porno

Happy Valentine’s Day, y’all! Today will be a kinda bizzy day for David and me … we fly out this afternoon to NYC to spend a couple of days there before we jet off to Europe on Thursday to begin our 6 year anniversary trip. While I can think of a lot of other things I’d rather be doing on Valentine’s Day than flying cross country, I’m very happy to be celebrating another VDay with my boo.

Matt Groening’s bigger-than-iconic cartoon sitcom about a family of yellow people, which is both high and low culture, has run 23 seasons and will air it’s 500th episode on Sunday, February 19th. This is a huge achievement! Two decades ago, it was considered “dangerous” and evangelists and politicians denounced The Simpsons as “a televised toxin that weakened parental authority and coarsened the culture”. Today, it is quoted more than anything else. I’ve actually heard friends of mine use Homer’s lines to explain things in their own lives. Check out some of the pics from the The Simpsons’ 500th Episode fan party on February 8th. This week we should all celebrate Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie…true pop icons!

Every year, The Simpsons airs an amazingly entertaining Halloween episode titled Treehouse of Terror that usually pays homage to famous (and infamous) horror films, TV shows, characters, etc. This year, The Simpsons will be paying homage to the brilliant Showtime TV series Dexter. In the video below, you will see Ned Flanders doing his best Dexter Morgan impersonation as he spoofs the opening sequence of the show Dexter. It’s really cute … check it out in full below.

The Simpsons are planning a BIG Oscar-themed episode this month and it will feature none other than Academy Award-winning actress Halle Berry. Here is our first look at Halle in her Simpsons form.

My fave author Neil Gaiman, who recently married his rocker fiancée Amanda Palmer in San Francisco, CA to ring in the New Year, announced on his official Twitter profile last night that he will be guest starring on an upcoming episode of The Simpsons. Gaiman has been cast as a “Nail Gaiman: British author”, a role I think he can prolly handle. Gaiman also posted a few fun photos from the recording session for sharing.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer alum and How I Met Your Mother star Alyson Hannigan will guest star in animated form on an upcoming episode of The Simpsons and today we get our first look at Aly‘s Simpsons character. Guest starring with Saturday Night Live castmember Kristen Wiig, Aly will appear on the first new episode of The Simpsons in January.

Earlier this month we got our first look at Daniel Radcliffe in animated form on The Simpsons and today we get to see some fun preview video of his appearance on the show. As you may know, The Simpsons air a Hallowe’en special yearly titled Treehouse of Horror and this year they are up to their 21st episode:

DanRad plays an Edward Cullen-like vampire in this year’s ep and sat down for an interview about his appearance on the show:

After the jump, check out video of Dan‘s interview about his upcoming appearance on The Simpsons which includes some scenes from Treehouse of Horror XXI …

On Sunday night The Simpsons aired an opening title “couch gag” which was directed by guerrilla graffiti artist Banksy (which we saw here on the blog yesterday morning) and humorously paints the show and its parent company 20th Century Fox in a very negative light. Today we get to read excerpts from an interview that Simpsons executive producer and show-runner Al Jean did with The New York Times that explains how the collaboration came to be:

Q. How did you find Banksy to do this, and now that it’s done, how much trouble are you in?
A. Well, I haven’t been fired yet, so that’s a good sign. I saw the film Banksy directed, “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” and I thought, oh, we should see if he would do a main title for the show, a couch gag. So I asked Bonnie Pietila, our casting director, if she could locate him, because she had previously located people like Thomas Pynchon. And she did it through the producers of that film. We didn’t have any agenda. We said, “We’d like to see if you would do a couch gag.” So he sent back boards for pretty much what you saw.

Q. Were you concerned that what he sent you could get the show into hot water?
A. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about it for a little bit. Certainly, Fox has been very gracious about us biting the hand that feeds us, but I showed it to Matt Groening, and he said, no, we should go for it and try to do it pretty much as close as we can to his original intention. So we did. Like we always do, every show is submitted to broadcast standards, and they had a couple of [changes] which I agreed with, for taste. But 95 percent of it is just the way he wanted.

Q. Can you say what got cut out?
A. I’ll just say, it was even a little sadder. But I would have to say almost all of it stayed in. We were thrilled. It was funny, I watched “Mad Men” last night and I wondered if this was my Don Draper letter to The New York Times. I knew just how he felt. But it was great to have a secret.

Q. Even compared to how “The Simpsons” has mocked Fox in the past, this seemed to push things to a different level. Are you sure there’s no one higher up than you on the corporate ladder who’s displeased with this?
A. I think that we should always be able to say the holes in our DVDs are poked by unhappy unicorns.

Q. Has Banksy’s criticism made you reconsider any of the ways you do things at “The Simpsons” in terms of producing the show or its merchandise?
A. I have to say, it’s very fanciful, far-fetched. None of the things he depicts are true. That statement should be self-evident, but I will emphatically state it.

Q. A lot of the show’s animation is produced in South Korea, but not under those conditions.
A. No, absolutely not.

Q. And even that closing shot of the 20th Century Fox logo surrounded in barbed wire?
A. Approved by them. Obviously, the animation to do this was pricey. I couldn’t have just snuck it by Fox. I’ll just say it’s a place where edgy comedy can really thrive, as long as it’s funny, which I think this was. None of it’s personal. This is what made “The Simpsons” what it is.

In my personal opinion, I think the opening speaks volumes about commercialism in general and isn’t meant to speak directly to the conditions under which The Simpsons marketing machine really works. I applaud the show and 20th Century Fox for allowing its image to be lampooned so that an artist like Banksy can make such a public statement. The whole thing is just so cleverly done … right down to the final scene of the 20th Century Fox logo — famous for its spotlights — locked away behind barbed wire in a prison setting … with even more spotlights. I find it very hard to believe that Fox will ever find a way to allow its image to be self-deprecated in a more sensational way. In case you missed it or just want another look, you can watch the opening title sequence of The Simpsons directed by Banksy after the jump …

Back in February we learned that the long-running animated series The Simpsons had revamped and updated the main title opening of the show for the first time in its 19 year history … today we take another look at the main title opening sequence of last night’s ep which was also changed a bit. The sequence was directed by guerrilla graffiti artist Banksy who used the opening to give his take on how The Simpsons is really put together:

The Simpsons are always very clever with their opening sequences but this time, all the cleverness comes from Banksy. I’m not sure but this may be the first time the opening was directed by someone outside of the production team of The Simpsons (I’m certain it’s the first time an artist was allowed to direct the opening). The screencaps above do NOT show the best parts of the opening, tho, which come after the “couch gag”. Check out the opening in full to see what I’m talking about …

We’ve seen castmembers from Glee on The Simpsons as well as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on The Simpsons … and today we get our first look at Daniel Radcliffe on The Simpsons. DanRad will be a part of the annual Treehouse of Horror Hallowe’en Special that The Simpsons do every year … but instead of Dan portraying his Harry Potter character, he’ll be doing his version of Edward Cullen from Twilight:

First, I love the Treehouse of Horror eps that The Simpsons do every year … even if they always air after Hallowe’en. Second, I cannot WAIT to see DanRad‘s interpretation of Robert Pattinson‘s Edward Cullen. This photo alone rules … I cannot wait to see the ep. What do y’all think? Any Simpsons fans in the hiz? Does this not look amazingly awesome?

[Source]