Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - They Saved Lisa's Brain With Podcast: The Ride

Episode Date: January 1, 2020

This week's episode is all about nerds coming together, so we called together the amazing nerds of Podcast: The Ride - Scott Gairdner, Mike Carlson, and Jason Sheridan! All three help us with chat about Mensa, pudding, the dangers of nerds AND random guest stars, among many other tangents. So listen now or else we'll make litter out of you literati! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the new official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

attention podcast listener we've got an exciting new podcast coming just for patrons of patreon.com slash talking simpsons talking futurama season two part one has begun exclusively for our five dollar and up patrons on the talking simpsons network that's the first 10 episodes of futurama coming to you once a week so just sign up for $5 a month at patreon.com slash talking simpsons and you'll get Talking Futurama season two and all of our limited miniseries, including the entirety of Talking Futurama season one. That's 13 episodes.

That is patreon.com slash talking simpsons. Now, please enjoy the rest of this podcast. I heartily endorse this event or product ahoy hoy everybody welcome to talking simpsons hosted by two fully credited and bonded pornographers i'm your host the lowest most disgusting nitwit in town bob mackie and this is our chronological exploration of the simpsons who is here with me today grandma plopwell you've done it again this is henry gilbert hi and who else do we have uh well i'll just say you got the full podcast the ride crew among them me scott gartner who's been on your show before it's gonna be back

hey guys hello welcome back uh i'm jason sheridan and my name is mike carlson i think you're gonna go more jason yeah that's all right and today's episode is they saved lisa's brain today's episode aired on may 9th 1999 and as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my God. Oh boy, Bobby. Dana Plato passes away. The Mummy is number one at the box office. And Ricky Martin's self-titled album is released in the U.S.

and will go on to sell 15 million copies. That's one of the highest selling albums of all time that data play to a thing so we were in the game stress for a while that was it that was a joke for about 20 years it was like it's funny she's dead yeah I mean it keyed into the night trap thing yeah but she also is dead it was night trap adjacent humor yes yeah yeah I can't explain it but a full motion video classic it was a dark time. Yeah.

Now available on Switch. It's on Switch now. Yeah, yeah. You can play Night Trap. You cannot play it on Night Trap 2. You can also not play it. Like, that's a better choice. I think you can just watch it in the new version.

Yeah, that's the right way to do it. The Mummy. That's the Brendan Fraser version of The Mummy. I guess the best Mummy? A personal favorite of mine. Oh, yeah. Comes up on the show regularly that I was like, that's on cable.

Like, I am stopped. That's a few hours now. That's the rest of the afternoon is watching the Brendan Fraser mummy. And it still persists in the form of the best ride, in my opinion, at Universal Studios. Hollywood? Yeah. Oh, okay.

Even though... Florida. No, Hollywood. What? Yes. No. I don't like any other ride but that one. It's only half a ride, so. opinion at Universal Studios yeah even though you are no Hollywood but yes no I don't like any other ride but that one it's only half a ride so that's just me though so we were just declaring that in an episode like maybe the like roughest ratio of good in Orlando to not as good in Hollywood because you're missing all a bunch of stuff you're're missing the fake-out ending with the fake-out employee.

All these things I know now because I hadn't gone on the ride because I was being a scaredy cat, but I just did it. Henry explained it to me, but it's like half a roller coaster because you do half the roller coaster and then it goes backwards. Oh, the Hollywood one? Yeah. So I had the double trick on that one

because I grew up in Florida, so I had ridden the Mummy Florida ride, and I didn't go to Universal Hollywood until last year. And so I didn't do any research, and when I got on the Hollywood ride, it was like, time for the Orlando experience. Time to get the fun fakeout. And then instead, when it was all in dark, and I was pulled backwards back through it,

I think that is the most terrorized Bob has ever seen me. I was next to you. But no fake out. No fake out, fake loading area either. Yeah, no. It's just, yeah, the Hollywood one is like more of a Space Mountain kind of thing. It's a dark roller coaster.

I guess there's some stuff. But no, the Orlando one is the best one but we skipped the line with our podcast privilege well yes we did do that we would never pay for we had a friend who gave us a friend of the show who gave us

the fast pass at Hollywood and we were done with it in two hours I think without lines that's about what that park would take yeah we also having just come back from Orlando, what a reminder of also the extreme ratio, just Orlando Universal in general compared to Universal Hollywood.

There's approximately 12 times more rides. Something like that. Roughly. There, I would say, do pay for the Fast Pass. Oh, yeah. Do pay for the front of the line in Florida. It's worth it there, for sure. But yeah, the Mummy Ride, I'll be sad if they ever reformat that one

and get rid of Brendan Fraser on that. I'll miss him on the Orlando one. Also missing from Hollywood. Yeah, yeah. That like self-aware sort of 90s. You mean the video at the end? Yeah. I thought you meant Brendan Fraser is missing from Hollywood.

He is. Yeah, I am. He's on Doom Patrol, the DC Universe original series. Sure. I definitely know how to get that. I definitely know how to track that down. I might have done an ad read for that. I wasn't sure what it was.

Not for this podcast, though. But anyways, our special guest today, the boys from Podcast the Ride, Scott Gairdner, Mike Carlson, and Jason Sheridan. Welcome to the show. We're big fans of all of you. Thank you for having us. Thanks for having us. Good to be back. Anyone listening to your show doesn't know ours.

We're a show about theme parks. If you want to hear a lot of stuff about theme parks and everything related to that world, check us out. And you know what was exciting, I felt, in watching today's episode, is that for the first time, as opposed to the last time I was here on the show, we could watch The Simpsons on Disney+.

Yeah. It's a world of difference. What a great time to be alive. Really, yeah, yeah. Is that now your preferred way of reminding yourself? Or are you still, is it DVDs? Is there the aspect ratio concern? DVDs have the right aspect ratio.

Yeah, in commentary, which we don't know where that is on Disney+, or if it's coming to Disney+, because those are part of Simpsons World, the commentaries. I still went, I forgot about Disney+. I went to the Simpsons World website, and it directs you to Disney+. I know. That's it. It redirects you? Yeah. I think Henry went there the simpsons world website and it directs you to disney plus i know yeah i think henry went there the second day and they burned it down it was gone the day disney plus was live yeah there's like a placeholder image now saying the simpsons have moved to disney plus and it's like oh okay yeah they have a clip from when i went there they had a clip from the

homer becomes the garbage man episode where they're moving the town to 10 miles down the road. And that's, that was the clip. They're like, the Simpsons are moving. That's funny. Yeah.

The right crafty, uh, pornographer out there might want to pounce and buy Simpsons world.com ASAP. Because if they let it lapse, like I say, if it's free for like five seconds, they can, you know, redirect a lot of traffic there. Or maybe like a mayor Pete, if it's free for like five seconds, they can redirect a lot of traffic their way. Or maybe like a Mayor Pete or somebody who's running for president

could also do it. And he rebrands that for him. And promised to nationalize The Simpsons. It should be given to all of us for free. It's a national treasure. We need the candidates to weigh in on how they feel about Simpsons, seasons one through nine or one through i give it to 10 you give it i give it to um behind the laughter i have fond memories of that i don't

know if it holds up yeah it feels like a fitting now that'd be an excellent debate question like what is your cutoff episode yeah oh for the candidates yeah sure sure sure and i bet someone like well i'm still watching every would lie every Sunday I do instinctively still go like Sunday nights like well it's fine I could turn on Fox but I don't but I could Biden hates the Simpsons because it overtook the gun smoke

record the law is a chip on his shoulder you get all those hearings against Bard in the early 90s. When The Simpsons premiered, he was a very established congressman already. He was already like 10 years in Congress by that point. Ran for president probably during The Simpsons. I think in 92, he had some nascent campaign.

And in the 80s, too. I think when The Simpsons, before even the shorts, he was running. Yeah, like and in the 80s too i think when the simpsons before even the shorts he was running yeah like 88 he ran that's yeah yeah that's when he had his plagiarism scandal right yes yeah that's when he dropped out of the plagiarism uh back east i i grew up very close to wilmington delaware and the joke there was that he was the congressman from mba uh mbna whatever it's a bank that doesn't exist anymore and so I cannot remember the name of it. But that's where all your credit card bills go. That's where all the show companies are.

He's famously anti-malarkey and this show is full of it. Malarks it up. Malarkey and horse feathers. You mean your show or The Simpsons? The Simpsons. Yeah, yeah. From the beginning they were up front with the malarkey. The whole thing is pretend. There are no Homer and Bart and Marge don't exist so that in itself is malarkey the show is the show is a lie yeah that's why

biden hates it uh well when scott was on we heard all about his his history of the simpsons but jason michael what what are your guys's history as simpsons fans is it the typical childhood watching obsession uh with a deal uh yeah for me yes we watched the first one watching obsession with it deal? Yeah, for me, yes. We watched the first one when it aired, I think, and then we were just obsessed with it. My whole family was obsessed with it. And we would tape it and watch it like three times during the week.

Oh, man, the Simpsons tape. I had my prized VHS tape that taped all my Simpsons. There's no tale to tape on this one, but if there was ever a time on my tape that I screwed up a commercial break, I would make sure the listeners need to know how I screwed up that commercial break. Nothing on this one. Sure. Were you a keep the commercials

in kind of recorder? I would probably set it, whatever the timer was, so I wasn't manually stopping and starting, unless someone had a cool VCR that would do that back then, which I'm not aware of but they're all pretty clunky they were not precise with starts and stops so why like uh play with the devil yeah i would fast forward show that's what i tell henry every time he tells a story like every every time he messed up he should have learned uh but but the dream of being able to re- Hours of Simpsons with no commercials, I wanted to live that dream.

It was worth the risk. Sure. Which now you can live on Disney+. Hashtag. My childhood self would be so happy to know about Disney+. Well, Jason, you? I feel like this is a history I've heard other people have, too. I remember watching it in, like, second grade and enjoying it for a while and then my mom

saw the uh walked into the room when bart was uh melting army men with a magnifying glass and said i'll see you in hell soldier and she was like you can't watch a show anymore i was like what why just that sort of moms who don't like profanity kind of thing. So that kind of stuck for like three or four years. And then around like sixth or seventh grade, that's all my friends did was talk about The Simpsons. And I was like, mom, I have to watch this or I will be, I need to do this to have a personality at school. And so I, every Sunday, had it moved to Sundays at that point?

Like 97, 98? 97, yeah, yeah. It was back on Sundays, yeah. So Sundays and then Fox Philadelphia would air episodes at 6.30 and 11 every night. So I was like getting, I was like mainlining it to get caught up. So when it was banned from your household, were you getting details from friends and constructing episodes in your brain that you would later see? I think I was just easily, I was distracted by like Power Rangers and comic books for a few years.

And so, but once seventh, like seventh and eighth grade, I was just like all in on it. This season too, I was like finishing up eighth grade and I was still like all in on it. And just watching this episode, it's like, it's all coming back to me. Like, I feel like I know some of these jokes better than extended family members. No, I don't remember my aunt's birthday, but Homer's birthday is easy to remember.

You don't happen to know all of their Mensa IQs offhand? Oh, no. I took a picture of that on Wikipedia, but if anyone knew Lisa's IQ by heart, I'd be impressed. It's pretty spongy, honestly, the IQ. The jokes, that's something, too, I've learned on the show, is that all continuity on the show doesn't matter,

and they just double back on it when a new showrunner comes on. Sure, sure. Because the person who has to do the job of writing all this stuff doesn't care to the degree that the people who only archive and learn everything about the show, to cut them a break, I guess, are not reading some Bible, which doesn't exist. They never made one. They were busy making the show. If they had Frinkiac back then,

they would have had much more factual accuracy on the show. You could just double check. One is comedy professionals. Did The Simpsons influence you guys? This is all just, I'm not, I can never remember the jokes word for word, but I feel like all of this is just in my subconscious. Like, I feel like I was mouthing along,

like, watch out East St. Louis. Like, while I'm watching this episode, like, all of this stuff is just buried in my brain so yeah it's like i think tina faced it something about 30 rocks she was going for like a simpsons joke hit ratio like a per minute or whatever and i do feel like that's ruined my brain for comedies like i can't lie i'd be like well is this as funny as the simpsons is it's like sort of like that's it's also I'm cranky and older now, but it's still like, well, it's got to get close

at least if I think it's a true comedy. It's a good benchmark for all comedy. Having to pack in so many jokes, Simpsons just threw so many jokes out there all the time. It probably changed how people felt what a snappy comedy script is too. Yeah, I'm hoping

that as people our age start to get uh higher and higher job titles in the comedy writing world we start to see a little more of that influence because i feel like we've had a good decade of stuff of like look at this critically acclaimed comedy that's really just a 30 minute drama with three joes yeah well i think the uh the boss of that type of comedy has been defeated so maybe we're not gonna have we're not gonna have these dramas that are comedies anymore oh yeah and the mid-boss of that type of comedy as well yeah uh a place who i think i guess i know you're talking about louis ck yeah yes yeah yeah yeah but although it's weird, because he also, that is all true, but he also did a ton of super silly, jokey joke films on the way up.

I think Louie is an example of everybody learned the wrong lesson. They never should have been like, that's a good show that's that way. How about we let that one be what it is, and we don't try 70 more of those that will be progressively worse and worse. I feel like The Simpsons too like there's other shows that are going for the amount of jokes it's just they're missing

like every joke. Yes, they're all bad, yes. Yeah, that's what I'm I was being a little more polite but yes, you're right bad is what I was looking for where it's like oh yeah, there's a joke quote, every 15 seconds but none of them are good. It just seems sweaty and desperate. There's a level of super joke pack shows where I'm like, I don't know what you're saying anymore.

No, yeah. And The Simpsons was always perfect with that and packing so much in, but I could always follow it. Yeah. There's a certain level where just like, you did too many rewrites on this. This is like draft 12, and I'm very impressed, but like slow down, please. It was very clear, and it had a lot of heart. And nowadays, it's either just a lot of jokes,

and yeah, they may not land, or it's just like, well, all these characters got depression. Yes. Yeah. That's what I liked in the new season of BoJack. It felt like they were making fun of depressed character. I don't know if you guys have seen it, that they were,

they were making fun of somebody being the face of depression and this, uh, like, I think they finally realized like we've done too many episodes about suicidal depression. Let's, let's joke and pass them. I was,

I was shocked to see Klasky Chupo has their own sad horse show or they did 15 years ago. Oh yeah. They had their own sad horse pilot but uh who knows what happened that was part of their pile of pilots that have you guys seen that klasky chupo pilot reel no no oh you boy i want to just pause and pull it up on youtube but it was uh like in 2002 or three the early 2000s their contract with nickelodeon ran out so they're trying to pitch themselves to some other network. So they put together a pilot reel of seriously 30 ideas they had that were just like, you could buy just one of these, look! And they had self-funded five minutes of animation for all these things,

and it just is a million ideas at once that all, you're just like, these could never be shows. I want to see the bison talk show host. Oh, yes. Weird. I think the horse one was called You're an Animal or something like that. Okay, okay. None of them got made?

No, no. Klasky Chupo's been in a lot of trouble for a while. We walked by the, quote unquote, abandoned Klasky Chupo building several times last trip here. Is that on Highland? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I go by that all the time and i was wondering like are they in there or did they just not paint the building i think there's like one car parked there but there's a

url for a website that does not exist anymore for a new flash cartoon about a cool zombie like a pucci style zombie yeah so it didn't really happen for them who owns squiggle vision now oh someone owned that technology i think uh soup to nuts yeah i think tom snyder got to keep it but like lauren bouchard left and that for bob's burgers and kind of i think took most anybody they don't make stuff right i think yeah even the last few seasons of home movies switched to like flash from the squiggle yeah yeah after the first season were you watching when i put in the dvds the first season i was like wow squiggle vision is rough this is really hard to watch now well also before we get in the episode like ride stuff what do you with the

simpsons right i am curious if you guys on as annual pass holders at disney have you seen any sign of simpsons things at disney? No, I don't think so. They haven't done anything. Yeah, I wonder how restricted contractually they are. They've got to be wanting to do it. Well, according to one of our theme park podcast guys

that we listen to, Jim Hill, has mentioned this before, that Disney is, and it makes sense, they're trying to figure out the Fox properties quickly to make money. So I wouldn't be surprised if we see merch. That's usually what happens first, or when they buy something.

There's been Marvel t-shirts in the park for years before any actual superhero. It's more of a California adventure property than a Disneyland property. That's what Mr. Jim Hill has been alluding to. But I don't know where it would fit duff at disneyland either so you gotta you gotta have it in california well yeah i was curious because at the um d23 i saw they tweeted out pictures like they've made or pulled them out of fox's live collection but i think they made it new like simpsons mascot outfits like they weren't the ones from universal they look like new ones that they were just showing off there so it did that

to me felt like they had plans uh common for simpsons i could see universal giving up the simpsons park rights quicker than the marvel ones oh yeah i mean the the simpson the simpson ride is good i like it it's also like me to promote the movie in a way, too. Oh, yeah. That era's kind of over. Oh, so what if something was coming for movie two, that they would refresh the ride or do a ride with Disney in kind of coordination with that?

