UNSOLVED T.V. MYSTERIES

When I was a kid I just assumed Hey Arnold! took place in New York, until I noticed that the city's name is never mentioned. I figured that was the end of that chapter.... but I was wrong!

According to a bunch of fansites, it's... Hillwood City???

CASE CLOSED.

P.S. Speaking of Hey Arnold!, watch this

PREVIOUSLY: Where does Clarissa Explains It All take place?; Are Mr. Tastee and Artie The Strongest Man In The World the same person?

I've been playing this song a lot over the past two days. It's one of my favorite musicians doing a cover to the theme song of one of my favorite movies

Repo Man - Frank Black (note: I think this will only play in full once so play wisely)

My Christmas shopping is done!

I'm getting everybody this:

BREAKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF HOLLYWOOD!!!

***ITEM!!!*** The car from Knight Rider just plowed into a Yoshinoya!!!

In honor of Thanksgiving Day, here is a sketch for an Independence Day Anthropomorphic Republican Talking Duck comic that I never got around to doing:

WHERE IS THE BUTTERBALL

Sir, if you would just put down the gun, I would be more than happy to assist y-

WHERE IS THE BUTTERBALL

Here! Here's your goddamn turkey! Just take it and go!

WHERE IS THE CRANBERRY SAUCE

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sorta eerie panel from a simpsons comic book that came out shortly before the episode where maude flanders died:

what was it about maude that made her so irresistibly killable?

It's here!!! The highly-awaited fourth installment of my screenplay and soon-to-be megahit blockbuster, Funnie Business!! Here's a sneak peek preview:

DOUG (VOICEOVER)

Roger Klotzini. Head of the Klotzini crime family. Big time pest, big time rat. He and his mob goons infest this city like a... like a huge zit on your nose on the night of a big dance.

Sounds exciting!!!! Go read the rest now!!!

Man do I love this guy's political cartoons

(click for make big)

I was reading Infinite Jest over the summer and then I stopped and then I started again and then I stopped again. Anyway this list assumes there aren't any funny character names in the parts I haven't gotten to yet

Top 5 Infinite Jest Character Names
Petropolis Kahn Mildred Bonk-Green Ann Kittenplan Molly Notkin Cosgrove Watt

New Anthropomorphic Republican Talking Duck???!!!???

twitter owns because sometimes you can get famous people to respond to you

GREAT MOMENTS IN CHILDREN'S LITERATURE

"Yo!" shouted Stacey. "Look out there! In the middle of the lake."
"Yo?" repeated Mal.
"She's from New York," I heard Kristy say to Mal, who nodded knowingly.

- The Baby-sitters Club Super Special #8: Baby-sitters at Shadow Lake

I like that Matlock's existence can be summarized as being a Simpsons reference

haha does anyone remember when the president of the united states was forced to publicly deny wanting to kill old people

LATE NIGHT WEEK!!!

Carson Daly/Chelsea Lately/George Lopez/Wanda Sykes

ATTENTION WHITE MALES: WE HAVE COME TO TAKE YOUR LATE NIGHT HOSTING JOBS

Here is a somewhat Controversial Opinion: Last Call with Carson Daly is not awful. I watched it recently (which, I should probably point out, I don't intend on doing again), and I don't know when they switched from Carson Daly in a studio failing to make an audience laugh to Carson Daly wandering around some city, but the amount of difference it makes is incredible. When it was announced that Jay Leno would be decimating NBC's primetime schedule, they made a big deal about how his new show was going to be totally different from The Tonight Show and they were going to get rid of the desk (!!!), only for it to turn out to be a near-exact clone of The Tonight Show with a slightly less prominent desk (...). Last Call, however, actually followed through with big changes (which you will be reminded of approximately 50 times via the words "NO DESK. NO TITLE. NO RULES." continuing to pop up throughout the show) that really help distinguish the show from the preceding dozen talk shows. Suddenly, Daly's complete lack of charisma isn't as noticeable when it's just him and a celebrity without a studio audience present, the increased focus on music highlights his ostensible connection to the music industry (remember when this guy was popular and hosted MTV's last music show???), and he doesn't have to do godawful comedy segments about MySpace anymore. Weaknesses are diminished, strengths are highlighted - I never thought I would say this, but Conan, Leno and Fallon could probably learn from Carson Daly.

Anyway, I apologize for a week of Late Night Talk Show Opinions, but after watching ¾s of The Larry Sanders Show I find the whole late night wars thing to be bizarrely fascinating

LATE NIGHT WEEK!!!

Jimmy Fallon

The problem is that he's too normal

LATE NIGHT WEEK!!!

Craig Ferguson

This is probably the best late night show right now although I'm getting kinda tired of it

LATE NIGHT WEEK!!!

Jimmy Kimmel

I have never watched this dude's show but I bet it sucks!!!

LATE NIGHT WEEK!!!

Conan O'Brien

A list of my demands: 1. Cut down on the monologue 2. Bring back the short sketch between the first and second guests 3. More characters 4. Let Andy sit on the couch 5. S&M Lincoln 6. Bring back the "weird cable channels" sketch 7. Bring back the dance

If my demands are not met I will destroy the Eisenhower mug

LATE NIGHT WEEK!!!

David Letterman

DAVID LETTERMAN IS A BAD MAN

LATE NIGHT WEEK!!!

