Fly Notes: MP3 Players and the Simpsons Movie
A couple of things.
First, for those of you who don't use Hotmail, MSN has an article about choosing an mp3 player. Given that both Mo and I have recently gotten mp3 players, I took some interest in the article. Once I've really settled down, I'll start putting a few songs on mine here or there. I'm a little bit disappointed so far with Yahoo!'s Launchcast radio, which I can't seem to get to work on any public wifi network (including the one n my own flat, which will log my computer on just fine, but not my mp3 player). For the record, I got a Sansa Connect because it featured online radio through Launchcast (as mentioned, a work in progress), it was smaller than the Microsoft portable brick (uh, I mean video/mp3 player), and it wasn't made by Apple. Anyway, I haven't read all of the article yet, but I may comment further on this subject.
* * *
Second, I wanted to answer Peter's comment about the Simpsons movie.
I agree wholeheartedly with my distinguished colleague on this one: one of the strengths of The Simpsons has always been that it was a strong blend of obscure cultural references and classic slapstick, among other types of comedy. Until it got really inane a few years back, The Simpsons was a great hybrid of sophisticated and unsophisticated comedy.
Aside from their references to Lyndon LaRouche, my favorite example of this phenomenon stems from an episode that I saw for the first time when I was a junior in high school. I remember it vividly. I had been reading The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe, and the Simpsons episode in question was 4F24, Lisa the Simpson. Lisa Simpson begins to fear that being a Simpson has genetically predisposed her to losing her intelligence. In once scene, she joins Homer and Bart to find that they're watching a television program titled "When Buildings Collapse". Simple, huh? Mocking the stupidity of Homer and Bart with some mindless humor? (On Fox, no less!)
Here's the thing: the final scene of the show they're watching shows the collapse of a nineteenth century mansion, and the caption reads "The Fall of the House of Usher". And so the Simpsons writers combined low-brow humor about catastrophic architectural failure (complete with a line from Bart, "The best part was when the buildings fell down!") with this obscure literary reference that I had only learned about mere minutes prior to seeing the episode.
Now, such references were there in the film; I enjoyed the scenes with President Schwarzenegger, for example, and the barely-perceptible "Duff" logo on Moe's briefs. The whole film, though? Really, I thought that it was very comparable to Reno 911!: Miami. What do I mean by that? Simple: the Simpsons Movie, in my opinion at least, was merely a longer version of a typical Simpsons episode with a few gags and special effects thrown in that would be impossible on the television show. Reno 911!: Miami was the same thing: the same gags, a few scenes that wouldn't make it onto television, and a bigger budget. Both entertaining, neither revolutionary.
For the record, I think that South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut did a better job of pulling off the television-to-movie-back-to-television conversion than the Simpsons Movie did.
* * *
Alright, time for me to go to bed. More tomorrow, folks.
First, for those of you who don't use Hotmail, MSN has an article about choosing an mp3 player. Given that both Mo and I have recently gotten mp3 players, I took some interest in the article. Once I've really settled down, I'll start putting a few songs on mine here or there. I'm a little bit disappointed so far with Yahoo!'s Launchcast radio, which I can't seem to get to work on any public wifi network (including the one n my own flat, which will log my computer on just fine, but not my mp3 player). For the record, I got a Sansa Connect because it featured online radio through Launchcast (as mentioned, a work in progress), it was smaller than the Microsoft portable brick (uh, I mean video/mp3 player), and it wasn't made by Apple. Anyway, I haven't read all of the article yet, but I may comment further on this subject.
Second, I wanted to answer Peter's comment about the Simpsons movie.
Saw the Simpsons movie on Sunday. Have you seen? I'd be interested to hear your take on it. I rather enjoyed it, but I was a little disappointed that the audience around me seemed to respond a lot more enthusiastically to the low-brow humor than to the more sophisticated humor that, for me, sets the Simpsons apart from other shows.
I agree wholeheartedly with my distinguished colleague on this one: one of the strengths of The Simpsons has always been that it was a strong blend of obscure cultural references and classic slapstick, among other types of comedy. Until it got really inane a few years back, The Simpsons was a great hybrid of sophisticated and unsophisticated comedy.
Aside from their references to Lyndon LaRouche, my favorite example of this phenomenon stems from an episode that I saw for the first time when I was a junior in high school. I remember it vividly. I had been reading The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe, and the Simpsons episode in question was 4F24, Lisa the Simpson. Lisa Simpson begins to fear that being a Simpson has genetically predisposed her to losing her intelligence. In once scene, she joins Homer and Bart to find that they're watching a television program titled "When Buildings Collapse". Simple, huh? Mocking the stupidity of Homer and Bart with some mindless humor? (On Fox, no less!)
Here's the thing: the final scene of the show they're watching shows the collapse of a nineteenth century mansion, and the caption reads "The Fall of the House of Usher". And so the Simpsons writers combined low-brow humor about catastrophic architectural failure (complete with a line from Bart, "The best part was when the buildings fell down!") with this obscure literary reference that I had only learned about mere minutes prior to seeing the episode.
Now, such references were there in the film; I enjoyed the scenes with President Schwarzenegger, for example, and the barely-perceptible "Duff" logo on Moe's briefs. The whole film, though? Really, I thought that it was very comparable to Reno 911!: Miami. What do I mean by that? Simple: the Simpsons Movie, in my opinion at least, was merely a longer version of a typical Simpsons episode with a few gags and special effects thrown in that would be impossible on the television show. Reno 911!: Miami was the same thing: the same gags, a few scenes that wouldn't make it onto television, and a bigger budget. Both entertaining, neither revolutionary.
For the record, I think that South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut did a better job of pulling off the television-to-movie-back-to-television conversion than the Simpsons Movie did.
Alright, time for me to go to bed. More tomorrow, folks.
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