Smartphones! They're all the rage now! The iPhone, the Android platform, and the upcoming Microsoft Windows Live Zune Phone 7 Series are all beautiful mobile operating systems that have dramatically raised the bar for OH GOD WHAT THE HELL IS THIS

AHUJ9BLJ8qwuyr8913h9h31oKjklajsfas;; [AndroidZoom via Sx2]

Bongo Comics, the independent comic book company owned by Matt Groening, has finally joined the 1990s and will launch a website tomorrow, which will feature news items, blog posts, and, most amazing of all, a list of "all Matt Groening's comic-book, trade-book, and calendar publications." Bongo, which publishes Simpsons, Futurama, and NewsRadio comics, has owned the domain www.bongocomics.com since 1996 but until now only used it for e-mail purposes.

Still no word on the long-dormant MattGroening.com, which has been "under construction" since 2000. [The Beat]

Here is the late, great comics legend Harvey Pekar homerized for his 70th birthday by longtime Simpsons director David Silverman:

Coincidentally, Dan Castellaneta (voice of Homer) portrayed Pekar in a stage adaptation of his long-running comic American Splendor. [SMITH Magazine via Twitter]

Huffington Post blogger Harry Shearer was once again hosed by the TV gods, who failed to nominate him for a prestigious "Emmy" orange blimp award in the category of "Best Voice-Talkin' Guy." Shearer, voice of Mr. Burns, Smithers, Lenny, and Principal Skinner, among others, has only been nominated in that category once (in 2009) and is the only regular Simpsons cast member to have not won it (the others somehow all won in 1992, WTF?). Dan Castalleneta (Homer), Hank Azaria (Moe), and Anne Hathaway (the princess in that godawful 20th anniversary episode) are nominated this year along with Seth Green, Dave Foley, and Coach McGuirk. [Los Angeles Times]

• A bunch of BORT stuff is being sold on the one-step-above-Cafepress online retailer Zazzle. Now you can wrap your baby in obscure Simpsons references! (source)
• A frequently-updated Simpsons tumblr called my son is also named bort quietly opened last month.
• Detective Bort is on the case.
• Searching for Bort on Wikisimpsons will lead you to a disambiguation page, lest you mistake the younger Bort for the older Bort. (source)
• My Ruby on Rails application is also called Bort.
• Are you on TEAM BORT? Stock up on team apparel. (source)
• Apparently "BORT" has been co-opted as a term for creepy Bart-Sideshow Bob fanart (Bob x Bart = BORT). Enthusiasts have set up a page on DeviantART. Ok I think I'm done with bort now

Back in 2002, a more innocent time when we were told Saddam Hussein could attack us again at any moment, Futurama was on death watch. Since its premiere, Fox had shuffled its timeslot multiple times, and it eventually wound up in the 7 o'clock hour, the almost-but-not-quite-primetime hour where TV shows go to die (bad news for American Dad) and football pre-emptions occur every other week. Together with a lack of advertising and the fact that it was a niche show to begin with, Futurama could only manage to wring out a pitiful 6.4 million viewers when the show was mercifully put out to pasture by Fox.

In 2010, The Simpsons, which has held the same timeslot for sixteen straight seasons and has always had the full support of the network, recieved 5.74 million viewers for its season finale, which featured guest appearances by four American Idol judges and host Ryan Seacrest. [No Homers Club/Media Life Magazine]

Comic book company Bongo Comics is rolling out a five-issue comic book miniseries called Comic Book Guy: The Comic Book, centering around comic book guy Comic Book Guy, the once-funny Simpsons character who got overused and is now just plain irritating. [TFAW.com]

A top-secret informant has come forward with the plots of several upcoming episodes that will air in the upcoming 22nd season:

The Maude Squad
Maude Flanders returns to Springfield through an emergency exit door in Heaven

My Son Is Also Named A-Bort-ion
An old flame leads Marge to make a shocking revelation. Meanwhile Homer is tricked into becoming a pissboy. Jon Lovitz reprises his role as Jay Sherman.

Now You See It, Now You Donut
A diet hypnotist makes Homer blind to fatty foods. Guest starring Mel Brooks and Rep. Joe Wilson.

Kenya Feel It?
At Grampa's urging the Simpsons travel to Hawaii to find President's birth certificate.

