What do white supremacists think about The Simpsons? It's the question that's been on everybody's mind. Well, okay, maybe just one person's. About four years ago, a former member of the No Homers Club message board decided to "infiltrate" the white supremacist board Stormfront and ask the posters there directly for their take on the long-running show. The resulting thread (click at your own risk) is very informative.

After some initial questioning of whether the yellow-skinned characters are actually white, the conversation gets into full swing. Karl Lueger took a hard stance, calling the show "jewish subversion... simply designed to create self-loathing and hatred for anything White." Others weren't so sure. After all, says White Pride Warrior, "[t]hey did an episode once where they made fun of feminist, white male hating, liberal college professors." Plus, the Jewish characters aren't shown "in a good light either;" Marge's prom date Artie Ziff "is shallow, self centered, greedy, and weaker than Lisa." bill kwacker posted a photo of show creator Matt Groening, mentioning "he looks kind of Jewy." However, self-proclaimed Nazi punk MisanthroPunk disagreed with that assertion, saying "[Stormfront] members see jews everywhere." Oh, those guys and their anti-Semitism! WastedPunk laments the show's decline, calling it "utterly pointless nowadays" while Seasons 3-10 "were golden." It seems discussing what constitutes The Simpsons's "golden era" is a universal constant.

[Stormfront.org via No Homers Club]

Three big Simpsons fansites have gone offline just in the past month or so. Normally, I'd be ecstatic that three of my competitors have been knocked off in one fell swoop, but instead I'm perturbed. Is someone picking off Simpsons fansites? Who could it be? Why are they doing this? And who's next?

Back in the late 90s, Simpsons fansites were a dime a dozen. Some, like the character sites, had their niches, but most were pretty generalized, meaning they had a little bit of everything: some character bios, episode guides, some .WAV files, some grainy framegrabs that would occasionally rouse Fox lawyers into sending threatening letters to teenagers, maybe some fanart and reviews, and ever-popular "grabpics," which were framegrabs that were traced over in Illustrator or something and put on white backgrounds. But as time went on, webmasters grew up and moved on, the show got steadily worse, the dynamics of the internet changed, and the number of sites dwindled. That number dwindled even further this month as three Simpsons fansite fixtures met their frosty fate.

Like I said a couple posts ago, Dead Homer Society is the finest source of Simpsons criticism on the internet, but apparently even they have their breaking point. If you're unfamiliar with their process, here's how it goes: after a new episode airs, they parcel out a week's worth of features including "Ratings FAIL" (which could really use a less-memeish name), where frontman Charlie Sweatpants talks about one particular aspect that bugged him; Crazy Noises, which is basically just a chatlog of the team and sometimes odds & ends; and my favorite feature, the incomparable Compare & Contrast, a comprehensive Glenn Greenwaldian takedown of the episode by simply comparing it to a good episode. It's a good process that runs the gamut between formal and informal, snap judgments and prudent deliberation.

Well, Mr. Sweatpants has announced next season will get a much less comprehensive treatment, because (shocker) the show is really bad:

For all its manic bumbling and endless stream of pointless cameos, the only enduring characteristic about Zombie Simpsons is how blandly repetitive it is. Episodes consistently have no coherent story, few jokes, fewer funny jokes, wasted guest voices, hacktacular pop culture references, and all manner of things poorly lifted from old episodes. [...] I've begun to get the sense that we're often doing little more than citing examples of the same kinds of things each week: it sucked when they made Homer do this, that joke went on too long, that's not even a joke, this voice sounds terrible, that was done better years ago, this made no sense, etcetera etcetera. [...] In short, it seems very unlikely that most of the episodes in Season 24 (or Season 25, or Season 26, or Season Whatever) are going to be worth a close examination and serious criticism.

The rationale is pretty meta - we're talking about the repetitiveness and general quality of reviews - but it's true. You could go to any Simpsons forum, click on an episode review from ten years ago, and the complaints would still be applicable to the current season. My guess is there'll still be Crazy Noises, because it seems easy to do, but no (or a heavily reduced amount of) Compare & Contrasts, which is a shame but understandable for the sake of Charlie's mental sanity.

[Dead Homer Society]

For the past few years, Dead Homer Society has been the finest source of Simpsons criticism on the internet, dutifully diagnosing the symptoms of what it affectionately calls "Zombie Simpsons." Well, now the site's frontman Charlie Sweatpants has written a whole mini-book on the subject, Zombie Simpsons: How the Best Show Ever Became the Broadcasting Undead.

