Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Summer of 4'2" With Nina Matsumoto

Episode Date: July 11, 2018

Just in time for summer (assuming you're listening the week it came out), Simpsons artist extraordinaire Nina Matsumoto is here to have ever so much fun! Not only do we discuss summer, beaches, growing up, fireworks, crabs, and sprinklers, but we also dig into Nina's own history as a professional artist whose career was influenced by The Simpsons! Learn all about it on our season seven finale, just be careful not to get The Dud, poindexters! This podcast is brought to you by VRV, the streaming network full of cartoons, anime and more. sign up for a free 30-day trial at VRV.co/WAC and help support Talking Simpsons! Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons!

Attention Talking Simpsons listeners, would you love to hear us give the same treatment to Futurama? Who would do a thing like that? Who could do a thing like that? Then you'll be delighted to know we're doing just that for Futurama's entire first season. Hey, when you look this good, you don't have to know anything. And it'll only be available for people who donate at the $5 level to the Talking Simpsons Patreon. Oh god, no! And along with 13 episodes of Talking Futurama, you'll get all 23 episodes of Talking Critic,

the entire first season of Talking Simpsons, monthly community podcasts, interviews with Simpsons writers, and so much more! Shut up and take my money! Remember, go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons to get your hands on podcasts from the world of tomorrow! I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody. Welcome to Talking Simpsons, where we look like Blossom. I'm your host, Certified Dud, Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons.

Who else is here with me today? Henry Gilbert, and we'll have ever so much fun. And who else? I'm Nina Matsumoto, and stuff sucks. It really does. And today's episode is Summer of 4'2". School's out! Up yours, Krababble! Today's episode aired on May 19th, 1996, and as always, Henry will tell us what other stuff happened on this mythical day in real world history

Oh my god Oh boy, Bobby On top of all the stuff that I mentioned in the last week's episode On May 19th, an asteroid surprises astronomers by getting within 450,000 kilometers of Earth It was just like in their blind spot. They're like, oh, that almost hit us. Weird. Murder, She Wrote and Fresh Prince of Bel-Air

both air their final episodes. Aw. I assume that asteroid or meteor, what was it? It was an asteroid. I assume that was what inspired, in two years, Deep Impact in Armageddon, that story, just that story itself. Just that news story.

It was on Time Magazine. Every dude in Hollywood saw that. They're like, okay, this is the next movie. DreamWorks tried to beat, no, they did beat Paramount to it. By a few months. It was like, Deep Impact was April and Armageddon was like the summer. Yeah, something like that. Yeah, I saw Deep Impact.

I've never seen Armageddon actually. Armageddon's the more memorable one for me because it's, well, really just from that Aerosmith song. Yeah, that's all I can remember. Yeah, oh boy. really yeah Armageddon's the more memorable one for me because it's we're all really just from that Aerosmith song yeah that's all I can remember yeah

how can you forget I don't want to miss a thing I can still hear that song when I get my hair cut so what was the other news thing

I'm sorry oh that it was that the Murder She Wrote and Fresh Prince of Bel-Air ended their runs well you know what both really good shows I feel like

Go Back to Murder She Wrote is a lot of fun and Fresh Prince I like that it's still getting a lot of play in memes on Twitter. I see a lot of DJ Jazzy Jeff being thrown out of the house on Twitter, which is great. It got syndicated so heavily that I feel like no child watching afternoon television was unaware of the Fresh Prince. I think it's even too, now it's too old for Nick at Night, the Fresh Prince. It was old enough for Nick at Night 15 years ago. I know I've seen the finale for Fresh Prince, but do you remember what happens in it?

He's crowned the prince of power. No, it's actually a weird like shrugging their shoulders like, oh yeah, I guess it's over. They have to decide, like they realize they gave Will Smith nothing to do. The Fresh Prince has no future. He's a college dropout and doesn't know what he's going to do. And everybody else is moving out of town away from him and they're like, what am I going to do? At the end,

they just decide, well, they'll be fine in an apartment. And that's it. I kind of remember people moving. That's all I can remember. Him being sad. Him just sad in the empty mansion. He was driving off to movie town. He was going to drive off to Independence Day a few months later, right? Well, yeah, the future was extremely bright for real Will Smith, but for the fictional

Will Smith, it was kind of dim. And yeah, Murder, She Wrote had been on so long that they had had Bryan Cranston on like twice as two different murder suspects over the course of 12 years. I think this was by the time, I mean was by the time the last seasons came around. So the intro to Murder, She Wrote is her writing Murder, She Wrote on a typewriter. By this point, it had become a word processor. I bet the elderly audience was freaking out. So if they did a reboot, she'd be typing on her iPad?

She'd be in VR, moving the letters around in front of her. I think that's how it would work. So what happens in the finale, though? People stop dying around her? And she can no longer write about murder? Well, I know it's not like a retirement-type finale for her because they then would do TV movies after it. So it's not even like the character dies

or she's like, I'm retiring from book writing or anything. And I think there's a larger universe surrounding murder. She wrote like Matlock might even be a part of it or diagnosis murder. Yeah, anything with murder in type. Boy, CBS has really changed their programming lineup, haven't they? Yeah, and I hate even saying the word

Cosby Mysteries, but I think that was also a related show to it. I think we solved the Cosby Mystery. Yeah, thankfully that case closed. So let's talk to our guest, Nina Matsumoto, Eisner Award winning artist, Nina Matsumoto. Nina, who winning artist, Nina Matsumoto. Nina, who are you?

Why did we invite you here? There are very good reasons for both of these things. So I was brought onto the show not just because I'm a huge Simpsons fan and I did the artwork for your guys' show and all that, but also because I work for the Simpsons. Kind of. No, I don't animate for the show as many people first believe when I bring this up. I do work for Bongo Comics. And Bongo Comics is Matt Groening's publishing company. And they've done Simpsons comics and Futurama comics.

And now they do SpongeBob comics, among other things. Oh, I didn't know they did SpongeBob. Yeah, that's a more recent development. But they've been around for a really long time. But unfortunately, not many people in North America seems to know about it. They're really big in Europe, though. Really? Yeah, Europe loves Simpsons comics, apparently.

I was a bongo comic reader from day one. I kind of fell off over the years, but you could always count on it to be quality Simpsons stuff, though. It felt like it had a more all-ages bent than even the show does, right? Oh, definitely, yeah. My most senior just did Bart Simpson comics for a while, actually. Bart Simpson comics has ended its run. I actually got to do the final issue, which was issue 100. It was like, yeah, it was like double size or whatever.

Yeah. Bart Simpson comics was more about the kids. So that was definitely all ages. Simpsons comics, technically it's all ages. And whenever I would do conventions and have Simpsons comics at the table, I would get like a bunch of kids like going like, like wow simpsons comics and getting it signed and all that and i would think to myself oh also their parents would say things like uh we won't let them watch the show yet but we let them read the comics but then you look at the comics and it still has some like racy jokes in there and they're still drinking and smoking and there's like sexy ladies and stuff like that how many are there a lot of mo suicide jokes in the comics i mean you just you just penciled a Moe special, right? Yeah, yeah.

As of this recording. Yeah, the Mighty Moe SysLac number one. It's just a one-shot, but they call it number one anyway, just for fun. It just came out like this week, I believe. I drew that like a year ago, almost a year ago, and it was released digitally. But I guess they decided to release it physically. Yeah, I was surprised when I saw it in the comic book store right here in San Francisco. Yeah, if you would allow me to compliment you, Nina,

like your stuff is so versatile. I didn't know until semi-recently that a lot of the Fangamer stuff that I own is work that you've done, like a lot of great t-shirt designs. You also do prints and stuff like that. Can you talk about more of what you've done outside of the Simpsons comics? Right, yeah, I do a lot of different kinds of artwork, not just Simpsons, which is good. Like it's good to be a versatile artist

because that gets me a lot of different kinds of jobs. But at the same time, like you mentioned, a lot of people don't realize how many things I've done. A lot of times people tell me like, oh, I have the shirt of yours or I've seen this picture, but I had no idea you did it. Or if I do a convention, they'd be like, so did you do all this stuff?

I'm like, yes. And they're like, really? I'm like, do you think I'm lying about this? I think we all work jobs where people have horrible misconceptions I don't blame them because they're very specialized jobs but also you get some weird questions too oh boy yeah lots and lots of weird questions but yeah I mainly do well in the past couple of years I've been mainly working for Fangamer so Fangamer does a lot of video game merchandise I guess more recently we've been doing stuff like uh indie games especially so merchandise for uh shovel knight slime ranger stardew valley well undertale is the biggest thing oh yeah yeah because toby fox has been a friend of fangamer slash starman.net which

they first started as for like a really really long time oh man i didn't know what star i remember starman and buying shirts off of that wow yeah i Yeah, I've been following Fangamer for a long time just because they were the first group to make non-embarrassing video game t-shirts. Exactly. That's kind of what Fangamer specializes in. More subtle, kind of, I guess, classy video game t-shirts. Yeah, because if you go to Target in, I don't know, 15 years ago, you would see a Mega Man t-shirt that would say, like, say hello to my little friends or whatever. It's just some dumb movie quote on a video game t-shirt.

If you at least saw that, or you'd see, I loved Mario t-shirts, but if I got a Mario t-shirt, it's like, everybody loves an Italian boy, or I say the princess, or whatever. It's like, I don't want this dumb shit on this. Yeah, I just recently saw a licensed Nintendo t-shirt at Walmart that had, it just had an NES controller on it and it said classically trained yeah good yes so there is some collusion here retro sorry a game or does make retronauts t-shirts so we're all in this together it's all money's being passed into the table right now thank you is good people though they're great yeah you've been a Simpsons fan for a very long time even

before you started drawing the the comics right yes so I was born in 1984 I was very young when the show first went on i did not get a chance to see the the allman stuff ever because like i'm from vancouver bc canada i was born and raised there i still live there we didn't get whatever network they played the tracy ellman show on which network was that was fox yeah it was the same network as simpsons we got fox but we just never got that show. I wouldn't be surprised. It was not a big hit here, so I could see it not getting localized. I did see it eventually.

I saw it on syndication on a Canadian channel, but that was way after the fact. That was way after the 138th episode of Spectacular. I was one of those people who had no idea that even existed, the Allman stuff. So when I saw it for the first time, I was like, is this real? I had the same reaction a lot of people did. You didn't know if Troy McClure was lying to you. Well, it seemed like it could have been just a weird joke that they were doing because that show was full of weird jokes. Yeah.

I only knew about those at the time. I had never seen Ullman. But at the time in season one, they were like, we need as much merchandise as possible. So I bought this Consumer Reports published book about The Simpsons. Before the first season even ended, it was like, here's everything we could possibly write about The Simpsons, where they started, every bio for Harry Shearer and Dan Kaislanetta. It was just like scraping the bottom of the barrel. But because of that, I knew about the Allman shorts. Yeah. So I'm not sure exactly when I started watching the show. I have an older brother and sister and I would pretty much watch whatever they watched. It might have been the Christmas special. Like I like cartoons as a kid to a certain extent. It's

weird like I was a really weird kid. I didn't like a lot of kids media and I'm still not a big fan of it. I have no idea. Like I didn't like being condescended to as a child. Like I didn't like other children. I didn't like my classmatesescended to as a child. Like, I didn't like other children. I didn't like my classmates. I preferred talking to the teachers instead. I wanted to know what their deal was and talk about how their day is and, like, their thoughts and not my classmates. A lot of kids' shows back then, like, I would watch things like Sesame Street. And I guess if you're a Canadian, you would know what I'm talking about.

But things like Fred Penner, Mr. Dress Up. Oh, Fred Penner was on Nickelodeon back when they were just like, anything cheap and foreign, put it on the air. And that guy with the mouth harp, get him. Oh, okay. All right, that's who that is. It's just the guy with the mouth harp walking through the woods, right? Fred Penner's place?

Is that what it was? The beginning, yeah, that's what he does. Yeah, that's all I remember about it. I assume that's what the entire show was. Oh, you're not too far off. Oh, Sharon Lois and Bram are also Canadian, right? They have to be. I'm pretty sure they are.

I never watched it, so I'm not sure. You're missing nothing. Under the Umbrella Tree. Oh my god, we got all of these shows in America. Oh yeah? Okay. That's a very Canadian show. The Polka Dot Door, Big Friendly Giant, that's very Canadian. You should look up the intro sometime and laugh at the Canadian accent of the narrator.

Anyway, so all those shows, I would watch them, but whenever they started doing things like singing and dancing, I would change the channel. I just could not stand that kind of thing. So when I started watching The Simpsons as a kid, it really appealed to me because it felt like they weren't talking down to their audience. There were a lot of jokes I didn't understand,

but you don't really care about that kind of thing when you're a kid. As long as it's entertaining, that's all that matters. Yeah, on a joke-admitted show like The Simpsons, if you don't get a joke, you just watch. In a minute, you'll get another joke anyway. Yeah. On a joke show like The Simpsons, if you don't get a joke, you just watch in a minute, you'll get another joke anyway. Exactly. I think we were all like just sort of precocious kids who would seek out entertainment that didn't talk down to us, which is why we like Batman, the animated series and Ren and Stimpy and all the Warner Brothers 90s cartoons that they felt like they were a little smarter overall. And they definitely were a little

smarter. So I was a weird kid who didn't enjoy most children's media, but I watched The Simpsons. But I think I was one of the only kids my age who would watch The Simpsons. A lot of kids my age didn't understand what it was or they knew it, but they're like, oh, this is above me or whatever in terms of comprehension level. And they would rather watch stuff that's more suited to their age range. Yeah, I think with my friends, just a regular school chum who I talked to in class, they wouldn't really know The Simpsons either. But I eventually amassed a friends group by like middle school that we all were like, well, we all memorize The Simpsons, right? That's why we're all friends.

That's funny. I mean, when the show started, me and all my fellow school chums thought the show was quite corking. And we all had t-shirts. Was there a similar Simpsons mania in the early years in Canada? I mean, I would assume that it did creep over the border, but maybe it was bigger in America in the beginning. Yeah, I remember male classmates of mine wearing Bart Simpson shirts and all that. But I don't remember seeing too much merchandise, to be honest.

Like, I would collect any piece of merchandise I could find, which was not a whole lot, considering how much was released. I do feel like it was probably a bigger phenomenon in the States. I owned at least one Underachiever and Proud of It t-shirt. I definitely had that. My mom would not give me a Bart Simpson, Who the Hell Are You? That was too dirty. I had the famous Cool Your Jets Man shirt, which I believe he said once.

But was there a delay between episodes in Canada and America like in the UK it took them a long time to get our stuff but was it just sort of day and date in Canada I don't think there was

any kind of delay no okay by the time I became a bit older and like a super fan when I was like 12 13 years old

I would definitely watch I definitely became more aware of the show like as a good show not just something fun to watch that's on tv and uh i would watch it every sunday and like tape it and all that well did you like grew as an artist you probably did were some of the first things you drew simpsons drawings oh yeah i drew simpsons stuff like all the time i did too but i doubt it was

as good as you but i when i was a kid i drew garfield and i drew simpsons all the time i was like well these eyes are easy and i'll just draw things around it it'll look enough like it'll suggest a head yeah like I come from a Japanese family like my parents are from Japan although I was born in Vancouver I grew up reading manga mostly like my favorite manga is Doraemon so I drew a lot of Doraemon like my first very first comic that I drew was a Doraemon fan comic wow so I would say Simpsons was like the the one Western cartoon that I really latched onto. Homer sort of has a Doraemon kind of head. I'm thinking about it now in some way.

Does he? I don't know. I'm putting it together in my head. Do you know who Doraemon is? I do. I do. They have a similar muzzle. Yeah.

I'm thinking of the muzzle. That could be in the eyes close together too. Doraemon's muzzle starts from his eyes though. That's true. I kind of want to try drawing Homer too. Doraemon's muzzle starts from his eyes, though. That's true. I kind of want to try drawing Homer as a Doraemon face. Have you seen that Homer slash Pikachu? I've seen that, yes. I want to try that, but with Homer and Doraemon mashed up together.

