire that i also just love that impossibly he just turns into a pig yeah when did it happen

it just happened they cut away and now he's a pig and he's been pooping the entire time i'm glad the pig isn't harmed he gets a big bite of that cake after seeing all the buffalo get killed at least one kind of livestock succeeds yeah yeah turns out pretty good for that pig yeah i also like the marge in this this is one where marge in fictional uh story does not love homer and is only doing it because she's been held at gunpoint for uh at least a decade uh which i i love that they they had written marge runs away but design wise she's in a very constricting old-timey dress so she kind of has to shuffle at like 20 at 30 miles an hour away from him which is so funny uh it's such a great drawing and then uh old-timey everybody's old-timey but in missouri old-timey not old west old-timey

which is great designs it's just everything is so old. I don't even know how to describe it. Old-timey, specific versions of old-timey, because you get used to that blanket old-timey. But everyone was different in the olden days. It's something I take for granted sometimes when I'm thinking of what old-timey means. These guys, you know, a guy in Deadwood doesn't dress the same as a guy on the Mississippi.

How we use electricity can be smarter, cleaner, and greener. At Electric Ireland, we can help guide you there. You see, our new Net Zero Hub has all you need to know about smart meter plans, EV tariffs, solar panels, and much more. Making your usage clearer, your trips greener, your home cozier, and your world brighter. Find our net zero hub at electricireland.ie. Great Mississippi. Which also, I guess them crossing the Mississippi to start this story, that means that they traveled westward from Delaware.

Now, obviously, Springfield, its map placement is pointless to try to guess. that means that they traveled westward from delaware now obviously springfield is you know its map placement is pointless to try to guess but in this case it is west of the mississippi for the simpsons to travel to delaware on the east coast wait so they're coming from the west coast because they're heading to delaware yeah and that's where they end up so if they're crossing the mississippi to get there then they're on the west side of the mississippi but uh but yes the so the boys run away and uh they it's a really good joke that they just get on this little raft they are five feet away in shallow water and they're like we'll never catch up to them i just got the missouri joke because i looked at a

map because i'm ignorant as to geography most of the time and uh the joke is that the mississippi river runs along the border of missouri so i guess technically you can be hitting different states depending on which side of the river you're on so that's i guess that's or just absurd but yeah i chose to take it literally missouri and miss Missouri are different states somehow yeah uh and I missed that thank you for telling me that joy I missed it and also uh difference here is in Huckleberry or in a Huck Finn adventures uh he does not ride down the Mississippi on a raft with Tom Sawyer he does it withim and that's just his name it's jim uh this is a apparently a thing that i i saw in a history article that's like no never in the book is he referred to by another name than jim these are in other works that he is called n word jim is that he is known

but in the book uh it was not a change to the book in huck finn not that the that slur is used in the book but uh i know it was a very a very banned book when i was a kid and presumably before that too i wonder if that if the banned book discussion in the year in the late 90s is partially why they were just thinking of tom sawyer and huck finn and wanted to do an episode or an act about that i wonder but yes this is when we get well a reference to uh the popular eye of the 80s that has nothing problematic in it at all no boy at all mike scully mr silas this young lady is flashing her privates. Oh, well, I'll dispose of this. All for Silas, all for Silas.

Yeah, I realized for the first time the guy saying don't exit the raft is Mike Scully, the showrunner. I only isolated there. This captures the post-ride feel so well while still feeling feeling old timey because they get off the boat and then you're hearing like the music of the like hang out after the ride version of the ride yeah there too the come down music yeah now uh i have not been to disneyland since uh genie and genie plus were invented do you still get this photo access with those apps? I don't know. Okay. No. No.

No. Okay. Dang. I don't think so. You know what? I take that. Genie. Okay.

So Genie is free. That's just on the app. Genie Plus you pay like $15 for. They don't actually. It's not working in Disneyland yet. Okay. I was wondering. It's not working in Disney World at the moment.

