Friday 8 March 2019

stark raving dad

While not supportive of a biblioclasm or revision history in any sense, the production team behind The Simpsons has decided to pull from regular rotation a season three episode (1991) from the programme’s rotation in syndication—claiming their right as creators of the long-running series and as descent and upstanding human beings their right to choose what chapters of their story they share.
Some radio stations are taking Jackson’s songs out of circulation.  In the bottle-episode, Homer Simpson, Bart’s father, was confined to a mental institution on suspicion of being an anarchist and has a roommate named Leon Kompowsky who claims to be the pop star Michael Jackson—whose actual cameo was not disclosed until many years afterwards. A sequel was scripted but went unproduced over creative differences that had the character of Kompowsky reprised—but this time claiming to be Prince.

Sunday 16 February 2014

at the star wars, star wars cantina or non-canonical

Looking through some old photographs, I found a picture I had taken of the curio-cabinet that housed primarily Star Wars action figures, circa 1991 (I imagine it was a few years later but would be embarrassing to admit, seeing as I had made trousers for the brooding Luke Skywalker from Revenge of the Jedi and set up an infirmary for G.I.*Joe characters in need of repair—the rubber-bands for their twistable torsos having snapped with a waiting area). Besides the meticulously curated cast of the original saga, it is interesting to see who else shared this prime real estate: the villains of Cobra, an out-of-proportion Insectoid and Thundercat, Happy Meal toys, Animaniacs, PEZ dispensers and a few other sundries and ephemera are represented, including a student council campaign sticker advising to “free your mind.” I believe I still have everyone of these people, somewhere, and I think I ought to recreate this Wunderkammer.