The next shitpost needs to be Homer and Doraemon. And Bart could be the little boy from that series. I do want to ask before we start the episode proper, what is your favorite Canada bashing joke on the show As a long time resident of Canada Oh man I loved it whenever they referenced Canada In any capacity There wasn't much Canada rep on American shows back then

Or even now I guess I think one of my favorites is when Bart in You Only Move Twice And Bart is in the special class And one of the kids is I'm just from Canada and i talk a little slow they think i'm slow eh and his name is gordy oh yeah gordy yeah no that i was gonna say that was my favorite uh canadian uh bashing joke by far i also like the that's it back to winnipeg

we just recorded that one and winnipeg is a long way from cape canaveral yeah oh you measured the distance it's about a 30-hour drive. Oh, jeez. Yes. No, that was hilarious, because Winnipeg is not a kind of city that you would ever hear referenced ever, so to hear it on The Simpsons was just like, oh my god, I can't believe they said that. I think that was probably a three-hour conversation in the writing room.

Like, which Canadian city? What's the funniest sounding city and most obscure but still popular city? Everyone's heard of Toronto, everyone's heard of Montreal. I have a feeling they were thinking of funny American cities. And then they eventually decided, how about a Canadian city? That'd be funnier. That did not sound Canadian.

It sounded like Dan Castaneda being very Chicago-y. That's true. Oh, yeah. Also, on the Japanese Simpsons comparison front, I think you were the one who directed me to Chibi Maruko-chan. Was that right? Oh, yeah. When we were talking about how the show Saze-san is, people

sometimes compare it to The Simpsons, but I think you were the one who pointed out that Chibi Maruko-chan is more of a... More Simpsony, yeah. Have you had a chance to check out the show since? Yeah, I have, because there's I actually think he's a listener to the show, so hey, thumbs up if you are, but... He is, yeah. There is a, some saint is fan-subbing Chibi Maruko-chan on YouTube.

And don't tell the Japanese people who own it. So, the first 30-something episodes are on there. I've watched five of them. It's a really funny show. And also, when I was just in Tokyo, there was still Maruko-chan merchandise in multiple places there. I was surprised. Oh, yeah. There is still a lot of love for Maruko-chan out there.

I loved reading the manga when I was a kid. And I would say it has a very kind of sarcastic sense of humor, which you don't normally see in anime. Yeah. That's what reminded me of The Simpsons in the episodes I watched was how it was about like how two sisters being mean to each other or a parent telling their kid to stop procrastinating on on the holiday break and get to work on their homework and just it was the kind

of like more dysfunction stuff that i'm not used to seeing in families in in like most japanese media i've seen yeah and the real star of the show i think is a narrator it kind of has like a almost an investment development type feel oh yeah i could see that yeah that's where a lot of the sarcastic humor comes in where maruko chan will like say something like i'm gonna do this tomorrow and then your narrator will be like she didn't how do you feel about kran shin chan because i've seen a bit of that and i know it's always compared to the simpsons and it was one of those weird cases where in japan it was sort of a family show but it was also when they brought it over here it was like in the middle it was too racy to be a kid show and too gentle to be an adult show so they hired American writers like Evan Dorkin to make a new

dub that was like way off script for it like way dirtier than the original I had no idea he worked in that show yeah yeah a lot of American comedy writers worked on the brief Adult Swim Shin-Chan when I've never actually watched the English version but I heard they changed the script a lot. Yeah, yeah. Basically made like a whole new script for it instead of doing a direct translation. I read the manga when I was a kid and I thought it was pretty funny.

I mean, it wasn't exactly my style of humor because I'm not a big fan of crass humor like that. There was a lot of crass humor in there. He's always taking his pants off. Yeah, taking his pants off and like drawing on his dick and stuff like that and showing it off to women. Like there's one joke

where he's shopping with his mom and he lifts up a skirt of a mannequin and he says to his mom loudly in the store, like, hey, she doesn't have any hair like you down here. Lots of jokes like that, which would not really fly here. I just love how the characters look in that manga.

Sorry, this is way off topic, but it's kind of racy in some way, some of the Simpsons if you're looking for similar japanese things uh who are your favorite simpsons characters to draw i am curious about that too oh ever since i was little i like drawing lisa the best she's i think she's one of the easier characters to draw honestly um except for her hair i guess her hair is very specific it's hard to get her eight points just right like evenly spaced out so that it like ends up being eight points in the very end. It's hard to get her eight points just right, like evenly spaced out so that it like ends up being eight points in the very end. Cause it's like, you got to draw them in a circle. I

mean, there are tricks to getting it right, which I eventually learned. Well, that's a, I mean, that's a tough thing in general when you're drawing official Simpsons merchandise, it's supposed to like, if you're drawing Simpsons for yourself, you're just doing it for yourself. But if you're doing it through the machine of the Simpsons, you've got to be on model. It's got to look exactly to the rules. So that's got to be a lot of extra pressure. I was curious in terms of staging, where you're sort of moving the camera, quote unquote, around. Are there certain angles of the characters where you're like,

this would be a cool layout, but these characters do not look like they should at this angle. So I have to sort of change things around. I haven't run into too many problems like that because whenever I think of when I got the script and I think I imagine how it will play out on paper I imagine it like it's on the show and I've seen that I'm so familiar with the show now that I basically know how to stage the characters I think the writers have that in mind too. So it's not really a big deal but yeah like I've

been drawing those character for such a long time like if you look at all my school notes as a kid, they're all just like little doodles of like Bart and Lisa everywhere. And I would also write out like entire song lyrics, sometimes like entire scripts of episodes. That's awesome. Yeah, they're just everywhere in my notes. So when I eventually, I did like one year of traditional animation training. The first year I got out of high school, I was like 17 years old so I was definitely the youngest person in my class and I was surrounded by all these like

really really amazing artists about a lot of older people like people in their 30s who I guess did something else and then decided I'm gonna be an animator and went to animation school. I went to animation school in Vancouver. I didn't want to become an animator. I always wanted to do comics but at the time there weren't really any options for me education wise for comic books all the comic programs were in the states and that would have cost way too much so the next best thing was to to go to an animation school so that's what so that's what I did and there was one assignment where we had to draw Simpsons character it was like a layout assignment and it involved I can't remember I wish I remember what scene it was exactly they did give us an

official like sketch of a scene and then part of a script so we had to draw the the layout i think it took place in the simpsons living room and you had to draw homer doing something so you had to do all the key poses oh that's cool it was really cool i was like yeah this is right up my alley and when i was drawing that i was okay i'm not bragging or anything i was 17 so i was like the least the least uh experienced artist in my class. Everyone was a better artist than me. And yet I could draw Homer most on model out of anyone. Everyone was struggling.

They were like, well, this character design is so simple. Why can't we get this right? I'm like, I've done this forever. That was my moment of shine. It's sort of like how we just talk to each other in Simpsons language. It's like a lot of it is just burned into into your brain so you can just recall it so naturally it's just like one of the first things you can think of in any moment yeah exactly that was like the one assignment i really excelled at like not that it was super important to be right on model for that because

it was about the layout not the drawing but still it was really cool to see how there were all these really amazing artists who still couldn't get the style down because it's so specific oh well before we get any upside i want to say you've uh you with another person who worked with at bongo you just put out new kids book right yeah so ian boothby has been with bongo comics way longer than me he's done i would say he's written most of the stories for for them it's weird there's a lot of people who work for bongo Comics in BC. There's me, there's Ian Boothby, there's James Lloyd, there's John Delaney. And we're all in BC, just kind of coincidentally, for some reason. So Ian and I won an Eisner together. Awesome.

Yeah, Treehouse of Horror. Number 14. We won Best Short Story for a story called Murder He Wrote. Wow. Relevant. Yeah He Wrote. Wow. Relevant. Yeah, very relevant. What does an Eisner word look like? Is it just like a pendant or something? It's not, but I wear it on my neck anyway. For the longest time, it was just a plaque.

But I'm really lucky. I won back in 2009. They had just changed it to a trophy. It's really heavy. I should have brought it, actually. Put my legs up casually on the table. Rolls out of my pant legs. It's much better than that most improved odor trophy.

Yeah, no, it's a really heavy trophy, and it's got a globe on it that says Little Eisner Award 2009. And it spins, too. It's so fun. Yeah, so Ian and I, although we both lived in Vancouver, and we worked on Simpsons Comics together, we never actually met each other until way after we won the Eisner. Wow.

Even after we won, we didn't make plans to meet with each other because we're both, well, he's a writer, I'm an artist, we're both shut-ins, and we both have social anxiety and all that. Like Lenny in his apartment. Pretty much, yeah. But we eventually met up at a convention convention and the first thing he said to me was like yay we won an eiser together i'm like that's right and then we've been we just got along really well and we became we've been friends ever since and we collaborated on like a few different projects some pitches that didn't really go anywhere and eventually one of the pitches stuck and that was sparks and sparks just came out at the end of february you might have seen it as a

preview for free Comic Book Day because Colossic chose to publish the first, I think, 29 pages for Free Comic Book Day. Yeah, and it's about two cats that dress up as a dog in order to save people because people don't take cats seriously as heroes. Oh, this book has an agenda now. That's pretty cool. I've read some of it. It's really neat.

I didn't get the Free Comic Book Day thing for it, but that's really cool that you i've read some of it it's it's really neat i didn't get the free comic book day thing for that's really cool that you guys are like you know got this big day like you've been touring around and doing signings for it and stuff yeah there was free comic day at the beginning of this month we did a signing for that then we went to uh tcaf in toronto and did a signing there then we went did vancouver comic art festival um the weekend after yeah we might do more signings uh it's only been like a few months since the book's been released and we've already done so much for it it's been a it's crazy ride i've really enjoyed all of your road trip comics that you've been drawing and i

have to say to our listeners she is not a coyote person that's all a lie she's actually a human i love that for well would you say a fursona or just your other i love your character yeah it's not a fursona, but I call her my mascot character, which is the Space Coyote because I'm on... I've been known online for a long time as Space Coyote for, I don't know, forever.

As soon as that episode... Well, I'm sure the listeners know where that comes from. But that's the Johnny Cash voice. Yeah. Spirit guy. Shortly after that episode came out i i adopted space coyote as my online name because i liked it so much and for the longest time i never revealed what my actual name was until i became uh quote-unquote discovered online which we can talk

about some other time yeah like uh for a long time i had actually what i wanted to talk about very briefly was the fact that i had a website for a long time for The Simpsons. I was really active in the online Simpsons fandom, I'd say in the mid-90s. Wow. Yeah. I had a website when I was 13 years old, like 13 to 15 years old. That's amazing. Yeah, on GeoCities.

I coded it myself in Notepad and all that. And that's when Fox was shutting down all the websites because they didn't understand fans at that time. Yeah, if you had sound clips on your site or as we called them back then, frame grabs. Waves. Waves and frame grabs. If you had any of those, then yeah, they would send you a cease and desist letter.

It was called getting Foxed is getting your website shut down, like your X-Files website or your Simpsons website. Wow. Yeah, so I'm just wondering how many listeners remember my site Or me being around as a Simpsons Webmaster at all I would say my site was never super popular But I was

Friends with all the really popular Webmasters And their websites So I would chat every single day with them In a giant group chat on ICQ. What was the name of your website, your Simpsons website? My website was called

Little Plagmatic Hormset Port. Oh, perfect. That's why this episode is a perfect one for you to do. Given the era that it existed in, I thought it'd be like Nina's Simpsons Zone or something because every website at that point

was like your name and the thing you're interested in and the name of a place. There were a lot of sites like that, yeah. But I wanted to avoid that kind of uh website name i wanted something cool and when this episode came out i don't know what compelled me to do it i guess because i'm a i was a big lisa fan i decided to base my i decided to make that the theme of my website i figured it was like um it was such a unique setting that I could make my site unique by basing it off of that.

The website background was Lisa's t-shirt print as a pattern. Oh, awesome, man. It was not awesome. It was very hard to read. It's better than a space background, which was 90% of the backgrounds and websites in 1996. Oh, no, no. 90% of the website backgrounds for Simpsons fan sites was the clouds at the beginning. Oh, you're right. Poorly tiled as well. Yes, yes.

My favorite of old backgrounds on websites were on the anime web rings. I would see that would usually be different versions of steel or metal cover. Multi-frames, too, of that. I think I recall that on the Evangelion web ring I went around on a lot back in the 90s. I think that, no, I think it was Simpsons MST3K and Ronma 1.5 were the things that pulled me onto the internet. I think I just went to a lot of

MST3K sites, which is why I'm remembering a lot of space backgrounds. A lot of space backgrounds. So my site was at gocs.com slash television city slash 5301. Unfortunately, no trace of it remains i tried to find screenshots or something it was funny like preparing for this episode i actually contacted some of my old simpsons webmaster friends almost like an old superhero trying to run up the old

team being like help i need to find out if there's any screenshots of my website left the two main guys i contacted was Adam Wolf, who ran Simpsons Channel for a long time. Simpsons Channel was like the main directory for Simpsons fansite. I can't believe it. There used to be so many Simpsons fansites that there had to be a website for Simpsons fansites. Yeah, yeah.

And almost daily, it would update with new Simpsons fansites. Like a directory. Yeah, it was like a full directory. The other one was Eric, who ran Evergreen Terrace, which eventually became No Homers. Whoa.

Wow. Actually, Eric's old site, Evergreen Terrace, that was like one of the more popular ones, I would say, because of the sheer amount of content it had. He said one of the old layouts of Evergreen Terrace, like when he did like a big revamp, he was inspired by my site, Little Plague, because he really liked how I did my layout,

which was not great. Like I wish I had a screenshot of it to like see but i don't think it was very good but he was still inspired by it anyway and that was like one of my claims to fame i guess wow well i know from interviewing for us interviewing uh the bill oakley types that they they were reading those websites back then too so like it must be at least fun or maybe a little scary to know that they were reading that the creators of the show were reading your website at the time yeah that was back when the internet was so young that to have to know that the creators of whatever you're a fan of was reading your stuff and responding to you was like a really major deal now you can argue with your favorite creators on twitter yeah and then you don't like them anymore. I'd be like, boy, I used to love The State, and now I don't know.

I still love The State. I won't say what person on the staff I'm talking about. I know who it is. But yeah, okay, so then, is that why you picked this episode for the one you wanted to do a Talking Simpsons about? Yeah, to be completely honest, Summer of Forfeit 2 isn't even one of my favorite episodes,

but I have such fond memories of it because I watched it so many times like over and over or just to like pick out little things i could um base my uh website on like for example my guest book remember guest books my guest book was called retrospecticus oh nice it's perfect a little touches like that that is perfect theming like that people don't get on fan sites that like it's consistent theming of references to a specific episode that is just perfect so everyone is screaming get to the fireworks factory right now but i will have to say and i'll bring this up on so we didn't record homer palooza yet behind the scenes information but this episode aired on the same day as homer palooza i will say one of the greatest nights in

entertainment history you get two back-to-back new season seven Simpsons episodes. I remember where I was and what I did that day because of this day was so magical. That's how poisoned my brain is. I did love that day. Now I look back on it and it feels like such a waste to be like two classic episodes.

It just feels like Fox or somebody had the, the programming people just said, well, it's the end of the season. We end it now with the sweep weeks for this week. So let's just get these two out of the way. And they're both very summery. One is about a music festival that happens in the summer. One is about summer vacation.

So they both fit together as a way to end the season. I always love when Simpsons finales kind of focus on summer. Because of the earthquake, love when Simpsons finales kind of focus on summer or the ended up having because of uh because the earthquake there the Bard of Darkness ended up being a start of the season one but I I as a kid who built his whole life around the Simpsons or his personal schedule if I saw a new episode when summer started and at least like mentally prepared me of like well there's no new Simpsons for three months but the Simpsons have had summer now just like me. I think annoyingly, Camp Krusty was like a season premiere.

