November 2, 2009
flea market

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.