But they must have an exclusive thing at Universal, though, I would think, for Simpsons. I mean, they'd lose, man, they'd lose so much to lose that Springfield in Hollywood. Like, that's a lot of real estate. Yeah. You would have to re-theme it to another cartoon town, I assume. Which, they might have a cartoon town somewhere.

Arlen? Arlen, Texas? King of the Hill. Does Disney own that now? Do they own King of the Hill. Doesn't Disney own that now? Oh, shit. Do they own King of the Hill? It's not on Disney+, so they own it. It's not independently created outside of Fox. I think Hulu got it back, though.

Yeah, yeah. Because King of the Hill is, that's Disney. Yeah, that's just Disney now. They have operational control, that's right. Disney owns Family Guy now, too? Yep, Family Guy, yeah. Hulu is for everything dirtier than Simpsons. Simpsons, I think, is the level of raunch that Disney will go to on Disney+.

Anything beyond that, that's what Hulu's going to be, I guess. Hulu is the touchstone to their main Disney pictures. There's a grip of FX and FXX. Prestige TV shows that they're just dumping on hulu yeah yeah it's crazy and they're just calling it fx on hulu that's that's until they just kill the fx brand in general yeah yeah as all of cable dies yeah there is no cable it's all shoveling uh oh what a dark time but uh but we got disney plus yeah and we can watch episodes like this one with a weird cut off face it there was a moment in this episode

where the frame the 16 by 9 framing on lease it like goes to a newspaper yeah that's the worst one i think yeah that really jumped out of me it's the kind of uh you know i've looked at you know composition composition and cinematography guides and that kind of thing. And I've never seen one where you cut off a character like right between bottom of chin and mouth. It's very strange framing. Somebody's making the choices because oftentimes if they can't figure out how to crop the image, it will just be squished into the frame. So it's like slide the vertical down yeah they just make the image like uh very uh you know askew so somebody is sitting there

deciding what to crop and what to squish i don't think it's a computer process or anything i think it's a an editor deciding like where the where the crop happens or where if the squish happens were these the same things that were on fx app like is it the exact same aspect ratios i think it is just the same hatchet job they did like five years ago for fx world yeah they probably just moved the elements from one server to another i used to work in like non-creative uh post production like the people doing dubs and like sizing it for stuff and it was really like just churning stuff it was like fast uh fast cheap or correct you get two out of three you don't get three so yeah that's said i just can't believe we had to go through it a second time with disney plus it already happened with fx like

they put it in the wrong aspect ratio nerds on the internet complained a bunch and then they changed it and now the disney plus had to like do it again and even put out their press release of like everybody's loving plus but well they said they didn't want to scare people we're like everything else is 16 by 9 except for half the programming so uh yeah bonkers as we clearly said bonkers is not 69 they kept that in the three same with the tailspin yeah Darkwing Duck and things like mister boogity mr. Boogity four by three not 16 minute yeah I like seeing four by three in a new pristine streaming service that actually excited me yeah yeah except it is you guys were the ones who alerted me the Chip and

Dale rescue Rangers is all cropped and Is it? Did I say that? I think the theme is different too, right? Is that what I said? I didn't know what you were talking about. It seemed fine to me, but maybe we weren't looking at the same episode. No, no, no. I checked it too and you said it. Well, the theme is the same song,

but in the opening, originally they had sound effects when stuff would happen on screen. And they removed the sound effects for the song. Yeah, there are like HD remasters of Goof Troop and Rescue Rangers. And Henry was showing me the other day where they do a new Goof Troop logo with the animation. Because they couldn't figure out a way to make it work with 16x9. So where you see the logo at the end of the opening song where Goofy and Max high-five each other and then stand back-to-back,

that's all new Flash animation they do. Oh, weird. I haven't seen it yet. It's very distracting if you can look for it. And then at the end, Max says McClunky. That, I mean, that sounds like a Goofy-ism right there, McClunky. Oh yeah, sure. McClunky.

It is crazy how big this company is and how weird and insular it it still behaves sometimes like not a lot of feedback or like not a lot of like oh wait like 30 people had to approve this and this is what you came up with and you insist your executives all have like ivy league master's degree like what the fuck is going on well if you guys watched any of those Imagineering specials yet on Disney+, you'd know that Bob Iger's a genius who's friends with everybody there. Sure. He's a great man.

He's the one standing next to John Lasseter and all those shots that they're like, let's keep these in, that's fine. It's a new documentary that goes out of its way to really praise Lasseter. It's strange. You know, in one of the Imagineering docs, they to they mentioned buying pixar and like lassiter's in a picture and but they don't say his name right they just say steve jobs yeah that's the one time i saw lassiter in any new product they made there they they really punt on uh captain eo too they say like and they had a 3d movie and then keep moving, keep moving. And the rest.

They said more about the Song of the South involvement in Splash Mountain than they did about Michael Jackson. That was the most shocking. Because it's a topic, it's a very current thing we can't talk about as opposed to one that's been haunting. I mean, well, I don't know.

We've known about Michael Jackson. We just all remembered this year. But Song of the South has been bugging people since the 40s. When he died, it's like we all reset the knowledge we knew about Michael Jackson. Like, oh, he died. Whatever we knew before, let's just hit the reset button on that, and we'll have to relearn it again over the years. I mean, Jobs, too.

If Steve Jobs was still alive, everyone would just be going, like, oh, he's a son of a bitch. Like, every day. Like, because he was a son of a bitch. Like, he was not a good man. Yeah, I mean, we could talk all about how bad Stephen Hawking was, too, later, if we want to.

Oh, no, was he? I don't remember this. Cheating on his wife, that's the worst thing. It's a moral failure. Sure. I was excited to talk about this episode, but I was a little like, oh, can we nudge it just a couple of weeks so we can get that sweet Mel Gibson? You guys are heading for it.

We were almost there. It was almost us. We might be finding, this is a tease for listeners, we may be finding a way to push farther down the road our Mel Gibson conversation. It might be coming like three months later than we'd originally. What a star for 2000.

Not so much in 2020. A huge deal. They got Mel Gibson in, in 2000. Wow. Homer's new best friend. The sentence will be right back welcome to the break and happy new year everybody from the talking simpsons crew and a big thank you to our guests this week, the three hosts of Podcast The Ride, Scott Garner, Mike Carlson, and Jason Sheridan.

We had so much fun with these guys at our Burbank podcasting trip, and I hope you guys enjoyed listening to this podcast too. If you're a fan of ours and want to hear every podcast a week ahead of time and ad-free, then you need to sign up at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons.

You get so, so many extras extras you get to hear every talking simpsons a week early and ad free the same goes for our sister podcast what a cartoon where we cover a different animated series once a week and you'll also get to hear our entire back catalog of exclusive to patreon podcasts like us covering the first season and a half of futurama the first season of king of the Hill, the entire series of The Critic, and tons of interview with folks who have worked on The Simpsons, some as early as the first shorts.

Please check all of that out. You get so much for five bucks a month, and it helps me and Bob do this full time. Head over to patreon.com slash talking simpsons if you want something finer that you can enjoy in your own private gazebo you need to sign up at the ten dollar level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons you get all that five dollar stuff i just talked about plus you get to hear the what a cartoon movie our monthly podcast where we cover a different animated feature film once a month. The January one is coming soon.

And in December, we just did Iron Giant for four hours. It's a really great one, especially if you're a fan of The Simpsons, because we talk about the many surprising ways The Simpsons impacted Iron giant's creation and vice versa so please sign up to hear that and the entire back catalog of what a cartoon movie over 14 podcasts probably about 40 plus hours of content right there for movies like spider-man into the spider-verse batman mask of the phantasm kiki's delivery service aladdin akira tiny tunes how i spent my vacation nightmare before christmas toy story and so many more you want to hear all of that and you only can if you sign up at the ten level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons For this episode, who here was a gifted kid in school? Me.

I was, yeah. I was, but I had to work, and I feel like I never was in the program. Oh, really? I was in honors classes in high school, but I feel like i didn't like never was in the program like i was like in honors classes in high school but i feel like i had to study so much uh see gifted programs taught me to not study and to do everything at the last minute because i'm gifted i'm so good i don't need to study you'll just figure it out like these sub-omegaloids in eighth grade there was like a new gifted program and for whatever, I didn't get invited to it,

even though I had better grades than a lot of the people in it. They still let me just go on all the field trips. So I got the best end of that deal. That's pretty good. Yeah. We talked about this in the past, but Henry and I were in gifted programs. And it was of the era where you were taught outside of the school. You were so smart.

The school could not contain your knowledge. I did that. Yeah. It was like a trailer outside of the school. I don't know what the rules were for that or why that happened but it was just it was very odd but we were envied by the other students forgetting to leave in the middle of like a spelling test or whatever oh yeah yeah yeah i remember first finding out about mensa like in my i was a gifted kid and my mom was uh i think i had hopes of i remember her telling me there's this thing mensa and maybe

you could be smart enough even to be in Mensa. And then I wasted it on comedy and filling my brain with theme park knowledge. There was a time if I hadn't stopped my own ascent, that was my mom's dream for me. But I don't think I, I wouldn't say I'm Mensa level at this point.

I think I was aware of it because I would read parts of Parade Magazine, which they reference in this episode. I would read Howard of Parade magazine, which they referenced in this episode. I would read Howard Hughes and also Marilyn Vos Savant's column where you asked the Mensa genius questions about things. That was basically it.

So I knew about Mensa from that. Once I got through the Sunday paper or the Sunday comics, I would go to Parade, like the last page. Parade was the free one in the Sunday newspapers, right? Yeah, it was like the insert with public interest stories and glowing celebrity profiles and things like that. Yeah.

Once you run out of Sunday comics, you end up on Parade. That was the only time I opened up Parade. And Howard Hughes was a lesser Marmaduke. Would you guys skip Prince V valiant or suffer through it i would look at the picture i would not read the paragraph next to art was beautiful the paragraph not great the gifted program feels like it comes from the same place that this that meant the thing of like the measurement of iq like their dragon ball z power levels kind of things just uh now it just feels so gross to me.

I feel like the internet kind of ruined it because I think it exposed you to, I think, how sociopathic a lot of smart people are or high IQ people are. It's been kind of a bring down. Sure. Well, the episode kind of tells you there's sort of, you see the dangers of being, you know, how you can come off snooty and elitist and make the whole town want to wreck your gazebo.

Murder a child. That's what that actually drives into it. What about child they know? It's like Moe and Lenny, kill her. She was in no real danger. She could have ran out of the gazebo any time. Yeah, I think so. I don't know.

That seemed like a self-applied trap I do love the This is I feel like contains both the portrayal of Moe and Lenny As like endearing normal guys And then also like as jerks As like dirty dirtbags Scumbags like drinking in the park

Drinking in the park with the chief of police And this episode is written by Matt Selman bag scumbag like drinking in the park drinking in the park with the chief of police uh and uh this episode is written by matt selman he's a cool guy we got to meet him have you guys ever run into matt selman in your uh comedy writing careers i got to go to a table read one time and i i shook his hand and uh yeah yeah he seems like a cool guy yeah yeah from that very brief thing yeah all of that was very cool to do yeah the uh the matt selman he wrote this one i i you know i now think it might be i read this as him critiquing the harvard snobs who were in his writer's room with him from some other university right yes yeah he's he's sadly not a harvard man i think oh so it's a little jab

almost yeah maybe maybe we've heard from other writers who are just like the scully year they Sadly, not a Harvard man, I think. So it's a little jab almost to Harvard people to some extent? We've heard from other writers who were just like the Scully years. We heard from another writer that the Scully years, he saw them as the de-Harvardifying of the writer's room. Oh, sure. Well, Merkin wasn't a Harvard guy, but Gene and Reese and Bill and Joss, they were both Harvard dudes hiring their lampoon friends,

who were all very funny writers. I'm not saying like a cronyism. Yeah, it's true. As gross as the Harvard thing can be now, yeah, Oakley and Weinstein and Conan. And there's extremely, those are a little bit better. They're way better than Colin Jost. Like now we have to have these lampoon guys who are just Colin Jost, man. Yeah, yeah.

I'm wondering if it's like do people did that generate Conan and company did they just like evolve quicker getting away from Harvard because it's like do the current some of the current crowd like I know some very nice people very funny people went to Harvard but also it does feel like you know the lampoon tries to put out like

look we published our best of the year in a book and you're just like this is unreadable this is just Barry Trotter like what the home or whatever their parody is called uh well i think you know it could just be like harvard lampoon they were really cutting-edge comedy in like the 80s or at least like of being published comedy then but now i think like they think like through simpsons or also all the harvard writers at snl i think they moved pushed up the level of acceptable comedy writing and now like comedy

writers now they're skilled in that way or they learn from these shows without having to go to harvard or write for the lampoon to know those kind of tricks sure yeah you know it's a funny discovery of who was a harvard lampoon guy? It was Fred Gwynn, the Munster. Really? Herman Munster. Yeah, he was like maybe the, I'm not sure if he was in charge of it, but he at least wrote for it in the 50s. Yeah, that's a bizarre alumni.

This is funny, though, because I was just literally four days ago going down an Al Lewis, Fred Gwynn rabbit hole and did not see that. You have to go to the official Harvard Lampoon site And you'll see FG under It's just initial so you have to know C-O-B FG Fred Gwynn This is what happens as we're going to bed I go Lindsay did you know

Al Lewis was like a big socialist Like he was a real left wing guy You know he ran for governor or mayor She's like oh yeah okay And I'm like why didn't they work more the two of them were so funny they should have worked more she's like oh yeah they were funny okay and you start and then you both start sounding more like al lewis as you as you go to bed yeah yeah honey hi hey why didn't they work more i got a cigar Did you know he had his own restaurant

Called Grandpa's Restaurant? Oh In New Jersey, right? Yeah Yeah I vaguely heard about it Not a high quality restaurant though, right? That's what I

Yeah, I understand But he apparently didn't even really own it They just like Made a deal with him And he would just sit in the front of the restaurant Oh god And greet people Now Fred Gwynn got other roles

He just lived as Grandpa Until he died After people. Now, Fred Gwynn got other roles. He just lived as Grandpa until he died after the Munsters. Or Fred Gwynn was Herman. Oh, yeah, that's what I meant. Al Lewis. Al Lewis was Grandpa. Al Lewis didn't get away from it as much, but Fred Gwynn did.

Yes, yes, exactly. Pet Sematary, My Cousin Vinny, things like that. He's in a weird Disney Christmas movie that's on Disney+. Oh, cool. It's called The Christmas Star. He's trying to...

I think Ed Asner is a weird bum who thinks he's Santa or something. Fred Gwynn wants to put him in jail. I didn't watch the movie. I could be way wrong about this. That could be the most inaccurate plot synopsis. That description is more exciting to me than anything in the movie theaters right now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Fred Gwynn wants to put old Ed Asner's Santa in jail. In jail? I'm sorry if I'm wrong. I mean, after seeing a movie poster that just says, Honey Boy, I might never go to the multiplex again. I was like, how did... Honestly, I...

What? Keep in mind, it's about Shia LaBeouf growing up. Does that get you? I'm looking up Honey Boy. Safe searchers on. I just... I'm looking up Honey Boy. Safe search, Rezaan. It just feels like an algorithm generated the most unpleasant thing to read. To bother you.

To bother me. It's a real movie. It is a real movie. It has some images of Honey Boys. It's part of Shia's comeback. Sure. I mean, after he just did art projects for a few years. No, I'm sure this isn't.

This must be very accessible and not just an oblique, I mean, after he just did like art projects for a few years. No, I'm sure this isn't. This must be very accessible and not just an oblique unpleasant thing. It's like a behind the scenes expose on even Stevens or something. Is that what's happening with this movie? I think it all is code. And he plays his own father. Do we all know this about him? Oh, I don't know anything about him. Now you in?

Now you in? Man, now I am. Let's go, Jason, after this. I am in the hole, digging deeper. Stop talking about Honey Boy as soon as we can. Well, also this episode on the commentary, Matt Salmon tells a pretty funny story about a writer's prank. Yeah, that's right.