Yes, it was. Was that season four premiere? Season three? Season three. No, season four. Sorry, I was just reminded of something. We brought up Homer Palooza. And since we were talking about old Simpsons fan sites, there was one fan site I followed called,

I think it was called Simpsonville, Jace's Simpsonville. And I remember the owner's full name too. I'm not going to say his last name but it was Jace something and he had a huge hate boner for Ken Keeler that he had an entire section devoted to how much he hates Ken Keeler it was called Ken Keeler sucks! and he named Homer Palooza

as the worst Simpsons episode ever wow so that was before principal and the pauper i'm sure yeah even more after that i mean i think we on this show we try to among the many things we do try to tell people like just because someone's name is on an episode doesn't mean that they wrote every joke in fact they could have very little to do with the idea and the main story and a lot of the things you like or hate about it. I think I now look back to that magical time pre-listening to the commentaries

about what I thought making a Simpsons episode was before, even when I would read interviews, like I read interviews about making the show or watch behind the scenes documentaries, but until I actually heard like the lengthy commentaries explaining how a show is actually written and what the writer's room is, I now feel like i had no clue what this was why was i so mad at mike scully or what which i'm still so glad we apologized to mike scully he was so nice to us yeah well ken killer is great

too so i don't know what what jace's problem was jace if you're listening uh how are you doing ken killer has a phd leave the man alone. He's suffered enough. The Sentence will be right back. You didn't get the dud with this week's podcast because we had a really good one here with nina and we thank her so much for coming on this week's episode and if you want to see some of her awesome art be sure to check out her book sparks or just the cool stuff she puts up at her twitter account space coyote or you can see her awesome art featured at patreon.com slash talking simpsons she did the lovely art that's at the top of the page of me and

bob in simpsons form and if you're there anyway patreon.com slash talking simpsons why don't you sign up and you can get access to every episode of talking simpsons a week early you could be listening to season eight first episode the treehouse of horror 7 right now not only that but you could also listen to our very recent season 7 end of season extras which are only on the patreon you can hear our season 7 wrap up where we go through the biggest news that happened during that season as well as all of the season 7 deleted scenes that are on the dvd you can hear it in audio form for five bucks a month at that level if you give it our 10 level, you can watch the video version, along with tons of other cool videos we did,

such as us going through all of the Simpsons shorts for completeness's sake. And so, so, so much more if you check it all out, along with Dina's wonderful art, at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons you know what else is a patreon.com talking simpsons we also have lots of cool interviews like our most recent interview with mike reese who was a writer from season one on of the simpsons an executive producer and showrunner for seasons three and four, a co-creator of the critic. And he just put out a brand new book, Springfield confidential, all about his time with the Simpsons.

You'll learn all about that in our interview and sure you can read it, but wouldn't you want to hear an audio book version read by Mike Reese? If you sign up at audible trial.com slash talking Simpsons, you can sign up for a free trial and get that book, Yours to Keep, for free. You can get a copy of Mike Reese's Springfield Confidential and listen to it right now for free if you sign up at audibletrial.com slash Talking Simpsons.

And it's a great way to help the show beyond just signing up for the Patreon. And I mean, if you're going to get Mike Reese's book anyway, why not get it through aud trial.com slash talking senses well i guess speaking of writers this episode is written by dan grainy who in our interview with him he actually gave us quite a a rundown on how credation is really difficult from a writer level with that stuff but a lot of this is a reflection upon the upper middle class writers uh vacations in new england yeah that's why they have to make up a reason that the Simpsons would have a beach house because they are not in the class bracket that most of the writers were who went to beach houses

in Kennebunkport in their childhoods, which I was in a slightly upper middle, lower, no, lower middle, upper class, whatever. Upper, lower middle class. Upper, lower middle class. Well, yeah. So we got a beach house one year, but it was in Florida. It wasn't exactly like this. And it was actually not fun for me as a kid, which I'm not complaining about my wonderful vacation that tons of kids would have wanted to have. But I didn't particularly love it. Didn't love it. I didn't have the transformation Lisa had. I had the dorky stuff and then no transformation. I did just bring a book to the beach and I read it. At the lower end of the economic scale,

we never really went anywhere on vacation during the summer. We got a pool and it was like, you have a pool, that's your vacation, swim in the pool. There, we fixed it. That's pretty nice. The whole beach house thing, I cannot relate to any of this in this episode because my big summer vacations were spent in Japan. Oh my god!

Which is really cool. I will say. Probably better than going to a beach house, honestly. I'll trade my pool for that. Japan is so hot. Yeah, it is. Whenever I've been to Tokyo, the closest to summer I've been in Tokyo was September.

And I was dying of heat. It reminded me of being in Florida in a pathway. Now I'm so spoiled by the tempered weather of northern california like here it makes it really hard to go back either to florida or have a real summer like in tokyo as well yeah i think i would spend like roughly a month there but a lot of it was just kind of bumming around doing nothing being like way too sweaty at my grandparents place and and just listening to cicadas, the anime cicadas. It's kind of calming.

They never go away. It is. Yeah, when you're a little kid, like you don't have as much freedom. So it's not like I could go wherever and like hop on trains and go visit whatever I wanted to see. I had to do whatever the rest of my family was doing, which was not a whole lot. All that manga, you had access to all that manga.

It was so cheap. I did. When I did become a little bit older, like say around 14, 15 old i'd go to japan and and pick up a lot of things from bookstores folks like that in my childhood were the they were i was the most jealous of them when they come back from the summer they'd be like well i went to japan and i have all of the magical things here here's you will never get to read these dragon ball comics because they're too dirty they would never come out here i i swear to God, we'll start the episode soon, but I just went to Japan

and I went to the Shonen Jump exhibit in the Mori Museum in Japan. And Shonen Jump is a weekly phone book sized magazine that has a ton of serialized manga in it. And going through that 90s exhibit made me so jealous of the kids who grew up in Japan in the 90s.

Like I could have had this phone book every week. I had to buy Spawn for two bucks a pop. And Bob got me some awesome Hoshinengi posters and playing cards. Hoshinengi is, I would say, my favorite manga ever. Definitely very influential in my artwork. That was one of the series I discovered one summer in Japan when I was just like at my grandparents' place. I had nothing to do, but they had a bookstore nearby.

So I would walk to the bookstore every day, constantly buying more and more volumes of Hoshinengi no uh when i watch this i'm actually this episode i'm kind of jealous of the freedom lisa has to make friends outside of her family like that my parents would not have given me that freedom to do things with strange new kids i just met on a vacation so you would meet them but you couldn't hang out with them uh if i saw them i I wouldn't have even talked to them. I would just be terrified. They're going to make fun of me. Yeah, they will definitely make fun of me. Not going to talk to them. I reject them before they reject me, I

said to myself. Just had to get a skateboard and do some cool tricks. I more wanted to just read the... I brought a collection of V for Vendetta with me, and I'm going to read that whole thing. I'm going to really learn about Margaret Thatcher this summer. This is Margaret Thatcher. She must work there or something.

But okay, yes, this episode, I guess it begins with Milhouse is a fucking star in this episode. He steals the show. It's so fucking good. Right from the first minute. Hey, Bart, summer's almost here. Which kind of sprinkler do you like? The one that goes like this? Or the one that goes like this?

Oh, and there's this one. It's the last day of school, Milhouse. Try to show some dignity. That was also a lower class activity, jumping through sprinklers before we had a pool. Did we all jump through sprinklers? Yeah, no, I didn't do that. I was afraid of the fanning kind.

If you're walking down the street and you saw that thing parked on someone's lawn, you're like, I better get through before it gets to the sidewalk. It's like a turret. Pretty sure we had the first one that Milhouse was doing. I looked up what sprinkler types those were, actually. They have names.

Yeah, they have names. There is a whole world of sprinkler culture out there that I was not aware of until I tried to find out what these names were. Wow. So he first was doing an impression, which, by the way, you can even, without seeing the visual, you can still tell what kind of sprinkler he's doing. That's great. Fully by Pamela Hayden, I swear. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so good.

The first one was oscillating. The second one was impact. And the third one is rotating i feel like these are all things hank hill would know totally offhand i my family had the oscillating kind the only till i was about eight then we moved to a place where my dad just said i don't care about this yard and didn't do anything he just covered it with wood chips so they were like there that just mulched that's the lawn yeah oscillating was the one i would see like, there, just mulch. That's the lawn. Yeah, oscillating was the one I would see the most often, too. I think it's the most gentle of the sprinklers. It's not intimidating. It looks pretty.

Yeah, and it makes the least noise, too, which is nice. It makes fun little rainbows in the air, too. Oh, that's true, yeah. I love that Bart is just so looking down like, Jesus. Calm down, nerdling. Actually, when I was looking up to see what these sprinkler types were, I found this YouTube channel by

some kid called Jake the Lawn Kid. And he's like some 15-year-old kid who reviews stuff about lawns. Oh boy. And he was talking about sprinklers and he's like, this is my favorite kind of sprinkler. And he'll just do these live streams too where he'd walk around his neighborhood talking about lawns.

I love deep diving in those very niche review YouTubes. Like I saw one for toilets. I saw one for elevators. They know everything and they found a way to express themselves. So God bless them. They are the talking Simpsons of their genre. Talking toilets. Yes.

So Milhouse would have a YouTube channel talking about this kind of thing. What can a sprinkler do like the best? That is the fate of Milhouse. That sounds like a comic pitch right there. I didn't want to take that. Oh, dang. Ian, are you listening? You've got to write this.

Also, Milhouse, he just wants to have fun, and then Bart is like, come on. The animation, not just Pamela Hayden, but also the animation. My favorite is when he's going back and forth with his hands up and down on the third one. It's so beautiful. I have a feeling someone

acted that out for the animators. And I also love, too, the great little visual trickery of you thinking, everybody thinking it's 3 p.m., not 9 a.m. Yeah, it's a good cheat. And I also, this really made me think of that anticipation

for the summer. We went over this in Bart of darkness, but my summers were being isolated and weird and like getting into mad magazine and playing like elaborate games with my toys and stuff like that. So I was just like, when does me time start? I need to reread all my comics, like get every Nintendo power I can find.

Like, just like get me out of here. You didn't even have to have your leg broken for that. That's true. You just had to have your spirit broken. I didn't even have to have your leg broken for that. That's true. You just had to have your spirit broken. I didn't need a broken leg to be weird and isolated. You wouldn't move your legs all that much. Exactly.

As much as if you had broken them. They would just atrophy. Yeah, no, that was my countdown. Again, if I may complain about vacations my parents paid for. Too many cruises. Yeah, but when we would go on trips like that or a cruise, I would just bring my comic books with me. I be like i just want to read these comic books or play my game boy the entire time and dropping my game boy on the beach is becoming very uh like dangerous here

and i'd be more safe if i stayed in the hotel room and kept playing donkey kong 94 how could you even play a game boy on the beach it's way too bright. If you angle it just right. Part of the fun of going to the beach with my Game Boy was to find the exact right angle and hunching over it to block the sun. Oh boy, it's too bad Boktai didn't come out during your youth. Look that up, kids. Boktai.

The sun is in your hands. And now kids go to the beach to catch Pokemon, I'm sure. Yeah, I was playing a bit of that or uh my beach favorites uh were definitely pokemon gold and silver donkey kong 94 aka well i guess it was just called donkey kong the game boy game not donkey kong country listeners and uh the good one and the and also super mario land or tetris at the very start of it oh and i love the animation too of milhouse running, and then he's instantly

out. You see him in the window. Like, there's no way he ran that fast. And Martin is revealed to be a snitch to the cops. Yeah. I gotta say, Lou really sucks that he immediately reveals Martin is the narc just by looking at him. It's not a good way to keep an informant. Yearbooks, guys. Did you have them? For me, it was

really weird. When they matter is high school right high school is when your books matter we wouldn't get them until the beginning of the next year so it wasn't like oh uh here's your yearbooks get signatures the year's ending we would get them like the following fall okay what if you had moved out of the town by then you have no memories or they just mailed it to you i don't really know what happened that's uh yeah is that due to poor planning or something i really don't know but it seemed odd to me because i'm like i've seen yearbooks in media i thought it was like that's what you do but i don't know what they were thinking

that is so weird because i had i had the experience in the show which was you order your yearbooks you take your yearbook picture like in the second month of the year and then at the like second to last month of the school year then you get you get your uh your yearbook and then at the like second to last month of the school year then you get you get your uh your yearbook and then you hope people sign in and i did have the least experience too of like oh no one signed this i'm sad or i think i would usually get at least other people in my advanced or gifted classes i'd get at least signatures from my current my fellow nerds in there but pretty much none otherwise so we're all in agreement that this whole yearbook thing they're doing in this episode is more of a high school thing that they really brought to elementary school.

It was middle school for me too, but yeah, this was way too young for yearbooks. I feel like a second grader would not be going through this sort of crisis with a yearbook. Yeah, that's kind of cruel to push on to elementary school students. I guess they did that so they could give Lisa something to be sad about. Yeah, it's effective. I didn't really think too hard about it. I kind of realized they were reflecting upon more of a high school thing. But they do that often with the characters, where they will do age-inappropriate things

for a reason, just to have something happen on the show. Yeah, like their aptitude test for jobs. They wouldn't give you that in elementary school. Certainly not to an eight-year-old. No, not to an eight-year-old. Whenever I saw stuff like that on The Simpsons, I wonder, is this an American thing? Is this cultural? A lawyer bird.

It did stress me out thinking, am I going to have to take this class? And is this a test for me? But when this episode came out, I was 13. So I was experiencing my first yearbook that year in middle school. And I was like, oh, yeah, this sucks. Yearbooks suck. They just make me feel unpopular though i was never on the yearbook group like lisa was yeah bc we just have elementary school

which is grades one to seven and then high school which is eight to twelve okay yeah so it was definitely a high school thing i it always depressed me that the fact that i wouldn't be in like none of the pictures at the end like all these like happy pictures I'm like I'm not in this at all but people will sign my stuff like I didn't have a whole lot of friends growing up but I was still known as like the big Simpsons fan or the girl who would draw really well so people at least knew of me like I was never bullied or anything I just kind of didn't exist in their eyes they just knew me as the artsy person so they would at least say things like hey Nina I really like your drawings, stuff like that,

because that's all they knew of me. Have a good summer. Yeah, I was about to ask, did you get that a lot? H-A-G-S? What? Have a good summer. Oh, I never heard it in that context.

Oh, really? Yeah, so I don't know how widespread of a thing this is, but at least where I grew up, putting H-A-G-S with a period after each letter was a huge thing. I'm not writing every word. Exactly, yeah, hags. I wish I did that because I definitely did write have a good summer or see you next year, but I just wrote it all out the way I did not know there was that option.

But then a lot of kids would twist it and say hags are for... When you said hags, that uh when you said lines with hags when you said hags that's the first thing i thought of what was going on in these yearbooks that's where 13 year olds are gonna immediately go yeah actually this is a this is uh semi-related uh i didn't get anything signed in my yearbooks because they came in too late when my grandma died i was looking through her yearbooks and seeing what people wrote in her yearbooks and there was uh one student decided this will be my time to write a very racist what people wrote in her yearbooks. And there was one student decided, this will be my time to write a very racist limerick in your yearbook.

Whoa. And it was eeny, meeny, miny, moe. And they're going to catch something by the toe. And I'll give you a dollar if you can figure out what that was. Wow. More on the next show. But so here's Lisa with the yearbook staff. Ah, the reward for a year's worth of toil and sacrifice. Retro Spectacus. Oh. staff. The reward for a year's worth of toil and sacrifice. Retrospecticus.

The leather oleum covers were worth the extra money. You can smell the benzene. Oh, when the kids see these layouts in fonts, you're going to be the most popular girl in school. You know something, Beezy? I think you're going to be the most popular girl in school. You know something, Beezy?

I think you're right. What became of Beezy? I like Beezy. Yeah. I was like Beezy. I have to say, for Lisa to say she has no friends very soon in this episode, it's like, what about all your yearbook buddies? They should have eliminated this scene because she clearly has fellow nerds to hang out with. Yeah.

Very affected nerds. Maybe they were all too busy trying to get signatures from more popular kids. I just love that line. Listening to the commentary for this, too, is to know that all the writers on the show were grade-grubbing teachers' pets as well. That they all had those same thoughts of just like when they see these layouts and thoughts oh boy I mean is this the first episode to seriously examine that Lisa has no friends at all like in

a very like that the episode is about that like we never gave Lisa a friend Janie is there if she needs someone to talk to occasionally but most of the time Lisa is alone on her own and Lisa versus Malibu station they had to give her friends to like tell her she's stupid And sexism isn't real

But other than that I can't think of an episode That was really about her Not having friends Even Lisa's rival was not like Oh Lisa has no friends So this is very important for her It was not framed in that way

Well there is the funny scene In that one where she's like Oh those are my friends Get away brainiacs Yeah like Allison should still be around, I think. Yeah. She's actually in the background when she's actually standing next to Lisa or next to one of the crew when she's handing out the yearbooks. So it's all the more cruel that she's not getting a signature from her.

