Emperor Fuckshit

This topic fails because The Simpsons didn't go bad, it just changed.. and it's still awesome. It is SO established that when they make a joke based off how a character is, it instantly clicks as funny. I like the way that things have went.

How can that be when the characterisation is so inconsistent and is dispensed with whenever it's convenient for plot / gag reasons? Unless you mean the "when Homer did that stupid thing it was so like him, because he is a stupid guy who does stupid stuff!" base level of "characterisation." I also like the idea that a lengthy thread containing many people making interesting points about stuff "fails", and the antidote is a one line post saying "I like it, whatever." Message boarding!!!

As for the point about it being a well-animated show -- sure: it look nice, congratulations to the animators. Brilliant. But it's still marketed (and praised) as comedy, rather than as a series of twenty minute animation workshops. And I can't seriously believe that anyone tunes in to the show just to admire the animation quality every week.

^ I re-watched "Lisa on Ice" recently, and almost cried during the final scene. I will willingly admit to this for the purpose of uncovering what went wrong with "The Simpsons".

I blame The Office for the death of British AND American comedy...

Well, the relationship between Gervais and America is a bit more complex than that, in that Gervais himself was influenced heavily by "The Larry Sanders Show" and perhaps "Curb Your Enthusiasm" (the pilot of which aired in 1999, so I'm not sure if Gervais could've seen it before writing "The Office", which was aired in 2001). Elements of "Seinfeld" (the "no hugging; no learning" ethos, the cutesy conversational asides) were also heavily in the mix. Gervais was later very emphatic about his American influences, which peaked with the "...Meets" interviews with David and Shandling. (I suppose one might say further that "This is Spinal Tap" must've been a big influence on all three.)

The emphasis on American influences was probably in large part for Gervais a way of securing interest from a more lucrative market whilst also drawing attention away from the obvious debt he owed to less fashionable British shows ("The Royale Family"... shit, even stuff like "Operation Good Guys").

But, yeah, Gervais had the aggressive publicity behind him and the ability to interest a trans-atlantic audience. "Seinfeld" was never very popular when aired on BBC2; Shandling is basically an unknown; and the U.K. only "discovered" CYE after Gervais' success, for the most part.

The tide is beginning to turn a little, in a sense. "Extras" (especially series two) was received in a rather more lukewarm way by the press. Armando Ianucci's lecture series and associated "Times" columns were critical of trends inspired by "The Office", and those have been influential. The broadsheet media has sold stuff like "The IT Crowd" and "Lab Rats" and whateverthefuckelse as "a return to big, loud comedy", etc.. The obsession with comedy "movements" and the associated exlusion of shows that don't fit in with what's currently fashionable remains a concern.

Do the kids still attribute any good in The Simpsons to Conan O'Brien?

Heh, I'd hope so. He wrote "Marge vs. the Monorail", didn't he?

I think another possible factor could just be that it's been going for about 20 years or so and there aren't a great deal of TV shows or indeed anything requiring creativity that is able to maintain consistency for such a long period of time. Maybe it's about time they took a few years out or just gave it up altogether and tried something new.

I wonder how much Matt Groening cares about the artistic quality of the show so long as it's still making money and still regarded as good entertainment by the popular press and the plebier elements of the fan-base? (Or maybe he's just convinced himself that everything's fine -- or salvageable at least). The "it's just been going too long" theory seems glib; but there's an element of truth to it. The "writing staff" approach of "The Simpsons" (and most other American sitcoms) lends itself well to longevity, but not so much to consistency or to a continued and united artistic vision. The writers used by the show at this point are mostly people who weren't involved at its outset. This can easily lead to later episodes feeling like "cover versions" of predecessors, or to a process whereby the episodes just become a long ejection of undifferentiated, grey comedy slop (since there's no artistic vision uniting all of those responsible for the production of the show). Imagine if "Flying Circus" were still going now (this is more of a comparison with "Saturday Night Live" than with "The Simpsons", but the point holds). It would be a revue for people like Sean Pegg, Marcus Brigstocke, David Mitchell, Russell Howard, etc.. It would have nothing in common with the shows produced by the original five, but wouldn't be able to escape association with or expectations making reference to the Gilliam-Palin-Cleese-Jones-Idle years.