So there's a big slam on East St. Louis in this episode. And I believe a paper from East St. Louis called The Simpsons and wanted a quote from Matt Selman about, you know, the slam on their town, which is a famously bad town. I come from a famously bad town, so I understand. And he basically said, I called your town this because it's a crack riddled slum. And then he went on vacation to Greece for two weeks. And so The Simpsons was getting flack from that quote, from his smart-ass quote. So they basically had Mark Wilmore, who was writing for the PJs at the time,

come in to pretend to be the East St. Louis mayor and roast Matt Selman for 20 minutes. And the funniest part of that story is Matt immediately threw every other writer under the bus, saying, you know, well, it's a collaborative show. Who knows who wrote that line? I don't remember. And then they revealed it was all a big prank on him so yeah yeah he was revealed to be a snake the funniest bit was that mark

wilmore like implied he was gonna like take him out back and like can i just have a few minutes alone with him and he was he was tricking solomon into thinking he was going to be beaten up and it should mention yeah mark wilmore is a a large man like here at least by by writer's standards he looks like a tough guy yeah he would uh go on to write for the simpsons yeah he wrote for like 13 years on like his last episode he got his first episode was a treehouse in oh two and he had a credit up until 2015 episodes so yeah but i i believe he's the first full-time African-American writer on The Simpsons. I think so. Yeah.

There was one freelance writer who was black. Season four, he voiced a sideshow. Michael Carrington. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, okay. Who's in the, there used to be like a news report in the line for Space Mountain. He's in that. Oh, really?

Oh, yes. Do you remember that when there was like Mario Lopez is a news guy. I think this guy was a weather guy or something and he wrote like a pretty good episode. I don't remember which one. Homer's Triple Bypass. That's right.

Oh, yeah. For sure. That's right. They part connections. On a commentary, they make fun of him as the spaceship Earth weather report guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh-huh, uh-huh.

I do would say with a perspective of 20 years taking a shot at a very down on its luck town and then fleeing to a grecian vacation for two weeks is a little really bad that's surprisingly harvardy for a guy yeah perspective yeah in 20 i mean in 2019 that's i mean that's a whole twitter moment and he's fired like that's that's what that moment would be the public would demand it yeah yeah you guys any writers room pranks on that level that you guys had no pranks does anyone prank every no pranks these days oh you know what i the closest thing to a prank that we've i think we've jason and i have been a part of is that we used to uh or me specifically, I would take a picture of our friend Anthony Gio

with a picture of like a little McDonald's toy that was a little boy dressed in like lederhosen. These dolls, it's this collectible line of dolls. There's little collect, yeah, I forget what, oh, it's a- Madame Alexander. Yes, Madame Alexander dolls,donald's made little plastic versions of them and they're creepy little like boy like green little hat and i used to like take pictures of the doll with anthony when he wasn't looking and i would compile them all together and then for a halloween improv show we told him we were all going to be ghosts and then we took our sheets

off at one point we were all dressed as the little boy. And we had one for him. And we had an outfit already made for him, but that's the closest to a prank. And then the next year, we did it again with a different outfit, a different Madame Alexander, like, man-hatter outfit, and he fell for it again. Yeah, we made a whole, like, ransom book, too, of pictures with him and the dolls. But that's the biggest.

That's pretty elaborate. I would say it's bigger than getting Mark Wilmore to come in for a day. It's not as cruel though. It lacks the cruelty. He didn't fear for his life or safety. I have more material though from it and I feel like hopefully he doesn't listen to this. Maybe there's a long con.

That was kind of early. Things didn't really Go viral back then But like We could have Got jobs If we had been A little more savvy Well I think it's a decent sample

It's gonna go viral now You won't believe Amazing story These eight improvisers Dressed up like Little boys and laterals You could write Your own medium post

Yes well it'll end With a medium post Of like Why this prank Is terrible We went too far But okay Why Yes, well, it'll end with a medium post of, like, why this prank is terrible. We went too far. But okay, boy, 40 minutes in.

Let's hear our first copy. That's how it goes. This is, like, the third episode in a row where you can tell it's late in the season and they're getting punchy that they're like, the Simpsons are watching TV and it tells them where to go in the next scene. Let's just start with watching TV. There are a lot of jokes about the quality of TV in these seasons, these scully seasons. Which is weird because this is when the show is getting less critical acclaim. And yet that's making them even more punchy at attacking other sitcoms for easy jokes.

We're not that far off from them taking the shot at family guy like if you would that joke about like if so if you don't want to low quality programming to disappear from the air and then they put family yeah yeah and who would have thought they would then all unite once there was uh money to be had from doing so once they saw that seth mcfarland wasn't equal of theirs and not some guy they could get away with mocking. But yes,

they are watching mismatched ethnic comedy. You promised to stop watching that telly and take me on holiday. Shut up, you mouth. Ethnic mismatched comedy

number 644 has been canceled. While we scramble to find new programming, please enjoy this encore presentation of Princess Di's Funeral. I was really starting to enjoy Ethnic Mismatch Comedy number 644. I've never heard so many Viagra jokes in 30 seconds. Shut up or you're out!

Attention Springfield, How low will you go to win a trip to Hawaii? This Saturday, our judges will select the lowest, most disgusting nitwit in town and send him straight to Maui. Sponsored by Grandma Plopwell's, the low-fat pudding that's approved for sale

by the government. Alright, a gross-out contest. Grandma Plopwell, you've done it again. I like they apparently filmed a bumper for that comedy

that involves them walking away disappointed from the logo. The characters know they were canceled. That's my favorite bit. I did want to bring up the title of this episode,

They Save Lisa's Brain as a reference to the movie They Save Hitler's Brain. I think it's a title everyone references, but no one has actually seen the movie yeah yeah yeah fame like mysteries in its theater ish like yes so bizarre be movie titles or just like very it's a very boring movie but the title is very evocative yeah

yeah yeah even a bat saving Hitler's brain once they get you in the theater with the title they can it can be any movie it doesn't matter they got your money yeah yeah that's why they saved uh bin laden's brain did so well a couple years ago uh the it's also funny they're making they're making sport of how hacky it is to do a viagra joke in 1999 they're already like god it's a hack to do a viagra joke but like three months earlier in the valentine's day episode they did a viagra joke, but like three months earlier in the Valentine's Day episode, they did a Viagra joke. It was one joke, but they didn't say Viagra, so it was classy.

They didn't say the brand, yes. No, it was just Wiggum saying to his wife, like, honey, it's $10 a pill. But if you check out bluechew.com, you can get it. Now, yeah, herbal Viagra jokes, those are fresh as the day. Sure.

Blue Chew is the Gilbert Gottfried-sponsored brand of off-the-counter Viagra. Yeah, they're sponsoring a lot of podcasts. We haven't done it yet. No, we're welcoming. We would welcome it. We would welcome all the... Yeah, we'll take it. Yeah.

Yeah, on the air. Is it Blue Che Bluetooth before vape? Which is the lower level for you guys? I mean, you guys could have your ghost advertise vapes for you. Oh, yes, we have been. We just did a series. Yes, we're a ghost. If you want to hear a daily series where a ghost vaped a lot,

go into our backlog. I wrote down the beats of like this first run and i was shocked at how many jokes in like two minutes or under two minutes like and two very dark the princess diana and the pushing an old lady in front of a train i'm like oh my god i i love that uh i'm assuming this is about the fox network but they're just like you know what the princess dies funeral last year. Did such good ratings. Just air it again.

People will want to watch it all the time. And I was shocked. They even got in like a frame of the grandma getting hit by the train. Like in other ones, they'd cut away first, but like you see it hit her like just a little bit. She's just fine with it. Yeah.

It's probably how they get away with it. She's like, she's not dead dead she's in the next shot and they're very proud that the pudding is approved for sale they've killed I mean they've killed Hans mole man before yeah like he burst his car bursts into flames after lightly hitting a tree you do hear his brains being drilled out yeah oh my brains yeah all those implications but this was seeing it yeah yeah yeah you don't see hans mole man's skin catch fire but very clever word play because it's like how low uh limbo and then how low uh murder for a contest and also war yeah yeah yeah yeah but and also getting chocolate on the flag that's another of those i mark every like

oh this they wouldn't do this joke after 9-11 kind of jokes and putting chocolate on the flag i don't think they'd have done that joke then even if they want to they'd be like man the flag can't do it that was of course jimmy the scumbag throwing the grandma in front of there the return of jimmy the scumbag currently wikipedia he only appears in one more episode after this in a non-speaking role it made his debut in the uh what the auto dialer episode yeah the auto dialer oh i expected better from you yeah that's right yeah uh and and also the grandma plop wells that's like it's a light shit joke there that yeah you will plop well if you eat this yeah ice cream i mean this whole set piece ends with the planet of the apes music and people throwing pudding like shit

oh yeah yeah that was fun uh but yeah the so this gross out contest it really reminds me me of uh like the mtv spring break programming just all the most disgusting things they would put on there. The shave your eyebrows and eat the hair kind of challenges. Or this would be part of the Whack Pack, the Howard Stern Whack Pack. Oh, it's totally a Whack Pack thing. They would come on and eat light bulbs and drink Windex and things like that. It seemed like from the Wikipedia that this was based on a real phenomenon at the time that I don't that doesn't though what you're saying I remember but I think like specifically small town stupidity contests

was maybe maybe a thing of the 90s that I don't I believe I would think most local radio stations there there the local shock jock would probably sponsor just like Bill and Marty do here yeah yeah yeah but now I the Lisa's message

here did get to us and we don't do these things anymore or like or well everybody does it on youtube so maybe there's no need for contests anymore this type of entertainment just moves from plat different platforms and now it's like on tiktok yeah yeah is this uh the same time period of uh hands on a hard body do you guys know that keep your hands on a truck for 24 hours win the truck sort of yeah yeah i i've never they didn't do those i've heard of them but they never they did not do those contests in my area i think it all did with the hold your we for a week campaign that killed that woman yeah oh you got well i was just gonna say we did

we were at uh anthony geo and i were at six flags and they did a contest where like people had to be lying down in a coffin for like oh yes yeah and like that's still pretty weird for a not good prize no for an annual pass to six flags that was your prize and maybe like a what six hundred dollars as well it was like oh that's it for just and we walked around like they were on display too which was very odd. And they were like shitty-looking caskets. And someone waved at us, and we were like, get out, let's get out of here. Don't touch me.

You're sickening me. They head to the contest. Everybody's getting free Plopwells. They find out it's full of hypersugar. That feels like a very George Meyer kind of word, hypersugar. That gives you the 300 times your daily dose of sweetness. I feel bad for Carl. He has, from this point on in the series, he has diabetes.

We need to treat it as that. If we see him eating cake or something, we're like, well, he does have diabetes. Be careful, girl. Great sight gag with Lenny, though, just in a toilet costume, and it's never acknowledged. Oh, yes. Did somebody pee on him on stage? Like, was that part of his routine? Oh, yeah.

I never followed it that far, but I'm guessing maybe. Yeah, the other characters' bits are implied, kind of, because Snake is in, like, a ballet costume. You don't see what their idiocy is. And Otto got eaten by a snake before he even goes on stage. Like, dude, do that on stage. Sure. No one said Hawaii. Yes, nobody said Hawaii.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Then it's not Hawaii. When Moe is on stage, it's sort of a callback to the Krusty and the sailor suit in the lolly. They use the word lolly also here as well. I like they give that a zero because it's like uh it is too obvious that's sounds like yeah it's a cheap joke that sounds like someone making fun of another writer's pitch oh is that the joke that moe is acting out of character sure oh yeah maybe no one said hawaii and it's me moe in a sailor suit moe with a lolly that's those are two that i was like oh yeah it's

all coming back to me it's like a burry it back to me. It's like a Manchurian candidate kind of activation. It's interesting you saying that because my memory of this episode is not good. Oh, really? I don't remember this episode that well. I don't know why. I was still watching. Yeah, and Tim, you hadn't fallen off yet, right, by season 10, the

99? Yeah, when is the Edison episode? 98. Is that the fall off 98 is that season 11 that's the season yeah

oh that's 10 is Edison's start season 10 yeah okay so I'm ready my brain feels it my brain feels it my brain felt it in the Edison episode

I can't describe I think I was still that was the first one I was still catching up I was still like in the thick of it well you were still seeing everything at different...

They were out of order, too. Yeah. So you were seeing great episodes for the first time, probably. But I remember sitting alone watching it in my parents' bedroom. They had a similar one. I'm going, oh. I could feel it. Yeah, the same thing.

Yeah, I was on vacation with my parents, and I was like... I think we may have then gone out and watched fireworks somewhere. And like, Scott, aren't you enjoying the fireworks? Yeah, I guess. Just a little glum about what seems to be a drop in Simpsons quality. I couldn't even articulate it at the time. All of this that made our parents go like, what do I do with my nervous child?

It's like, all of this is like, this is why you are actor, writer. Like, this is all, this is the path. If only a medium was invented where they could just talk about their anxiety constantly.

Yeah, yeah. Also, Bart gets involved in it. He says he's the human garbage disposal and he puts a tube to his mouth. My favorite thing of that

is that they bring back the Bartman mask. Yes. Yeah, I do like that. I loved Bart man so much the second informal appearance of bart man yes yeah okay he uh i guess he pulled it out of his closet and put out no cape with it but it's the i i think on the behind the scenes is probably just the animators were told like bart appears on stage with the mask like well he already got the design for Bart with the Bartman mask. Let's put that on him.

I don't think Scott's a big comic book guy, but you guys are. Were you reading Bongo comics when they came out? I was, but I wasn't that excited about them. I would read them, and they didn't feel right to me. But I had a decent amount of them i just there was nothing that like stuck with me yeah i i kind of would too and then i remember being like in middle school and at a few conventions that bill morrison was at and he kind of did a lot of those there was like the editor of a lot of them and i liked his like

self-published stuff or create our own stuff was seemed like he was having a lot more fun roswell that was one of the series yeah yeah i don't know i get the feel if i was on vacation and like in a grocery store 7-eleven and there were as a comic rack sometimes i'd pick up the simpsons books but like i had a weird thing with comics and well and i guess all like i would always in my brain know like what i thought the definitive story that was happening. So like for me, I liked the X-Men cartoon, but once I read the comics, I go, oh, this is what's actually happening. And then The Simpsons, I was like, well, that's, it's actually happening on TV. So like, I think like my brain had this weird canon thing.

Oh yeah. Where it would be like, well, this isn't actually canon and it's not necessarily, it's not as funny. I have that brain disease now. Yeah. That's why I never read fan fiction. I just look at it and go, anyone could write this. Anyone could write that Joel from Mystery Science Theater was doing this.

Right. Also, the bar was so low for comedy in comics, and still is. Like, when reviews are like, this is a very funny Marvel comic. I'm like, absolutely not. Get out of here. Come on. I do think Chip Zdarsky is a very funny writer. Chip Zdarsky is very funny.

He's really legit funny. His Howard the Duck run fucking ruled. I love that one. Yeah. There are some funny people. Oh, for sure. Yeah. I don't want to distract from what Jason just did.

No. They usually come. I mean, he was doing his own weird self-published stuff for years and years. And those tend to be the funniest people. Now I think as a kid, yeah, I had that same thing same thing of like well i want to read the real spider-man this isn't real spider-man i think now if if like spider-verse came out when i was a kid i might have disliked it because i'm like well none of these are real spider-man or who is real spider-man yeah yeah i think with i think that actually the thing that i like the best i forget

when bongo started because it was a couple years into the run right 94 okay that I like the best I forget when Bongo started Because it was a couple years into the run It was 94 I did like the idea and I liked it from the Nintendo game Of Bart vs. the Space Mutants Because I did like the idea that okay we are going to see Bart as a superhero So they would never really do that in earnest

On the actual show Which is probably a good thing But I liked the video game a lot Because I was like well this is a different reality where Bart is a superhero. It's almost like Butters being... Who's Butters? Evil Altair.

It's like a different trajectory. I like that a little better with the comics and with the video game. Well, I will say, if you guys are hardcore comic fans, in the first year of Bongo the bart man comics and also the radioactive man comics are full of references that are like to like silver age comics that you will know specifically if you're like a mega nerd about comics now or

they did when i was a kid and read radioactive man comics it's just because radioactive man was in them but then when i reread them like in my late 20s i was like oh this is a full watchman parody i did not get yeah that's a kid yeah i bet i would like that better now because i i wouldn't sew up on my actual superheroes or history at that time i think bongo was published some gary panther too who was just a friend of matt gray's like a big alt comedy uh all comics guy yeah yeah and they just published him for a little while which is crazy now there was also uh also in the red in the radioactive sorry we'll get back to this in the radioactive man one two it's uh steve vance is like this big lefty writer he was the writer of it and the comic is really about how socialist movements were silenced in America from the 40s until the 90s.

Wow. And the red scare is an ongoing message in the comic. Interesting. Yeah, and Nixon is the secret villain of the whole series. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, I would like to look at that. So anyway, he's wearing a barman mask in this episode.

It reminds me of that. And that's the story of the mask. Madeline Albright is also on the judging panel. I was surprised there was no joke, other than her appearance. I guess, yeah, it's just rando that she's there. She shouldn't be there. She's Madeline Albright. They do that once, like the Republican Party.