Yeah. Also, Janie is kind of an odd case. Sometimes she's like a really good friend of Lisa. Sometimes she's not. I feel like her character changes depending on what the scene calls for. And Lisa thinks she's going to pack the Supreme Court with boys. Whenever you see Janie now, it reminds me of like, if you see like Lewis in a shot with Bart, you're like,

oh, is this your friend? Like at least Wendell, you would remember like, oh, he's the queasy kid. Like that's who Wendell is. Other than that that season one friends of bart are kind of nobody they just made bart have more bullies than friends like richard and lewis yes yeah then lisa is handing out the yearbooks to see just how popular she is in the beginning of the school year each of you received a colored ticket i hope everyone still has theirs

who died made you boss mr Mr. Estes, the publications advisor. I edited the whole thing. If you hadn't done it, some other loser would have, so quit milking it. So cruel. I do appreciate someone who's very similar to Lisa. I do appreciate Lisa's need to establish order

on things unnecessarily, like the colored ticket system. Yeah, I feel like it happened to me several times in elementary school where the teachers thought we'd actually keep, a child would remember something for more than like two months or keep hold on to something. Yeah, I was always like super straight-laced, so I would have kept that ticket.

I had so much permission slip anxiety, like it was intense. Was it because you saw Bart didn't get to go to a chocolate factory over his permission slip? Yeah, I did see the poor kids that had to stay behind. I'm like, oh, that's not going to be me. To go back a little bit,

the girls who are on the yearbook team, I like to think that they then eventually grow up to become webcomic artists who will then self-publish their own books. Because I am part of that circle as well, like indie comic artists.

And, you know, self-publishing is a big thing now, especially kick-starting your own book. And you know what? When people do see those good layouts and fonts, they do make them popular. Do you use leather-oleum covers, though? Can you kick-start one of those? That's a stretch goal. I mean, I do love that benzene smell.

Just the new book smell is a beautiful smell. I did eventually become a bit of like a font and layout nerd and just like admiring how a book is packaged i'm like ooh spot gloss actually when we did sparks i was like i want spot gloss on the cover that reminds me like a lot of the if you go back to maybe the early 2000s uh back when there was like the second big wave of simpsons merchandise they didn't bother getting the graining font or figuring that out. So a lot of that is Comic Sans. When I go back to that merch, I'm like,

ooh, I've got a Monopoly game and it's all in Comic Sans now. Oh no, that's so painful. They eventually got the graining font or made it or something. But until then, it was just like, this looks like it. It's free. Oh God, no. Oh, you know, another thing that scared me though, or was a warning for me as a kid,

was Lisa cutting open the box and then pulling out the cut up yeah from it like oh yeah when i open boxes from now on it's just in the way lisa goes that should be in the donnie don't book whoever packed those books should have put something at the very top i agree obviously the springfield printing factory not not all that good with shipping and nelson saying is something i remind myself of too i'm just like when i worked too hard on a job that didn't matter at previous office jobs i mean i should have reminded myself of that line just like if you didn't do it some other loser would uh quit quit milking it somebody else would have done this now

i think we're doing i'm actually doing something that some other loser wouldn't do. Only this loser can do this show. Very skilled at being this sort of loser. I also like that for the rest of his life, Ralph will think President Lincoln was okay. Ms. Hoover was like, my obligations are done as of now. I will not even tell you what happened. It's over. There was a lyric in that Bloodhound Gang song about Ralph Wiggin. Yeah.

The song that was entirely composed of Ralph Wiggin quotes. Oh, yeah. I have not listened to that in so long. Me too. I do wonder who this Mr. Estes was. He's dead. To imagine who he was. He's dead now. The teacher, Mr. Estes, who died and made her in charge. And there's also, when Lisa's going around trying to get signatures,

there's a really cool underrated psych gag I didn't notice until this time, which was Sherry and Terry signing each other's books right there I didn't even notice. You live together just sign it at home. And for some reason Bart is inexplicably popular in this episode just to counter Lisa

because at times he is like a Milhouse caliber nerd or just slightly above on the social ladder than Milhouse but sometimes he is like a local celebrity which he should be at this point honestly one did bart signings remind you of a comic book signings oh god yeah like i've i've been there and i wish it could be as cool and composed as him but it's just nerve-wracking every time and getting the person's name spelled right when you're signing it is always like oh i hope i did this right because sometimes people have odd spellings for names i never thought of that yeah the pressure of that the best thing to do

is to like get them to write down their own name then you can't screw it up or if you do screw up it's their fault i must be a comic artist dream for an autograph oh yeah to bob but you know what if you walked up to me and said i want this made up to bob i would still ask you to spell it just in case because you never know. B-A-A-B-B. I have. Yeah, I wonder if they base this the Bart signing stuff on Groening signing or other artists or writers on the show. By 96, they

must have been doing public appearances at that point and doing signings. At least at San Diego, you would think, right? Probably by then, yeah. It is hard to think of things to write in there too usually I just defaulted things like thanks or thanks for the support or hi insert name here because the more you write the more you feel like you have to write a lot every time and if you're doing a book sign you got to sign a lot of books you want to keep it as short as possible

and you want to help everybody in line like everybody wanted it like yeah i i also love that as much as skinner disliked bart he also wants to sign his yearbook did you guys ever get your teachers to sign your books uh maybe did again no no one signed my books ever but i don't know if i would have there are a few nice teachers i like but i feel like i would be uh i would be like um a pariah if someone saw me getting a teacher signing a book. I really enjoyed it. But like I said, I was a weird kid who was more interested in their teachers and their classmates. I liked going to the teachers that I really appreciated and going, I want you to sign this. I maybe did with a couple of my favorites.

But I more was just about a couple of years I obsessed of like, oh, this person who I secretly have a crush on. Maybe they'd sign this for me, and then they'd show that they actually were thinking about me, and then they didn't sign it, and I felt very sad. But I don't want to depress people with this one. This episode made me teary-eyed like multiple times. It did. With familiar sadness of unpopularity.

Though I've never had jury duty unlike Flanders here. Homer, I'm in a rhubarb of a pickle of a jam here. I was all set to go off on vacation when I get called up for jury duty. Oh, it's a corker of a case. Seems a man drove up onto a traffic island and hit a decorative rowboat full of geraniums. Now, they're trying

it as a maritime offense. So, anywho, how'd you like to use my beach house? Free of charge. I only get two weeks of vacation a year, and you want me to spend it in your lousy beach house free of charge. I only get two weeks of vacation a year and you want me to spend it in your lousy beach house? Well, if it'll seal the deal, I'll take a look at your septic tank, see if I can get her humming again. Deal. See, Flanders, you give a little, you get a little. Hello, Mr. Brown Ground. What you got for me? And you're sure the Flanderses won't be there?

Well, it sounds great. Bart, you can invite me to the house. Lisa, you can bring a friend, too. Hey, great, a friend. Or a companion. March has carried her distaste of the Flanders from Homer Loves Flanders into this episode. I love that gag that you could tell It was post

It's just words over The establishing shot of the house But it's just so funny And I also like that Ned has never been more happy To take a look at the septic tank He's not even upset when he's doing it It's like, well, let's see what you got I kind of want to know what Jake the lawn kid has to say

About a poop-soaked lawn I'm happy I've never had to deal with Jake the lawn kid has to say about a poop-soaked lawn. I'm happy I've never had to deal with a septic tank. That's a lawn no-no. I've never lived with a septic tank before, so it was just nice. I thought they were bigger in Florida where you can't dig as much. Yeah, they are, but the one home I lived in in Florida did not have one, so I didn't have to worry about it. I would definitely go to friends' houses when I'd see their septic tank.

I would think about Mr. Brown Ground. Also, Bob, you were doing the little hand motion that Homer does. It's so good. I love how bored he is. He's just like, come on, come on. I wonder if that's them, like, they're thinking the audience is going like, yes, Flanders, you're going to move the plot forward. You're going to offer him something.

Could you just do it already? And his story is very boring. The case is not interesting at all. I always do that hand motion now when I'm watching something and they're rambling. I say, come on, come on. And that, yeah, that he thinks that Flanders even calls it a very interesting case,

which when somebody tells you they have an interesting case for jury duty, you think like, oh, a murder or a bank robbery or something like that. And instead it is a Colorado median. case for jury duty you think like oh a murder or a bank robbery or something like that and instead it is a colorado median that should not even be a case with a jury honestly that is small claims court at best like that's that's something night court would deal with i but they needed an excuse in the simpsons economy for them to go to a beach house because unlike bill oakley or josh weinstein

or dan graney they couldn't afford their families can't afford a beach house. Yeah, they're still thinking at this point like the semi-realistic economics of the Simpsons family. I also like that Marge invited along Milhouse, that she's like, you know what, let's invite a friend along. My parents did not like my friends, in some cases for good reason, and I had bad friends. But they would not have invited them on a vacation for me. Which it's like, that is another mouth to feed. You're adding cost onto your vacation. I've heard from friends that I have that aren't white people, that is a white family stereotype. Like they send your friend home when they're having dinner, when you're having dinner.

It's like, that happened to me a lot. I was rarely invited to dinners at friends' houses. I'm not too familiar with beach houses but what happens in the rest of the year when it's not being used it just sits there i think so yeah i mean it's like it's i guess it was airbnb beforehand and it's just it's owned by somebody who owns a lot of properties and so they just rent it out as as needed and it's on the beach and if in a lot of cases the owner uses it when it's not being rented just as like, if I want a vacation here, I guess I will. I think other times it's just empty. And those are the same thing as like timeshares, right?

Where you go, I don't know if they still do this. It was a huge scam in the 90s, where it's like, you go to the seminar and just sit through it. You get the free timeshare access or whatever if you just be pressured for three days. No, I think there's some people who just have the Jack Nicholson and the shining job

of being a caretaker during those off months and just making sure it's not full of dust or rats or whatever. Now I'm imagining someone stuck in a beach house all summer going crazy like Jack Nicholson, but they're all by themselves. There's no one to murder. And there's only three rooms. And then we get to see how Lisa

taking account of her friend status. Well, did you call one of your friends? Friends? These are my only friends. Grown-up nerds like Gore Vidal. And even he's kissed more boys than I ever will. Girls, Lisa. Boys kiss girls.

Mom, why don't I have any friends? We have each other. When I was a lonely little girl, I always dreamed that someday my daughter would be my best friend. We are best friends, Mom, but I'm a kid. I need friends my own age, too. Honey, you'll make plenty of friends. All you have to do is be yourself. Be myself? I've been myself for eight years and it hasn't worked. Look at all these dorky clothes a bathing cap nose plugs a microscope at the beach ah what was i thinking i really enjoy how uh the sweet moment between

marge and lisa where lisa kind of politely shoots down marge's very sweet idea but she like reaches over and puts her hand on her on her leg and just like no mom come on i i appreciate that but i need friends my own age i'm glad that marge accepts it because some parents don't they i feel so bad for them and for lisa that march and i feel bad for marge and marge has no friends of her own so she's like well my kid can be my friend like maybe your kid doesn't want to be your friend lots of lots of sad lonely margin this season Yeah, at least it's better than just a Marge who just says, oh, Homer. But it's a more depressing Marge. Yeah, that must be heartbreaking for parents who

are like, oh, I can have a kid, and then my kid can be my friend, and they don't want to. I'm sure it happens all the time. I really enjoy Marge's girls, Lisa. Boy's kiss girls. I don't feel like it's homophobic. I feel like Marge is like, no, no, you're wrong. This is how it's supposed to be. Marge is not aware of homosexuality

in any way. Let alone Gorvodol. But then Lisa is aware that Gorvodol is a man who would kiss men. And meanwhile Marge has a kind of like, just talking to a child like, no, Lisa, boys kiss girls. By the way, he's dead and we didn't kill him.

I don't know who Gorvodol is. I didn't read any of his books and i have a master's uh well i'll i'll first let you know folks the tome is not a book gorvidal wrote that is a made-up book for this it's a joke about the size of his books they are gigantic books he he was a writer slash professional intellectual of the the beat generation and he was a goddamn queer as william f buckley called him he personally eschewed labels but he was mainly with men i think in his in his lifetime and he in a in like the 50s and 60s very few public intellectuals wrote books about homosexuality or that involved gay characters in them one of of his most famous books was Maya Breckinridge, which was turned into a very bad film.

But what he's probably most famous for now was setting the tone for political arguments on television as he did with William F. Buckley on TV. There's actually a great documentary about Gore Vidal versus William F. Buckley, like TV debates that basically set the tone for all like cnn debates and crossfire and basically everything you see on cable news so you can thank these guys for it but william f buckley was a crypto fascist who was a really bad uh but he was the republican smart guy he was the intellectual for conservatives and meanwhile

gorvadole was the left side of that and so they would be on tv arguing with each other and here's a couple of my favorite clips of them juicy how about mr vidal's answer to them well as usual mr buckley uh with his enormous and thrilling charm uh manages to get away from the issue toward the comedy. He's always to the right, I think, and almost always in the wrong. And you certainly must, Bill, maintain your reputation as being the Marie Antoinette of the right wing and continually imposing your own rather bloodthirsty neuroses on a political campaign.

Wow, why does every intellectual from this era sound like George Plimpton? I know, right? Well, you see, if you look at it from my perspective. But the most famous one of those times was when William F. Buckley and him got in a very heated conversation in the 1968 presidential convention here. Here is the clip. Nazi. Shut up a minute. No, I won't.

And some people were called Nazi, and the answer is that they were well-treated by people who ostracized them. And I'm for ostracizing people who egg on other people to shoot American Marines and American soldiers. I know you don't care, but you don't give anything for identification. The only sort of pro-crypto-Nazi I can think of is yourself. Failing that, I would only say that we can't have the right of assembly in Korea. Let's stop calling names. I'll sock you in your goddamn face's get Let's stay plastered

Gentlemen let's go That's like the Twitter discourse now I wish he was still alive on Twitter But that moment there was when Gore Vidal know he beat him on that day Because he's like well I made you say I made you call me a queer and say you're gonna Punch me so I won

It's funny to hear the I'm gonna sock you one in the face you'll stay plastered uh and also that last thing about gorv et al is he was a hollywood script writer as well and most famously he was writing he was writing the script for ben hur and found it to be very boring and that he's like well you know what i'm gonna write it to ben her and his old chum that they were in a relationship before and that that is the history with them and he told one of the actors but not charlton heston and so he says if you watch it you can see one actor clearly going for it and it's like i am in love with you ben her and meanwhile charlotte hest is like yes my old friend he wrote his own ben her fan fiction he did and they made it into a film so that's that's who gorvadoll is also then we cut to lisa like leaving all of her stuff at home and i like that marge is so unsafely holding maggie in the front seat while millhouse is the one in the baby seat like when i

was a kid babies we didn't know the rules like you're like yeah just put the baby in the front seat while Milhouse is the one in the baby seat. Like when I was a kid, babies, we didn't know the rules. Like you're like, yeah, just put the baby in the front seat or just have it on your lap. It's a baby. Let it roll around in the trunk. It's fine. Put some blankets in there. I mean, I loved sitting in the, just when my family had a Jeep, I was like, I want to lay in the back.

I can sit wherever I want. Yeah, just laying across a backseat as a kid on car trips. Completely unsafe. You're just a projectile in any car accident. But it was very comfortable. That sounds super fun. Yeah. Unsafety is fun.

I'm too long now. Here they are going off. I could still fit. Somebody's traveling light. Nah, maybe you're getting stronger. Well, I have been eating more. Wave bye-bye to our house Maggie bye bye tree

bye bye job bye bye toothbrush bye bye Lisa Simpson it's great I could break and they're off to America's Scrod Basket I uh whenever I get a compliment

one of my favorite things to think about replying to is like well I have been eating more like Homer's pride of just like i have been eating he's bulking i like how condescending lisa is because she's just not into this trip lisa is quite condescending the entire time which again i could really identify with as a uh

sarcastic miserable child on uh trips as well just like me, you know, thanks for this trip, mom. And actually like being sarcastic and cynical is how I eventually started getting friends. I got that sense of humor from the Simpsons. I realized, Hey, if I talk in this matter, it makes people laugh and kids like me more.