By the time this comes out, it'll be, I'm sure, both coasts. Yeah. The program could be gone completely. Who knows what'll what will happen well you guys had an episode on it it was so confusing yes yeah uh it was very confusing yes um but i don't i'm trying to remember if the photo pass comes with it but they've been you look i used to get that free with my annual pass and that's not even offered there anymore you know, those photo zones on the old rides are so interesting to be in in a post-smartphone age that it's just, you just kind of walk straight through it now. It's like, oh, there's that old photo. I find my code.

I feel that Space Mountain used to have a good hangout zone there, and I guess it's still good, but I just leave'm like well i'm not buying a photo i don't even need to look at it and i just walk away yeah on disney world they have a lot of stuff in disney world if you have the photo pass or if you just have your app like loaded and location services on it'll just add it to your phone automatically oh nice if you have like a magic band on like there's certain things where i would just looked and i was like oh there's my video from tower of a video from tower of terror of me they make video oh wow i didn't know that yeah i only knew about these stills the i don't think my family when i was a kid wouldn't have bought them anyway because it seems like we're already i mean the reason my dad hated theme parks was it was just like a money pit to him.

I don't want to remember this. He didn't have fun in them. It was just like he saw it as wasting money. So buying a photo, more waste. That's what he saw it as. Uh-huh. I see. Okay, you know what?

I'm looking at this up. Disney Land has unlimited photo pass if you buy Disney or Genie Plus. Okay. Okay. Pretty straightforward. Yeah. i'm not sure if well it's not regular genie it's genie plus and at disneyland you have unlimited photo pass but i'm not sure about disney world okay so that's so clear yeah very very helpful is the i just i can't i can't go to the park without some sort of max pass style experience well now it's a big thing because you have to pay in addition to genie plus for the bigger rides I can't go to the park without some sort of MaxPass style experience. I'm waiting for that to come back. Well, now it's a big thing because you have to pay in addition to Genie Plus for the bigger rides.

Genie Plus is just for your, like, C, like, I guess D ticket and low or higher, whatever you want to call it. E ticket rides are an additional charge called Lightning Lane where you have to pay, like, $10 per Guardians or Cars or whatever. Wow, man. That's harsh. E ticket ride you want to pay like ten dollars per guardians or cars or whatever wow man that's hard you want to go hey you know what i go once a year fleece me i can't ride space mountain somewhere else that's true i can see when you you know obviously if it's like you're just a childless couple going there that's one thing but i i understand why parents feel the twinge there like with two or three kids are like like it uh i can see the the anger yeah i understand yeah it's nickel and diming but i know henry you've got a history to tell us right do i yes yeah now now mike i know you know this

is it is both theme park history but also bodiness so i don't of course don't know how much you're you know about the flash mountain history. I know a bit of it. So go ahead. I can handle it. Well, so yes, in the late 90s, it became an Internet phenomenon called the Flash Mountain, which was a website and there were other associated ones, too, that had photographs of people showing, in most cases, their boobs, but sometimes other things,

while in the photo spot for specifically Splash Mountain, the 80s classic ride that we all love. And I'm sure they checked to see that they were all adults. Well, so, yeah, that's the thing. So I found a LA Times article from January 1997 on this scenario with an amazing headline. For Disney, it's a case of unzip-a-dee-doo-dah. Oh, boy. Yes.

Yeah. I don't hate it. Are you unzipping things to show your breasts, though? You'd have to have like a zipped up tube top or what. Yeah, I feel like it's... I would say... A flash means a lift to me. Unclaspity doodah, maybe.