There's a couple funny cameos they don't mention. Dracula. Yeah, the Dracula. Yes, Dracula. That's what I'm talking about. What does the banner say At the Democratic convention In that one episode

We can't govern We hate life and ourselves Yes Very correct Yes Called it And the Republican one's like We're just plain evil

Like that Which also Ahead of the game Still lines up Speaking of rando humor too There's Barney's gonna jungle chickens Which just feels like

Eh jungle chickens That's funny words. It's like gong show style. Yeah, yeah. Thinking of gong show. Yeah. I do like the chickens at least come back to, like, Peck Homer. At least there's two uses of the chickens there.

Yeah, then Moe does his lolly suit. And then we hear who wins in, like, very stark ADR. Like, it is just, they sell. We have to take all the fun out of it and bring up when things are clearly ADR. But, like, Ramiro Wolfcastle's line is all wrong. This is so embarrassing. Lisa, did anyone force you to come here today? You.

Well, no one's forcing you to stay. Okay, I'm leaving. You're not going anywhere, missy. But it's me, Moe, wearing a sailor suit. Moe, with a lolly. It's so out of character. Ain't that worth nothing? All right, judges, who is our winner?

The winner is me, for being seen with you freaks. Judges can't win the contest. Boo! You have robbed us of our dignity. What are you, a urinal cake? You, sir, have crossed the line. Yikes! People, stop! Stop!

We're not animals! And that's when the Van Gogh on wheels exhibit is vandalized. I assume those paintings pick up a lot of road debris. Yeah, it seems dangerous in general to keep them that way. I like Homer adding a Homer beard line to Van Gogh. That's a funny gag. But I guess it could also just be read as smearing shit on something. It was a stink shit beard. No no it's all plop well pudding it's uh but when they played that

planet of the apes music they've used that a ton because it's like oh fox owns it we can just use it now when i heard it here i was like oh i'm hearing this on disney plus that's because they own planet of the apes i was doing the math. Yeah, we can't just enjoy anything anymore. No, no. Talking about rights issues. Hold on a second. That music is from Planet of the Apes? Yeah, yeah.

It is, yeah. I thought it was just Simpsons music. Oh, no. That never dawned on me because they use it so much. Yeah. Similar to in the episode Cape Fear, and what kind of a came Sideshow Bob's theme, I didn't realize until I was so late watching the movie Cape Fear and what kind of a came Sideshow Bob's theme. I didn't realize until I

I was so late watching the movie Cape Fear. Oh, that was the music. Yeah. Yeah. The Planet of the Apes theme comes up so often because it really is good.

Like everything's going crazy. It's a riot music. And there are there's two riots in this episode. Yeah. I feel bad for the animators every time I see them now. I'm like, boy, that's a lot to ask of them.

Writing-wise, it's a good way to have a scene, but you have to animate all those people moving. Yes, yeah. Simpson's very good at just using someone saying boo as a very funny line. Yeah, yeah. I wonder what that Ramir line was though other than the before like him giving himself the award you see you're saying that seems like punch at the yeah no it

totally well like the room the room tone sounds different on harry shears saying the and the winner is me for being like there's it feels like a real cut off on there and maybe and the mouth movement's all off too like There was some dissatisfying winner before, and they didn't want to deal with that. Yeah. Was he recording different? I think he was calling it in by that point, probably, a lot.

He's in some New Orleans room or something recording. That's why the tone was so weird. It sounded different. Yeah, he's too busy with Le Show. The height of comedy with Le Show. Yeah. The height of comedy in the show. I made a Le Show reference on our show recently.

Two crickets. I forget what you even said, but I was just befuddled for a second. I couldn't. You touched the. All right, that's the power of Le Show coming for us. Interrupting the show. The one Le Show thing I've seen is Waterboarding USA, and that really defines the sense of humor from Le Show.

Oh, to the tune of the Beach Boys? Yes, Surfing USA. And it's like six Harry Shearers as Beach Boys singing it? Sure. He was a musical guest on Conan not long after I started. Oh, really? He was on the band stage, and we were watching him.

He's on all the feed rehearsing. I was new there, and somebody leaned into my office and was like, so you're thinking about leaving already? No. I forget what that song was. I think it was the song

Celebrity Booze Endorser. It was a screed against celebrities endorsing liquor brands. Celebrity Booze Endorser. He sings really super nasally. And I feel like it was one of those, like, oh, we got to run it again. All right, here we go. Rehearsal number 12. Like, no.

Oh, boy. That's so good man that reminds me of a few like years and years ago uh when so many things had made a prairie home companion reference i was like well what is this show and so i picked a random one and one of the comedy segments that week was uh the ipad 2 had just come out, and Garrison Keillor sang a song called It's My iPad 2 to the song Little Deuce Coop. Oh, God. It's my iPad 2. You don't know what I got.

Oh, my God. This is what this is. But no one else has ever heard this, and I feel like I just imagined it but i know it happened i was listening to in my youth just or i knew it through my parents because my mom at least really liked it and yeah when the simpsons made fun of it in like the uh bad tv be more funny when the with the garrison keeler guy being on it my mom actually was like hurt like oh he's funny being mean are you being mean to him?

My lowbrow family had classic rock on the radio, so I didn't know what NPR was until I was in college. I mean, the Mensa crowd in this episode is a Garrison Keillor listenership. That's totally true. In an off-screen scene, they all bonded over that.

Kirk Van Houten gets so injured by it. The sound of it hitting him is so painful glasses breaking immediately yeah and he's just like a giant baby too yeah so we didn't mention knocked unconscious in a diaper like he doesn't even have like uh id with him he's in trouble but yes the the world goes to shit lisa can't stand it and uh that's she was upset the whole time she was there. When Bart ate the spark plug, she really just wanted to get out of there.

But that would kill. Bart's dead after swallowing his spark plug. That would think. But then Lisa kind of becomes a New York Times opinion columnist for a scene. And writes some important information. An open letter to the people of Springfield. Today, our town lost what remained of its fragile civility. Drown in a sea of low-fat pudding.

Look, I got runner-up prize. You won second place? No, but I got it. Stealing is wrong. Free boudoir photography. Sweet. Homer pulls out a dictionary. Hmm.

Oh, right. We are a town of lowbrows, nobrows, and ignoramai. We have eight malls, but no symphony. 32 bars, but no alternativephony. 32 bars, but no alternative theater. 13 stores that begin with le sex. I write this letter not to nag or whine, but to prod.

We can better ourselves. Yeehaw! Well, most of us. Bart shouldn't be naked with a pig. I'm just gonna say that. That's what's waiting to happen. But yeah, that, I mean, Lisa's article for the newspaper to cry for civility, like that just, that is today.

Like that she totally would fit in the literati of today. That's true. Very Maureen Dowd. Oh, yeah. Well, she was writing then too in 99. She was. Yeah. It is, this area is not very kind to lisa so it's uh kind of funny that they're having an episode featuring her just to crap on her and call her snotty and tell her she's wrong yeah by the end yeah the moral is kind of like

lay off right yeah marty pan she's often the hero of these stories and in here she is not no she's i mean she even acknowledges in her thing like oh but to prod like yes you are a nag like this is you nagging people and making them feel bad not to cut to the chase but i mean her story even just gets stolen by homer at the end and she doesn't even get a real resolution yeah that's true there are like three scenes where homer ignores her but that never uh he never gets his come up and so yeah learns anything from that when i saw all those scenes like in the next one where he's too busy reading a bra ad to read her ad and then just stare at the wall instead of reading her article uh it took me back to how critical we

were of that episode a few months ago where lisa's like you know dad does a lot of things for me he doesn't want to he's like no he doesn't he never does and the joke is he things for me he doesn't want to. He's like, no, he doesn't. He never does. And the joke is he's an asshole who doesn't do stuff for you. He signed her up for that beauty pageant that she didn't want to do. That was the nicest thing he ever did. Lisa sends off her article. It gets published. It goes by so fast, and it's cropped terribly on Disney+, but I do like the headline,

Pudding Spree Not Enjoyed by All. That's a funny headline. Homer's not reading it. Ned won't read it. Wignham won't read it. Nobody's reading it. And I also like this. On the Skull Years,

they took Ned from being kind of just like a wholesome goody two-shoes to like a fundamentalist strict Christian yeah he's sliding and Lovejoy even more so he has a book burning mobile like that's very extreme just containing all that fire in the back with a lit yeah with an open fire in the basically an oven with fire going in the back of his van. Yeah, Lovejoy didn't care. That was always the joke with him early on. He's just boring and checked out.

As opposed to an actively, like a Handmaid's Tale level moralist villain. I'm not saying that. Again, I agree. The pulling up in front of the tree so you can't see burning. It's a good joke about Christians burning books or whatever. But yeah, the only person they can tag it on is Lovejoy, I think, because they already did a joke with Ned, so it couldn't be Ned twice. Right.

Yes, yeah. I guess it could be Helen Lovejoy. Oh, yeah. She always worries more. I assume no one watching would remember her, though. Just like, who is that character? They'd at least know her for the Think of the Children catchphrase. She was saying that enough lately yeah but yeah maude eh

also bart befriends a pig way before spider pig that's what i was i just yeah spider pig is still incomprehensible to me like i remember when that popularity but was it popular was that just manufactured consent like they just advertised it so much like you like spider pig we will get to the movie at some point but they found like at a test screening everyone loved it so they kept bringing spider pig back in the movie which is why there's a spider pig song so like the people making the movie fell in love with the idea of spider pig but i thought it was funny for the first time but all the callbacks in the movie I wasn't a huge fan of. It's a lot. It felt a little like Gabbo, Gabbo.

I swear I think the Spider Pig song made it on the UK charts. The playing of the song from the movie. I think you can buy, can you buy Spider Pig at the park? Is there like a Spider Pig doll or something? I think there is something. I don't see any

merch beyond the big pink. That's the only, that's the first and last thing I see when I go to the parks. And you can see he's in the fast food area. There's a spider pig on the ceiling? I think that's... There's a lot of little gigs. Yeah.

Have you guys at the Hollywood one? So the Hollywood one is better than the Orlandolando springfield just because in the orlando springfield they don't have the crusty secret room in the dining room and that is like the best thing they made in all of springfield yes for sure yeah it's got his memorabilia in there you've got a gabbo a real live gabbo right there i would pay i would pay so much money for that. I want that puppet. That's with all the illustrations. Yeah, all the off-model drawings.

And the artists actually get to sign their name. It isn't marked as Matt Groening. Artists actually get to put their names on their art. It's pretty nice. And the palm, the caricatures, like the palm restaurant. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Those are good. Those are up in a cafeteria on the

Fox lot. There's like a slightly, like where the Fox employees work, there's a slightly Simpsons-themed area. And that's the main thing, is the Mount Lushmore drawing. That's kind of a cool thing. I wish we'd asked you that before. We got to do a table read last month for our first one ever. It was awesome.

But we ate at the Fox commissary, but we should have been crawling around the studio all day just avoiding security guards. What security guards? There were no security guards. That's kind of true. Use a tip if you're on a back lot. Start walking.

People will assume you're supposed to be there. In a universal, you can get pretty up close to Jaws. You can walk up and be an extra, essentially, in the Jaws scene. Nobody will button in. Nobody will stop you. You can walk everywhere. We walked with our friend. We were standing in Amity.

We were just standing in Amity behind the lake. Oh, man. No one cares. Warner had yeah. Oh, man. And no one cares. Warner had a big lockdown, right? I mean, we went with my girlfriend to a Conan taping. She had to use the bathroom. She had to get, like, escorted there with someone with a walkie-talkie during the screening. Oh, really?

Or during the filming. You know, audiences might be a different thing. But if you have some, like, you know, if you have some meeting or there's some reason to be on it, like, then after that, you could just, like, you know, do whatever. Yeah. If you're, yeah, audience, they, like that, you could just do whatever. If you're an audience, they lock you down a little more. But if you can just get a friend to give you

what they call a drive-on or something or a walk-on pass, it doesn't matter. Then you can do the... If I have... A couple times I've been lucky enough to drive on at the Universal lot, I always do the... I drive Marty McFly's path. I go past where the wire was hung and past the,

and around Courthouse Square. And usually it's not blocked off and you can just do it in your personal car. And you can put on the score and be the dorkiest dork ever. But it's pretty exciting. But they changed the clock tower facade, right? It's not the same old facade. Yeah, typically it's some other design, but it's clearly the building and the you

know and and the layout of you can tell where uh the hologram jaws popped out and i wouldn't want to walk loose around the universal high with lot just because norman bates is there he's gonna get me yeah that's a good point yeah watch out for that lady that's not who you think we we were standing next to the bates motel and i was like oh maybe i'll go up on the porch and and we you can take my picture and norman bates came out of the building because the tram was coming up like oh sorry we were very close to it we were very very unnerving also we watched a guy in a golf cart just take the um go up the path by jaws and that's all motion act there's like a strip oh so she. Oh so it's you pass it.

So he just went over the strip and all the effects started going off and I could just see him like laughing as he drove away. He wasted all that gasoline on the explosion. Oh yeah you can just trigger explosion that's a huge waste. But yes nobody's reading it except for

somebody who can make a paper airplane and they throw it into Lisa's room. We read your letter with great interest. If you wish to learn more, go to 13 Euclid Street. Tell no one. And bring a dessert. Ooh. Hey, Lisa.

Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Lisa Simpson, are you ready to go on a voyage of intellectual self-discovery? I think so. Is that a pie or a quiche? A pie. You may enter.

Welcome to Mensa, Lisa. It's the organization for people with high IQs. I know that. It's also a constellation visible only from the southern hemisphere. She's good. She's very good. And she brought a cream pie. That bugs me because it's clearly not a cream pie.

No, it's got a lattice crust. Yeah. We have sweets expert Jason here. Pies are easier to draw, right yeah and they drew the wrong pie yeah i i think they i think they just saw like it's funny to hear frank say cream pie let's just that's an easy exit line they chose a good group for mensa for this show and i think is this where lindsey nagel lindsey nagel is named yes this is the true christening of Lindsay Nagel. And we've seen her like two other times in speaking roles, like early edition and then something else.

Actually three. She was the Poochie boss, the boss of the kids news, and also the cell phone company lady who's talking about family and community and synergy. Right. Oh, right, right, right. So named after Sue Nagagle, who was the, she was an agent then, she became president of HBO,

and she was married to Dana Gould for a time, too. Pre him being a writer on the show. Yeah, yeah, I think. And she now, yeah, I knew some of that, and then I looked up, and she now is the head of Anna Perna. Oh, yeah. So we have her to thank for good movies. Yeah, good movies that lose money.

I appreciate that. And a future episode will be about her and Dana's experience adopting kids from China. Yes, yeah. That'll be happening in like five years. If you remember the one... They have three kids from China is what I read. I think so, yeah. You said, wow.

Yeah, if you remember the one where Selma adopted a child in China. Oh, yeah. I do not remember that. Okay, well, that happened. Selma's had a child for years now. Really? How many years? I think a decade at least.

I do remember that one. I'm going to say 17 or 16. It's Goo Goo Guy Pan is the name of the episode. Oh. Yeah. But it was funny. We did interview Danaana gould and he had a good joke about how he he tells his daughter like hey that's you on the simpsons i've named it you and it was written for you she's like yeah yeah i want to watch bob's burgers like she's very impressed

much respect to dana gould for his commitment to planet of the apes fandom like he is an insane like has went up to that one ranch that one like like, Hollywood ranch that isn't used anymore and got pieces of plaster and chicken wire. Whoa, really? And they just let rot there. Whoa. Because no one was taking it. Like, he's told stories about, like, just his commitment to it. He's like an archaeologist.

Yeah. I think he's appearing somewhere as Dr. Zaius this month in LA. Oh, I saw him as Dr. Zaius. I've seen him as that. It was at a John Hodgman thing where it was one of John Hodgman's stage shows. And he had a bit of like, what if Dr. Zaius read a thing? I forget the joke. But then Dr. Zaius came out, full perfect costume.

And the second he spoke, I was that's dana gould like that and hodgman didn't even say yes that's dana gould under that stuff or anything he kept it kayfabe the whole time that's great yeah wow so we we meet minsa minsa a real still operating thing i wondered if it was like shut down because it was uh like me too or something i tried to find that article but I couldn't. On the Me Too article about it. There was something, wasn't there? There was like a cult or there was some sort of scandal,

but I couldn't find it. Maybe our listeners can let us know what happened with Mensa. I was thinking about the Me Too odds of comic book guy in the real world today. He'd have his Harry Knowles moment. I was going to say, he's more like the Simpsons version of

Devin Farachi maybe We can cut that out if you want We'll keep naming him Until there's one we can use Until there's a lawsuit I'm glad comic book guy Is there to show the dark side Of the Mensa nerd

He's toxic he's toxic. He's toxic. He's totally sexist in this, like a asshole. Like, yeah, he's, and you're waiting for him to take off that hoodie for like eight minutes.

Yeah. I feel like they cut, uh, I feel like that C dot run thing was supposed to happen at the, this was going to be a full scene. And they're like, nah, we want to cut to Homer during this scene.