Yeah. It's worth it for Lisa. Definitely works for her. It works out. It did. It worked out for me too. So yes, they are on their way.

When the hell are we going to get to? Where the hell are we gonna get to where the hell are we going it's called little pragmatical i'm set port it's known as america's squad basket i thought springfield was america's squad basket no springfield is america's crud bucket at least according to newsweek god bless julie for saying it the one time it's said in this episode. Yeah, they should have said it a few more times. Yeah, it's a mouthful. I couldn't even write it down because it would be pointless.

I couldn't say it after writing it. No, I can still spell it perfectly because of my website. What was it again? Little Plagmatus Quorum Setport. Oh my God. But it's the perfect like mangling of a million of those little seaside towns where you would get a vacation house. And a scrod is a type of fish, but scrod basket sounds disgusting. America's scrod basket.

It's all drippy and gross. Yeah, the scrod is just like a general term for whitefish, which I could go for a scrod basket right about now. When I was listening to the commentary, I think it was Dan who said Little Plagmatus cormsat port was based on place names in Massachusetts. So I actually looked up place names in Massachusetts to see what kind of names they had. The best one I could find though

was a place called Satan's Kingdom. An unincorporated community. I want to know what goes on in there. Boy, some sort of a sex cult I have to imagine. There better be a sex cult at Satan's Kingdom. I want to see the Flanders vacation there. Better at least be a sex cauldron, not a sex cauldron it's not a sex

it's just a name it's actually a peninsula i also love bart saying hell twice in one sentence and march going like and then replying to him it's it's just they've given up on really telling bart to watch his language it's like whatever like and they arrive in the home full of post-it notes which is great yeah i love those post-it notes, which is great. Yeah, I love those post-it notes. Which makes me feel like, did Ned go out there just to put post-it notes everywhere? He might have flown in for one day to put up those post-it

notes and then come back dutifully for jury duty. That's a very selfless Ned thing to do. I don't think this is a flaw in the plot. I think Ned actually flew out there to put all those in there. When Marge finds the ice cube tray and it says, fill me, and she says, well, duh, with what, Ned? And she lifts it and it says, with water.

The way she says, well, duh, I incorporated that into my daily vocabulary, even though it's just, you know, you can say that normally and not have it be referenced, but it's a tone in which you say it makes it a substantive reference. Kind of like Mr. Burns is, yes. It is. I feel like it was also,

she had that same reading in, uh, was it flaming Moe's when Homer did them, the magical man from happy land. And. Oh yeah. You couldn't tell I was being sarcastic. Well,

duh. Yeah. It's kind of like a catchphrase almost, or they were trying to make it a thing, but it didn't catch on. You should have done it more. I, I just catchphrases.

I like the March had gone from thinking it was thoughtful, like when Homer says, he actually wrote diddly. That's thoughtful. That by 100 post-it notes later, she's like, with what, man? She's clearly irritated by the Flanders. By the way, if you want to know how to make ice cubes in an ice tray, go to wikiHow. Nine steps with pictures. Seriously? That's crazy.

And then there's a wikiHow on how to remove those ice cubes from the ice tray. That's much trickier. But yeah, as they're unpacking, Omar is a lot happier. Isn't this fun, honey? It must be exciting to make a different set of beds. I know you're joking, but it is!

Say, why don't you put on your swimsuit and head for the beach? Well, it's kind of funny. With all the craziness and confusion and mishigas of packing, I forgot to pack! Lisa, that's not at all like you. Exactly. I forgot my swimsuit, too, but I improvised. Hello! It's perfect timing timing the cops are immediately there i love the little like you can see like the lights reflecting off of the things in the uh

and then the hallway it's great it's 10 times funnier seeing the lights in the hallway than seeing cops grab homer i think it's you just get to imagine it for yourself homer's basically being the paper bag princess in that scene. It's one of those scratchy-ass doormats. One of those really like, I don't know what it's made of, but I can feel it under my feet. I hope he's wearing underwear in between that, too. Me too. That just sounds very uncomfortable. I also love the note of, please don't steal from me.

And Bart going, nice try. Why would you keep money in your summer house? It doesn't make any sense. Especially if you're a kid and you just want, you're going to want three dollars at some point before you go back to your summer house. Also, I guess it was Ned who put that note on there. Yeah, well, Bart assumes it's Todd, but

it must have been Ned. Also, with Marge making those beds, they're two twin beds. So, do Ned and Maude sleep in separate beds on this vacation? That could have been Rod and Todd's room on this little thing. I don't think we ever see Homer or Marge are sleeping. Also, discontinuity problem here is that just a little flub I noticed was when Marge is making the bed, it is a photo of Ned and a photo of Maude over the beds.

But when the camera changes, when Marge says, I know you're joking, the Maude painting becomes a Rod and Todd painting. Oh man, it could be one of those lenticular paintings, where it's on the angle you're seeing it from. I'm sure those are real. Maybe they had different layout artists for that scene. I just love catching little mistakes like that, and I also love how Marge

just admits, like, I know you're being condescending, but it is! She's like super positive throughout this episode. Yeah. She's really enjoying her time here, despite all the cleaning up she has to do for homer because that's what she likes to do is clean up yeah it's more just time to shine yeah when she can't clean up she gets depressed and then we head over to tj's zay mart so where do you want to show off your new hip togs the sherbert shop the candle district big su Water Cafe? Um, if it's okay with you, Mom, I'd rather go find some kids. Oh. Okay.

You'll be my friend. I'm never, never gonna let you get away. Aww. On the commentary, they said the joke for... They loved the store named TJ's. TJ's is Zaymart because I think the joke they said the joke uh for they love the they love the store named tj's tj's zaymart because i think the joke they were going for was these stores merge to the point where you don't know what is in there so it's sort of like a mix of tj max and kmart and another store that begins with a z i forget what they said it was but i do enjoy tj's zaymart it reminds me of going to a beach walmart or something as a kid For supplies on trips like this

And when you go to It smells different as a Walmart Because it's like a Walmart on the beach They put their soda in this aisle It's so different This is Oh, they call their popsicles here a different thing That's honestly how I feel whenever I come down to the States though

Everything's just slightly different I love it I should have asked you to bring down some Smarties. Oh, you're a Smarties fan? Yeah, I actually like them more than M&M's because I'm that worldly. I wish you had told me. I could have brought you some. Smarties in Canada are opium-based?

What's happening with these? They're like M&M's. They're just like candy-coated chocolates. And they are good, but they are considered kind of garbage candies in Canada. But I know it's like a novelty to you, so it's fine. I mean, our Smarties are garbage candy. They're a step above Necco wafers in terms of like, this chalk has some flavor. I like that stuff, though.

It's called Rockets up in Canada. Or some ketchup-flavored potato chips. I think that's another Canada-only thing I enjoy. I brought you so many gifts already. No, i could have brought some i just wanted to talk about canadian foods yeah like whenever i come down to the states i'd like to bring some uh chocolates like i just came back from tucson actually that's why i'm here like i just went to tucson to visit fangamer who i work for and all the flights back the layovers really suck so i decided to stay in san San Francisco for a few days

before heading back to Vancouver. Anyway, I like to bring chocolates to them because they're a big fan of chocolates. And whenever I bring them over, like people always, I feel like Americans love coffee crisp so much. That's a big favorite. I don't know what those are.

Coffee crisps? Yeah, coffee crisp. They're known for their coffee flavor and their ads that play the 90s over and over with two old ladies having coffee or about to have coffee and one old lady says how do you like your coffee and the other lady says i like my coffee crisp and then they have a good chuckle over it yeah i think it's okay it sounds like a very friendly ad so so how do you like your coffee? Crisp. You like your coffee crisp. I like my coffee crisp.

Oh, I'm supposed to laugh now. You don't know from jokes. Well, when Nina got here, she emptied out a Ziploc bag full of poutine onto the floor, which I guess that's how you're supposed to eat it in Canada? Uh, yeah. No utensils, just stick your face in it. Gotta tie your hands behind your back. And I like any kind of maple candy.

That's another of my favorites. These are all things I could have brought you. Instead, she got us nice shirts. Yeah, so those are three gifts. Though, also, speaking of sweets, I love the idea of tap water taffy. Yeah. You're on the beach. The thing you're using is salt water.

That's the pull. They're like, no, this is the tap water taffy place. I don't know if I ever even had taffy, to be honest. You know, you can get some in the city. Actually, if you're going to the war, Fisherman's Wharf, I'm sure you'll find some salt water taffy there. I just think of it as really stretchy. And is it soft or does it harden once they stretch off? Salt water taffy is different than taffy you buy pre-packaged like at a candy store.

Yeah. It's not like Laffy Taffy like Daffy Duck used to advertise. It's a little softer than that. Oh, no. Now I'm reminded of that terrible song, Laffy Taffy. Oh, boy. It's an allegory. Yeah.

I also love how not unlike in Marge Be Not proud marge just doesn't she has not noticed her children are growing up and that she is trying to buy lisa like a four-year-old's bathing suit instead of like i guess as an eight-year-old she's still she is a child if i saw an eight-year-old and she said no i'm growing up i don't want to wear those baby clothes i was like you're an eight-year-old yeah but in the reality of the show, she's more like 23. In terms of her preferences and what she likes to do. When Lisa's back at home and she's like,

look at all these dorky clothes. I find that kind of weird though because is a red strapless dress considered dorky? That's true. It's not really anything. It's anachronistic. Yeah.

But that's basically it. It would be weird to see an eight year old walk around with a red strapless dress. I'd have to say, I'd be like, that's odd. Yeah.

And pearls too. Pearls on a child? Little girl, I'd have to say. I'd be like, that's odd. And pearls, too. Pearls on a child. I guess that can count as dorky. They did a great job designing mid-90s cool outfit for her. Same with all of her friends that she makes. They all look like they're straight out of a Devin Sawa

movie of the mid-90s. And now all that stuff is back in fashion. Tie-dye is back in fashion i've been seeing a lot around here actually i had one of those boys haircuts for sure like the classic the classic 90s bulk i don't now but i did then yeah because you got your haircut a month ago lisa is trying to find new kids and oh yeah first before that though i love that the simpsons is really firing on all cylinders when they can find humor in low tide they're like well let's write some jokes about low tide what could we do with that plumber's doing a lot of damage to the

environment in this episode yeah i just love how he peels out i was like it's low tide boys that's what you do yeah and also bart's uh taunt of last one it is a yearbook editor it's such a great little line i saw some low tide yesterday i went to land's end oh yeah which is like the western oh land is great yeah yeah i didn't know it even existed but i was taken there by my friend and i was like oh this is really cool and i saw the the bathhouse ruins yeah which i also did not know was a thing it was a giant like bathhouse for rich people i think which burned down and now the ruins are left and it looks like ancient burial ruins or something it's really cool and you're seeing all this stuff I've never seen.

I almost never even go to Fisherman. I've gone to Fisherman Wharf only when people are in town and I'm taking them around. You've got to go to that Applebee's. It's great. So we went out to the beach there and there's lots of low tide. And I saw sand crabs for the first time. Nice. Lisa is trying to find kids somewhere.

Will she find them at the library? I wonder where all the kids are. Hey, a library! No, I can't. That's the old nerdy Lisa. Lisa, read about my adventures in the South Seas and make me live again. We've got periodicals on microfiche.

Won't you join our tea party? It would be ever so... Don't do it, Lisa! It's a trick! Run! Run! Lisa runs away. I think her loneliness is causing some sort of psychosis. Yes. Alice is dead.

She got shot in the head after that fell through. What I like about This New Yorker guy appearance Is I don't think On the critic episode They put the butterfly Flying around him Bravo Mrs. S

You're right But this one That's part of the original art Which I like You can hear it flapping They added Foley And that is of course The New Yorker dandy

Eustace Tilly That's a real name Officially his name I didn't know what A microfiche was So I thought he was Talking about very tiny fish For the longest time I didn't know what A microfiche was So I thought he was talking about very tiny fish For the longest time I didn't know what microfiche was either

I knew that that was how you could look at periodicals Through a scanner But I didn't know what those were called And I'm sure a fan or a listener will let us know But how is that different than microfilm? It's just a funnier word to use It does sound funny Yeah, microfiche

I thought it was just a fancy way of saying fish I also like Pippi Logstocking's kind of desperation to... Make me live again. She needs a reboot. She's just... Yeah, I haven't seen her in a while. I just wanted to bring up that Ian Boothby, who I've done Sparks with and who I won an Eisner with,

he's been doing a lot of New Yorker cartoons lately. Oh, really? Yeah, he's been writing them, and his wife, Pia Guerra, who's most known as being the co-creator of Why the Last Man, and doing a lot of the political cartoons for the Nib lately, she's been drawing them, and they've beenia guerra who's most known as being the co-creator of why the last hell yeah and doing a lot of political cartoons for the nib lately she's been drawing them and they've been doing a lot of them recently i did not know that she he was married to the co-creator of why

the last man that's amazing they're both very fine people so i wanted to uh bring them up i remember too recently speaking to me and there was a uh a panel from Futurama Simpsons crossover that went viral of Skinner saying that Edna wasn't there because she ate too many steamed hams and they needed to hire Fry to do it. And you were the one, I think, who said like, hey, Ian, didn't you do this? Yeah, I tagged him going, yeah, you wrote this, right? That's how Edna died canonically, right? Steamed ham overdose. I still haven't read that. Like, want to i'm sorry ian but i have not read it yeah he wrote it and uh james lloyd who's also from vancouver and one of our friends he drew the whole thing that that happened years before it happened in the tv show like they

did the futurama thing which i think i remember that was in an interview about that crossover i think was the first time i saw matt graining say his rule of like no in the futurama world the simpsons are fictional characters so they have to go into the comic book world that's how the crossover happens i believe in continuity there i think he allowed it because of that and then i guess he was okay with it for the show eventually since it worked out for the comics it took him 15 more years but but they were officially okay with it so lisa's finally finding some new friends like you know whatever like you know whatever hey what's up okay okay okay not your fault it's a bird thing you don't control the birds you will someday but not now hi what's. Who's that? I don't know. Some kid. Hey, I like your hat. A compliment.

Scanning for sarcasm. It's clean. Go! Thanks. You guys skate? Try to. The cops always confiscate our boards. Yeah.

And you just know they're using them like five minutes later down at the station. I think I know a place you can skate that's virtually deserted. Like, you know, whatever. Presumably Lisa will learn how to control the birds at bird camp this summer. She has a real obsession with birds this season. I'm learning about

owls. I also like her using a Jiffy Pop thing as a mirror That was a cute little beach garbage And that was Christina Ricci there Which I'm glad they got a like Real youngster of the day in there The other characters are just voiced By the stock voice actors But Christina Ricci is great casting

On their part of like she's She was the cool weird weird girl in movies. She was Wednesday Addams. She had just been in Now and Then and Casper when this episode came out. She took this year off kind of from big movies. And this was kind of her transition year into more adult movies. The next year would have been when she put out The Ice Storm, which I think was her first R-rated movie. Was that Ice Harvest or Ice Storm?

The Ice Storm. Okay. Ice Harvest is a different movie or one I just made up? Yeah. I believe that is a Billy Bob Thornton, John Cusack movie? You're right. Yeah. Yeah, you're right.

