Recently in WEB-WATCH Category

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]

Everyone knows that one of the major causes of the writers' strike was the fact that writers were not being compensated for profits made from online distribution. Rather than waiting to see how negotiations would turn out, News Corp. and NBC Universal launched the private beta of their YouTube rival Hulu at the end of October (I didn't get my invite until like a few days ago, so whatever). Hulu features clips and full episodes of all your favorite Fox and NBC shows, including The Simpsons, with some fairly annoying ads for the upcoming movie Hitman built in. It's actually a nice, clean interface, and you actually the option to turn on subtitles. As of right now, the Simpsons category only has full episodes from Season 19, as well as some 60-odd clips from Seasons 1 - 7, some of which are just couch gags.

So while you're waiting for the strike to end, you can just sit back, relax, and enjoy all your favorite Fox/NBC-owned content, with the knowledge that none of that ad money is going to the writers. [Hulu]

Wikipedia user "a metal shard" has blown the doors off the biggest plagiarism scandal to rock the animation world since the Lion King/Kimba the White Lion fiasco of 1994:

Neon Genesis: Evangelion---theme?

While viewing the movie, I was reminded several times throughout of the old Anime: 1. The corporation EPA and their helicopters = NGE's EVA and their large scale assaults + heli's are almost identical 2. Dome = Angel's shields (were they called AT Fields?) 3. Homer's Epiphany = Shinji's numerous experiences, almost identical, with the clapping hands and such, 3.5 the boob-ladie's blowing into Homer's mouth remind me of the NGA's women cleavage and kissing scene (during Shinji's dream?). 4. Homer's pig = Masato's penguin

A naysayer attempts to shoot down his theories, forcing a metal shard to respond with these sage words of wisdom: "Maybe if you had seen the anime show, watched the movies, played the games, read the manga, or set foot in Japan, you wouldn't be so quick to claim that I was implying anything..." Don't let the bastards grind you down, a metal shard! Keep on fighting the good fight! [Wikipedia]

Candy Addict is a blog that's completely crazy about candy - just look at its description: "Candy news, views, and reviews. All the candy that's fit to eat, and some that isn't. All candy, all the time. Addicted to candy." In honor of The Simpsons Movie, or so I assume, they compiled a list of the top 10 Simpsons candy moments, which one of the candy addicts thought I might be interested in and kindly e-mailed me about it. The Simpsons article is good and well, but I strongly advise looking at the rest of Candy Addict because it's delightfully insane. [Candy Addict]

rubbercat.net/simpsons is nominated in three categories over at Simpsons Zip's Choice 07 Awards for "Choice Website," "Choice Section" and "Choice Support." Check it out and vote for rubbercat.net/simpsons. Or don't. Whatever. See if I care. [Simpsons Zip]

Those knuckleheads over at TV Squad seem to think strangling your 10-year old son makes you a great father. Aye carumba! [TV Squad]

Some conservative bloggers were outraged at a recent episode that supposedly made fun of the US military! Could the show that gave them their beloved war chant "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" actually hate America??

The Corner:

Yesterday's episode wasn't just unfunny, it was very poorly animated - a 1970s Hanna-Barbera-level of crudeness. The sequence in which Lenny's car was crushed looked like it had been drawn by a 10 year-old trying to draw The Simpsons. I can only assume they're devoting all their time and effort to the movie.

As for BSG, I agree with Jonah's long-trusted reader and had exactly the same argument, err, discussion with my wife during the episode. Far more fun was Doctor Who in the hour beforehand, which involved Rose berating a pompous psuedo-patriot for not knowing how to fly the Union Flag and also included an interesting nod to the realization that families need fathers at the end...

Michelle Malkin:

I got tons of e-mail about the military-bashing Simpsons episode last night. Here's a bit of the video if you haven't seen it and want to get in a bad mood. The mockery of Army recruiters and enlistees is absolutely disgusting. This comes on the heels of last week's election-timed episode mocking the Iraq war.

The show is getting long in the tooth and low on funny. Don't bother with it.

Keep on fighting the good fight [alicublog]