Well, then, you know, zip, unzip. I know. It's very sweaty. Yes, yeah, which is what I love about it. But yeah, so it was known enough by January 1997 that LA Times is covering it. And this was confirmed on the snopes website too about it which was as long as there have been the the photo ops in rides people have flashed their boobs or other things uh like that's always happened but you that is why you have a cast member there

to sort them out they they don't put them on the screens to see and and freak people out like that's why like an unknown thing about a cast member's job on splash mountain or other or other rides is to be like oh there's boobs no nope can't show that let's put put that in the dumpster but some cast members didn't put them in the dumpster. Oh, no. So the reason Flash Mountain exists is because a cast member or at least one shared with a website their ill-gotten collection of flashes that happened on Splash Mountain and then posted them online. So not only were those Flash Mountain websites, you know, the people did not consent to having their images put on a website. So that's an extra dark angle to the Flash Mountain history there that was not considered at the time. But so there you go. Flash Mountain, it always happened. People were flashing. It only broke out then because a cast member spread it. And I have to think after that happened in the LA Times article in 97, even Disney, some

representative was like, we never want these to get out. We are going to be locking it down even more so than before. I haven't kept up with the Flash Mountain phenomenon to know if it happens as much anymore. There's the, and of course there's that viral photo of uh the guys playing smash brothers on it yeah which it was smash brothers though it uh that couldn't be real right i buy it hey it fooled me yeah i i also thought that was maybe not real and then i was like i don't know you can really i feel like you can get away with a lot like uh but i i it's crazy that that in 97 that because this is pre-digital it's like you they're the guy whatever perv pervert cast member was

doing this that was effort that was a lot of effort as opposed to like he wasn't just dragging and dropping i don't know what interface they had but it seems like a guy went to a real special like amount of trouble to do it and for years planning on this like this guy had probably been working his way up the ladder at splash mountain to be like i gotta be the alone with the files and and collect them because i wouldn't think dozens happen a day on it like this had to be like at least a month's long process of collecting the band images but yeah i don't know i mean i remember going to professional wrestling shows in the late 90s and there would always be one or two women flashing in the audience i mean the audience it was the environment was crazy certainly not i was like 15 or something i was

like this is scary this is all scary it does you know yeah i guess it was it was the era of girls gone wild as well it was just a more normal thing then i suppose but yeah to think now i've been to so many wrestling shows in the last five years i couldn't even i never even thought it could happen like it never even entered my mind that like someone's gonna take their top off in the audience like no, no, why would you do that? This is serious pro wrestling here. Yeah, I mean, most of the audience now is just nerds who would like to pay attention, please. Yes, yeah.

To pay attention to the show. You're taking focus away from the artists in the ring. So much lore to absorb. Yeah, yeah. Yes. I'm looking for specific reversals so i can note them in my memory but it's very hard to just show your ankle on camera on splash mountain yes yeah that's yeah uh but but knowing the behind the scenes story like the reaction of awe for silas all that

is what the person who shared the flash mountain entry said and uh so yes uh after that fun little splash mountain section there uh we then get to hear what i just love this it is a list of mark twain foods i'm considerable hungry we got any food left looks like we're out of corn pone fat back hard tack fat pone corn tack any tack back? I mean, back tack. Plum out. One jug of whiskey, three plugs of tobacco, and some extra strength opium. That will be two cents, boys. Two cents? If you think my prices are high, go across the street.

Thank you. Come again. He put the lardpone on top of the egg pone dang i i really enjoy that 99 cent store joke where it is the fancy store because you know money caught money was worth a lot more 100 years ago i also like mathematically the two cent joke means the only other thing it could cost is one cent like that's all it's either one cent or two cents it could not be any less there's no smaller denomination yeah uh in case you're wondering pwn is a small baked loaf of something and tack is just a very hard biscuit they're not good but they last a very long time so they're good for old timey provisions yeah you

would not you would not want a hard tack cracker you'd want or yeah i like from it i've watched a video on like how to make corn pone it's like this is a shittier version of cornbread like it's like what if cornbread didn't have all that you know flour or sugar just just fat just drippings bacon drippings and cornmeal wow and i i would i would love to have a authentic meal though like from 200 years ago and just just see what it's like and then find something that's like surprisingly better like you know like bread was better actually uh fatback is also the lardiest part of bacon it's like what if you know as in it literally means like the back fat of the hog like if that's what fat well uh hat while back tack and tack back and fat pwn and

corn tack not as real as the others also you know what all this child drinking stuff i'm shocked they got away with but uh you know there wasn't apparently uh there was not national drinking limits until after the prohibition was instituted yeah like, like Nelson drinks all of his moonshine and Bart sips it later. So there are children drinking hard liquor on screen. Yeah, they got away with that. And I guess Bart is executed later and it's just for showing his butt.