I didn't grow up watching a whole lot of movies. I'm still not a big movie watcher. So I was trying to think, what Christina Ricci movies have I seen? And I think it's Casper. I think that's the only one I've seen. And actually, it's funny that you brought up Devin Sa earlier because he was human casper at the very end yes spoilers but it was a now and then as well like oh really okay i guess he was like a heartthrob back then um i only yeah i knew of him only because he's from vancouver bc so he was kind

of a big deal locally i think he went to the same high school as me actually not in the same year of course but yeah you weren't reading tiger beat though you weren't aware of the i wasn't into that kind of stuff no dream team steam i like non-threatening boys i think christina ricci gives it a real like reality to it of a child actor and then lisa plays off her really well. It's why she's the only character that is given a name. No, they all have names

at the very end when they sign her yearbook. I guess they're not ever spoken, but you see them in the yearbook. Yeah, the boys' names

are Dean, Rick, and Ben. I don't know who's who, and one of them likes her, you know. Ah. So these are like, again, we saw this with the kid

who wanted Bonestorm. These are some of the first jokes about millennials. These were us. These kids were us, our age,

when watching this. Well, how old do you think these kids are supposed to be? I think maybe like a little bit older than Lisa,

just because of how they're larger than her. I'd put 10 or 11. Older than Bart? Maybe a skosh. Yeah. I read them as like maybe closer to 12.

I would say between Bart's age and Dolph Kearney and Jimbo's age Between 10 and 40 Oh right yeah One of them is not a kid I think they are pre-puberty I'm glad you finished that That feels like a weird way to say that Pre-pubescent

As I was saying pre-pubescent I'm like that feels weird to say say that. Prepubescent? As I was saying prepubescent, I'm like, that feels weird to say. I don't know. Just say prepubes. Prepubes. No, I also love the joke of Lisa scanning things for sarcasm. Like, wait, was that sarcastic? It's a pain I feel too much in life.

It was like, wait, was that person actually being complimentary or was that sarcastic? I better be careful. Why does that guy keep calling me boss? Yeah. I don't care for that. Oh, sure, boss. Oh, hey. No, I hate that the most in office culture.

Just like, hey, I'm just busting your bees. Like, no, you're not. It's like, F you. And now scanning for sarcasm is sold on T-shirts. I need that. Oh, God, yeah. I don't want to wear that shirt. That was another of the many Simpsons ripoff shirts that just had lines from the show in them.

The one I hated the most, a picture of a scary clown that said, yes, can't sleep, clown will eat me. I was just like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I saw The Simpsons too. And then if I say that, if you were like, oh, cool Simpsons shirt, they were like, Simpsons?

What? There's actually a clothing line. I can't remember the brand name. They collaborated with The Simpsons? What? There's actually like a clothing line. I can't remember the brand name. They collaborated with the Simpsons to release official stuff, like kind of more higher-end, quote-unquote, cool clothing. Oh, Threadless. Not Threadless, no. It was like some other more fashion-y line.

One of the shirts released was of the cool Lisa from this episode, except the pattern on her shirt is different colors for some reason. Weird. Yeah. But Lisa is having a good time hanging out at the library. Hey Bart, Lisa's skateboarding with some cool kids. And she looks

like Blossom. Lisa? With people? If they're impressed by her, I'm gonna Bart their world. Okay Milhouse, you know the drill. Right. You go over and wild them, I hide in the shrubs. Hot stuff coming through! My friendship, you know you want it.

That kid, like, tries too hard. Sure. The whole thing smacks of effort, man. That's my dorky little brother Bart Tholomew. Like, who does he think he is with that slingshot in his back pocket? Dennis the Menace? How'd it go? Are we done with him? No.

They must have seen you. So whenever a female friend of mine posts a picture of themselves from the 90s on facebook that is my stock uh post like it's blank and she looks like blossom no matter what no matter what yeah like i like the blossom joke a lot but she doesn't look like blossom she needs a one of those hats with the flower yes she needs the classic blossom hat i had that hat when i was a 10 year old denim was it denim it was not denim no okay it was like one of those weird caps with the flats front and the giant flower on the front.

I think the official Blossom hat is acid wash denim. Wow. I wasn't that cool. So, kids today, if you don't know what Blossom is, which, like, that doesn't even get rerun or anything. It was a pretty good show. Blossom was a show known for its very special episodes. Yeah.

It started by a biolic. It was Blossom was a show about a its very special episodes yeah it started by bialik it was uh blossom was a show about a a girl growing up in the 90s and having it real and i there were often scenes about how her brother was a former one older brother was a former drug addict another older brother was hunky heartthrob and her father was like an ex-hippie Who his mom died And they'd often have lines like Well why did you get to smoke pot But you don't want me to smoke pot as a kid Or why did you have premarital sex And I can't have premarital

And she had a randy grandpa too Wow I never watched the show So I had no idea it had these themes in it In my opinionation it's a good show Opinionation is a word in the opening In my opinionation And who could forget her best friend six as well yeah i had a minor crush on six whatever happened to that actress she was

in a goofy movie and then she turned into sand i guess uh yeah it's uh all i know is mine bialik is now uh being rich on big bang theory the subject of a very rude joke on arrested development that blossom really blew up is what Jeffrey Tambor says. We all know about him. Yeah. I do like the skateboarding animation on Bart that makes it even better when they are so not impressed that you even tried to

do something. It is really great to set up the anachronistic by design Bart against realistic 90s kids who are like, this is so corny. You have a slingshot and a skateboard, and it's like, we're just hanging out here. We're doing the ideal 90s kid thing. So, Bart was going full Dennis and Mattis in Too Bad Neighbors. Yeah, just in Too Bad Neighbors.

He was. But that show exists in their world, I guess? I guess so, yeah. I love, too, it kind of feels like even in 1990 when Bart was technically cool, that were he to exist around even 1990 kids, they'd be like, who is this? Yeah, I mean, at some point he says, I'm this century's Dennis the Menace. So Dennis the Menace definitely exists in this world. But so Lisa, I also love how Lisa smartly says that she's older than Bart to make him the dorky little brother. It's just like,

Bart Tholomew. Bart Tholomew. She knew that would be too cool being Bart. So she has to denigrate him a lot there. Oh, by the way, it was mentioned in the commentary that Christina Ricci recorded over an ISDN line. Oh, yes. Yeah.

What is that? Well, it's a secure phone line of the time they're like well we can't just record this over the phone it'll sound like shit so now it's much more popular well i mean even harry sheerer just does that all the time like the regulars on the show record over the phone i remember as a kid reading that in um like some entertainment weekly thing like oh matthew broderick got recorded from his home i'm like you couldn't even fucking drive somewhere to record for the lion king dude like come on it's a yeah but it's a motion picture even there i'm like come on yeah like it's one day it's an afternoon fly to la though i guess for me i'm such a simpsons fan that if i was asked to be a guest star and i'd be like

well can i hang out all week or i mean they can't get rid of you in the end. I'll read my spec script. You know, well, what they made of, if Seth Rogen says to them, I wrote a Simpsons script eight years ago. We'll make that episode right now, Seth.

We have to get more famous and then they'll accept us. Yes, that is, that is the plan. So that's why I need fame. But anyway, Bart is left playing lame old games.

And I think this is the line of the episode though the line is a facial movement i would say that's the joke oh why do we have to play this lousy old game because it was the only one in the house come on homer open the door for your mystery date. Ooh, captain of the football team. He's a dream boat. Don't wait up, Marge. Okay, Bart, your turn, your turn. You got the dud! Hey, he looks just like you, Poindexter. How come Lisa doesn't have to play? Why does she get to hang out with her friends? You got friends, you got the dud right here.

Stand up for yourself, Poindexter. He doesn't know Milhouse's name, right? Being bullied by your friends is one thing, but to have a parent of them laugh at you, it's like, I hate my life so much. But nobody gives a shit about Milhouse this entire episode such like a prop uh i i like marge having fun though she's having a good time with this mystery date game it's very wholesome yeah well she probably remembers playing it as a kid and now she's

getting but it's the only game at the beach house that's why they're playing it of all of them have you guys ever played mystery date i have not no i did play girl talk in the 80s which is like uh did they have the the like a telephone or something no it was like a it was sort of like um you spin a wheel you have to answer questions and if you get something wrong you put like a zit sticker on your face um the ultimate punishment for girls uh but here's a commercial for the original mystery i love the song it's mystery date the thrilling new milton new Milton Bradley game of romance and mystery that's just for you. And you. And you.

And you. Mystery Date. Will you be ready for swimming? Or a dance? When you open the door, will your Mystery Date be a dream? Or a dud? Fun and surprises.'s mystery date remember milton bradley makes the best games in the world so girls open the door for your mystery day get mystery date let's cool

down a little bit she's like uh what does the dud look like? I didn't see the video. He actually looks nothing like the nerd that there is, as Bill Oakley would tell us, that there is a card in Mystery Date that looks like Milhouse, but he's one of your good dates, that he's the preppy kid. The dud is a slovenly

dude who's like, not sure it isn't tucked in. Pants aren't properly creased. His hair isn't cold. He missed a button. Shout out to a podcasting friend, Gary Butterfield, who has the dud tattooed on him. He got that recently and I love it. It's great. Is it just of the dud or are there like decorative elements? It's just the dud on his arm holding the wilting flower. Oh my god. I love it. This is based on Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein's life, but when we asked Bill Oakley about it, he talked about how he loved the term dud

because his sister would use it all the time to describe things like, oh, what a dud. That guy's a dud. That's a pretty 90s term, I guess. It's a fun word. I like dud. I also like milk duds. They're tasty.

I would say yes to those mystery days. They will not blow up in your mouth as advertised. They will tear your teeth apart though I was never like a girly girl Growing up at all So even if I had the chance to I don't think I would have wanted to play a game like this How do you play it even, do you know?

Well, as they show in the commercial You have to be ready for your mystery date Meaning this guy is going to take you to the prom So you better have your prom dress card But if you only in your deck have the beach party card Then going to take you to the prom, so you better have your prom dress card. But if you only in your deck have the beach party card, then you can't go to the prom with your mystery date. It's really teaching girls this is what you're expected to do as a woman or a man. Yeah, better start them early.

And now you get ready for your mystery date by Googling their name. Yeah. Ooh, I don't like what you said about Hitler here. No, I just... You like him, eh? I do dislike on dating. I'm glad I'm out of the dating pool now, because now it's not even the awkward thing on a first date to say what you do.

It's just like, well, you definitely Googled me, so yes, I do do a podcast about The Simpsons. I think I'm too internet famous now to sign up for a dating site again. I think I actually have to meet people in real life now. No. Because now you can just like, oh, Bob Mackie. I can know everything about him. I don't know.

Some people don't really do that, I find. There are a lot of people who have met me and they knew that I would be a guest at whatever, but they don't bother looking me up because they want to meet me in person first and hear my story from me, from my own mouth. I'm such an internet stalker, I can't imagine. Me too.

I'll Google everybody. There's on the awesome new Netflix show, Aggretsuko, they have the character Fenneco on it. She just knows everything about people just because she reads their Instagrams all the time. And people are freaked out. Like, how do you know this? Because it's right here on their website. Yeah, I am Fenneco.

That's exactly what I do. And it's like, hey, they're putting this out publicly. This is not freaking me out, but it's always fun to meet people at cons and stuff. And I do a lot of panels. I do a lot of setups at cons. And they'll tell me a story about myself that I forgot that I told on a podcast. I'm like, how do you know this about me? This thing that happened to me when I was 15.

I share a lot. The reveal of Homer. Homer's realization that Milhouse looks like the dud Is one of the best animated moments in the series Just his slow mouth I wonder why they decided to go with that I don't know I wish they went into that in the commentary actually

It's such subtle acting on Homer You rarely see such smooth animation on the show That's a lot of frames Yeah And it's so timing-based, too. Why it became such a... Before Steamed Hams, it was one of the top

Simpsons shitposts of just the reveal recontextualizing the dud in different places. And when the dud is seen, then you cut back to the character and now they have Homer's mouth slowly smiling.

I think my favorite one is from Homer the Smithers when Mr. Burns puts the mirror underneath the door, turns it, it's the dud, and then he has a slow smile creeping across his face. To set this recording in time, we are now in the era of the shitpost

of Bart hitting Homer with the chair and that turning into a lot of things. And those have been all very good. So I also do love the Bart watching Lisa with Milhouse's glasses. It's so great that his glasses work work it's binocular and then also millhouse petting the the crab i just love that too oh yeah this speaking of crabs this was the first time when lisa's hanging out with her kids i realized like the hermit crab is symbolic of

lisa oh yeah yeah getting rid of her that's why she kept the shell and put it on a string because she uh it it really clicked for me when she referred to the hermit crab as a her. And I was like, oh, Lisa is projecting herself on that crab whether she realizes it or not. I never thought of it that way before. It's cool. So this episode, it's very emotional for me, not just nostalgia-wise. But as a kid, I did not mind having isolated and weird summers where I'd be alone. In fact, that's how I prefer things.

As an adult, loneliness is kind of shitty. And whenever I'm meeting new people, it's the reason all my friends are online weirdos is because I'm an online weirdo. I can't stop. I'm not saying I'm smart, but I can't stop learning about stuff. And like, I'm addicted to knowing things. So when I meet new people, I always have to check myself like, oh, you just mentioned something. I listened to eight hours of a true crime podcast about that. I could tell you so much about it But I won't The worst feeling is like oh my god you guys are normal What do I say? I don't know what to say

And I feel like Lisa has the exact same problem Because she is like a mega nerd Who wants to just overshare all the stuff that she knows But she's not on the same wavelength with these people So that affected me Watching this now I can totally relate to that And I'm not saying normal people are worse than me. They're better than me. But it's hard to connect sometimes. I just want to say when Bob

said, all my friends are online weirdos, he looked at me. You're included. Oh, thanks. I just wanted to say I have crab opinions because I really like crabs. I'll talk more about the hermit crab part later. But I like horseshoe crabs a lot, especially And whenever I go to an aquarium There's a chance to pet a horseshoe crab I will do it And I will say nice doggy Because I always think that scene

Horseshoe crabs are really fascinating though Like they're considered living fossils Because they've been around for like 450 million years apparently Wow Yeah, and they look like crustaceans But they're more like arachnids So they're like sea spiders almost With like protective shells

I heard a joke like this from Jim Gaffigan but i thought this before so i'm not stealing this from him but but crabs and lobsters are bugs they're just underground bugs that people eat just because they're just delicious delicious yeah they're in the spider family they're arachnids i believe they're the most delicious bugs ever but you are you are eating bugs that's that bugs. Keep that in mind when you're eating bugs. So these things have, they have like five pairs of legs, nine eyes. They have the largest cones and rods in their eyes of any animal. Wow. Yeah, but they have really poor eyesight.

That's weird. Just like Milhouse. Yes, they swim upside down and they breed in, and I'm quoting National Geographic here, a massive beach orgy. Wow, shout out to horseshoe crabs. And they breed in, and I'm quoting National Geographic here, a massive beach orgy. Wow. Shout out to horseshoe crabs. A bunch of males will crowd a female and all fertilize together. Oh, wow.

I was wondering if you learned that from Baywatch. I always pet the horseshoe crabs, too, even though I think that we shouldn't. I'm like, is this okay? Should we be touching these guys? I thought that when I pet a manta ray once, I'd be like, is this right? They must be sick of that by now. Or maybe they don't care. I don't know.

If they've been in captivity that long, who knows what they're thinking. But be careful when petting a horseshoe crab, though, because their eyes are on top. Oh. So Milhouse might have been blinding that horseshoe crab when petting it. Yeah, it wasn't maggots' tail.

It was in pain. Aw. I love the sound it makes. Oh, yeah. I don't think that's the sound they do make, but whoever does the sound must have had fun with that. It's like, what does a horseshoe crab sound like? I was just thinking of the level in Katamari Damacy

where you're just rolling up crabs, and they all make these horrible noises that I don't think any crab makes. Oh, God, yeah, yeah. So, meanwhile, Homer has his own adventure in the world of illegal fireworks. I'll bet this place sells illegal fireworks. Just go in and act casual like you buy them all the time.

Hi, um, let me have one of those porno magazines. Large box of condoms, a bottle of Old Harper, a couple of those panty shields, and some illegal fireworks, and one of those disposable enemas. No, make it two. My apologies, sir, but the sale of fireworks is prohibited in this state and is punishable by a... Follow me. I want this town to Apu, Shelbyville's Apu, and Apu to get together and hang out.

Just hang out. I love his conspiratorial, follow me. Yeah. It's nice. That's Little Value Martha, too, which is a cute little name. It sort of reminds me of my, I didn't have 7-Elevens where I grew up in Florida. We had Little Champs. Yeah, no 7-Elevens for me.

