Writer's Block: Disco Stu doesn't advertise

[badatapologies]

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No question. Disco Stu. I love Disco Stu. Best throwaway joke-turned-recurring character ever. Runners-up: Sideshow Bob and Professor John I.Q. Nerdelbaum Frink, Jr.

The Simpsons is one of those things that's been around so long it's easy to take for granted and easy to criticize. And I regularly do both when the subject comes up, because I strongly prefer the early seasons (with actual character development) to the rote Homer-gets-his-penis-stuck-in-a-park-bench-which-somehow-leads-to-a-zany-cameo-by-Jude-Law episodes we see more often these days. Lisa in particular used to get heartbreakingly great episodes, but it's way more Homer's-buffoonery-focused now. And still, we should be grateful for it because it's the best thing on--it has a strong claim to being the best TV show ever made and certainly the best long-running one. Sorry, Gunsmoke.




Which reminds me. I miss Life In Hell. Does Groening even draw that anymore? If so, who carries it? Where can I find it?

Comments

Re: Where the Elite Meet to Watch Sweet Repeats

[mcbrennan.livejournal.com]

I will check out Will and Abe...yeah, I have all the Life In Hell Books as well, except apparently that one. It was a huge influence on me as well, in the dreaded 80s when such things were considered genuinely subversive. I could not even believe that somebody let the guy from Life In Hell make a TV series. It was like letting Steve Albini produce the new Journey album or something. I think it's my fondness for Groening and for just the idea that something like that could have ever happened that keeps me coming back to The Simpsons.

Yeah, I feel the disappointment. There have been numerous Simpsons episodes where it ended and I actually exclaimed "what, that's it?!" But every time I get ready to write it off completely, they come through with a winner. I do often want to punch people in the face who steadfastly insist it is exactly as good as it ever was and has not diminished one tiny bit since it debuted. There's a local film/TV critic in Phoenix who loudly insists that's the case. The poor deluded nut.

You're right about the anniversary and I'm amazed I missed that, because in December 1988 I was a late-teenager living semi-comfortably at home in balmy Phoenix, and I remember watching the Simpsons debut in December 1989 when I was a starving artiste in freezing-cold San Francisco, having just survived a major earthquake two months earlier. A world away.