I think from the point-of-view where individual lines aren't dissected, The Simpsons downfall was from "intentionally" bad episodes. 'Itchy, Scratchy and Poochie' and 'The Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase' miraculously work as concepts and occasionally appear in best-of lists. I believe as a consequence of those two episodes, the self-referential comedy really kicked in.

That's a good point, GA. No doubt the universal praise received by "The Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie Show" encouraged the writers to persist with that style of comedy. In a more general way, the endless plaudits had probably convinced many of those tightly associated with the show that they could simply do no wrong. And -- as I've now described many times in various places -- that specific episode was also effective in convincing a great portion of the previously-critical fanbase to refrain from overt negativity (at least for a time).

A similar phenomenon could be described in the UK. The media jumped on "The Office" and made it into a huge critical success, to the extent that it went virtually unchallenged. Ricky Gervais responded by ramping up the self-referential aspects of his show to an even greater degree via "Extras", and a whole hoard of imitators (in a very real sense, Gervais was an imitator himself, of course) simultaneously surfed the "naturalistic" wave.

(Nelson yelling at Skinner through the intercom and Skinner commenting that he shouldn't have been able to hear it...

This almost falls into the category that Weinman was talking about, though, doesn't it? It sort of seems like parody -- but what of? It could alternatively be seen as self-deprecation on the part of the writers -- admitting that they often need logical inconsistencies to further plots -- but couldn't that result in the line just seeming smugly self-referential and therefore annoying? For me, it's one of those things that I have to parse the intention of for so long that the moment passes in terms of mining any actual humour.

Very good article, I thought. Locating one of the major problems with the writing of "The Simpsons" in later series as its love for "intentionally" bad lines is spot on, I think. I'd never thought of that style as an exercise in self-referentiality before, but that angle makes a lot of sense. Self-absorption in a general sense was a big problem for the show in its later years, with its constant love of back-referencing and sly nods to the viewer -- writing that rests, almost literally, on past glories.

But the problem can also be linked to a general "Postmodern Turn" in comedy, away from the "straight" and emotive narratives of the sit-com towards either the dispensation of narrative or its ironic employment in a way that references the concept in abstract rather than actually utilising it without irony as a tool for doing comedy. Straight "gags" have increasingly come to be seen as un-cool -- they have to be displaced by non-sequiturs or delivered with a nudge and inside a set of inverted commas. The apex of this is a show like "Family Guy." Weinman makes the point that "The Simpsons" was a better show when it mixed its elements of post-modernism with strong narratives, nuanced and believable characters, and "orthodox" styles of comedy. It sounds like a bland point ("it's the mix that makes it"), but I think he's basically correct.

The phenomenon of the non-joke has become quite prominent in British comedy too, but for slightly different reasons. The obsession with "naturalism" that began with "The Royale Family" and became ascendant after "The Office" begat a style of comedy in which jokes actually became egregious. After all, the argument runs, most people in real life aren't very funny. So a "naturalistic" comedy must also cut down on jokes in favour of the comedy of embarrassment, "shocking" faux-pas, and non-sequiturs. There's a brilliant moment during the "I'm Alan Partridge" series one crew commentary in which director and writer Armando Iannucci says of one line written for Alan Partridge, "that's us writers transferring our inability to think of anything onto Alan, there." Neither of his colleagues (Steve Coogan and Peter Baynham) are amused by that little piece of self-deprecation -- they see the technique as a valid part of comedy craft, whilst Iannucci highlights the device for what it is.

One slightly worrying thing:

30 Rock has a lot of jokes like that too (most of them coming from Tracy, like “foxy boxing combines my two favorite things, boxing and referees!” — see, it’s funny because it makes no sense!

Um... that's not the point of that joke. Here, the viewer expects Tracy to say "foxy boxing combines my two favorite things, boxing and foxes!" -- a hackneyed and lame joke. Replacing "foxes" with "referees" isn't "saying anything", it's replacing one factually valid observation with another (un-expected) factually valid observation. I'll concede that it would be better if the second thing weren't a part of regular boxing as well. But I don't think the line is a good example of what Weinman is excoriating. He picks some good examples of the style from "The Simpsons", though.

Looking at the more frequent deployment of one comedy technique won't do as the end (or even the beginning) of a critique of the show. But I think it's a pretty good "in", which is about as much as you can hope for in such a short piece.

*Haas (pronounced "haarse").