It was a bunch of different mini-Mart chains with all weird names. This scene is based on, multiple things in this episode reference it, but this scene is based on a very specific scene from American Graffiti which I have right here. Want something? Um, yeah. Let me have, okay yeah, let me have a Three Musketeers and a ballpoint pen, one of those combs there, a pint of Old Harper, a couple of flashlight batteries, and some beef jerky. OK, got an ID for the liquor? Oh, um, yeah.

Oh, naps, I left it in the car. Sorry, you'll have to get it before. Well, I also, I forgot the car. So right there in the clip, the guy asks for a bottle of Old Harper. So that is the specific alcohol he's getting, which is why Homer asked for a bottle of Old Harper in it. And the end shot is also American Graffiti, right? And the same song.

I've never actually watched that movie. I haven't either. I've seen clips of it. Never watched it in full. The weirdest thing to me is that Harrison Ford is just a minor part in it. Oh, I didn't know he was in there. Basically, all the people on Happy Days Were just cast straight out of this movie I took the trouble to go through all the firework names

But I don't think I've ever done before There's one by the door that has a joke written on it Sort of a thin rocket shape If you can make that out or let me know what that says I could not for the life of me But we have Bang Time Fun Bomb Yang Si Doodle Fireworks Terrorizing Dog Missile

Screaming Tower Jumping Ancest, whistling menace, bright color assailant, and Homer buys the M320. If you don't know what an M80 is, it's a quarter stick of dynamite. He just bought a stick of dynamite. That's why it's called an M320. That's the joke. I've never had an M80. They are basically illegal. You, if you have a, you can get your hands on them, but it's harder than say a gun. But they used to be, they were legal until the 60s, which I don't know, I guess shows you that you can control weapons with legislation. I mean, they were spoken of in my school days as if it was like the BFG from Doom.

Like he's got an M80. M80, man. I was curious to know what fireworks laws are like here and where you grew up. Well, in California or in the Bay Area, forest fires that you're so afraid of, like, you maybe can buy a sparkler. And that's it. And it's illegal to light them anywhere. Like, you're in big trouble. Yeah.

A friend of the show, Michael and Diana Raparez, they live near the ocean in San Francisco. So they actually, you can light fireworks in their area. So one 4th of July, they hosted a 4th of July thing there. And part of their big selling point was like, and we're going to light fireworks because we can here. That's true. In Ohio, we had Phantom Fireworks, which is a major fireworks corporation and but the thing is it's like a real wink wink thing where it's like when you buy them you're like i'm gonna take these out of state to scare crows off of my farm wink wink wink that was the exact thing i did in florida too because in my county you could buy some fireworks but not particularly powerful ones if you went over the

border to saint augustine america's first, you would sign one of those contracts too. It was like, this is to scare birds on my farm. Okay, then here are the biggest ones you can get. They're not M-80 big. Birds are only afraid of a $100 thing called Bin Laden's Last Stand. And I need that on my farm. I've only been in the States during the 4th of July celebration weekend once in my lifetime. I think that was either Long Beach or Anaheim.

I was there for Anime Expo. And man, I didn't know. I knew fireworks was a thing for 4th of July, but I didn't know how crazy people got with it. There was just smoke and loud banging sounds everywhere. It was kind of weird. Americans really do like to blow up

a small chunk of their nation to celebrate it. Yeah, my summers, until school started, you'd be walking over spent bottle rockets all summer, just they'd be everywhere, littering everywhere. We had bottle rocket fights a couple of times, just shooting them at each other. So in Vancouver, fireworks,

and I didn't know this for a long time. In fact, people who live in Vancouver, I've lived in Vancouver all my life. And a lot of other people who are in the same situation as me still don't know this, I think. That it's a Halloween tradition to set off fireworks in Vancouver only. Like Vancouver and the lower BC, lower mainland area. I thought it was a universal thing and that everybody did it all across North America.

But then some people from other parts of Canada would come to Vancouver and be like, what's with all the fireworks? So they're illegal in Vancouver except october 25th to 31st firework sales are legal gotta be um 19 or over you have to get a permit but it's free it's easy to get and they can only be set off on halloween and only on private property wow yeah i was it was 18 and over for the fireworks as well in in florida believe it was. At least these really awesome ones. Yeah, so in school they would always teach us fireworks safety close to Halloween time

because they expect you to do it and they don't want you to get your fingers blown off. Yeah. I also love the term flag-fearing American. Flag-fearing. And then Homer takes it home and I also just love Marge's reaction to the bag of shit.

Gee, I don't know what you've got planned for tonight, Homer, but count me out. Didn't you buy any meat? This baby's sure to kill something. Okay, now, everybody, stand back while I celebrate freedom. Bart, give me your matches. Fresh out. No lighter? Nothing?

Oh, wait. I got it. Give me your matches. Fresh out. No lighter? Nothing? Oh! Wait. I got it. And then there's a great all-visual scene of Homer lighting on the stove, throwing it in the fridge, realizing the beer could be injured, and then throwing it in the dishwasher and then walking away. And the next scene immediately cut to see Marge cleaning it up in the background, which is great.

It's a great joke. It's pretty shitty to Marge that she has to clean up all this garbage. She's happy, though. Look how happy she is. In a later scene, she's humming happily to herself as she's washing broken and burned dishes in the sink. I have an interesting story about the scene where Homer is running around with the fireworks.

So, long story short, I got into Bongo because of a fan art that I did. This was back in 2007. I recently got unemployed. So for two months, I just took commissions and I was living off of commissions for a while. That was my first time working at home, just doing artwork for a living.

But I decided that I should get a part-time job anyway. This can't last forever. I need steady income. But before I do that, I should do all the fun fan art that I couldn't do when I was working because I'd be too tired when I got home. And one all the fun fan art that I couldn't do when I was working because I'd be too tired when I got home and one of the things I always wanted to do was to draw the Simpsons in

my style so I took this like giant group picture official piece of art because I didn't want to have the burden of choosing which characters to draw and I just redrew that in my style which is like a manga slash anime style and it was called called, I called it the Simsonzu. And I put it on DeviantArt. And I just drew it like really quickly just for fun. I had to go to a friend's birthday party that night. So I was like, this is done enough. Upload, go to a friend's party, come back home, go to sleep.

And the next morning it was like everywhere online. It had gone viral. It was thanks to mostly Dig. Remember Dig? Yeah. I was king of dig for about two days for something i wrote yeah so like it was everywhere and it got the attention of bongo comics wow yeah who who had a script for a manga style that called for a manga style simpsons story

and it was written by chuck dixon they said hey we saw your um your piece of art we actually we don't have an artist for the script, and we've been looking for one. We can't find someone who can draw Simpsons in a good manga style, but we saw your piece. Can you do comics? And by that point, I'd already been doing a webcomic for like three years.

So I showed that to them, and they're like, okay, yeah, you can do comics. And that was my first time being published ever was through Bongo Comics. Wow, that's amazing. Just what a find. Yes. Thanks in part to Dig. Yeah, that's amazing. What a find. Yes. Thanks in part to Dig.

Yeah, Dig did kind of try to take a lot of credit for it. But that's another whole other story. I mean, that is like the part you were born to play, baby. Yeah, pretty much. Because growing up, I always was into manga and anime, but I also liked The Simpsons. I never thought to merge the two together. Also, all my classmates would say,

wow, you should work for The Simpsons. You're so good at drawing them. I would be like, I don't want to be an animator though. I don't want to move to LA or wherever they do the show. But I never thought to do Bongo comics. I never thought that was possible, like working in Vancouver. Can people still find this image online? Oh yeah. Just look up the Simpsons or just Google Anime Simpsons. And I'm sure it'll be like the first image that comes up. I also did something called, I did like a Futurama version called

Futurama Super Happy Fun Show. The title's not great. I couldn't think of any ideas for it. So I was contacted by Nathan Cain, who was the art director at the time. Now he's taken over Bongo since Bill Morrison left. But I was also contacted by someone from Fox. It was a guy named Alex Roos.

He was in charge of the merchandising department. And he said, hey, some of your Simpsons and Futurama art is floating around my department. And people are going nuts over it. And I just showed Matt Groening's close friend Millie. And she liked it. And she wants to know more about you. So can you give me my phone number? We can chat.

I'm like, oh, OK. Oh, my gosh. Whoa. And I called him up and we talked and he said, oh, maybe we can get you a job doing merchandise art for us. That never happened in the end, but it was still cool talking to him about it. He also left his job shortly. I think that's a large reason why I couldn't get doing anything for it.

But I was busy doing bongo stuff anyway. So whatever. Wow. And by the time this happened, we were also in the same issue of imagine fx together issue number 15 yeah so alex reese was the one who animated that scene of homer running around with the lit fireworks wow and i only know this because he's mentioned in the commentary can't remember who says it but he says uh alex was so good uh he was snatched away by fox

merchandising i was like hey i know him i talked to him wow it's an incredible scene especially even the camera movements are just so perfectly done too yeah homer's just flailing from position to position is perfect his gripping his teeth while also holding the explosive as far from him as possible it's just it's all over the place just great yeah if you look up his artwork now you would not tell that he worked on the simpsons ever it's all very like really dark heavily rendered um digital paintings of like cool sci-fi stuff but uh there's like a bit of info about him on his website he became a character animator on the simpsons at age 19 and then he became the director of illustration in 2003 for fox's license and merchandise department.

I actually got a chance to meet him in person at San Diego Comic-Con. He had a table there. And I was like, hey, remember me? And we had a little chat. And he didn't have any of his Simpsons stuff out. And I said, how come you don't have your Simpsons stuff out? I'm sure that would draw attention. He's like, well, that's exactly why. I don't want people to think that's all I do.

That's all people would ever focus on if he had Simpsons stuff out. And I kind of feel the same way now, because I used to sell Simpsons comics at conventions. But now I don't have room for that kind of stuff anymore. I do a lot of my own stuff. And yeah, I attract a lot of kids to my table when I have that out. I'm not great at talking to kids, so I just kind of hide that away now. It's a double-edged sword, I guess.

Do you want to pull them in with the Simpsons, but then they'll just ignore your other stuff potentially yeah yeah I uh I actually saw an artist like that at New York Comic Con who they had been an artist on King of the Hill and they were going hard on the other direction of that I'm like no no everything is I'm gonna draw King of the Hill characters with here's Dale sprayed bug spray on Spider-Man I like that i bought it it's a crossover i want to happen what an amazing connection to this episode oh so then we also get the great line about like bart being jealous of lisa is just so awesome here oh this is the worst fourth of july ever i hate america come on millhouse let's go down there i don't think you should let lisa be alone

with her new friends. They're my friends, rightfully. She only got them by copying me. Don't have a cow, man. See? That's my expression. Oh, you haven't said that in four years. Let Lisa have it. It's the principal. She's got to learn.

No. Now park your keister, meester. Ay caramba! Marge is a very good Simpsons historian. I checked Frankie Act. This is not an official statement, by the way. I could be wrong. But I believe the last time he said don't have a cow was in Bart the Murderer, which was season three,

which was four years ago. That is what my research revealed as well, yes. I couldn't find an early one. And even then, that was a postmodern joke about it yeah he says like don't have a cow all right in the thoid and it wins beat yabba dabba doo yeah i think bart had completely stopped saying like no writer cared to say that that was old that's like a season one thing yeah yeah i i oh yeah also that the fourth of july jokes Right before that one Marge is great at reading the room too

When she's like Rice Krispies, Squares, and Tang And she just walks right out There's not even a sound for it I've only ever heard Tang referenced on The Simpsons at this point Is it good at all? No It's like if you don't want to go to the trouble Of putting sugar in Kool-Aid, it's already there

But I guess there's some Kool-Aid that is pre-sugared. There are some sugar. There's sugar and sugar-free Kool-Aid. But then you just add more for Kool-Aid to it if you want. Tang, for me, was always below Kool-Aid on the quality scale. Not that Kool-Aid is ambrosia. It has more of a citrusy tang to it. It's like orangutan, named after the things that it tastes like.

So she went through the trouble of making Rice Krispie Squares, but she just put together some shoddy tang for the drink? I guess it's just seen as lame, but yeah. It's also a very 60s and 70s mom thing, which all the writers are drawing upon, too, yeah. I mean, I wouldn't have said no to Rice Krispie Squares, but it's real nice of Marge to read the room correctly. Like, I want her to have friends.

I got to work real hard on that. And if that means leaving the room. She's being very protective of Lisa, especially with how she's like reigning in Barts. Yeah. And also, this is when I learned when Bastille Day was. Yeah. Which is the 14th of July. Get some baguettes.

In France, it's just called the 14th of July. Bastille Day is what apparently English-speaking countries mainly call it, but it's just the 14th of July, just like July 4th is Independence Day here. Just curious, whenever you brought friends over, what did your mom serve to them? She'd buy pizza and Coke for us, but not really. She wouldn't make popcorn or cookies or snacks or anything like that. I ate a lot of bagel bites at friends houses like a lot of like just bags of frozen junk you give the teenagers and kids yeah what what did your mom do uh oh well she was a very japanese

mom so she went all out oh my god would buy like special cakes and stuff and whatever she whenever i was over at a friend's place and she'd come to pick me up she'd be like thanks for uh taking uh care of her and just give them an entire cake too so wow people like having me over for that reason i think also uh i distinctly remember this um i once had some of my animation school buddies over and she offered beer to the guys but not the girls uh i had an opposite version of this lisa thing happen once when it was my first sleepover with these new cooler kids they were not cool we were all dorks but these were cool they were a class higher of cool and it was the first sleepover them and I was like 13 or 14 and my mom dropped me off at the door like she had on when I was like 11 and I was laughed at like oh your mommy had to drop you off at the door I was

like well I've learned my lesson mom stay in the car that was a tough uh sleepover I had better sleepovers I guess it's different for girls then because I don't think we would have ever made fun of each other for moms picking us up or dropping us off yeah these guys need to show how tough they were and how you were not tough and, in fact, were other F-words. Oh, yeah. This was the first time I noticed the kitchen curtains had the Jesus fish on them. I never caught that. Oh, okay.

I didn't see that. Instead of corn cobs from The Simpsons, it's a Jesus fish. Just to let you know, it's Nads. Yeah, also, and I forgot to bring this up, but in the scene where Homer's running around with the fireworks, there's a bulletin board in the background that has a Bible number? What do you call those things again? Oh, like a verse. Bible verse on it, yeah.

It was 1 Corinthians 6, 9, 11. So I looked up what that is. I don't know, should I read this whole thing? Sure, go for it. It's only three lines or whatever. Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who have sex with men, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor slanderers, nor swindlers will

inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of our God. Okay, that's the verse people use to justify things. Yeah. That's a strong one. I know Leviticus. I'm wondering how it ended up in the background there. That might be a common thing to put up. I mean, there are a lot of verses, if you're a Christian, you see the name of it, you know what it is. You know, just from seeing it, like John 3.16.

Not Austin 3.16. That's a parody. That means I just kicked your ass. Yeah. 316 that's a parody that means i just kicked your ass yeah i guess that's a popular one in the verses of like it's about being sanctified and blah blah blah and i get angry at any of those ones about like the ones that justify hating homosexuality especially because it's like i read you 18 ones about how you're not supposed to eat a pig but or not eat cheeseburgers yeah cheeseburger well you can cut that verse part out if it's too depressing or whatever.

No, no, no, that was fun. Or it was informative. We needed to know what it was. But then Bart has had just too much, and it's time for him to reveal Lisa's secret. I'm dizzy. I'm nauseous. Oh, but I'm dizzy. I'm nauseous. Oh, but I'm popular.

What's he doing here? My yearbook. No. Hey, you guys. You want to see how cool Lisa Simpson really is? Check this out. Miss Perfect Attendance. Grammar Rodeo Head Buckaroo. The French Table.

Ooh la la. Teacher's pet? I really appreciate the kind of spooky shot where when Lisa's bouncing up and down, with each bounce, Bart is appearing closer and closer. It's kind of creepy, actually. It's like the It Clown getting closer and closer every time he looks. With bringing doom, I also love the animation on her, like, while bouncing in the air, going like, no!