So just move it there. I think that's why he's got that oh they check in on the homer plot yeah they break it up okay because it's always distracting when by this point too even in first viewing and when i was like 17 i was like they're okay where is this i'm waiting for this joke he's wearing a different shirt like i need to know when this joke's coming oh sure sure But yes, we learn all about Mensa from their members. You want me to join Mensa? Oh, that's wonderful. But don't I have to take some sort of IQ test? No, Lisa, you're more than qualified. I shared all your

standardized test scores with the other members. Aren't those supposed to be confidential? Welcome to Mensa. You've joined such luminaries as cartoonist Mel Lazarus, Gina Davis, and Parade Magazine's Marilyn Vosavant. Eachly tops in his or her field. Uh, except for Mel Lazarus.

Wow, I'm so honored you wanted me. Well, it was your delightfully condescending letter that put you over the top. Lindsay Nagel, Advanced Capital Ventures. Oh, what do you produce? Synergy, and books on how to cheat at bridge. Lisa, I think you'll really enjoy it here. Now, let's get down to business.

Any new palindromes? Rise to vote, sir. Now, you know the agenda. Palindromes, anagrams, eat Lisa's pie, then voting. But rise to vote, sir, is a palindrome. Lisa, I think you're going to fit in just fine around here.

Wow. Me? Fit in. That's sweet. going to fit in just fine around here wow me fit in that's sweet she yeah lisa gets to feel i which again is not an emotion they revisit with her later how she has to feel now that she lost her friends like we're not so interested in that by the time the episode ends but oh boy steven hawking's here it's like let's talk to him let's go to moe's make room for ste Stephen Hawking and go to Moe's. Yeah. Mel Lazarus, creator of the comic Mama, which my paper did not carry Mama.

Nope. Me neither. No, I know. I don't know what that is. Oh, yeah. I'm blanking on Mama. Also, Miss Peach. Did you guys read Miss Peach?

No. Mama was just about an old lady who interacts with her grown children. That's pretty much it. Not the greatest art either. But yeah, it's a shot of Mel Lazarus who just passed away three years ago. Pretty recent one. And Gina Davis is also a real Mensa member too. I was looking through real life Mensa members and there are some dark members here I want to list.

We've got Dilbert creator Scott Adams. He's pretty dark. Lost all his friends. Poor guy. We've got John McAfee, the creator of the McAfee software who's like he has a lot of like sex trafficking stories.

There was a video recently of a woman describing how he would have her defecate on him. So if you would like to Google that, go for it. Play the clip, Henry. I won't be offended if you don't. Minecraft creator Mark Notchperson.

Oh my god. Oh yeah, he's a guy. So wonderful. He is? He's a guy? Oh no. Oh, he sucks. He's out of his mind. I don't know any of this. Oh God. I don't think he was a great guy beforehand and then Microsoft

handed him $4 billion and then he went really crazy. Jimmy Savile also a member of the Men's Club. And lastly, a recent white supremacist mass shooter. I won't say his name. How do you join?

Is it like just a measure of IQ? Yeah, you have to pass an IQ test. I mean, the thing about that is all it is is a measure of how well you can take an IQ test, right? I mean, that's the problem with these things. Is it like culturally, not that I know what's on an IQ test, but is it like culturally skewed? Would it be sort of like if you know this reference or you learned this? Yeah, it's what they measure. It's just like, well, do you know these composers?

Have you learned this math equation? Like those kind of things. I haven't taken their test. The rules change per division of Mensa, but I think the classic rule of Mensa is you only get to take the IQ test once. You can't take it over and over again until you pass it and so if you fail once you can you can resubmit if you pass a similar

test and have a bunch of other like bona fides but uh you have to be in the 98th percentile of iqs which is according to wikipedia like 138 140 like that's the that that is your set for it i don't think i ever took an iq test when i would have cared about it as a kid i didn't take them they weren't as easily findable like online and now knowing your iq feels like the like the shittiest thing in the world so i don't know put that in your profile your twitter profile oh yeah oh yeah uh jamie loftus very funny comedian who was on our show I believe she got into She was like, wait, what do you have to do to get into And she did it

I think got in and has written a series of articles Like chronicling I think she went to a meetup or a convention or something And I don't remember the specific details But it seemed like immediately weird Immediately like, oh, this is unsettling Can we get Is there an age where they Could we apply? Oh, you could apply right now but it seemed like immediately weird. Immediately like, oh, this is unsettling. Can we get, is there an age where they,

like could we apply? Oh, you could apply right now, yeah. Tons of old people are in it. Like there's no age limit on it, yeah. I've gotten dumber though, so it's gonna be hard. This is like one of those things, it's like old fashioned, like just nobody thinks to do it now,

like joining the board of the Razzie Awards. Oh. Very like 30 years ago. For the Friars Club. Jason and I have been talking about joining an Elks Lodge for years. Or one of these weird clubs. You should have parties at that place. That's kind of what I thought about.

You could open up the Elks Clubs first podcast studio and just have the Elks Lodge podcasting network. Honestly, that'd be great all those moose heads great acoustics they just absorb the sound but yeah that there are good people who are members of mensa too i just wanted to find like the five worst people who were mensa i think you did it yeah uh and yeah that uh first lindsey nagel this is she says her name out loud and she has her blonde hair so i think that's when they finally could say

in the character packs this is lindsey nagle when trust me neil does this voice it is lindsey nagle not just female executive okay i still think she does take on there's still a fake lindsey nagle in the future i think she's one of the the execs who ruins the crusty show who says like have you thought about d Chappelle? Oh, so that's not Lindsay Nagle. I don't. Well, no, because she explodes and turns into T-1000. So I don't think that's her.

How bizarre is that, that moment where Dave Chappelle is their go-to of what a hacky person is? Yeah, yeah. And then not knowing that right around the corner, he becomes this, like, royalty of comedy. Yeah, yeah. I think at the time, he becomes this royalty of comedy. Yeah, yeah. I think at the time, he was just like, he's the guy they keep trying to make happen

in network sitcoms. Yeah. Oh, he himself kind of does that role in Larry Sanders. Yeah. He's brought in and notes the writer's sitcom to death. Well, Nutty Professor, he's a comic that's bad. Oh, yeah. He's the comic that eddie murphy

it is but i'm saying like i guess i don't know who's this all helped to like make his image before it was weird slants on yeah he was one of the men in tights right yeah oh yeah he'd already like hollywood had gotten pretty behind uh chappelle yeah most of the 90s Tom Hanks his best friend in you've got yeah they don't give him much to do and they were trying to do a home improvement spin-off that was him and Jim Brewer called like buddies oh I remember buddies like there's a weird

home improvement that's kind of hijacked by the buddies I didn't know that I didn't know it started out back to our pilot oh yeah they did one of those yeah as they did one of those. As they did with Dan Aykroyd in the show Soul Man, where he's a preacher. Truly unpleasant show around this era.

Soul Man was on to Omen Provement. I remember that. And I remember I was so excited for Blues Brothers 2000. And then they had on John Goodman. I think Goodman and Jim Belushi Were guests on a Soul Man episode To promote Blues Brothers 2000 I am going to watch that I will watch it

It's some lost Blues Brothers history They don't have the ABC sitcoms on Disney Plus Do they? They should No, no Things like Greats Under Fire That's far too risque for Disney Plus now Also like Crimes happened on that set TGIF Town Full House should be Things like Greats Under Fire, that's far too brisket for Disney Plus now. I'm talking like TG.

Also, crimes happened on that set, too. TGIF Town. Full House should be. All the TGIF shows should be. Maybe the ownership, because Warner Brothers owns it. Oh, yeah. But I think Boy Meets World is on Disney Plus, because that's Disney-owned, and so that just carries through. Yeah.

I still think it's wrong that Home Alone gets to be a Disney. They get to promote Home Alone on Disney+. It's like Disney in 92 would have never made Home Alone, and now they get to just steal all the credit for it. Yeah, it's a risk. I don't like that. Yeah, it's icky. Kids today, they'll think it's always been a Disney movie.

I'm going to tell my kids Home Alone. There used to be searchlights up front. But yes, in between these scenes homer makes a call to uh the the pornographer in it homer implies that when he plays santa he's like nude and exposing himself to children which uh okay uh isn't it weird that they designed the photographer to look like annie leibovitz oh you know what oh yeah yeah and why is her camera from like 1937 uh yeah i don't know like now it feels like she's an artisan photographer that you like hired to only take pictures with non-digital stuff but you have who did that voice uh that was just trust mcneil oh yeah i mean that was okay yeah pretty much any most women are dressed in the

this area here like one awful i though i wondered if she's also like usually a temp voice that they'll sub in with somebody i wonder if they thought they could get annie leibovitz to do that voice now they would i feel like this is a character a celebrity would play now but i feel like that is a big like oh a style of delivering comedic lines in just buried in my subconscious is tress mcneil yeah now she's like i mean we've been hearing her all our life since i guess starting with like well if you were a weird al fan then you heard her on the oh ricky song oh yeah she's lucille on that and she was in the video right yeah she's lucy in the video too yeah but where'd she come from

what was it groundling yeah she's a Groundlings person. I think, honestly, I think most of the, half the cast on Tiny Toons is Groundlings people. They're just tired. They're just tired Groundlings there. That's why all these UCB voices you hear in kids' cartoons now, it's just the continuation of that. Yeah.

Gotta get in on that racket. I know. Get Jason. You got a distinct, yeah. Yeah. Thank you. That's a couple hundred dollars each racket. I know. Get Jason. You got a distinct, yeah. Yeah. Thank you. That's a couple hundred dollars each roll. I know.

I saw Tress McNeil, but I went to a read-through like six or seven years ago. Ooh. And she came in for one line. Wow. Man, great. And then left. We got to hear her. She was at ours, too.

And Nancy Cartwright wasn't there, so we got to hear Tress's do Bart. Whoa, really? And she does a pretty good Bart. Really? That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah, it was no Nancy and no Harry. We got to meet Hank.

Hank was there in person. Interesting. Apparently, he's usually on the phone. Brock Meyer himself. Yeah. He was. Who was yours, Tableweed? Almost nobody.

Nobody out of the ordinary and not Harry and not Hank. So it was a little hard down. I had no Hank, no Harry. I had Dan, Nancy. I think Julie Kavanagh was on the phone. Oh, Julie was at ours too. Tress McNeil was there and Werner Herzog was there. Oh, man.

You were at the same table read one of our friends was at. Yeah, our friend Dan Reichert was at that same one. Yeah, we got to hear it from our friend who didn't get to go to it, who was incredibly depressed. He missed Werner Herzog. He was like, a Simpsons table read, that's great anyway, but meeting Werner Herzog, that was his true dream. It was wild.

We did not know before. We're walking around the table, and I go, oh, my God. Was that air yet? That did not air yet, We're walking around the table and I go, oh my god, there's a Werner Herzog. Was that air yet? That did not air yet, right? I don't think so. No, no, no. This is an old Werner Herzog episode. Oh, so our friend just did a recent Werner Herzog. So he must be back.

I didn't realize that. He said six or seven years ago, right? Yeah. That's how long. That's how experts we are. Werner Herzog, who lives here in Los Angeles and called it like the city he's ever lived in with the most

substance culture yeah he loves culture yeah he loves baby Yoda I mean he's all about baby Yoda I like I respect him so much and like I know he's a little like you know

he's got he's like he pulled a gun on an actor sure sure yeah but when he's like I have not had the only streaming service I have is Criterion Channel. I buy that post. This morning

I read Clint Eastwood says he's never sent an email. It's like, oh, God. Come on. I don't know, though. He's 90 years old. I believe it's true. I'm sure he's told people send an email. I'm sure he's told that. That's sent his emails for him. That was a John McCain bragging point.

He's like, I've never sent an email before. I've never used a computer before. Cool. I guess to make him seem more down to earth to the average voter. But now Herzog, well, yes, he pulls guns on people. He also saved Joaquin Phoenix's life. Oh, yeah. Joaquin Phoenix was in a car wreck, and he pulled him out of the car.

On like Mulholland or something? Yeah. So we wouldn't have the Joker if not for that. So we got to thank Warner for that. What an origin story. But yeah, Homer schedules this thing with the pornographer. The pornographer. Then Lisa. The pornographer. Yeah.

And then Lisa is having a conversation about library statistics, which I like that she says, like, when I try to talk about library stuff in my family, they call me a nerd. They rightly do, Lisa. Even in dry areas. Yeah. And then comic book guy reveals his t-shirt which is just like all i think we've moved past those clever t-shirts now i don't know i don't think i don't see him as much i don't wear them yeah i don't see a lot of shirts with like a just a joke printed on them anymore it's more like a clever image that if you are part of the dennis miller

ratio you recognize and now we associate dennis miller with other things not yes being clever his ratio is like how many uh the the level of likeness you have to be to talk on my other podcast uh we were taking outside ads because we're part of a network and one of them was for Dennis Miller's new sports show and it was him doing this very dry reading about you know check out my sports show on podcast one network blah blah blah and I was like well is Dennis Miller. He's got to say something snappy at the end. He said, be there or be square. You don't get any of Dennis Miller for his ad reads. So, yeah.

Wow. Yeah. You're not getting the magic. Not today. Not today. Cha-ching. I heard a podcast ad recently that was Ariana Huffington talking about her new show.

And I feel like she's on her third network, third show. She's just the most, she doesn't get enough credit for being a total grifter. Like made so much money on Huffington Post, not paying people. She wrote a book about like the importance of a good night's sleep. And it's like, this is unbelievable. That was before like her original grift was i knew her as like the friendly republican on the politically incorrect oh yeah when uh the fun accent yeah oh what a fun accent and she'd have barbs with al franken and uh boy how how times have changed i i

i'm so disappointed myself how much i was like i'm a good lefty watching politically incorrect i i'm learning things here and that was his left wing as you got to be on television Yeah, different time Or on your path Yeah, we all regret things By the way, Craig I need to say this on the mic so listeners know

Craig, Fix It America is the funniest thing ever You really take it to Putin's girlfriend. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Have you seen Putin hanging around with his bitch? His name's Donald Trump. I made a long, it's a full-length political show with Craig Healy, who is a nightmare comedian

I've been working with since Funny or Die. It's available on viewboo, V-I-O-O-B-U dot com. A guy who really resembles Jason Sheridan, who I'm with right now, who also a little bit resembles John Lovett, the political pundit, but he is Dana Carvett. A totally different guy.

Very different. Yeah, yeah. Oh, God, yeah. Every crossing of the legs that.... Yeah, yeah. The crossing of the legs. Thank you. Thanks. That's my favorite joke I've done in anything in a long time. Made me so happy.

Actually, I was going to say the Mensa roundtable they're having, that's basically this podcast right now, except about Simpsons instead of libraries. That's right. Oh, the top elite of the elite. But yes, Lisa is so happy to finally

have friends. I can't believe how they're dumbing down the Springfield Library. They've gotten rid of the English literature section and replaced it with a make-your-own Sunday bar. I heard they got rid of the reference desk to make room for an air hockey table. Even the microfilm? Even the microfish.

My family never talks about library standards, and every time I try to steer the conversation that way, they make me feel like a nerd. We are hardly nerds. Would a nerd wear such an irreverent sweatshirt? See, Doss. See, Doss, run. Run, Doss, run. Only one person in a million would find that funny. Yes, we call that the Dennis Miller ratio.

So I was part of All TV Simpsons, the news group, reading this at the time, and I rushed over to my computer when this episode ended to see what people were saying, and they were the first to point out that the slashes on his shirt are backslashes, and they should be front slashes for Doss fans. Wow. Living comic book. They said Mike Scully was slashes for Dostmans. Wow. Living comic book. They said Mike Scully was so lazy for letting that in the show.

Worst episode ever. I mean, by this point, they were directly taking lines from all TV Simpsons and putting them in comic book guy's mouth at that point on the show. I like from the beginning they are showing that Mensa seems fun for Lisa, but they already have all these not subtle elitism

and just how much they look down on common people. Now I'm just shocked that a library would ever have the money for a Make Your Own Sunday bar or an air hockey table. They would not have that kind of government support. I'd be into all those things also. Well, microfiche is useless now, but like an air hockey table, you can't like Google that. Yeah, you can go to a physical place.

You can take video games out now. It's awesome. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Interesting. Well, I have like at the library you can just like, there's some website that just has like, oh, do you have a library card? Here, you can just watch these movies. They're on a website. Oh, yeah. I have like three of those apps. You know, it's not as great as disney plus the greatest nothing ever will be no what if our

taxes paid for that too probably uh i mean we all right we in a way they are tax yeah the seven dollar a month tax on disney disney entertainment tax uh but yes uh homer homer then meets the pornographer in the next shot are you you ready in there, Mr. Simpson? Are you sure you're a fully accredited and bonded pornographer? Just come out. Please be kind. You look fantastic. Let me just adjust my lens here.