Jay Leno

I have been been trying to figure out a way to get Jay Leno into Anthropomorphic Republican Talking Duck so I can do a gag where his chin is three times the height of the comic and extends past the panel borders. I had an idea for a story arc where Anthropomorphic Republican Talking Duck is kicked out of his comic strip and replaced by "Rachel Meadowlark" and in one comic he commiserates in a bar about being replaced by a cocky young upstart, and Jay Leno & George W. Bush (each with a big glass of beer) say something like "You're telling me!!!" but I abandoned it. Someday, Leno.... someday.

As you may know, Geocities closed down on October 26th, taking along with it a decade or so of internet history. Frankly, the idea that kids today might grow up without the knowledge of Netscape, marquee tags, or embedded midis frightens me. Taking swift action, I managed to save a handful of great Geocities sites before the big closure, which I am preserving on a new subdomain - hosted.rubbercat.net - so that the humble, tacky and wonderfully sublime world of 1990s web design may be saved for future generations.

Here's what I managed to save:

• Morph Zone (from Jake's Animorph Site, formerly located here) - Remember Animorphs? They were the books that everybody read after Goosebumps and before Harry Potter that was also a TV show at one point. Check all these sick-ass morphin gifs!!!
• Charles Bukowski Ate My Balls! (formerly located here) - Before All Your Base, Chuck Norris and lolcats, "       Ate My Balls!" was the big internet phenomenon/meme/whatever-you-call-it-now on the scene. Here is an example of a typical "ate my balls" site, starring famous writer Charles Bukowski.
• THE REALM OF THE CITADEL - Jonathan Taylor Thomas Chamber (formerly here) - JTT!!! This tween (?) heartthrob was the crush of every girl until his mysterious disappaearance flying over the central Pacific Ocean. Come relive the JTT dynasty with this fansite featuring billion pictures of him and an embedded midi!
• THE REALM OF THE CITADEL - Joseph Gordon-Levitt Chamber (formerly here) - Sure, you know him from Brick and 500 Days of Summer, but did you know that Joseph Gordon-Levitt was once a sitcom teen heartthrob? It's true!
• Dominic's Late Night with Conan O'Brien Shrine (formerly here) - It's cool that Conan and Andy are back together on The Tonight Show but it's good to remember where it all began
• Magic Pat's Tricks (formerly here) - I have no idea who this Pat guy is, but his tricks are amazing!

More to come....???

rubbercat.net/simpsons - In The News (10/17/2009):

On November 8th, The Simpsons will be replaced by an episode of Family Guy, which will then be followed by a 30-minute "variety special" starring Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane and featuring integrated advertisements for the upcoming Windows 7 operating system. [Variety via A.V. Club]

Endgadget (10/26/2009):

Microsoft's decided to pull out of its co-sponsoring of "Family Guy Presents: Seth & Alex's Almost Live Comedy Show" after execs attending the taping came to the sudden conclusion that Family Guy-caliber jokes were to be told, tackling such topics as "deaf people, the Holocaust, feminine hygiene and incest."

Google News (11/04/2009):

Results 1 - 10 of about 455 for the-Holocaust-feminine-hygiene. (0.04 seconds)

...does anyone find it weird and perverse that we equate vagina jokes with Holocaust jokes?

A Haiku for Sarah Palin

haha does anyone remember back in 2006 when every single pundit in the media portrayed Joe Lieberman being challenged by Ned Lamont in a Democratic primary election as a liberal inquisition???

Your favorite Simpsons fansite, rubbercat.net/simpsons, has been updated a little bit. Speaking of The Simpsons (see how seamless that transistion was??), 2009's been a surprisingly good year for Simpsons-related products:

• Simpsons stamps: I like these so much that I liberally borrowed the color scheme for rubbercat.net/simpsons's header image thing. They're actually drawn by Matt Groening (even though they're pretty much the only piece of Simpsons merchandise that doesn't have his signature on it) and they have a lot of spunk and liveliness, unlike most official Simpsons drawings these days where there's a lot of shadows and shit that makes everything look soulless and plastic.
• The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History by John Ortved: This is a great book to read if you're the kind of Simpsons dork who listens to all the DVD audio commentaries. It's a tell-all book, so it gets pretty catty at points, plus it kinda skimps out on everything post-Season 3, but it's got some amazingly hilarious anecdotes, like this one about classic writer John Swartzwelder (told by former writer Jennifer Crittenden):

  He told me he got his exercise by running from wherever he was to wherever he needed to go. I guess just sort of integrate random bursts of sweaty cardio into his day. Anyway, when I was on Seinfeld, I pitched that as a Kramer story, a few times actually, and no one ever liked it. They always thought it was too crazy, no one would ever do that.

• Treehouse of Horror #15: Not sure if this is still out, since it's after Halloween and all, but if you can find this comic book you should most definitely buy it. It's guest-edited by Sammy Harkham, editor of the avant garde comics anthology Kramer's Ergot (the latest volume of which was a huge monstrosity), and he brought along with him a bunch of cool, hip alt-comics people like Ben Jones of Paper Rad, Jordan Crane, C.F., Kevin Huizenga, and Jeffrey Brown. Lots of great art and creative stories, definitely the best Simpsons thing in at least a decade. My favorite one is "Boo-tleg" by Ben Jones (pictured, above), which is insane and other-worldly but somehow still Simpsons-y.

goddog?