Like that's why they kill him. Morals were different then. Moonshining as they put it. And also a great bit of them, they're rowing away on their wanted signs and so then yes we get the mark twain riverboat pretty much looking exactly as it does at disney theme parks we also you know i gotta give it to harry shearer he's asked to sing old man river very deeply and he does a fine job of it obviously not as good as paul robeson's perfect

version in the 1936 film version of Showboat, or his many other times singing it, but it's a fine impression of it. If you've not heard Paul Robeson's Old Man River, listeners, look it up. It's about as good as the song gets. Is it on Spotify? I would say. Well, you should look up the film version of it, because you get to see him sing it, and Robeson is such an amazing singer.

He really puts his all into it but uh but yes we we then get some riverboat comedy well i see president filmar is in the news again glug glug glug what'll it be boys just three x's for me. Give me five. This ain't no five X whiskey. I can still see. That bar keeps a no good cheat. Cheat! Alright, we've all got derringers. Now let's just put them away nobody here is a cheat man those derringer bullets are weak powerful weak light out and stay lit up

you know uh matt solman is writing john swartz welder fanfic but i did like the very swartz weldery uh gun sliding out of the barrel of a larger gun that's why derringer comes out of a barrel of a big shotgun or whatever that's so good yeah and just uh you know bob anderson and his team animating little bullets bouncing off of things like that is such little detail on them but I I love that the powerful weak little pellets from a derringer and then another very Schwarzwald degree thing the group of basically lynchers the lynch mob is waiting for them on the riverbed somehow and they're not drowning but the boys are having trouble breathing underwater that that was a very uh unexpected joke that i forgot about where they float downwards and the men are just

standing on the bottom of the river yeah waiting for them and also the way homer produces those two nooses it's like oh yeah they're they are killed they are hung to death no so this i mean the this also was my biggest laugh even the first time i watched it the vision of so uh if you know anything about tom sawyer huck finn stories you know that it's them attending their own funeral they're assumed dead and then they show up at their own funeral i if you even if you've not like seen any adaptation of it it's like a like a saying you hear in in in life yeah yeah and so that's what they're suggesting here and then just the zoom up to them in the rafters smiling oh it's so good the miss i mean it only works once but the mislead is so great i remember laughing a

lot at the uh when the joke was revealed yes these these smiling that they not only did they die but their corpses were put into smiling smugness and placed in the raptors yes for the ceremonial lowering of their bodies into the coffins like god i just it's so fucking funny that's great yeah and uh and that leads us to a sponge bath ending and that was Tom and Huck's last adventure. I like that story because I was a judge. Get away. Well, this is our stop. Would you like to come sightseeing with us?

We're going to visit the place where JCPenney sends their damaged merchandise. No, thanks. I'm going to keep on riding the rails, swapping stories for sponge baths. I believe I told three stories. Oh, I'll meet you in Wilmington. Close the door. Raise your arm. Okay, the other one.

You know, I do 400 sit-ups a day. Oh, it shows. I was going to say something, but I thought it might sound, you know, weird. Oh, not at all. I like when people say nice things about my body. And it's important to feel good about yourself. Okay, spread your toes. Oh, you know how much glass is in here?