In it, he meticulously lays out not only why The Simpsons is so ridiculously bad now but also how it got that way, with charts and footnotes and stuff! The whole treatise will be parceled out chapter by chapter on the website over the next couple weeks, but if you have a Kindle you can get the whole dang thing right now for just three bucks. Do it or else a Zombie Simpson will fly into your kitchen and make a mess of your pots and pans

[Dead Homer Society]

Mark Zuckerberg and his Facebook goons have apparently deleted Bill Oakley's Facebook account, effectively rendering the former Simpsons showrunner and current Portlandia producer a non-person in this hyper-connected age. The crack team at Facebook determined that Oakley was illegally impersonating former Simpsons showrunner and current Portlandia producer Bill Oakley, who is the same person, and swiftly deleted his account. Despite being informed his account will not be reactivated "for any reason," Oakley has taken to the Twitter to bring the issue to as many Facebook employees as possible, as well as popular tech blogs Mashable and the New York Times' Bits blog. In the eyes of this reporter, it is great to see Facebook allocating its resources on protecting little-known TV producers from impersonation instead of focusing on less important issues, like instituting better privacy safeguards.

In a discussion on Twitter last week, Simpsons superdirector David Silverman clarified some things about Milhouse's origins, shooting down rumors he's just a rip-off of Paul Pfeiffer from The Wonder Years (come on dudes, he's pretty much just Akbar/Jeff with hair and glasses). He also shared a little more behind-the-scenes information about his first appearance. It's been known that Milhouse first appeared in a pre-series Simpsons Butterfinger commercial - in 2000, Simpsons creator Matt Groening told TV Guide he "needed to give Bart someone to talk to in the school cafeteria" - but until now it was believed he was created specifically for that commercial.

The Twittersphere was in a tizzy today when a series of Tweets from @BARTSIMSON_REAL appeared to indicate the popular Twitter account had been compromised.

For those who don't know, @BARTSIMSON_REAL aka "BART SIMSON YUGOSLAV" is the official Twitter account for Bart Simpson, who is real and Yugoslavian. Launched less than a month ago, the account has already gained over 3,000 followers and a writeup in the mainstream media (I'm also hearing rumors a book deal may be in the works). His Tweets have captivated the world and regularly burn up the retweet charts. A sampling of his output, for the uninitiated...

Back in 2007, rival media conglomerates News Corporation and NBCUniversal put aside their differences and joined forces to create Hulu, a video site designed to combat rampant piracy. If you miss your favorite shows, you can just catch 'em the next morning on Hulu for free in exchange for watching some commercials. It's been a big success, and something that many viewers have become accustomed to. Well, if you've been using the service to watch Fox shows, THE FREE RIDE STOPS HERE, BUCKO. Recently, Fox changed its rules so that Hulu viewers will have to wait eight days to watch new episodes from Fox shows, unless they pony up the cash for the subscription service Hulu Plus or prove they pay for DISH Network.

Unsurprisingly, people have turned to piracy to get their fix:

Over the last week TorrentFreak tracked two Fox shows on BitTorrent to see if there was an upturn in the number of downloads compared to the previous weeks, and the results are as expected [...] During the first 5 days, the number of downloads from the U.S. for the latest episode of Hell's Kitchen increased by 114% compared to the previous 3 episodes. For MasterChef the upturn was even higher with 189% more downloads from the U.S.

And keep in mind the fall season hasn't started yet; these trends may increase once shows like House and The Simpsons return to the airwaves.

Admittedly, ad revenue from Hulu is paltry compared to television - former NBC executive Jeff Zucker once quipped "We're exchanging analogue dollars for digital dimes." But surely it's better to make some money rather than no money, right? [TorrentFreak via TechCrunch]

For some inexplicable reason, the internet randomly decided that yesterday (or today, depending on who you ask) would be Bart Simpsons's 32nd birthday, if he were capable of aging and also not a made-up character.

As far as I can tell from Google's incredibly imprecise realtime search, the news of Bart's mortality appears to have originated from the Twitter account of record label Moodgadget, which got more than a hundred "retweets." Soon, "Bart Simpson" became a "Trending Topic" on Twitter for quite a while and news of his birthday spread like a funny cat video through Facebook and the rest of the internet.