Love Hack
Lisa starts a successful web 2.0 startup only have her code stolen by Mark Zuckerberg. Homer constructs a tin roof. Guest starring Justin Long and Jon Hodgman, with Heidi Montag and Kim Kardashian as "shack sluts"

Feel free to send us your hot Simpsons tips by e-mail (simpsons@rubbercat.net) or by Twitter (@rubbercatsimp). We take great pains to ensure the anonymity of our sources. [Twitter.com/virgiltexas]

In a stunning rebuke to global warming, the Dachstein Ice Palace in Austria is set to unveil its new copyright-infringing ice sculpture of TV's the Simpsons today, or at least that's all I could extrapolate from this article:

Die Eiskünstler Hans Böhmer (Mitarbeiter der Dachsteingletscher-Bahn), Christian Schmid und Sebastian Zörweg haben in den letzten Wochen mehr als 4 Tonnen Kunsteis und 9 Tonnen Gletschereis verarbeitet, um die Simpsons in Lebensgröße so realistisch wie möglich zu schnitzen. Ab Samstag, den 12. Juni können alle Gäste auf der wohl berühmtesten Couch der Fernsehgeschichte gemeinsam mit der Familie Simpson Platz nehmen. Neu ist auch der Fotopoint im Dachstein Eispalast. Besteigen Sie den Eis- Thron und fühlen Sie sich für ein paar Augenblicke wie ein König in dieser frostig - faszinierenden Eiswelt. Dazu Dachstein-Geschäftsführer Ernst Trummer: "Der Eispalast ist seit dem 1. Tag eine Erfolgsgeschichte. Um weiterhin für unsere vielen Besucher attraktiv zu bleiben, haben wir heuer alle Figuren neugeschnitzt und die Eis-Säle neu gestaltet".

You should watch the video, particularly the moment at 1:54. [SimpsonsNews.de]

Still no word on a twenty-third season of The Simpsons... hmm.... [A.V. Club]

Of the many little things I detest about the new HD opening sequence - the egregious fanservice, the flow-killing Ralph moment, the inexplicable downgrading of Mr. Burns to "background character seen during whip-pan" - my biggest gripe is with the scene where Maggie is scanned. In the original, Marge becomes extremely concerned when she realizes Maggie is gone, she swivels around with her hair accentuating her movement, then she lets out a big sigh of relief when Maggie pops out of the bag. It's a nice little moment of character animation, which you can see here in this crude gif I put together (framegrabs shamelessly taken from No Homers Club poster Wooster):

In the new one, Marge doesn't really react at all - her head jerks around, her slight frown changes to a slight smile, and then she blinks while Maggie exchanges a shaking of fists with The One-Eyebrowed Baby (ughhh):

Aye carumba, Marge really did become a robot!

Anyway, the reason I'm posting about this now is because I only recently discovered this rather candid journal entry by Dane Romley, one of the animators who worked on it. Turns out he hates the Marge thing too!

This whole scene was mine. I didn't like what they did where they cut pieces of body parts and moved them in the computer ie. Maggie's head etc. It looks like it was done in flash. About the Marge turn, I had originally done a version where she did a nice head turn but, again, they didn't want it. "Just have a simple head turn because we want the joke to be Maggie and the unibrow baby," they told me. I didn't know they were going to stiffen it up that much, I'm just defending myself because that seems to be the first thing people mention is Marge. They kept my Maggie scan and popping out of the bag though and in my defense they added the fist shaking later, I didn't do those 2 drawing cycle *eck*

Here's an interesting interview with former-ish animator Jay Robinson, about the highs and lows of working in television animation.

THE LOWS

• There's no job security; people in TV animation get laid off when their work is done and may or may not get rehired for the next go-around. Robinson says he was laid off 3-4 times. He, along with 39 other people, get laid off for good last November.

THE HIGHS

• Robinson's work still hangs in poster form at Von D's Hollywood shop; Metallica lead singer James Hetfield told him his work inspires the band; and [Bam] Margera sent him a letter, thanking him for the sketch of a nude skateboarding Bart Simpson clad in Margera's tattoos.




• "We spent the next two hours drawing characters on bar napkins for drinks. It's a great girl-gettin' job."

