SUDDENLY SIMON

Sam SimonFormer Simpsons writer/producer/showrunner/developer/character designer Sam Simon, who still rakes in more than $10 million from the show every year, secretly bought a $2 million ship for the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a superteam of anti-whaling activists who are engaged in a war with Japanese whalers. The SSS Sam Simon, which is the group’s fourth ship, will be used to tie up the Japanese whalers’ ships (somehow?) and prevent them from harpooning any whales for supposed “scientific” reasons. So, basically Charlie’s Angels with Simon as Charlie, I guess?

[The Christian Science Monitor]

GABBIN' ABOUT GOD

dohGood news, they’re finally fining The Simpsons for making bad episodes! Well, ok, not The Simpsons directly. And it’s for blasphemy, not quality. But we can at least pretend!!!

Last week, Turkey’s Supreme Board of Radio and Television fined the Turkish broacaster CNBC-E (which I assume is not affiliated with the CNBC that employs Joey Ramone’s muse Maria Bartiromo) 52,951 Turkish Liras – or $29,593.15 in actual money – for airing last year’s Simpsons Halloween special, which featured a blasphemous depiction of God in a parody of Dexter. Here is a description of the segment courtesy of Wikisimpsons:

Ned Flanders drives through a seedy district of Springfield and starts doing lots of good chores, until he dumps a severed body into a local lake. Mr. Burns then drives up to dump nuclear waste in the lake and a large booming voice tells Ned to kill him. Ned does so and dumps the body in the lake too. Back at home, Ned gets ready to kill again when asked by who he thinks is God and also kills Sideshow Bob and Patty and Selma. He eventually finds out that Homer has been ordering these deaths, not God, and goes to kill Homer. Homer then burns Ned’s Bible and the real God comes along and strangles Homer to death. When Marge walks in, God blames Ned for the death. Marge asks God to put everything right but he says that the Devil wouldn’t like it, when he suddenly comes along and asks God to make him tea. Then, Maude Flanders comes along and asks the Devil to come back to bed, annoying Ned greatly.

Um, yeah.

This doesn’t bode well for the upcoming Turkish adaptation of God, The Devil, and Bob.

[The Hurriyet via BBC News]

WRITER WATCH

Matt SelmanSplitsider did a pretty good interview with current Simpsons writer (and rubbercat.net/simpsons reader) Matt Selman. About half of it is just plugging his latest episode, Homer the Hipster (which he’s already defending), but there’s still some good insights. Selman talks about his thoughts on a final episode, how those lazy layabouts Tom Gammill and Max Pross have finally – after being on the writing staff for over a decade – written an episode, how the staff tries to make sure the show doesn’t feel like a Jay Leno monologue (except, uh, when they actually do Leno monologues), and getting fired from Seinfeld. Then the interviewer gets him to tell the “Mayor of St. Louis” story, which is pretty funny:

It’s starting to get very awkward because he’s sort of addressing his whole speech to me and putting me on the spot and humiliating me and saying, “Who said this about East St. Louis? Have you ever been to East St. Louis?” I’m feeling very uncomfortable and awkward. ‘Oh man, I’m so dead.’ I unfortunately showed my true colors by selling out the others writers by saying that I didn’t write the joke in the show about East St. Louis [and] someone else wrote it [and] we all wrote it together, even though my name was on the script.

There you have it: by his own admission, Matt Selman is a gullible liar, a man who should not be trusted, but is also incredibly trusting. So dark, the duplicity of man.

[Splitsider]

THE INSIDE SCOOP

brand new episode*spins around in chair to face reader* Oh, hello! I just got off the telegraph with a trusted, completely anonymous tipster, who resides at 271 Orange Grove Ave. in Burbank, CA, who has once again risked life and limb to bring us more EXCLUSIVE Simpsons tidbits that the shiftless layabouts at Entertainment Weekly still haven’t gotten their grubby meathooks on yet. Below, please find enclosed four exclusive, never-before-seen episode synopsi, reprinted in their entirety…

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