The date isn't based on any premiere date (as every Simpsons fan knows, The Simpsons first appeared on The Tracey Ullman Show on April 19, 1987; the Christmas special aired on December 17, 1989; and the series proper premiered on January 14, 1990), any explicit date given in the series, nor the birthdates of his voice actress, Nancy Cartwright (October 25th), or would-be namesake, creator Matt Groening (February 15th).

So, when is Bart's birthday? The good people over at the Simpsons Archive already determined it years ago. According to the 1992 episode "Lisa's First Word," Lisa was born during the 1984 Summer Olympics. Specifically, Marge started going into labor during the women's 100 meter butterfly, which was scheduled on August 2nd. In the 1997 episode "My Sister, My Sitter," Bart exclaims that he is "two years and thirty-eight days" older than Lisa, which would put Bart's birthday on or around June 25th.

Simpsons-L was a listserv dedicated to a show that hasn't been consistently funny since the late 1990s, run by The Simpsons Archive, a website launched in 1994 before most people had PCs, maintained mostly by people from a usenet newsgroup created in 1990. With three levels of obsoleteness batting against it, I suppose it was only a matter of time before it joined Geocities in the great internet boneyard. But the news of its demise was still a little surprising to me, like finding out telegrams still existed.

I subscribed to it a few years back in order to to stay abreast of the latest Simpsons news and views, delivered instantly to my inbox at the lightning-fast pace of about once a month. If my Gmail label is accurate, there have been only 21 messages this year, so far. Chalk it up to yet another online Simpsons community that got sick of this lumbering zombie of a TV show.

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.

I'm just using this post to make sure twitterfeed still works properly and I don't need to do anything with the feed or nothing

RIP one of the coreys (19?? - a week ago)

***FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE***

IN THE NEWS, the news section of the beloved award-winning Simpson's fansite rubbercat.net/simpsons, is proud, albeit modestly, to announce its major refurbishment! In moving from Blogger to Movable Type, IN THE NEWS has been completely redone to look like a somewhat presentable website. Here a look at the changes:

• Small images have been added to most every post to make them look interesting, and a handful of youtubes have been embedded. I don't know why I was so averse to including pics & vids on this thing
• Individual post pages instead of awkward jump-to-an-entry monthly archives!
• Archives are searchable! Now you can find out every time Utit Choomuang has been mentioned (zero so far)
• Categories are now clickable! I could never figure out how to style tags with Blogger
• There are a handful of posts from the first few months that I deleted because they were just me quoting a bunch of paragraphs from utterly uninteresting articles without adding commentary or context or jokes, which made me feel really parasitic
• More jokes added and old bad jokes have been tweaked to make them funny!!
• Fresher news on the rubbercat.net/simpsons home page since I don't have to do that manually now

The End

###

Charlie Sweatpants of the sycophantic Simpsons blog Dead Homer Society nicely asked the Vatican's newspaper (The Vatican Plain-Dealer) for an unabridged copy of the story where Pope Ratzinger personally declared himself to be the world's biggest Bart fan and they tried to charge him eight whole euros ($800 American) for the privilege of reading an untranslated article. Has the Catholic Church adopted Rupert Murdoch's pay-for-news business model? [Dead Homer Society]

Simpsons Crazy is re-writing Simpsons song lyrics in code over the Twitter:

if ( lisa.isBirthday ) print "Happy Birthday, Lisa." #songsincode
6:27 AM Aug 21st from web

if( floors.stickEMart && dad.sickEMart && hurl(brickEMart) && doh ) needKwikEMart = false; #songsincode #simpsons
7:54 AM Aug 21st from web

class Monorail { awfullyLoud=false; trackCouldBend=false; brainDeadSlobs.give(cushyJobs); sentByDevil=false; } #simpsons #songsincode
9:15 AM Aug 21st from web

Lest you think The Simpsons Archive, the holy grail of Simpsons nerdery, has been slacking (it is currently seven years behind on its encyclopedic episode capsules), contributor Tim Reardon [?!] has written an incredibly thorough 18,719- word summary, transcript, and review of The Simpsons Ride, including every line in the queue videos, the pictures on the walls, and a list of every character who appears in it. Why pay $50 to go on the ride when you can read this instead? [The Simpsons Archive]

Simpsons prop designer Jefferson Weekley has set up a blog where he showcases his artwork, some of it Simpsons-related. Check it out doggs [nawalliwai.blogspot.com]