[Duluth News Tribune via Sx2]

Hey, you! Do you know who Mark Zuckerburg is? If not, you soon will, because 2010 is the Year of Zuck! He's the cat who made the popular Friendster clone Facebook, which is currently in "hot water" for selling all of its users' personal information to the Taliban in exchange for drugs. The outrage is so widespread that it even made the cover of Time Magazine, which is apparently considered a big deal!

As the face of Facebook (I hope you enjoyed this phrase!!! I stayed up all night writing it!!!), you can expect to see the Zuckster's mug - which by the way used to be in the goddamn logo seriously what kind of weird egomaniac does that - all over the place in news story after news story as this privacy brouhaha continues into the summer. If we're lucky, we might even see him look remorseful and say he's really sorry, just like the CEOs of Goldman Sachs, Toyota, and BP!

Then, in the fall, an unflattering movie based on an unflattering book about Zuckerburg, his creepy mentor The Napster Guy, and the creation of Facebook will hit theaters, bringing his extreme jerkiness and unethical behavior to the attention of general audiences. And it's in 3-D! Even if you don't plan on seeing it, Hollywood's relentless marketing juggernaut will ensure you'll see fake-Zuckerburg's face everywhere (except maybe on Facebook?).

Finally, if that wasn't enough, Zuckerburg will guest star as himself (!) on The Simpsons (possibly to soften his image after public perception of him takes a beating?). This is surprisingly timely for a show that took seven years to do an episode about 9/11! For once, The Simpsons is actually jumping on a trend while it's still sort of hot; it's pretty amazing they didn't go with Tom from MySpace. Could The Simpsons become culturally relevant again...? (Haha, no. They just did an episode about the Patriot Act, so I suspect it's only a matter of time before Bart joins a flash mob.)

Anyway, shortly thereafter The Year of Zuck will conclude with Zuckerburg being thrown into a volcano after America grows sick of him, the end.

NOTE: This manga review is courtesy of our news partner, AnimeJihad.

[MONTHLY MANGA REVIEW: BART SIMPSON #52]

An animated television series based on the 2004 film Napoleon Dynamite is currently in development at Fox, a network spokesperson has confirmed to FishbowlLA.

Since Fox only does cartoons on Sundays, and there's a limited number of timeslots, could this cartoon replace The Simpsons after it's cancelled next year?? And what of Bob's Burgers??? Developing... [FishbowlLA]

The beloved long-running series that forever changed the face of television, Law & Order, has been cancelled after 20 years and 456 episodes. Although the show and its spinoffs is a billion dollar franchise, ratings had fallen to eight million viewers. [New York Times]

On an upcoming episode of Top Chef Masters (May 12 on Bravo) some top chefs have to chef up some foods for Simpsons characters, which will be judged by Matt Groening, Hank Azaria and writer Matt Selman:

There are starving people in the world and we're making food for cartoon characters??? Is whatever the hell this is becoming mainstream??? [Monsters and Critics]

UPDATE: Oh man I totally thought this was an upcoming episode but it actually aired before I posted this... I should really check my simpsons google alerts more often

I have no energy to comment on The Simpsons's Poochiesque stab at relevancy, so here's a roundup of what the rest of the Internet had to say about it:

Warming Glow pronounced The Simpsons dead:

Add me to the long list of hacks who have declared the Simpsons "dead." We have declared it dead upwards of a dozen times since the September 28, 1997 Seymour Skinner episode, but until the show finally dies, this descriptor has not and will not be any more appropriate than it is in the wake of last night's opening credits.

PopCrunch enjoyed it:

Even if you hate Tik Tok, you've got to admit The Simpsons intro is pretty clever.

Twitter user stevend, not so much:

wow that was the most disgraceful couch gag ever on the simpsons. seeing springfield sing a ke$ha song has got me to reconsider suicide.

Gawker said, "What the more recent seasons of The Simpsons have lacked in terms of comedic creativity, they've made up for with wacky intros." What???

New York was delighted but perplexed:

Despite the music, it's pretty delightful. As far as we can tell, though, this is the first time Danny Elfman's theme has been replaced with a contemporary pop song, so it's slightly baffling that would have chosen this one to make history with.

TwentyFourBit declared it an epic winz0r FTW:

The Simpsons brought the lulz tonight with a lip dub of Ke$ha's "Tik Tok" as their intro theme song, and though I'll admit to not LOLing IRL until Nelson Muntz belts out the ridiculous chorus, this is the one time you won't regret revisiting a song from the reigning poet laureate (sarcasm!) of pop.