I'll throw in D'Brickashaw Ferguson. If Dickens had been writing about suburban New York...

There's a boss (yes, that's right... "boss") bit in that segment where Hancock explains why Don Revie encouraged his Leeds team to all take on Brazil-style mononyms -- he'd had a bet that "the Division One's top goalscorer would be a player whose named ended in a vowel."

On the funnee names topic: Pramodya Wickramasinghe. Sounds like a comedy "funny foreigner" name. BUT HE'S A REAL MAN, INSTEAD!!!!!

What Didn't Happen Next? I love that book. My grampa bought me it when I was like ten or something. haha.

YES!!!! That book is a fucking gem. If you can still find it, then you should read it again. "The Stylistics had a song called "Nana is the Saddest Word". Which is bollocks. "Nana" is only the saddest word if spoken by a grown man requesting a banana."

Glad you mentioned it, but I also have a liking for Danny Shittu. My dad and brother met him recently, apparently he is built like a brick shittu house >_>

Best piece of writing ever, by Nick Hancock:

[barry] Davies then attempted to pay tribute to the burly German full back Dieter Eilts -- "there goes Eilts, built like a brick... door." Now, I think that Mr. Davies suffered a problem in communication here. He must have meant that Eilts either "bangs like a shithouse door", or that he's "built like a brick shithouse." The key word in any case, as I'm sure you'll agree, is "shithouse".

(Sorry, nothing to do with names -- I just love that.)

To follow up on one of Fuckshit's, Rusty Kuntz is the greatest baseball name of all time, even ahead of Dick Pole.

Ah, I dunno, Kuntz and Pole went mainstream. Like Danny Shittu. I dread the day that Heiker Menses makes it to the bigs...

Urban Shocker (can we count nicknames that eventually displaced real names?),

Wonderful Terrific Monds,

Ossee Schreckengost,

Yhency Brazoban,

Youliesky Gourriel (sounds like you're reading a rollercoaster),

Heiker Menses,

Julio Olarticoechea (because it made Barry Davies sound like he was saying "oooh, I'll take a chair"),

Angel Pagan,

Stefan Kuntz (purely for

Kenesaw Mountain Landis (marginal, but I'm counting it),

God Shammgod,

Javed Miandad (gave me and my dad endless "what... all three of you?" jokes when I was younger),

I like sportspeople with names that exactly encompass their style, too: Joe Bugner (tough and ugly), Mario Boogers (mad as a lorry), Don Bradman (simple, eternal), Vinny Jones (uncultured hacker).

e: I've always wondered if Kenesaw Mountain Landis' mates called him "Ken." One of those crazy, awesome names that is also conveniently easy to obscure at an everyday level.

Interpreting "recently" as broadly as I can, I was at the last game of the Sunday League season in 1997, as Warwickshire beat Gloucestershire at Edgbaston to clinch the title. Nick Knight scored a century, Alan Donald and Ashley Giles took four wickets each, and there was a pitch invasion. A fairly orderly, polite pitch invasion -- but a pitch invasion nevertheless.

Probably my best sporting "I was there" story... although I have witnessed a Paul Peschisolido hat-trick in person too. Actually, that story has a little more to it. I was on holiday in Lancashire with my parents in 1998, and we decided to go and see a football game. We ended up at Gigg Lane, the Bury ground -- Bolton was sold out, I guess. Bury had won two straight promotions at that point, and were in the old Division One after having won the Second Division in 1997. The team was unbeaten in 29 games at the time, but was vaporised by Peschi's trio of boot-comets on that day.

Nathan Barley was awesome. Those that don't like it are buffoons.

"Nathan Barley" was shit. Those that like it are cunts.

Come on, we can do a bit better than that, can't we?

I haven't seen "Nathan Barley" since the original t/x, so I can only judge it on broad issues rather than episode-to-episode specifics. But there was so much wrong with the show at a conceptual level that I don't think that matters, really. And, to a certain degree, the fact that I have no desire to see it again says a lot about my opinion of the series.