I guess that was just ad lib between Dan and Hank. It's real funny. Well, because I forgot the ad libbing ending. So when they did just the visual of Homer's sadly closing the door as Marge looks at him, I was like, I thought it was going more in the mo direction of jokes yeah so so then instead they're just you know a couple of guys talking while he's washing him and it's just you know just guy talk i i definitely prefer that so yes yeah does does do you think homer i was thinking when i was watching this is homer excited to be a judge because he like idolizes

supreme court justices oh i like that that could be a character detail actually all bad or is it just it's a funny thing for home to say yeah i don't know if they're thinking about his his knowledge of justices i i prefer that reading i oh i i just like when homer when homer says that it's like he saw himself designed as a judge even though the character is experiencing this as words said to him and he and right you wouldn't think that the hobo told him like well of course the judge looks just like you homer and you play him in this yeah that's true uh i also great great animation on the squeeze of that uh of the soap like just the smile on his face and the way the suds

realistically move down to like like, his elbows. He's just getting filthier on this ride. Yes, yeah. You know, that first sponge bath really should have done the job. Yeah. I think, you know. And the third, we didn't even see that middle sponge bath. You know, I'm thinking he's not interested in getting clean.

That's what I think. He just wants human contact. You know, it's lonely out there. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah, I just like, not at all all i like when people say nice things about my body like that's such a funny funny way of putting it and then over the credits uh they haven't they actually have pictures over

it which i wonder if they did that so they wouldn't cut to a commercial during it like if if you show images then it won't get squeezed to the side to say like an up next i'm malcolm in the middle or whatever it could just be a fun end of season thing like hey we made it to the end of another one and uh and i love seeing kang and kodos in there yes yeah i did note that it's just like they maybe did they expect to be in this one because one of them's on the phone yeah yeah it's good i uh it's it's just another call back to their many times that they've multiple times they just joke of like we're barely in the halloween episode or they forgot us for this one and here it's them the credit seems to be saying like oh

we should have been in this they could only make the picture but yeah i think that tall tales as far as a wacky little store a set of stories i i had a good time with it and again unlike you know an end of an episode where they just like shove in your face like we don't care that this is an ending and you shouldn't either this one because it's all just three stories anyway they don't need to have a resolution that takes them into wacky town where the simpsons end up with like bags of diamonds perhaps or or or just having mo look at the camera and say that don't make sense and it just cuts away like they don't have to do any of that it's it's a weird place to end a season i think especially when there's six months

and september 11th between this and the next one but uh yeah a lot of very funny jokes a lot of things that uh again i saw this a lot in syndication so a lot of it has stuck with me. And yeah, it's kind of, you know, fluff, but it's a lot of fun still. I was, yeah, I was thinking about it being the like the old time stories versus the new time like doing that for a long time it just now feels like it's so much more synergistic because it is yeah you know i preferred the days when we're recording this before the plusiversary special came out and who knows what other disney crossover things have happened they'll be celebrating turner and hooch soon i i miss i miss when the simpsons would hang out with a disney character in a way that made a lawyer worried instead of making a lawyer go like

yes that is we've talked to all divisions and it's all fine like uh you know they've also just changed it's also just changed in the sense that what the simpsons is was doing now wouldn't be that big of a deal for the most part yeah when uh when they would just draw mickey mouse into a scene or whatever that would be like oh i people don't do that and things now now we've seen it so many times yeah well i mean well honestly you know to take it back to the beginning we can't blame shrek for a lot of this like shrek shrek got so popular by making fun of Disney stuff that Disney's like they had to do the jokes themselves they had to get in on it so they wouldn't be they knew that they were on the way to being just fully a joke in old timey so like no no we have to pretend to be hip too let's make

enchanted yeah let's make enchanted let's let's uh have every like uh Frozen is also like kind of a parody of how all their Disney princesses are. So, yeah, they they've been in on the joke ever since. Shrek made everything better. Yes. We still live in the shadow of Shrek. We're living in his world. But thanks again for being on the show, Mike.

Please tell us where we can find you online and more about Podcast the Ride. Yeah, I'm on social media. I'm on Instagram. I think I'm I think it's Michael R. Carlson on Instagram. I really should know that before I plug. It's Fat Carlson, P-H-A-T Carlson, which is my backyard wrestling name, my cocky heel backyard wrestling name. Oh, cool.