Now you're sure this will save my marriage? Try not to speak. It's making your body ripple. Dad! Dad, are you home? Fine. I don't care what you're doing. Don't look! Don't look, don't look Okay, I think he's gone Let's reschedule The initial front-facing Bart is a very good drawing

Yeah, it's a very funny, yeah, cursed drawing It also is incredible When they show the outside shot of the house It's like, Bart is close to falling There's not a lot of space on that window For him to stand there. I think the reveal of Milhouse in there has made my favorite visual gag in the episode. It's just always funny to see Milhouse.

But I do feel for Homer's vulnerability here. He's the shyest he's ever been. He runs around in his underwear quite often, but now it feels different for him. It's also weird he brings into it that he's like is this gonna save my marriage like whoa what what save your yeah is this your worry that your marriage is falling apart i was more used to the moms of my era growing up getting the glamour shots and you see like occasionally go to a friend's house you see a picture of their mom looking like they were in poison or something with like very heavy makeup and teased hair and

this weird watercolor background. Yeah. The parents' house I went to that had a Nagel, not Lindsay Nagel, but Patrick Nagel, was the style I kind of used on Movie City, my show. I remember there was a Nagel painting and then her looking like that. Like, this is not

like my house. I'm scared of this house. Get me out of this house. These parents are too sexually free. I don't like that and like this is not like my house i'm scared of this house get me out of this house these parents are too sexually free i don't like that that's not true they were uh they got divorced they're a big old fight oh they pretended they were what year is this again what is this when 99 so so george costanza has already done a photo shoot. That's the first thing I thought of. That's right. Seinfeld's over at this point.

They're just ripping off a Seinfeld plot. Were men doing this? Was this a fad or something? I mean, it's the comedic idea of who would be attracted to this ugly, fat person. I don't know. I think Homer looks legitimately sexy

in a couple of these shots. It's the bear, right? Yes. No, it's actually him wrapped up in the hose. That's my favorite of them. His tummy's like peeking out between it. This is getting too much into my likes. Anyway,

there should have been a follow-up. I always felt like there should have been a fall i i always felt like there should have been a follow-up where bart tattles on homer or something like bart catching homer like this should have some some repercussions or something it just they just kind of drop it yeah or like he sits him down and talks about like something at least yeah it did feel like there's a couple things to just uh let go in the episode in general yeah like when you see daddy new with a strange woman, here's why. Oh yeah, didn't I? Yeah, it never comes up, who was that?

Well, there's funny things in this, and actually, I think that boudoir photography plot is pretty funny, but then it doesn't, it really is a left turn. It's the prize for the, it's the second place prize of the idiot contest is boudoir photography,

which they got the idea for the idiot contest from just some, just a commercial break. And then it doesn't tie into Mensa. And yeah, Lisa's feelings aren't right. It's, it's one of those, I don't know.

I, I say this not to scold them. Cause I know things I've written were like, Oh yeah, you didn't like earn any of that or tie it all together, but it's a good reminder to earn things and tie things all together. It's, it's funniest to me where Homer's taking photos still while his daughter is

mayor. It's like, wow, you still made time for photos while your daughter is the mayor of the town. They never discuss the fact that she is among six mayors. I guess they always intend to include a wacky Homer plot with a Lisa or Marge episode to sort of temper it a little in case you're kind of bored with watching a story about a woman.

Yeah, yeah. Some red meat. In the Scully years, when it's a lisa thing they're like we need a lot of gross stuff around lisa like that that's a lot i like just to keep uh the the scatological things to keep people engaged we go to the ren fair and the tale of gazebo seven and uh boy is there a joke in here that didn't change. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But let's hear about Gazebo. Gazebo's seven through nine. This is so cool.

I feel like I'm back in the Renaissance. Please stay in character, gentle wench. Verily I declare that the earth revolves around the sun and not t'other way round. Stop looking down my blouse, Copernicus. Forsooth, mine eyes doth rove of their own accord. Zounds! Someone took our gazebo! No, no, that's impossible. We reserved it months ago. Someone should stand up to them.

Hmm. I'll do it. Excuse me, gentlemen. Might I take a peek at your gazebo reservation form? Beat it! As well. We each have a good case. What part of beat it didn't you understand? I guess it would be the it. I'm not exactly sure to what that refers. Ow!

Oh, it's hopeless. There's some she-males in gazebo three, a nasty-looking spider in gazebo six, and the less said about gazebo eight, the better. Ah, Chief, thank God you're here. We reserve gazebo 6, and the less said about Gazebo 8, the better. Ah, jeez, thank God you're here. We reserve Gazebo 7, and look. Jeez, how many gazebos do you she-males need? Ooh. I feel like they were maybe talked down by the network

from a harsher word. Maybe. That's what it sounds like. Maybe. But they were very proud of themselves that they could say that on TV. Yeah, yeah. You guys were talking about on a another episode

about like graining was the one who would be like don't do that like he would be like keeping an eye on stuff yeah and uh yeah i don't know futurama now so uh not watching as closely not completely detached but yeah yeah it was like uh the example i always bring up is there was, if you guys remember the second Sideshow Bob episode where it's the very start and they're saying Selma's got dates and he's coming in and they're the storyboards where grating is like make this specifically the elephant man and you can do it but i don't want this to just be a joke about a man with a disability dating her and he even says like sorry pc matt strikes again like it's yeah but that she mails joke i just oh boy years later have that like selma marries a man yes pretending to and it's like this really odd like not wow i really forgot that yeah that'll be coming up but with like adam's apple comedy like who really yeah the reveal is that uh so like marge is on board with gay marriage until she finds out selma is getting married to a woman

oh no it's patty oh patty patty yeah yeah, Patty. Oh, right, right, right. But then the reveal is that it was actually a man the entire time. It's a man. Yeah. I remember like, what are we doing? This is some. It's an odd choice. High jinky.

Yeah. Well, this isn't a real like transphobic few episodes of Simpsons because the next one is 30 Minutes Over Tokyo, which maybe has like the grossest transphobic joke I can think of in the series, which is the guy is telling them how to live on pennies and how they can stay rich. Like he eats cat food and everything. He's like, that boat, it belonged to somebody.

This suit, it was something somebody died in. And all those beautiful ladies, they all used to be men. And then everybody like, yeah, it's a bad a bad you know in a less enlightened time i think trans bashing was just a new frontier of humor like all these jokes we haven't made yet but now we look back and we're like oh not so great no yeah i uh the nice thing i say is that there were way worse transphobic shows in 1999 and simpsons that they were being better but yeah just uh just hearing that word in this clip. That's a really extinct word.

Some of the shock of it isn't even... Some of it's you're offended, but you're also just like, I haven't heard that in years. I am surprised that Disney didn't comb through and knock some stuff out. Yeah. The first thing I wanted to check for, and I think Henry checked for me,

is the Nazi... What was it? Nazi Superman R.R. Superior? Yes, yeah. The short film made by the stand-in for Disney in their world, but they left that joke in. That's amazing. Michael Jackson didn't survive. That's the one. They cut that episode.

You can't see it on Disney+. I applaud. Very good. For sure. And it's on 8 million DVDs. You can find that episode quite easily. You can never go away. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And there's still the one later where the guy, Leon, comes back. I just learned about that. Oh, the Prince one they were going to do where he was voiced by Prince? No, no, no. A couple years ago, they brought back Leon Kompowski. Wow. Oh, I never know. He actually did. I don't think they removed that one.

Does he only talk like his regular voice at the end? No, he sings a new version of Lisa, It's Your Birthday. I just learned about this. And it's Kip Lennon who did the singing for Michael Jackson. Whoa, really? Yeah, they brought back Kip Lennon. I remember even at Simpsons at the Bowl, they did like five years ago,

Kip Lennon came out and sang it like he was there for it. Yeah, yeah. What a weird... I can understand wanting to hear like the Monorail song, but then like, who's excited to hear... See this odd guy.

Lisa, it's your birthday. Well, you gotta fill two hours. You can't just do that. There's only so many songs. This is like when we did the backdraft episode and we're like, hey, did you know there was a backdraft too from this year? Oh, shit.

Well, that episode is Mr. Lisa's Opus and I think it's on Disney Plus. It's from 2017, so I assume it is on Disney Plus. They better have removed it. All right, 2017 Mrlland's opus reference rock and roll and uh yeah this renfair bit here i there were tons of renfair bits going around in this time of comedy like mr show did a great one about uh well no it's a civil war reenactors meaning star trek reenactors but yeah I took that as a Ren Faire bit.

All the Ren Faire jokes kept me from going to one as a kid. And I think I made the right decision. I think they worn me away. That bent well. I had one friend, a woman who was really into it. And that's what the corset joke in here reminded me of it. Because she liked wearing corsets. But also, yeah, the secret of Ren Faires is it's for creepy nerds to look down the dresses of women in period-accurate corsets.

They really hated Ren Faire's at Mystery Science Theater. Oh, yes. Yeah. Just a different flavor of nerd going after a different kind of nerd. That's an odd. A little lower on the total pull than us. They really came down on the leather mug makers. I don't know why.

That was a reference they would use. I'm like, yes, that's something I should hate, so I hate it now. Was that in the Quest of the Delta Knights? It was way back in pod people. Oh, okay. Way early on. They were way ahead of the curve then. I think Kevin Murphy legit went to those and could report on them.

Somebody did. He was a Lord of the Rings mega nerd in the 70s, so I have to think he's gone to some Ren Faires, that Kevin Murphy. When I was a comic book kid, I would be like, okay, yeah, I'm a comic book nerd, but I'm not going in the Warhammer section of the store. I'm not going into miniatures.

The only time miniatures got me was for Heroclix, because they were, do you guys know Heroclix? Yeah, I was like, oh, I don't need any more of these. I don't need any more plastic stuff. I'd rather have my $3,000 back than I probably in total spent on Heroclix. But you didn't buy paint, right? No, I never painted the miniatures. They were pre-painted, so you saved some money.

I just had like, five versions of Spider-Man are going to fight your five versions of Batman. Who can win here? Was the game good, though? I actually thought it was fun. Yes. Yeah. I had some good time, especially because you could mix and match characters. And like as it went on, they even had indie comics.

So like you could have the Ninja Turtles and Hellboy fight Spider-Man and Batman and even obscure characters. Well, I miss the days when like spider-ham was obscure and now he's just like every obscure character is just uh i can't ironically like them anymore now they're just plain old popular spider-man and the women from love and rockets are hoping and uh hopey and maggie yes yeah damn it i was so close with the reach there uh uh but yes they they are rejected from gazebo seven they take the gazebo rule i also like the wig i'm just he's like i'm just gonna day drink in a gazebo in uniform right now like uh so they take the gazebo rules to uh mayor quimby mayor quimby thinks it is about something much bigger and runs away i uh the

runaway scene i was waiting for that horse to explode when it ran out of i was like it feels like it's a missing horse exploding there the horse murmurs as it parachutes away for no reason that's good i'd rather have a horse i mean things exploding that shouldn't explode like that was getting hacky by 99 at that point but they've just done it yeah i i family guy did a horse exploding joke like a little after yeah you're right about that yeah i do like that their shredder they shred things and then shred that in a super shredder type oh that's good yeah not to be confused with kevin nash played super shredder from of course yes yeah that's what did they use yeah that toy i had the super

shredder toy but he's like he's shorter Turtles. That's what pissed me off with my Super Shredder toy. Oh, yeah. It's very frustrating. I had the toy. I still have it. It's in my car in the storage unit in the apartment. I think, though, NECA is making a lot of Ninja Turtle toys. I believe we will get the real scale Super Shredder in the next year or two.

Those old toys never promised scale, though. No, the scale was very bad. That's true. But this new company is promising scale. Okay. NECA makes good... Yeah, they made some really good Simpsons toys. Yes.

They did all the guest star ones. I have a signed... You'll like this. I have a signed Bret Hart NECA. Oh, yeah. That's very good. Yeah. But they made that Adam West.

The Simpsons Adam West. That's a great one. Yeah. The they made that Adam West. The Simpsons Adam West. It's a great one. Yeah. The Mints of People scare off Quimby, and then they find out they're in charge. What? Well, that was unexpected. What's going on? Where's the mayor?

He skipped town. Really? So who's in charge? Well, that's a good question. Let's take a quick look at the town charter. Done. Done. Done.

Done. Done. Finished. According to the charter, should the mayor abdicate, the council of learned citizens may rule in his stead. Well, there's no one more learned than us. So I guess we're in charge. What?

Let me see that. See here. We the people, cruel and unusual, blah, blah, blah. Ritual circumcision, yuck, yuck, yuck. Geez, I'll take your word for it. I guess you are in charge. Yay! With our superior intellects,

we could rebuild this city on a foundation of reason and enlightenment. We could turn Springfield into a utopia. A new Athens. Or Walden 2. Yeah, a real candy land. Of the mind. The mind. I'll just go now. Bunch of dorks. He got a real

Moe-style... Yeah, he ripped off Moe's spit with that, what? Yeah. Only Hank Azaria characters can do that right yeah yeah but uh i guess mo couldn't be in that room to make that noise so way good i mean that bit there that is that is mayor pete's uh entire uh pitch like that's his stump speech like the smartest people should be in charge of things and i'm the smartest i i speak seven languages come on and iq is it means good yeah iq means good yeah the most iq makes you the most good person that's right uh but uh no i like a

good town charter jokes the springfield town charter has been uh the source of many a good copy don't have that uh clerk nearby to blow dust off it. Oh, that's so funny. And discover new passages, yeah. I guess you have to assume Quimby returned at some point to the town and retook his office. He's just gone for like a week or something. Okay. That's just kind of left hanging, too. But also, yeah, that Candyland reference did remind me. You guys, I had forgotten all this Candyland myth.

Oh, yeah. But you guys talked a lot about it on a recent podcast. We just did a big old run. I felt bad I didn't have a lot of Candyland at the ready. I didn't have the mythology so good. I've been meaning to dig back in and remember what they all look like. Every three years, Mike and I. We'll do a full Candyland.

At a certain point, we'll have Lord Licorice and Queen Frostine. Grandma Nut. Grandma Nut. Grandma Nut. I like for that game that there's no dice to lose. You just shuffle those cards, and if you win or lose, that's decided the second you put those cards down. It's just waiting to find out. Yeah.

We come back from the break, and they're explaining all their plans to make the city better. It makes me think, I think West Wing had premiered by this time in 99. I think that'd be fall of 99. This has a West Wing Democrat kind of spirit to it.

But that's also with these IQ nerds. They should have pointed out, there's a Ben Shapiro in these groups. There are guys like that in the Benzac groups. I was telling you, it's Comic Book Man. Wait, what's his name? Comic Book Guy. I keep saying Man. I don't remember.

That's too much maturity putting on old CBG there. But I like that it's Comic Books Informed. The jury noticed. That's a good joke. I just like seeing a Radioactive Man comic in the show, too. I think they dropped Radioactive Man.

Now they just are like, we'll just draw a Spider-Man comic. It's just our Batman comic. Now they can just put Spider-Man in there all day. It's all the same company. That's true. Sure. We see the fate of Carl getting diabetes. Lenny's fate is equally sad.

Oh, yeah. He has nowhere to go. I love that joke. But that's their first dumb thing of like, if everything was red, diabetes lenny's fate is equally sad oh yeah there's nowhere to go uh i love that joe so but that's their first like dumb thing of like if everything was red traffic accidents or everything is yellow or red traffic accidents would probably like multiply by a hundred percent that day it's actually quite dangerous this is why mayor pete isn't a good stain he's gonna do that he's gonna do the lights thing, I swear.

My dad had a story of, I think they went from Philadelphia to New York, either for a Yankees game or the World's Fair or something. But one of the cities did not have yellow lights for a while. They just had red and green. So it would very suddenly go from go to stop. Jeez, that's why they invented the yellow light to make you slow down and hopefully not kill someone.

The nerds are really showing off here. Stay yellow, stay yellow. Man, I'm making record time. If only I had some place to be. And we've really elevated the level of discourse at the dog track. We replaced the fanfare with classical music, and instead of chasing a rabbit, the dogs chase a diploma.

The world has already taken note of our accomplishments. Springfield has moved up to number 299 on the list of America's 300 most livable cities. Take that, East St. Louis. And that's where the St. Louis story comes from. Yes, a real kick in a town when it's down, with that East St. Louis. And that's where the St. Louis story comes from. Yes, a real kick in a town when it's down, or that East St. Louis one. Yeah. Well, like, so

the other four cities that are there from 300 to 296, like, two were made up, Dawson's Creek, North Carolina, and Ebola, Rhode Island. But the other one is Flint, Michigan, which is, again, even then was like, that's one you're kicking. It's like, no, it actually is, like, it got totally fucked over by business and like when i see it now i'm like

it just reminds me oh yeah they still don't have clean drinking water do they that's uh depressing yeah really yeah real life springfield it's less fun i also it's crazy how like dog racing was just like yeah that's just part of the popular consciousness for like it's so barbaric I mean horse racing is barbaric too the very first Simpsons that's very first Simpsons it's like tied to the Simpsons but you grew up pretty close to dog racing though Henry to me it was a foreign concept I still have not seen a dog racing track no uh in my Florida suburb I live from ages 10 to 23 there is a there was the orange park dog track like seven blocks from my home and like my my dad went there uh week

weekly uh he was he is a big fan of it though well he wouldn't even gamble on the dogs though he was like that wasn't as prestigious as gambling on closed circuit horse racing instead. So he would just ignore the dogs, all these poor, poor dogs suffering. And all the horse tracks around here. Santa Anita around here. There's like a new problem every month. It's getting so fetid, these places. Every now and then there's a big race that syncs up with the start of Comic-Con.