And then Bart's slow nodding of, mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. This is going to happen. I'm'm gonna do this you're gonna be ruined man i was totally a teacher's pet when i was in elementary school i was never in a yearbook about it though that they had official title in the yearbook teacher's pet not knowing that is an insult to kids and then this is the return of the grammar rodeo. They were on a real grammar rodeo kick. Grammar rodeo? We're going to a grammar rodeo? But this was the true grammar rodeo that Lisa attended,

not the fake one that Bart made up about taking place in Canada. Why would they have our grammar rodeo in their country? I don't understand. Yeah, we have different rules. All that British English, get it out of here. I didn't even think about that British English style Conflicting with a grammar rodeo You can really feel Lisa's pain as she runs away there too

Just like, oh, it's her tears It hurts, it hurts so much Smart move that the cool kids don't react in any way Or we don't see them react It's all in Lisa's head, really And it's also a great smash cut to the next morning of March Washing the broken dishes happily there As Bart thinks this is just a little thing that's going to pass right by.

I guess my little yearbook stunt was pretty rough, but it did teach you a lesson. It's important to be yourself. I know exactly who I am. I am the sister of a rotten, jealous, mean little sneak. You cost me my only friends. You ruined my life. Hey, kids, there's a carnival tonight. Oh, boy, a carnival.

It's been done before, even on The Simpsons, but I love any joke where it's revealed another character has always been there throughout a very important or emotional or tense scene. I love that reveal so much especially because Milhouse is such a doof

and he's not even aware of this like tension between Bart and Lisa apparently yeah I've seen this episode so many times and yet that surprises me every single time

he's like has his head down behind a cereal box and then he doesn't mind that he's hidden by a cereal box all the time he does he has no opinion

on what Bart and Lisa were just arguing about and he says like oh, a carnival. And great delivery by Yardley Smith. I don't think Lisa has ever been that mad before this. Yeah, and Bart kind of, like, cowers away from her, even though he is the older kid, so he shouldn't really be afraid of her.

But he's just like, uh-oh, I went too far. Yeah, he doesn't know what Lisa will do. Yeah, she's not, like, yelling at him with a lot of passion. She's trying to contain her anger, and it's seething and it's boiling, and you can tell how angry she is because of that. And also you can see that she lets the bear, the honey bear, have a little bit of inhale of air because she's going to pour all the honey on his face, but then Marge comes in the room.

That's such good attention to detail. with all of her rage she's very perceptive about where march is yeah these carnival jokes they didn't have enough time for all the carnival jokes they could do they'll do more in a future episode the funny the one that's actually funny i think is the one where they're both spinning on each other but it keeps hitting millhouse yes yeah don't make me get the carny i love marge's and same with the the water guns like they've done that joke before that at that was at the swap meet i believe whether millhouse is blasting martin in the face with yeah the water that yeah that millhouse is just stuck in the middle of this that he's this torture it is to be millhouse is to be in hell

i feel the same way as marge whenever i try to do bumper cars. I've never actually driven in my life, so whenever I get in something like that, I'm mildly terrified. And also whenever I'm playing a video game where you do a lot of driving, like Grand Theft Auto, I try to drive safely. And then it doesn't work because I end up slamming into

the walls all the time. I'm like, I should never drive in real life. I'm terrible at this. Driving's no fun. Real cars need bumpers. I hate bumper cars. I agree with Marge's philosophy, too. Just like, let's just have fun. You don't have to bump each other. There's no rule about it. It's just fun to drive around.

Though bumper cars should really just be called, like, neck pain. Oh, yeah. Whiplash machines. They're fine for children, but adults, like, why would you ever squeeze your ass into a bumper car to just be jerked around by that shit that's another danger of bumper cars that happens to lisa which is if you get a bad bumper car you're extra screwed you're just going to be smashed by everybody that it was so bad that she just gets her bumper car smacked out of the

thing and just it just stops right in front of the tree. And it goes from that extreme comedy to her just sad walking away. It's a nice range of emotions you get in that scene. And that's when you can see Bart being guilty. Yeah, it's good he felt guilty. This episode isn't Bart's story. It's very much Lisa's. But I'd like to at least show that

Bart has a lesson for mean older siblings out there to learn, maybe lay off your sister a little bit, give her at least some space. So this is when Lisa meets her friends again, which I swear to God, IRL, this would not happen. And the,

the cool friends would just go like, yeah, you're a dork. They just ghost you. Yeah. They'd be like, I'm never going to see you again in 24 hours. So who cares?

But not these kids. Being myself didn't work. Being someone else didn't work. Maybe I just wasn't meant to have friends. Lisa is going to freak when she sees this. Well, hurry up. They'll be back soon. Lisa. Okay, you found out I'm an overachieving bookworm.

So whatever mean prank you're pulling just finish it up and send me a polaroid i'm going to sleep well wait lisa look cool huh it's a really sweet moment it's it nice. Yeah, and I also like through the episode, at first Lisa's pretending to be someone she's not to be popular, but then later she integrates her know-it-all-ness into being a cool kid to teach the millennials about not to drink ocean water and how hermit crabs work. Yeah, so I like that she eventually found a middle ground

between being somebody else and being herself. She became less uptight, basically. She learned to loosen up, too. Yeah, I like that. found a middle ground between you know being somebody else and being herself like she she became less uptight basically she learned to loosen up too yeah i like that and that she i love her like my first real friend shipwrecked one of the things i had on my my website was that image of the car covered in shells that said lisa rules on it i did it all in ms paint and i was very proud of it wow that's a lot of work. That's one of the few things from my website that still remains. So you can look it up, and I think I did a pretty good job of it back then. And I also love that Lisa reflects on them, just like, to cover up my nerdish leanings.

She won't say, she can't commit to full nerdiness. She's like, leanings? But then we get the end of the episode here, which is a great range of emotions. I just love all this. Does this mean

you still want to be friends? Even though I tried to cover up my nerdish leanings? Look, we don't care who you were. You can't fake the kind of good person

that you are. Yeah, you taught us about cool things like nature and why we shouldn't drink seawater. This is the most thoughtful thing anybody ever... Sweet, merciful crap! My car! A polite thing to do would have been to clean the shelves first.

Shoo! Shoo! I guess I should give this back to you. I showed it to your friends again before we left. Bart! Look inside. Oh. Thanks, Bart.

I signed it too. So we're getting closer to Milhouse being in love with Lisa. Pretty close. I mean, I think ultimately Lisa's wedding sort of put that into everyone's mind, right? Yeah. Milhouse doesn't count.

Yeah, Milhouse doesn't count. And same with in the flashback. Within the flash forward that she's like, I just don't think I'll ever be married. Milhouse definitely has a crush on Lisa. I still hate that the show tries to couple them together as a real couple and not as just that Milhouse is a sad loser in love with the only girl in his orbit,

Bart's sister. He's a better vehicle for jokes about unrequited love than... Well, how do you feel about Milhouse, Lisa? Pairings? I don't know. I think it's better that they never end up together in any capacity. He's not right for her and it's part of the whole trope of like oh if the guy keeps pestering the girl eventually she'll give in oh yeah that's that's another problem with it but they are married in like some of the in the new future canon like the recent future canon the recent

future that they keep revisiting that is consistent they are married which i'm just not a fan of i also love uh homer's off screen sweet merciful crap and you just see his silhouette silhouette too it's so it's so expressive just in a silhouette and yeah the uh you mentioned before nina that's where we find out their names from their uh messages to her this was the first time i had paused to read those messages. And I love that one of them says like, next year, bring your microscope. Yeah, that's cute. It's really, it's really cute. And what makes this such a complete episode to me is they set up the yearbook in the episode at the start. It is a through line throughout the whole

episode and pays off with her getting all the signatures she wanted in there. So she'll never forget them. It's just, it's a beautiful ending. I love it. Yeah. Overall, it's like a really well structured episode. It's really solid. And I just love the ending shot so much.

That's like one of my favorite moments in the entire series. I would say just a hermit crab. It is great. In the Duff beer can or Buzz Cola can. Yeah. That was also another image that I had drawn for my website, and I just love it. It's so cute.

I love hermit crabs to begin with, too. I think it's so cool and fascinating and kind of metal that hermit crabs rely on the husk of another dead creature to protect themselves. It is. And this does happen where they use, sadly, where they use human garbage as their homes now. You can easily find images online of hermit crabs happened where they use uh sadly where they use cumin garbage as their homes now like you can

easily find images online of hermit crabs using things like bottle caps and like even cans like they do use aluminum cans as their homes as well there's one cool image of a hermit crab using the head of a plastic baby doll oh that's awesome yeah it's really creepy something you fight in pikmin or something uh yeah this episode i find it's funny that now I know from experience and we'll talk about it on that episode that the writers don't like Homer Palooza that much.

And they always say like once we get to the end of a season, we're all so tired and the episodes aren't as good. But this is like literally the last episode, maybe not the last production episode, but it's still like almost perfect

for being the last episode of a season. Go back in time and look at our other last episodes, except for Who Shot Mr. Burns, of course. And they're a little rougher than this. they they they really had something to say with this episode it's one of my favorites it's as it's one of those ones that as i get older it means a lot

more to me where i'm just like oh this is i am now nostalgic in the age of the simpsons writers were when they wrote this episode so it's it's getting me in from that angle that it wasn't before and it's a really good beginning of summer episode too it just feels so summery and just listening to the audio you've been uh for the from the clips that you've been playing you hear the like the sandy beaches and the seagulls those are all these sounds i've been hearing on my trip to san francisco right now nice and this it is memorial day today not to date this but we are at the beginning of summer this makes it feel like you're ready to get into summer right now right after watching this episode put on your medium

jackets for summer in san francisco uh so thanks for listening folks let's talk to nina where can we find you how can we support you and can you go over what you do currently right now i mainly work for fangamer.com if you've been to any convention i'm sure you'll see a ton of people wearing my shirts maybe you have some of my shirts. Just go to fangamer.com, go to the column on the right, click Artists and Groups, and go to Space Coyote. And you'll see a whole bunch of shirts that I've done. Not just shirts, but I'm doing things like lapel pin designs. And I do key art for video games through Fangamer as well.

I did the key art for Thimblebee Park. So that's the cover art that's used on all their stuff. Oh my god, I forgot you did that amazing amazing which is a another dream job of mine because i am a huge fan of lucasarts games and monkey island is my favorite game of all time and ron gilbert who did monkey island uh did thimbleweed park so i got to do work for him through fangamer which is really cool it's a great game too i played oh yeah i love it and you can call me in the game too because i'm a kickstarter backer and i I played that. Oh yeah, I love it. And you can call me in the game too, because I'm a Kickstarter backer and I paid for that tier.

Yeah, so look me up. I can't remember what my number is, but yeah, look up Nina Matsumoto on there. You can hear my message. Go to SpaceCoyote.com or.net or NinaMatsumoto.com You can go to my website, see all the things that I've done. I actually have a funny story about SpaceCoyote.com SpaceCoyote.com, I'm amazed I got it to begin

with, but I got it like a long time ago. It used to belong to some band, and then they stopped paying for it. I'm like, haha, it's mine now. But then, a couple of guys who own SpaceCoyotes.com, that was the homepage for their Vanity Press novel. Okay. They tried to be like Strong Army out of giving up space coyote.com they were like

hey we have the worldwide copyright on space coyotes and we want you to give up your your domain name and i was like there's no such thing as a worldwide copyright what are you talking about and i just talked about one coyote not multiple yeah exactly plus i was around way longer than they were so what the hell anyway i don't know what uh thespacecities.com is gone now so whatever you've outlived them all exactly yeah so i as i mentioned before i just released sparks it's a scholastic kids comic officially it's ages 7 to 10 but i say it's all ages uh mighty moe syslack number one just came out i have a story in that called uh moe and barney's excellent adventure it's exactly what it sounds like it's a a parody of Bill and Ted. Oh, I also, I forgot, but I also did the cover art

for the Disney Afternoon Collection for Capcom. Oh, yeah. Very good. I also do stuff for Mega64 sometimes, like poster designs. I did some plush designs from them recently.

And I'm very, very active on Twitter. I go to SpaceCoyote. That's SpaceCoyote, all one word, except the last letter is not an E, it's an L, because, like I said, I snatched up the name Space Coyote right away when that episode came out.

But since then, there have been multiple Space Coyotes. And it's hard for me to get that as a username on stuff now. Like every variation of Space Coyote I could think of was taken. And I refuse to use numbers in my usernames. So I went with Space Coyote. I know, I just joined Instagram and I had to become real Bob Servo because someone took bob servo i mean i've had that since 1997 what's awesome yeah we'll check out all that stuff and we you've done so much for us like it's especially the the art on the patreon has is just amazing it's it's what makes us feel more bona fide than i think almost

anything and our t-shirt, the Talking Simpsons slash Ion Springfield shirt, which is still available at Henry. Well, go to tiny.cc slash talking shirt. That's the easiest way to get to it. But it's on shirtsickle.com as well. You can find it there. So, before we go, let's talk about our Patreon, which funds everything

we do here. And I just wanted to let you guys know, if you want the ideal Talking Simpsons experience, go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons and for five bucks a month I'll tell you what you can get you'll get every episode of this podcast a week ahead of time and ad-free Every episode of what a cartoon our other podcast where we go through a different episode of a different cartoon every week using this style You'll get that a week ahead of time and ad-free. You'll also get all of Talking Futurama all of Talking Critic We're also doing season wrap-ups and deleted scenes from every season. So very soon after this episode posts on Patreon, and for Patreon only,

we will have a season wrap-up for Season 7 and a deleted scene special for Season 7. For $5, Henry, what else can people get? Well, you can get access to every episode of Talking Futurama, where we go through the first season of Futurama one episode at a time in the same style. That was our Patreon exclusive miniseries that followed Talking Critic where we also went through every episode of The Critic in order.

Not to mention there are tons of exclusive interviews on there. At the time of this recording we've got David Silverman, Dan Graney, Mike Scully. Dan Graney, the writer of this episode. We interview him and talk about this, among many other things. And we may have recorded two more really cool ones

at the time this goes live, but they aren't recorded yet, so I don't want to promise anybody. But we've got some really cool stuff coming in the future very soon, folks. And it's all right there at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons. And why not just go there just to see

Mina's awesome art? It's great. If you haven't seen it yet. I forgot one more thing. Go for it. If you're a fan of Game Center CX, I've done a lot of work for them as well. I did the official DVD subtitles. Wow.

I've done a lot of official artwork for them. Also, they discovered me through fan art. This happens to me a lot, which is cool. I also did a children's storybook written by the producer and narrator of GameSetterCX, Producer Kan. That was released in Japan, and then Fangamer released it in

English, which I had translated to English. So you can get that from Fangamer as well. It's called I'm Stuck in a Video Game. Oh yeah, that, okay, wow. Support Fangamer, support us, go to patreon.com talking simpsons and i will tell you if you've never been a patron if you sign up now i swear to god you'll get a hundred episodes that you've never heard before of a lot of stuff we've done and the good thing is

if you sign up you get a little feed you plug into whatever you listen to podcasts with and it just downloads them normally as you would download any podcast or you could just download them from the page there are many options for your listening pleasure, but we have so much stuff there. Check it out at our Patreon. As for me, I'm Bob Mackie. You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. My other podcast is Retronauts, and you can go to retronauts.com

or look for Retronauts in your podcast machine. It's a retro gaming podcast. I'm sure you'll like it. Plenty of people do. Henry, how about you? Where can we find you? At H-E-N-R-E-Y-G on Twitter. If you follow me there,

you can see tons of cool stuff. And whenever any episode of the show goes live, you can check it out there, including our Patreon exclusives. And thank you so much for joining us, folks. We'll see you next time for Season 8's premiere, Treehouse of Horror 7. T-shirts cut off, Santa pair of clothes We've been having fun all summer long All summer long you've been with me

I can't see enough of you All summer long we've both been free Won't be long till summertime is through Summer time is through Miniature golf and Hondas in the field Miniature golf and Hondas in the field When we ride a horse, we got some thrills Every now and then we hear our stars We got some fruit

Every now and then we hear our songs We're in heaven for an awesome love Won't be long till summertime is through Summertime is through Every now and then we hear our song Every now and then we hear our song We've been having fun all summer. We've been having fun all summer. We've been having fun all summer.

We've been having fun all summer. We've been having fun all summer. Kids, stop that. Don't make me get the car name.