For me, the main problem -- and one that I really can't get past -- was the horror of seeing Morris (once the nation's premier comic performer and one of its best writers) playing catch-up to twatty mediocrities like Ricky Gervais. "... Barley" was incredibly ersatz and owed a clear "debt" to "The Office" in terms of its naturalistic dialogue, use of field removed video, tight reaction shots, etc.. Those devices had been deployed by Gervais to very little comic return already, and Morris showed no real ability to claim them for himself -- using, for example, the close-up reaction shots to hammer home simplistic character emotions. Deploying the device might have made some sense if Julian Barratt were a capable enough comic performer actually to give us something interesting or unexpected in those shots, but we instead got repeated shots of him doing the same twitchy-face expression over and over again -- even when the hijinks of "the idiots" were more punchable than confounding. It was kind of difficult to escape the conclusion that, with "The Office" proclaimed A National Treasure by all available rent-a-gob hacks, Morris was -- for maybe the first time in his career -- following rather than leading.

The satire was also weak, as Morris diverted away from the big, thumping, significant targets he took aim at in "On the Hour", "The Day Today" and "Brasseye" so that he could instead take a swipe at a minor element of media subculture apparently confined to Hoxton. Sure, Morris had always had an interest in his own world -- that of the media. But his solo projects had showed a number of other conceptual interests -- animals and children, most specifically. "Nathan Barley", by contrast, basically took aim at a phenomenon to which I really don't think many of his viewers could honestly relate. I mean, what's the circulation of Dazed & Confused these days? Instead, media types lined up to impress upon us how much they could relate to it:

Mark Lawson: So, Kwame Kwei-Armah, did you get it?

Kwame Kwei-Armah: YES, I GOT IT!!!!!

(Above possibly paraphrased.) But even if one could relate to it, that doesn't necessarily mean that "the idiots" were a useful target. People of that sort are of basically no importance, aren't they? If you strip away the precise cultural context to which Morris is referring, you're basically left with a comment that "idiotic idiots are idiotic". Great. Considering Morris' ability accurately and trenchantly to turn his attentions to bigger and broad topics, wouldn't you have liked to see him have a real go at (say) "The War on Terror" instead? Instead, we got that music video extra from the "Peep Show" DVD extended from three minutes to one hundred and twenty.

And, as a foray into the sit-com genre, it really lacked any of the dramatic elements required by the form: the plots were formulaic, the characters either boring or horribly unsubtle or both, a lot of the performers chosen were unspectacular.

The only way I can see "Nathan Barley" as a salvageable project is if it's someday revealed as a supremely allegorical attack upon the comedy industry "idiots" who claim Morris as their geen-yuss inspiration without understanding his work. But, since he continues to work with Brooker and Ayoade -- and might even be planning a second series of "... Barley" -- that seems unlikely.

Excuse the buffoonery.

I'm looking forward to this: Morris' stuff is always worth watching, even when he misses the mark. I don't think he's done anything of real merit since "Brasseye" (although I should point out that I haven't heard "Blue Jam" yet. I have it all ready to go and should really get around to it.) However, I think that "Jam" displays Morris' ability to be interesting and worth discussing even when his comedy is, you know, not much good...

I have concerns that the essential conceit of the film won't move beyond the bathetic "do you see? wacky things in a place where you wouldn't EXPECT wacky things!!!!" I know that, if that is the case, then people will argue that the film's purpose is to re-assess the issue of terrorism in a way that is non-political (or at least extra-political), and that this in some way "humanises" extremists. But if the content of that humanisation is just the assertion that terrorist activity involves an ineluctably "absurd" element, then the statement isn't especially revealing. Are we dealing with terrorists as individuals so that we can better appreciate their motives? If so, are Morris, Armstrong and Bain qualified to provide such understanding? I hope this doesn't turn into "Peep Show" with Islamist politics in place of agonised centrism. (Or "Shaun of the Dead" in a new setting -- "I'll blow up Westminster... when I've finished this saaaaaaandwich").

Ultimately, I don't think the film will be able to avoid political interpretation, so it's useless to pretend that it can (not that I'm accusing Morris / Warp / whomever of doing so). Even a de-politicisation would be distinctly ideological.

Megalol at Andy Townsend describing Spain as "those little guys." Yeah, those tiny, squeaky-voiced, implausibly fast, sombrero-clad guys. Andelay, andelay!

Oh, and Rio Ferdinand is shit and that.

Reading a list article gives me that sensation like the moment after you've just finished wanking and, as the glinting specks of semen slowly dry and form a flaky crust in your bush, you glimpse the essential condition of Man: an endless juxtaposition of desires which cannot be articulated, overlayed upon a barren canvas of grinding solitude.