No, it's all the time. Is it every year? Every year, Wednesday, on the train. So the train down, just the worst people in the world are getting on in the dopiest outfits. Well, they have the big crazy Easter bonnet hats and dresses, and then there's just a bunch of assholes going to Comic-Con for preview night. There's a war between.

And then it's always the same issue where they get on the train and they're shocked that there's so many people on it. And they're usually hammered. So it's worse than SantaCon, which is happening as we record in Los Angeles. Yeah, I got an alert from the lift. I did too.

Careful, SantaCon is happening. And I'm like, great, I'm not leaving the San Fernando Valley today. Don't leave your house. Yeah. Now, I normally experience santa con in the bay area and like that's i think it's probably worse than here because it has public transit so if you yeah i remember bob on a santa con day we had a recording in the city

and you had to warn all the guests of like it's santa con they're all gonna be on the bart today just watch out like they're all there it's it is the worst i i heard of it first from like friends who lived in new york and then it was like why must it spread everywhere i thought it was quarantined i thought it was only in new york and i can't believe it's spread i would like to go no come on i'm interested mike likes to wade into the chaos sometimes. Experience it firsthand. I want to see what's going on. You would go with me.

You like a convention. New kinds of street vomit. I wonder if they're Santa-conning it at Universal or Disneyland today. I wonder. Where is Santa-con? Where did they tell you it is so I can not go there? It said Los Angeles on the end.

It's all of Los Angeles. Oh, God, the CSO the tri-county I would think Hollywood or downtown I would guess yeah probably and I got some stuff to look up yeah I have to go downtown Jesus my life um you're gonna end up at Santa con tonight oh no and I know down a few Santas They take me over I am one of them now I don't know how it happened boy You have a red sweatshirt on

I wouldn't wear that I'm already in They'll think I'm one of them You're halfway there The Mensa members After showing it off to Kent Brockman Who I do like his reaction of like I'm a Jada reporter

No but we're really going to do it You are? That's good. But I think, actually, I should play the official jingle. I think the line of the episode is Lenny's like, if only I had somewhere to be. I'm there. I'm there with you.

All right, it's jingle time. That's the joke. That was very loud. An extra loud jingle for an extra funny joke. But yes. But then there's some trouble brewing in the Mensa meeting room. Okay, next item of business is our weekly progress report. Principal Skinner, how's your transportation project coming?

Oh, excellent. Not only are the trains now running on time, they're running on metric time. Remember this moment, people. 80 past 2 on April 47th. It's the dawn of an enlightened Springfield. Excellent. Now, next week is our State of the City address. Has everyone finalized their proposals?

Well, first of all, I have a plan to eliminate obesity in females. Oh, please. For a nickel-a-person tax increase, we could build a theater for shadow puppets. Balinese or Thai? Why not both? Then everybody's happy. Oh, yeah. Everyone's real happy then

Do I detect a note of sarcasm? Are you kidding me? This baby is off the charts Oh, a sarcasm detector That's a real useful invention Sarcasm detector, that's a good joke I like that Though that was my approach in meetings

In the office world. When I would eventually get sick of being there, I would be the very sarcastic nerd who was just like, oh, yeah, that sounds really great. I regret that now. They really pinned down the use of females by online logic lords before it was as popular as it is now. Yeah, that's true. They were very in touch with what i mean the the gamergate stuff just surfaced it to publicly but we all knew these type of guys and were those type of guys into degrees they were always talking like ferengi online oh yes yeah that that joke is too dirty

yeah i'm sorry i've revealed myself i'm one of them uh but yeah i think this shows the failures of if like well the smartest people should all be in charge. And here they are incredibly out of touch to pitching ideas that don't help anybody except themselves. Like, I mean, this the shadow puppets thing, isn't it the same as saying, like, we need a program to take kids to Hamilton? Like, isn't that? Yeah. Yeah. Means testing field trips.

Yeah, intelligence without empathy doesn't really go super far. It's really not fair to lump Lisa in with everyone else. It does feel like a disservice to poor Lisa. She is a child. She has an excuse for not having that realization yet. And she's new, too.

And she's very empathetic. We don't hear her proposals. More than everybody. Yeah. I think she probably would have had actual good governmental proposals instead of these very autocratic ones that everybody else has. What was the thing that just happened that was so out of character for Lisa, though? There was something. Oh, yeah, yeah.

What was it? Was it the Lisa episode? Yeah. When they were on the bed? What is it? What is it? You mean the up-booth thing that happened? Oh, when they nodded What was it? Oh, her in March? Yeah. When they were on the bed, she was like, what is that? What is it? Oh, you mean the Apu thing that happened? It was, she said.

Oh, when they nodded at the Apu thing. Oh, she added a picture of, yeah. She said, some things that used to be seen as cutting edge now look bad, and it's, what can you do? What can you do? I was like, yeah, I hate it. If that's the statement the show wanted to make about Apu, fine. Nailed the landing.

The show nailed it. But it's like, why put those words in Lisa's mouth? Of all characters, you can put those in other characters' mouths. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I really didn't. I mean, I got that. I get that a lot of the Apu stuff and the early stuff is based on a stereotype. And some of it is outdated.

But I always found him such an endearing character yeah he's a lovable character yeah i do like a lot of writers would salvage the stereotype and try to make him into more of a human being it was a big uh project of like in the bill and josh years to give him more things to do like that's when they made him like a computer genius and they actually did the you know the citizenship episode that was all like very empathetic it was on the side of illegal yeah that was a david conran one and that was like he really brought a lot to that yeah uh which yeah i but but it does bug me when people when people bring up uh like oh they improved up whose character it's like well yeah but

when most people were watching The Simpsons he was more of a stereotype who also would like say gibberish that they pretend was Hindi it's just like yeah mostly they would give him real Hindi and they'd actually do the research on it but like him and his relatives sometimes

yeah but yeah I do remember first becoming I mean I first really went all in on this instance when they were trying to flesh him out. Yeah, yeah. So I guess that's what my memory is. No, and that was good things they did, though, yeah. But then the pornography thing ends in this next scene

where Homer presents his photographs to Marge or to my significant other, as the booklet says. Marge, oh Marge, I've got something for you. Oh, homie. Houston, we have a problem. A sexy problem. Homie? Well, look at you.

I'm gonna maul you. Homer, I've never seen the side of you, but I like it. Whoa, whoa, look at those silk pillows. It's like the set of some high-class porno film. No, no, it's just our basement. Hold on, what? That's our basement? Yeah, so? Come on, more kissing. It looks so elegant,

and all it takes are some lace curtains and a beaded lampshade. You've got to show me exactly what you did. But I was going to score. No, you weren't. I feel like Homer should have scored for all that effort. I think Marge shouldn't have just slapped it down and be like, no, you weren't going to score. Like, I don't know. Throw him a bone, Marge. Just let him down easier. Yeah. I like, too, where it's a very mom, like, well, look at you.

Look at you. Yeah, she's kind of, yeah, she's sort of cute here in her, like, condescending. It's funny to hear Marge say high class porno set. She has a lot of experience with viewing those. She knows what good and bad porno set dressing looks like. But yeah, it's

Homer's photos are kind of cute and I guess they just spent the rest of the episode set dressing the thing. I did like when the photograph session happened, Homer says like, let's get Homero homer erotic funny funny term yeah they're all clever it's the very you're not laughing too hard sure i was laughing too hard at the i'm too sexy song they dropped oh my god yeah that's uh it's just too easy too easy that's still what still what not many levels of irony show like The Simpsons would. Like in 2019, there would be a I'm Too Sexy montage.

Just to the song. Hasn't that happened? Well, I mean, that's in this episode. And then I think again, I bet they've done it again. But I just think like a movie would still do I'm Too Sexy. And you're supposed to be. And then at the end of the movie, like the real right said Fred. That's what they do now. That's the current blockbuster.

Game Night 2. A Right Said Fred cameo. John Apatow made some calls and got Right Said Fred. I'm in line for that now. God, I've loved you guys since I was growing up. I can't believe you're in our movie.

We forget that they weren't good. Dave Grohl does a song with Right Said Fred. They do a hard rock version of it. People forget they they weren't good. Dave Grohl does a song with Right Said Fred. They do a hard rock version of it. People forget they were rock and roll. They were so good. It's Dave Grohl's job now is just to be a guy on documentaries to explain rock and roll.

He's a famous rock and roll bystander. Jeff Tweedy from Wilco, and I saw Jeff Tweedy at the Largo. He said, yeah, Dave Grohl. He goes, the mayor of rock and roll. Very accurate. Yeah. I mean, he's legitimate. I like him.

I do, too. But it is always, if you're ever watching him in a documentary, you have to know that it was like, OK, thanks for coming, guys. All right, next. And he just ushers another documentary crew immediately into his house. He probably just has a documentary nook in his house, in his mansion. Yeah, yeah. It's great.

People live there. But yes, we head back to the telltale gazebo seven for the presentation by the Mensa squad and how they're going to change things for the better in Springfield. Welcome, everyone. Today we embark on a new era of intelligent governance. Governance! Governance! Governance! We have some new rules and regulations that you're just going to go ape poopy over. Professor Frank?

Well, first of all, we're going to ban such barbaric sports as bullfighting and cockfighting. Also boxing, uh, both kick and the kind with the gloves there. And hockey, football, push-ups, and anything in general where you have to take off your shirt, which is embarrassing. Inspired by the most logical race in the galaxy, the Vulcans, breeding will be permitted once every seven years. For many of you, this will mean much less breeding. For me, much, much more. You cannot do

that, sir! You don't have the power! It's another Ponfar. Yes, yeah. We just did that Ponfar episode of Futurama. And so another Ponfar joke there, yeah. It was on the minds of the writers and the in the Simpsons life they loved Pon Far

Tolkien mating ritual every seven years is that it was like one of three Star Trek episodes that were referenced it was Tribbles evil Spock and Pon Far yeah that's basically it stuff that's kind of removed from Star Trek that you even if you don't know Star Trek You know the reference

If you see a guy with a beard Like an evil twin with a beard Yeah You know that little kid You know the The Clint Howard kid Yeah Yes

Yeah The Tranya I don't know I mean I don't know that Oh he loves drinking Tranya That's what Clint Howard is used for Yeah

Honestly I only know that Because I watched the episode To get a Mr. Show reference Because they did an extended scene that is a reference to that. With all of those different. Delightful. That is so funny. I have a question about this state of the city scene, which is why does

anyone come? Yes. Yeah. No one needs to go to this. People are always attending like trials, just any sort of gathering will attract more people. Everyone's bored in Springfield. They're very socially engaged. They're like, local government, let's show up.

It's true, there's no reason for them to be there, but I guess it should be front page news that the nerds took over and replaced the mayor. There's a little curiosity. If five nerds took over my town, I'd be mean there's a little curiosity if like if five nerds took over my town i'd be like i want to see their first speech yeah yeah yeah and let's bring things to throw at him just okay oh yeah you gotta be ready for that i i like at least they show the leases like i never heard about these things they're all revealing their secret plans that

they had and same with like hibbert has a broccoli juice plan as well. And with what we know about CTE, I think I'm on Frank's side about banning all those things. You hear him hummer cheer about that. I think he's remembering his boxing experience. Oh, yeah. He knows what boxing did to him. He got smashed in the head by Drederick Tatum. Yeah, you're right about that.

But something that I love will have to go, too, so I will never publicly say that we have to cancel football or boxing. Well, look, wrestlers, they know the threat now, too. I'm just like, look, we all know it.

Let's just forget about it and have fun as we watch the wrestling. That's right. Yeah, now it's... Daniel Bryan's back and he's fine, and let's just not think

about how he's doing when he's 60. Yeah, he's not think about how he's doing in 2016. Yeah, he's been doing the hyperbaric chamber. If you just push it more towards acrobatics and musical theater, there's less threat. You know? There's less threat of banging your head off. I know.

I saw Kelsey Grammer walk off that stage. Oh, yeah. That's dangerous. That's dangerous for him, too. But German suplexes is so cool. I mean, it sucks that it hits the back of your head every time, but they're really cool. The Kenny Omega snap dragon suplex is the greatest move ever,

and I love it when he does it to a guy on an apron of the ring. Yeah, the hardest part of the ring. That's right. The most dangerous part. Kenny Omega is the coolest guy. But anyway. Yeah, that's another podcast. It's weird that Skinner says ape poopy.

That just doesn't feel right for his character. Yes, that's alt-y, that's rewrite-y. weird that skinner uh says ape poopy that just doesn't feel yes that's alti that's rewritey and i don't like that one i think but it's at least there's only like a couple of those in this episode and then i feel like we get further down the seasons yeah there's a lot of ape poopy a lot of malarkey yeah it's just like i mean obviously it's like he's saying you're gonna go ape shit for this but he said he self-censors and says poopy but it's just like, I mean, obviously it's like he's saying, you're going to go ape shit for this, but he self-censors and says poopy. But it's like, why would Skinner say poopy? I got to think Harry Shearer grumbled at being given that line. He grumbles about a lot of things.

If he grumbled about saying poopy, I'd be like, you're right. You're right. Well, it's also funny that Frank is talking about brain injury sports when he then injures his brain in the next moment of saying he has 193 and then hits his head on a post and can count his IQ going down. The song Comic Book Guy sings, is that a reference? I was trying to pin it down and I couldn't find out what it was. Yeah. He goes like, I'm smart, much smarter than you, Hibbert.

Oh, yeah. That's a weird phrase. The Star Trek song, isn't it kind of? What? The theme to Star Trek? Isn't it? Yeah. Isn't that part of it?

Like that song? I'm not sure. Or is it like Close Encounters or 2001 or something? I feel like it's a music cue I know, but I can't place. Maybe. I'd have to hear it again. That's our first question if we interview Matt Selman. What's that song he sings? He doesn't know. He has no idea what you're talking about.

This was 20 years ago. He has no memory. I didn't direct that actor ever. But yes, they're all kind of revealing their eugenics plans and even referring to themselves as alphas and everyone else as sub-omegaloids. That's a good word. That's a great word, yeah.

But then we get our big guest star for the episode who, when you see there's no ramp to this gazebo, he just teleports in. Well, you can hover. Oh, that's right. He just flew in. So we should turn the volume down slightly and play the always respectful death jingle. Yes, yes. Of Talking Simpsons. Death stalks you at every turn.

Ah! There it is! Death! When it's a good person, I feel bad. Yeah, I feel a little bad. So yeah, Stephen Hawking died at age 76 in 2018. He's the wheelchair guy, Homer knows. Yes, yes.

That book by the wheelchair guy. He said that in Homer Q. The treehouse one. I should have read that book by that wheelchair guy. He also would appear on Futurama three times after this. That's all he did. They actually recorded his audio from his

speech to text to speech program. They didn't fake it. It's not like a right family guy around this time did an episode with a stephen hawking type guy and they just used a machine to make it like yeah you can you can fake a stephen hawking guest star in your show easily with the text to speech program but right there was a thing on late night with conan i remember where jim carey got a call from Stephen Hawking, and the audience, I don't think, understood what was happening.

The bit didn't go great. It was like this pre-recorded call thing. And then he had to stop and say, like, you know, that was the real Stephen Hawking. I went out of my way. And then he makes Conan do the bit again. Oh, wow. I made it happen.

And the second time doing it is so much funnier than the first, because he's so laying into doing a bit again that didn't really work before. It's a very funny clip. He actually used the real Steven. That's impressive. He got the real Steven. Yeah, yeah.

But he clearly needed... It's so confusing that you could just get a computer voice. So he had to make a point of saying, no, no, no. I think they even videotaped him too. But that, of of course is confusing because he's pretty still yeah i think it was it wasn't even clear it was a video yeah they put like a pinwheel on his uh wheelchair so then people can see it moving i think like as his

condition worsened uh in this episode he's like using his hand to type into the voice box but i think like towards the end of his life he he was using just one cheek muscle to control his voice box thing. So he had ALS. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. An unfortunate thing. I also didn't know, as a dumb kid, you just hear his speech machine, which has an American accent.