Videogum officially declared itself done with The Simpsons:

I'm pretty sure this means we are done with The Simpsons. Bye, The Simpsons! I will continue to not have watched you in years!

The creator of iCarly loved it!!!

Twitter user ACHkris laid down an ultimatum:

Dear simpsons- NEVER USE A KESHA SONG IN PLACE OF THE INTRO EVER AGAIN OR WE ARE THROUGH.

Finally, andPOP won Headline of the Year with Tik Tok: The countdown Until 'The Simpsons' are Cancelled:

Either Matt Groening has finally run out of ideas for America's longest running show or Ke$ha broke into his house and offered to blow him. Either way, the choice to use 'Tik Tok' as a substitute for the Simpsons theme song was a scary indication that no one is safe. Even an American institution, with over two decades of immense popularity, is vulnerable to Ke$ha's infectious auto-tuned pop hooks.

While researching "SIMPSONS ALUMNI UPDATE 2010," I learned that former Simpsons writer Dana Gould used the pseudonym "Lawrence Talbot" on the "Simpsons Go To China" episode where Aunt Selma buys a Chinese baby who has never been mentioned since. Gould's use of a pseudonym struck me as peculiar: was it because of some legal thing? Could it be that a writer who started in the post-funny era could actually be so ashamed of his work that he would want to distance himself from it? What's the point of using a pseudonym when the genuinym is so easily findable on the Internet?

Now, IN THE NEWS is a Very Serious News Organization that takes great pride in its journalistic integrity - here is my real, actual, not-making-this-up press badge - and so, for answers, I went straight to the source: the only e-mail address I could find on his website.

From: simpsons@rubbercat.net
To: info@danagould.com
Date: Sat, Mar 20, 2010
Subj: lawrence talbot

dear mr. gould

i have a press inquiry: why did u use a pseudonym for the simpsons episode "goo goo gai pan"? or is wikipedia got it's facts wrong.

thanx

urs in christ,
adam
http://rubbercat.net/simpsons/news

From: simpsons@rubbercat.net
To: info@danagould.com
Date: Thu, Apr 8, 2010
Subj: press inquiry

Dear Sir Or Madam Whom It May Concern:

On the 20th of March I sent a press inquiry to this address, which as of this writing has not garnered a reply. I shall rephrase and repeat the question in hopes of an answer: why did Mr. Gould choose to use the pseudonym "Lawrence Talbot" for the The Simpsons episode entitled "Goo Goo Gai Pan" (production code #GABF06, original airdate 13 March 2005)?

I am an important member of The Press and I will not rest until I get an answer. A simple "no comment" will suffice. You may answer "off the record" if that is more palatable to you.

Yours in Christ,

Adam
Head Journalist, IN THE NEWS
http://rubbercat.net/simpsons/news

From: simpsons@rubbercat.net
To: info@danagould.com
Date: Fri, Apr 23, 2010
Subj: ultimatum

I've had it!!! Twice I have e-mailed this address for a simple answer as to why Dana Gould used the pseudonym Lawrence Talbot, and I STILL have gotten no response! WHAT ARE YOU HIDING, DANA GOULD? If I don't get a response by April 30th, I will have no choice but to go public with unfounded rumours and speculation about Mr. Gould. YOU CANNOT HIDE FROM THE PRESS.

Adam
http://rubbercat.net/simpsons/news

Needless to say, I still have yet to receive a response from Mr. Gould or his associates.

So why is this guy, Dana Gould, hiding behind a fake name and stonewalling the fourth estate? Here are my theories:

• Dana Gould murdered a teenage girl during a trip to China
• Dana Gould shot up an entire orphanage
• Dana Gould was fired from Fox because of his rampant drug abuse
• Dana Gould is the reason The Simpsons is so bad now
• Dana Gould was ashamed of his name after discovering it is an anagram for "analog dud"
• Dana Gould was incarcerated at the time (prisoners are not allowed to write for TV)
• Dana Gould is a deadbeat dad attempting to hide his TV revenue from his ex-wife
• Dana Gould was in possession of evidence that could have brought down the Bush Administration
• Dana Gould was put into witness protection after seeing a mafia guy kill a dude
• Dana Gould's body is the current soul vessel for the entity once known as "Andy Kaufman"

No denials as of yet... hmmm....