Everyone knows the sun never shows until the end of winter

[vovat]

I believe yesterday was the vernal equinox. If not, today is. Either way, happy spring. The weather has been warming up as of late, but I wouldn't be too surprised to get an April snowstorm or something, because the weather is crazy like that. Actually, I heard it was supposed to snow last night, and it didn't, which was good.

Last night's Simpsons episode wasn't great, but it wasn't bad, either. Like last week, there was a lot of Homer getting hurt, but at least this time it was for a reason. Still, Homer's hand in the paper shredder was going a bit far, I think. Anyway, the basic premise was another "Homer and Marge's marriage in jeopardy" kind of deal, but, although there have been plenty of episodes about marital strife and about the family's problems with money, I can't recall them ever temporarily splitting up over financial issues before. There wasn't really anything side-splittingly hilarious in the episode, but there were plenty of funny moments. I liked the Flanders' sinister Jesus hallucination, some of the discount products Marge bought, and Homer's note on the Flintstones Fun Map. (Incidentally, an Ask Jeeves search for "Is Dino short for dinosuar?" revealed that it was, but not on a page relating to the Flintstones.) Interestingly, the last time Homer and Marge split up, Weird Al appeared on the show. This time, they played a They Might Be Giants song at the end. Maybe next time, XTC will be used in some capacity. {g} Anyway, I do wonder whether the use of TMBG confirms the rumors that Matt Groening is a fan. Not that Matt decides on every single music cue, but I think NRBQ appeared on the show several times because he liked them, so I don't know.

I also watched last week's American Idol, where the theme was the sixties. One of the girls commented that she was born in the eighties, so she didn't know that many songs from the sixties. What, she never listened to anything from before she was born? Then Ryan Seacrest said something about how, since the songs were from the sixties, they would be new to a lot of the contestants. Seriously, how culturally illiterate do you have to be to not know any songs from the sixties, regardless of how old you are?

Comments

[zaph.livejournal.com]

Last night's Simpsons episode wasn't great, but it wasn't bad, either.

really? hrm. During the whole episode I was rolling my eyes and thinking 'This has to be the worst episode they've ever made.' I thought it was absolutely horrendous. Homer was for more ridiculously stupid than usual, and the whole premise was just absurd, as was the ending. I mean, really. I found it terribly unrealistic, even for the Simpsons.

[tisok.livejournal.com]

the premise was absurd, but it had enough funny moments to elevate it to "decent" status.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I don't know that it was all THAT absurd, as far as The Simpsons goes. In a way, it was actually more realistic than usual, in that Homer actually had to face the consequences of his reckless spending and accident-prone nature. And it's not that unrealistic that Homer and Marge would fight over money. Homer's living in an RV was pretty ridiculous, but, well, there was another time when they split up and he lived in Bart's treehouse, so it's a bit more believable than that. And yeah, the ending made no sense, but I thought it was a funnier nonsense ending than some (the "surf's up" bit in "The Great Money Caper," and the ending party in the recent rap episode, for instance).

[tisok.livejournal.com]

i'd say they're more fan wet dreams than rumors. i haven't heard it from any source other than someone saying "omg it would be cool if..." or "well, uh, based on his humor, i think he must be!"

i agree with you on all other simpsons episode points, and raise you a "spider poison is people poison?!?!"

[loz]

Even if Matt's not a TMBG fan, I bet several of the writers and directors are.


I seriously cannot imagine not knowing any songs from the 60s... and I was born in the 80s. I know songs from the 1660s for goodness sakes. Culturally illiterate indeed.

[revme.livejournal.com]

I kinda think Matt Groening is, just because he tends to be into that sort of music. One of his pre-Simpsons careers was Music Critic and all. He actually wrote a book-type-thing on the Residents, even. (It was the Fan Club Book, which had a longish essay by him, and then I think it was mainly discography-type information and stuff like that. This was back ~1979.) So, I'd wager that if Matt Groening weren't a TMBG fan, he'd at least have been aware of them from the beginning.

Seriously, though, it's kinda interesting to read him going on about music (which is does too rarely now...), because he's got pretty good tastes. (Read: Match mine pretty decently.)

I'd really dig it if he did a CD like the Powerpuff Girls' Heroes and Villains disc, because Craig McCracken chose all those bands and there's only one song on there I don't like, and maybe one other than that I'm sorta indifferent to.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I've never heard the Heroes and Villains CD all the way through, but I've really liked what I've heard. "Don't Look Down" was my first introduction to the Sugarplastic.

[revme.livejournal.com]

Heroes and Villains is pretty much the only compilation-of-that-sort CD that I've ever seen that's actually Basically Good all the way through. Usually, it'll be one song by one awesome band, and that song will often be of Decent-But-Not-Hit-Single-Or-Anything-Quality, and the rest will be crap. (Hence "the compilation scam" a/k/a "what P2P was designed for") But Heroes and Villains is pretty much all really good, AND actually works as an album. It's pretty amazing. It was also my second introduction to the Sugarplastic. (My first was coming across "Don't Sleep" on a random compilation at my college radio station, and listening to it; IIRC, it also had the Ween remix of Yoko Ono's "Ask The Dragon" on it. Those are the only two things I remember. I think it might have been an old CMJ disc, actually, back when they sent them in jewelcases.)

The City of Soundsville soundtrack-ish CD is also really cool. It's the opposite problem of a lot of techno -- where most techno takes about 2 minutes of idea and stretches it out to 7, the tracks on City tend to take stuff that could easily be 7 minutes of awesome and cram it into 2.

The other PPG CD, uh Power Pop or something, I don't have but, um, I've heard most of the non-swiped-from-Heroes-stuff, and it's pretty fucking awful. It's basically obvious that it was a Cash-In, rather than something Craig McCracken had anything to do with. Mainly because it's a bunch of shitty, shitty manufactured pop bands. (Like that goddawful "That's What Girls Do" song by Play.) Presumably his only input was to force them to put on the Shonen Knife track from Heroes.

(I'm still amused that you could tell he was forced to put "That's What Girls Do" in the PPG film, because it was buried after a new, awesome version of the theme by bis, and then the Frank Black song in the credits sequence after most people have left the theatre. The only cooler thing is that the Spongebob Movie, despite having "OMG AVRIL LAVIGNE THEME SONG LOL!!!1111" in all the ads _actually didn't have the Avril Lavigne version of the theme in it_. The Trailer Ad was referring to the soundtrack CD only.)