It was a surprise to me to learn he was British later in life for me. I forgot until you just said that now yeah well because he has an america to us he has an american accent we never saw him speak when he could speak i remember wondering if it was him and then he is credited in the credits and he was he was really there he was uh happy to be on the simpsons and down for the jokes and stuff i i think what looking back on it like remembering that was him doing it i was like i'm glad that meant he had to like say yes these jokes are like i'm cool i love this hawk's gotta fly oh yeah that's the smartest idea i've heard all day and that they gave him like a contrabulous fab traption type joke so like yeah uh

that a boxing glove can just pop out of it or a toothbrushing machine and there's a really oh man they sell out chris carter so much on the commentary i love that i guess when he was in when stephen hawking was in to record chris carter the x-files creator found out he went to the recording booth basically put a hat on stephen hawking's head an x-files hat and got a picture with him and left. What? That's crazy. A man who can't move. Whoa! That is wild.

Then on he can just show his friend's pictures like, big X-Files fan Stephen Hawking, he agrees with me about aliens or whatever. I'm just assuming that's what he did with the photo. Wow. That's actually pretty, that's abuse

to put a hat on a person who can't take a picture with everything they can't get to it. Yes, yeah. A very good 90s joke in this. I wanted to see your utopia, but I see it as more

like a fruitopia. Yeah. Like. Yeah. I wonder how they taught his machine to say fruitopia. Like that word couldn't have been

in the program before, right? Yeah, right. that word couldn't have been in the program yeah right the i actually wrote down the name of the program it's called equalizer or at least that was a program he was using in the 90s it was made by the people who made word plus uh they they invented a text-to-speech program for him that was uh had like 2500 different words in it that he just selected with a switch he could manipulate with like one finger or just little wrist movements. Wow. Yeah. Before that, the way he dictated was family members would hold up alphabet cards and he would move his eyebrows for like, that's the letter I want. And then they just go back through the alphabet and like, okay,

move your eyebrows. Yeah. The technology really helped i mean without it he couldn't have done any of the whatever science thinks he did i don't know i'm not theoretical physics sure yeah i take your word for that uh but yeah this i mean this use of him here he appeared more than once on the show too a bunch of bunch of times. Yeah. He's a big fan of it. I think British people just love The Simpsons as well. So I think that's how they got him. His appearance though, well actually here, I'll play the clip first.

Your IQ is a mere 155 while mine is a muscular 170. I am smart. Much smarter than you. Hey Bert, you should all do what I say. My IQ is 199 for crying out laughing. 198, 197. Big deal.

My IQ is 280. Stephen Hawking! The world's smartest man. What are you doing here? I wanted to see your utopia. But now I see it as more of a fruitopia. I'm sure what Dr. Hawking means is... Silence. I don't need anyone to talk for me, except this voice box.

You have clearly been corrupted by power. For shame. Larry Flint is right! I don't know which is a bigger disappointment. My failure to formulate a unified field theory, or you. I don't know which is a bigger disappointment, my failure to formulate a unified field theory, or you. I don't like your tone. If you are looking for trouble, you found it. Yeah, just try me, you. Oh!

That's a good paint. That Larry Flint line, actually, that's my line of the show. I take it. That one is. Some guy he's never heard of. But yeah, he made a ton of appearances on the show, including a cameo in Mr. Lisa's Opus. Wow. Wow.

Wow. Isn't that the same one? Whoa. I think most of these listed are speaking roles, too, because some of them are like he's mentioned. I'm looking at your screen. That's a lot of appearances on the wiki there, man. Wow.

Yeah, you are totally... I was pointing at you, Jason, when he said it. That is a Star Trek theme. Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. I think he was doing the Star Trek Jason when he said it that is a Star Trek theme da da da da da da like that I think he was doing the Star Trek theme when he said the original? yeah yeah I heard it that

I don't know listeners let me know what you think but yeah Hawking Hawking had some good I mean also hearing Hawking say silence like interrupting someone with the word silence that's funny yeah I think all this and then the little silence that's funny yeah yeah i think all this and then the little scene at the bar is great i i think the escape in the it it becoming that the stakes are getting lisa out of a gazebo on a big robot arm and he's flying around that all is

like it's weird it's like pretty pretty mucky to me i think they wrote it without understanding like what the staging would be because because when Stephen Hawking saves Lisa, she can just run down the steps out of the gazebo. Right. There's nothing blocking her way. It's weird. The staging isn't really great for that. This episode's all about gazebos,

and gazebos being taken up for meetings. Also, think about how lame. They need a gazebo to go stand around In Ren Faire costumes This cannot be done anywhere else And then they collapse I don't know Too much gazebo politics

I wonder if they were going for something like An extra smart Paradise Lost kind of reference Of like, they tried, all they wanted was Gazebo 7 and now it's destroyed Because of their hubris And it does cost them G gazebo 7 and now it's destroyed because of their hubris and it does cost them his gazebo 7 story but i wonder does homer realize he is leading a lynch mob against his daughter like that's very weird when when he says like now is our chance get him like it's like your lisa's right there he's rewarded with beer for this scene. Yeah, yeah. It's Homer taking over his scene, for sure.

It's funny, this episode about Lisa ends with a fun Homer scene. Like, forget about Lisa. Right. She's literally tired of it. She's in the title, and yeah. Yeah. It's odd.

But yeah, I also do like, when they are about to attack, Carl says, let's make litter out of this litterati, and then they turn on him cause it's too, too clever. Yeah. That's a, that's a good joke.

But yeah, the, the saving of Lisa, it's just very, it, if it, it's one of those things that if it was in a tree house, I'd be like,

that's not too silly. But in a real life one, it is a little, it's a little much. Cause I'm still teetering at this point. I'm like, maybe it'll come back. And there's some funny scenes in this episode.

And then I, I do remember for the first time watching, like, dun, dun, Lisa flying away from a collab, just thinking, this isn't, I don't, this isn't the show. I mean, what's going on? It's a dark time. Yeah, I do. And also, they do a very, like, late, what I consider late Simpsons is when a famous person person appears, they just go like, person's name.

Nails on a chalkboard. I think it started as a joke. You'd say that on the Muppet Show. But then it became like, well, we have to identify this person. So here's the easiest way to do it. In case you don't know Stephen Hawking, somebody has to say Stephen Hawking. Wow. But yeah, then it just turned. You're right.

It is a very Muppet-y statement of a guest. Not long after this is like, NSYNC? Oh, very soon. Yep. That was close to. Actually, I think it was, for me, the one-two punch of Kid Rock and NSYNC. Have you done that Kid Rock? No, no.

That's a ways off. I apologize in advance. When is Mark McGuire? Who wants to see me hit some dingers? Well, the NSYNC one ends with a 9-11 style attack on Mad Magazine's headquarters. That's right. In the middle of New York, they blow up Mad Magazine.

I think that aired within six months of 9-11, I think. That's the one. That is the point of no return, the insect episode. Or maybe the kid rocks. Not for our listeners. For cowards, maybe. Yeah, we're going to stick in with this. Not us.

Not for you. You'll probably have fun talking about bad ones. We love talking about horrible rides. Yeah. So you have a lot to look forward to. Or horrible Green Goblin appearances. Yeah, I mean, that's, you know, I don't even know if I'd call it horrible I was going to say, I don't know if I'd say horrible

What'd you say about me? Oh my god, he's here Well, it's surprisingly easy to break into I learned a lot about Lil Abner Thanks to you guys We all did I spread the information through our podcast You guys have to look up Lil Abner

There was a brief, there was a Little Abner. It's amazing. There was a brief. There was a Little Abner theme park in Arkansas that we talked about for a very long episode because there was just so much to get into that ends in an ATV accident and the person who got in the accident being handed the keys to the park.

Nearly decapitated, right? Yes, nearly decapitated to make it up to him. You own the park you own this giant piece of land that you have to pay taxes on now congrats bye kid there is a three and a half hour irishman style uh uh movie about the life of al cap waiting to be made i totally agree unfortunately he would look like shit at the end of it. Like he was a maniac. Have we beat the Irishman with our running time yet? No, no, no. We've got another hour before we hit the Irishman's running time.

Let's settle in for this last scene. Yeah, we're going to have to talk about each frame individually. So yes, there's the second mob riot in the episode. They destroy Gazebo 7. Everything's falling apart. It is Walden two and how it's all gone to hell uh and then lisa uh they kind of have the moral of the story and then homer steals the ending from lisa here lisa thank god you're okay did you have fun with your robot buddy

oh dr hawking we had such a beautiful dream. Oh, Dr. Hawking. What went wrong? Don't feel bad, Lisa. Sometimes the smartest of us can be the most childish. Even you? No, not me. Never. I guess everyone has a different vision for the perfect world. Wow, Mom, that's very profound. Hey, you read that off my screen. Who's up for some beers?

I am. That's the smartest thing I've heard all day. Your theory of a donut-shaped universe is intriguing, Homer. I may have to steal it. Wow, I can't believe someone I never heard of

is hanging out with a guy like me. All right, it's closing time. Who's paying the tab? I am. I didn't say that. Yes, I did. Dope. so that's how lisa's episode ends apparently stephen hawking can drink that beer i wasn't sure what his uh he's able to drink but he has a beer with some of it is missing oh yeah i thought the joke was gonna be his beer is still

full because yeah or there'd be a straw in it yeah something like that i would think he does need a straw though in the world of simpsons his uh chair can do anything so maybe it just lifts the beer to his mouth or whatever uh we ask these questions someone has to but yeah the yeah lisa just gets her thing taken away also that uh he that's a joke his 280 iq his his iq apparently was like 160 like not even like extremely high but right yeah though that again maybe it's not the way to measure how smart somebody is perhaps but uh i i mean i bet steven hawking liked that uh maybe he even asked for like i want to drink a beer with homer like make a scene like that for me yeah michael jackson wanted to stay up with bart yeah i would write a song with him yeah just not supervised at all by parents because it's not weird it's just it's normal everybody should be more accepting of it yeah why did you have to bring it there i would just you know but it's not on disney plus yeah

fortunately yeah but yeah i couldn't believe this i had forgotten this episode ends at Moe's bar with Homer being punched by the robot. Like, that's the end. At the end, Homer gets punched by the glove. I don't know. There's something resembling its story here and a message here. Lisa should not have to apologize for the adults

who were the ones causing all the problems, right? Yeah. Well, she'll be president soon enough. Ten times. Yeah, in many different ways. She'll take care of it then. As we've all seen, the Simpsons predicted it. She'll be the Liz Warren and Liz... No.

I don't expect that. But I mean, this is a Bernard Brothers podcast, so that's our official stance. Now we've got to go harass people, right? I haven't done that yet today. We're all going harassing after this podcast. We all have to log back in.

Those Santas. Using my alts. It worked on Cop Mala, didn't it? This podcast is going to be so dated. Yeah. I mean, this comes out in two weeks, so it's all right. No one will remember her at that point. Yeah, I guess not.

But I guess any final thoughts on this episode, guys? Huh. Some jokes that I liked. My memory of it was not strong, I realized. Whereas, of course, the first so many seasons, it's burned in my brain. But, you know, there's jokes. I like jokes. Honestly, I like sunday joke the best

in the library i know that's a jason thing usually but i like that joke the best yeah it's out of character for you to want the sunday bar oh yeah yeah yeah i don't know i i remember liking it when it aired but like scott as you were spelling out the series of events like Like, as us now at this age, I am like, okay, yes, that heightens very quickly. That goes zero to 100 pretty quick by the end of the episode. And the Mensa crew doesn't come off super endearing. Which I think is the point, ultimately. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So at least they're saying like, this is not a pro-nerds show. It kind of, it hates slobs and snobs. The answer is somewhere in the middle. It's moderation, as it will be in our election, right? The most moderate person we can, for sure. It's Lisa commanded civility from all of us. The least exciting will win.

Please talk about Podcast the Ride, anything else you're working on, where we can find you on Twitter. And thanks for spending all your time here with us. Thank you. Oh, sure. We really appreciate having us. Thanks for having us. Yeah, I don't know.

Well, we're just Podcast the Ride on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram, but our podcast is available where podcasts are. And, yeah, we talk about theme parks, but a bunch of, as we've dropped, a bunch of weird random shit've dropped, a bunch of weird, random shit that's tangentially related, like the Green Goblin and this weird little Abner theme park. We have a Patreon that has content that I would say is a little more

theme park adjacent. McGruff musical career, the Ninja Turtles musical career, other people's musical career we'll get to, other spokes animals I think the timing would work out The Star Wars one

Oh yeah The Hyperspace Hoopla Oh boy Do you know about Hyperspace Hoopla? Well wait That's the one that has The disco Is that the disco one

Or is that a different I know the Christmas one It was a live show During Star Wars weekends In Florida Okay Where all your favorites come out And dance It was a live show during Star Wars weekends in Florida where all your favorites come out and dance. It was a big dance-off between the light and the dark in Star Wars. Oh, is that why I've seen GIFs of Darth Vader dancing on the Twitter?

Is that from this show? Could be. It's very possible, yeah. But you can get, yeah, there like Queen Amidala and Darth Vader Dancing and like to Lady Gaga Or something To Trouble Whatever's like the sort of like challenging

I used to love you song of the year They always dance to It sounds like close to the Bill and Ted shows You guys talked about It's a wholesome Bill and Ted There's a couple jokes to start, and then it really, especially in the later years, got just into a hardcore...

All music. Song after song after song, mixed with your Star Wars favorites. So that kind of thing. But also, hey, just theme park-y stuff. We're going to talk about Rise of the Resistance whenever we get to do it. It's open ahead of us in Orlando.

We're not going to go down just to do that. Although I was wondering if you guys were... I was picturing you might go in like, I. We're not going to go down just to do that. Although I was wondering if you guys were... I was picturing you might go and like, I think I'm just going to go. If I had more money, I was... Yeah, it's frustrating because I wanted to do it. I'm very jealous of everyone who's getting to do it now. So no, in a different scenario,

a different financial scenario, yeah, maybe. I go, well, the flight isn't that bad. I saw one of my old games press friends who, he's still in the press. He tweeted out a braggy photo of standing on that ride of getting to do the press ride of it this week. It was an effective photo of making me jealous. If we were invited to the press event, I may have justified it. But you're not just going to go and stand in a line and have it maybe break down we'll just suffer in Anaheim

we'll just wait for five hours we'll be there first day you say we meaning you and Jason yeah quick question if that means Scott yeah no Jason and I will go first day have to lay boundaries oh and also listeners

you guys will enjoy their podcast or as recent downtown disney ordeal oh boy 18 days of every uh thing that's been in downtown disney that ever did was there over 24 hours of content a full day's work previous simpsons guests uh talk previous talking simpsons guests have been on there like julie prescott and Nick Weiger. You can hear both of them. Yeah, it's been a lot of crossover. Yeah, I had a lot of fun with all of them. And yeah, yeah. And I swear we talk about

rides, too. We definitely do. Yes, we swear. Yeah. On the mansion we talk about. Yeah, thanks for having us, Phil. Yeah, thanks for coming on. Thank you. So thanks again to the Podcast The Ride guys, Scott Gairdner, Jason Sheridan, and Michael Carlson. Please check out their podcast, Podcast The Ride, and they've got a Patreon with all kinds of great exclusives so thanks again to the podcast the ride guys scott gartner jason sheridan and michael carlson please check out their podcast podcast the ride and they've got a patreon with all kinds of great

exclusives too but if you want to support our show and get every one of these episodes one week ahead of time and ad free please go to patreon.com slash talking simpsons and if you sign up at the five dollar level you'll get just that but also access to everything behind that five dollar paywall that includes too many things to list here but i will mention that you will get access to our mini series the most recent of which talking futurama season two part one is wrapping up right now so there's over a hundred bonus episodes on the patreon that you haven't heard if you're not on the patreon at patreon.com slash talking simpsons and henry can tell everybody out there what is happening at the ten dollar level extra long podcast once a month for our $10 patrons.

If you guys like hearing us talk about The Simpsons or animated series on What A Cartoon, you'll love hearing us talk about animated feature films on the What A Cartoon podcast, released once a month exclusively for our $10 and up patrons. You can hear a back catalog of tons of great films, but if you want to hear our most recent one, that's The Iron Giant, and you can only hear that in full if you're a ten dollar and up supporter at patreon.com slash talking simpsons so i've been one of your hosts bob mackie you can find me on twitter as bob servo my other podcast is retronauts a classic gaming podcast every monday and occasionally on friday go to retronauts.com

or look for retronauts in your podcast machine and you should be able to find it henry what about you you can follow me on twitter at h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g anytime new stuff goes up on our feeds i'm sure to tweet about it so you'll stay in the know if you follow me there and you should also follow on twitter at talk simpsons pod the official twitter account of this podcast and our network tons of cool stuff going on there so please follow both me h-e-n-e-r-e-y-g and at talk simpsons pod thanks so much for listening folks we'll see you next week for 30 minutes over tokyo we'll see you then Next up, Homer and his amazing Rattlenbacher Dreamcoat with a number he calls

Colonel Knowledge. I'm hot-buttered. Check it and see. I got a fever of 453. I'm hot, so very hot. For...