Slint are quite good, aren't they?

Any other suspects for that murder that occurred on the dancefloor? Ian McKaye has to be up there. He seems a bit too confident in his assertion that this is the "Last Chance for a Slow Dance." Obviously he knew something we didn't. And the sudden disappearance of two of the Pipettes following the band's first album has always seemed kind of dubious to me. I hear the original title for track five was "It Hurts to See You Dance so Well (But Not as Much as It'll Hurt You)". Hmmmmmmm...

Ahhh, whimsy.

....then the Arctic Monkeys came along and said that he http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGCre4HgPLU.

Didn't Mr. Turner actually place a bet on the possibility that some other (unnamed) person would look good on the dancefloor? This to me suggests that some third party has been involved in the practise of operating a tout "on" the dancefloor (using the word "on" in the sense of "in connection with").

In a similar vein, Sophie Ellis-Bextor technically only draws attention to the dancefloor murder. Keith, the incorrigible cynic, is obviously presuming her guilt based on the old premise that "(s)he who smelt it dealt it." (Or perhaps we should imagine SBE as akin to one of those dishevelled parents crying press conference crocodile tears in relation to his recently abducted child... even though HE WOZ THE ONE WOT DUNNIT!!!!). I think we're right to be suspicious about some kind of wrongdoing, anyway. Bextor's claim to "know know know know know know [sic]" about the mentality of those involved in such rug-cutting rub-outs is a bit over-zealous.

OOTPX demo, for those interested, now available here.

The Yardbirds' Greatest Hits.

Yeah, that's a decent breakdown.

Though I think the packing of 2009 Opening Day rosters as the default set has increased OOTP's "pick up and play" attractiveness quite considerably. And fictional leagues don't have to = zany leagues. They can often just be a way to do simple, realistic things that BM can't (run an Asian or other foreign league alongside MLB; use the Pacific Coast League or Negro Leagues in Historical play; etc..)

I had a lot of fun creating a UK league with OOTPX, but I set the Player Creation Modifiers poorly and ended up with a league that was too offense-centric for my tastes. There are a lot of received opinions about OOTP being horribly obscure and difficult to get to grips with. It's true that, in historical and fictional play, there are a lot of user-set variables that need to be handled carefully. If you have a really specific set-up in mind (and if that set-up is really quite far-removed from modern-day MLB), then it might take you a few trial-and-error periods to get to grips with things. But the manual is very detailed and helpful; as is the online community for more specific queries (honestly, the expertise, DIY ethic and willingness to learn more about the game over at those boards is astounding).

On the other hand, if you just want to take over the Yankees and win 130 games, then there's not too much more to get to grips with than in BM. You need to be more careful as regards some strategic elements (see the 40 man roster discussion earlier in this thread), sure. But other things which could theoretically require endless expenditure of time (micro-managing strategies for your GCL team, say) can be done by the AI if you like.

Honestly, I think the default roster set for this version of OOTP (10) is absolutely fine. I'm sure there will be a demo out at some point soon-ish: I'd definitely recommend trying that at least.

e: If you play exclusively single-player present-day games, then OOTP will be quite a bit better than BM, but maybe not sufficiently so to justify the extra cost. If you play any fictional/historical baseball at all, though, then I think OOTP just wins hands down (since fictional play isn't even an option in BM, I don't believe, and it also lacks a lot of fundamental engine customisation options necessary for a decent historical facsimile).

Well, I'm an OOTP zealot, a baseball nerd and a megalomaniac. There is a large element of "different strokes", but OOTP is also just objectively superior in many areas. I mean, one can turn 40 man rosters off in the game, for example. And create six team leagues in Aruba that play forty game schedules! And are insanely pitcher-dominated! And have an associated high school league that feeds the parent circuit with players! And has no DH! And super low roster limits so that everyone plays the whole season!

A lot of hardcore "sim" guys actually hate OOTP for not being enough of a "replay" game (as compared to DMB or Stratomatic). But at least, via league totals modifiers and the recalc function, OOTP now caters somewhat to a very wide user-base.

To me, it's essentially a Big Mac/foie gras issue. I can accept the right of people to enjoy BM (hey, this analogy is slicker than I intended...) and sort of see why they would and all that good, libertarian shit. But I simultaneously have no problem deciding which is "better".