And it's still my Twitter handle. Yeah. And you can find podcasts through all the places you find podcasts. It's about theme parks, robots. It's like a kind of about Casamigos tequila, George Clooney, Cindy Crawford, husband, Randy Gerber, tequila. There's a lot of offshoots of theme parks and themed entertainment. And as you were saying earlier, McGruff content. McGruff had a very long music career.

There's multiple albums that McGruff made, The Crime Dog, and we've gone into there. We still have more to do. I don't know if we're going to get to McGruff 3 this year, but there is plenty of McGruff 3 content available for us to explore. many celebrity tequila mentions got me to uh as a gift for my stepdad i was like you know what you will enjoy this terramana tequila like you you like the rock in his work and i'm sure you'll love his tequila and just i told him like just pull this out for your friends and say do you know whose tequila this is this isn't just any old tequila that's uh and you know what for a bottle 35 bucks sure that's not bad yeah you know when i see casamigos at trader joe's i think of podcasts i'm sure that's

what they want that's exactly what they want uh yeah i have two bottles of terramana unopened that i'm waiting for i guess a special occasion i don't know when i got engaged we should have had it i guess yeah i should. I should have, you know. Celebrate the end of a big podcast with some Terra Mata. Do that. Yeah. Yeah. And I also have Scotty Pippin's bourbon, which is called Digits.

I got to try this. I like bourbon more than tequila. I should give that a shot. Yeah, yeah. So I got to crack that open at a certain point, too. But yeah, anyway, all that stuff at a certain point too but yeah anyway that stuff on the podcast thank you so much it's always awesome to have you back thank you for having me and don't forget to check us out on the episode of podcast the ride for the simpsons ride

thanks so much to mike carlson for being on the show please check out podcast the ride but as for us if you want to check out more of what we do and get all these episodes one week ahead of time and ad free please go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons sign up there you'll get just that but also access to everything behind the five dollar paywall that includes all of our limited miniseries the most recent one that we did was blabbing about batman the animated series that was 10 podcast episodes about our 10 favorite episodes of batman the animated series signing up at that level also gets you access to monthly episodes of Talking Futurama and Talking of the Hill, our ongoing miniseries that are just for patrons. And we have a $10 level as well.

When you sign up for that, you get access to all the $5 stuff, plus also access to one Megalon podcast once a month, only for patrons of that level or higher. And what is that, Henry? Bob is discussing the What a Cartoon movie podcast. Now, we have a sister podcast, What a what a cartoon where we go super in-depth into animated series just like we do with the simpsons and once a month we do the same for an animated feature film recent ones have included the satoshi konan anime classic a millennium actress the month before that the holiday classic rudolph the red-nosed reindeer if you sign up you

get access to over three years of what a cartoon movies in addition to all the five dollar things bob just mentioned that is over 200 hours of exclusive podcast content with a new one each month that is often over four hours long some of our biggest even over five hours long giant podcasts that you will enjoy in addition to all the other stuff check it all out when you go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons so as for me i've been one of your hosts bob mackie you can find me on twitter as bob servo and my other podcast by the way is retronauts to classic gaming podcast about old video games find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash retronauts sign up there for two full-length bonus episodes every month and henry how about you follow me on twitter at h-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G.

You'll keep up to date in the world of Henry Gilbert. And if you're following H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G or Bob Servo on Twitter, please follow at TalkSimpsonsPod on Twitter. At TalkSimpsonsPod is where you stay up to date whenever new stuff goes live on our Patreon, on the free feeds. If we have a live show coming up or a poll, all that news, you stay up to date if you follow at talk simpsons pod on twitter thanks again for joining us folks we'll see you

next time for the season two finale blood feud Oh boy, buffalo testicles! Okay, ready for another impression? This is Southside Jake tearing into 10K and Tilly. Oh, this'll be good. Who put the beans in my bindle? Oh, I am so tired of you saying that I put beans in your bindle. It just makes me so... Do you ever shut up?

Kiss me, you fool! Uh, could we hear another tall tale? In a sec.