Clinton, Obama, and Eminem and the Politics of Success

So the race for the ‘08 continues on to May, with the possibility of even reaching into June. While this isn’t much of a surprise to anyone, it continues to captivate the news cycles of the 24 hour networks and most local news.

It is democracy in action, showing the good and the bad of politics. There is plenty of good things coming out of this long primary season, there are more people than ever before showing up to vote and getting involved in the process, and its likely for the first time in years every single state will likely get a say in who the democratic candidate it. (Even Guam-ish voters actually count this year, their primary is on May 3, with four super important delegates at state.)

But its also showing the ugly side of politics. In the six weeks between the last primary and the Pennsylvania one, things became rather nasty, in this morning’s New York Times, the paper that pledged its support behind Clinton attacks her latest ad, which includes an image of Osama bin Laden. "Mrs. Clinton became the first Democratic candidate to wave the bloody shirt of 9/11," they write, adding that it is a tactic that is "torn right from Karl Rove’s playbook."

This follows the notorious and much parodied “Three a.m.” ad, and the rehashing of Pastor Jeremiah Wright’s anti-American sermons.
The paper goes on to spread the blame over to Barack Obama; saying "He is increasingly rising to Mrs. Clinton’s bait, undercutting his own claims that he is offering a higher more inclusive form of politics."

So is this the end of the Democratic Party? Will they simply tear themselves apart from within, and as Stephen Colbert calls it the coming democalypse?
However I think all this nastiness can only help the eventual candidate. You want to know why?

“8 Mile."

Yes that’s right 8 Mile the crappy Eminem movie. (Stay with me on this I know where I am going, I promise).

If you have or haven’t seen the film – its about an aspiring rap star played by Marshall Bruce Mathers III – who raps his was to success sort of. The final showdown is with the reigning underground rapper in a free styling competition.

Get ready and provide your own beat – this is what Eminem’s character Rabbit raps. (According to IMDB I don’t know it by heart I swear.)

“This man ain't no mother-f**in' MC / I know everything he's got to say against me / I am white, I am a f*ing bum / I do live in a trailer with my mom / My boy future is an Uncle Tom / I do got a dumb friend named Cheddar Bob / Who shoots himself in the leg with his own gun / I did get jumped by all six of you chumps / And Wink did f my girl / I'm still standing here screaming "F* the Free World."

So what does this profanity ridden rap have to do with Democratic politics?
It’s simple.

Clinton and Obama are using all they have on one another. Where Rev. Wright’s sermons could have ruined Obama at the polls in November, they are already out, apologized for – and by Election Day – will most likely be forgotten.

Clinton’s fake sniper fire story –it’s already out.

Obama’s drug use from his books? Done.

Crazy scum bag landlord? Dealt with.

The Return of Monica? Discussed.

So the Democrats just like Eminem are taking all of the bullets out of the Republican’s gun. There won’t be a bone of a skeleton left in the democratic candidate’s closet while John McCain’s closet will be bursting at the seams.

So just like in 8 Mile McCain will be left holding the mic speechless.

Killing The Planet on Earth Day

So it’s Earth Day, and the Polar Bear is still at risk, the planet is still warming, and developing countries are using more natural resources and polluting more than ever before.

So what is worth celebrating? Capitalism! Mainstreaming and commercializing of the “earth agenda.”

Every company from cars to soda is marketing a organic, energy efficient, low carbon foot print creating, products. It's like Santa in stores at Christmas, Hallmark Cards at Valentines day or Corona beer at Cinco De Mayo.

There are plenty of examples of this run amok; the ethanol disaster comes to mind, where the generally held belief is that it is having a more negative impact on the earth then positive.

Basically it's because Ethanol doesn't burn cleaner than gasoline, and it consumes twenty percent of the entire U.S. corn crop, causing the price of corn and everything from corn starch to corn oil - to double.

Another good example – of the way saving the earth has been commercialized and it comes from something that happened to me on Saturday at Trader Joe’s. I was walking into the store – when I saw a huge honking black SUV drive into the parking lot. A woman on her cell phone got out opened the back of the truck and pulled out a few reusable grocery bags – and went into the store.

The fact that someone could be conscious enough to use the re-usable bags but still drive a huge SUV shows that saving the earth is still just something people do when it is convenient. If gas does go up to five dollars a gallon will this woman – or all SUV owners park their trucks and look for alternatives? Not likely, but even if they do it’s because they can’t afford it, not because they want to help the earth.

When I was in China I saw the effect of the pollution on the Beijing skyline. There was simply a gray brown haze over the city at all times, when it rained the rain pulled dirt out of the air and coated everything in a brown sludge.

It’s a nation in the middle of its industrial revolution, a city growing as fast as it can, much like now dead mill cities here in the states, where factories up and down rivers belched smoke and poured chemicals into the river.

So what can we look as we approach the 40 anniversary of Earth Day in 2010? Simply that things may get so bad, that we can’t afford to ignore the problem, but who knows if we’ll even be able to make a change once we get to that point.

RIP Tower Records

It has been going on for months, and finally after 46 years in the music industry this past week Tower Record officially disappeared forever. It’s funny because the chain of music stores had such an impact in my growing up, and then the first time I set out on my own, I end up in the city where it was founded, and got to watch as the once mighty music giant shriveled up and died. Now I know many of you don’t even know what Tower Records is, and the rest probably say good riddance it was overpriced, and outdated, a relic in the world of digital downloads, and cheap chains like Wal-Mart and Best Buy.

Now I have two special attachments to Tower Records. Most recently is my move to Sacramento, since Russ Solomon founded the chain right here on Watt Ave. in 1960. There are two tower stores in the city – each with a Tower books and video nearby. So at work we have been watching the story closely especially since Solomon tried to buy back the chain. So the stores death throws have been in the news on a daily basis as the auction went late and as two companies For Your Entertainment music stores and liquidator Great American Group battled for the property. The out come would have been very different if FYE had won, there would be no sell off and the famous store on Hollywood’s Sunset Boulevard would remain open. That’s not the tune the fat lady sung. In the end Tower Records was worth more in pieces then it was as a while. So in October, with ‘Going Out of Business’ signs going up in all of their stores. For a few months the percentage off dropped as selection thinned out and stores emptied out. People who hadn’t stepped foot in a tower records in years were going back to look for deals, going out of their way to make one last stop to look at the music dinosaur before it went extinct.

The Second reason I am upset and more importantly is that Tower Records played a major role in my childhood. You can laugh all you want. It’s true. I bought my first real CD’s there, The Offspring’s, Smash in and Green Day’s Dookie in the early 90’s. I remember walking up the counter with my neon Velcro wallet and shelling out thirty bucks, a small fortune to my 12-year-old self. I remember walking the aisles and looking through the CD’s, and being in awe of all the music. It was really the only music store on Long Island except for the equally as expensive and now also closed Sam Goody, and The Wiz.

But my fascination with the store didn’t end there. It was the only store on Long Island that stayed open late. In fact the Tower on Sunrise Highway was open till 11:30 during the week though you could usually hang around there till midnight. It was nearby the mall and diner that were our usual haunts. It had a Ticketmaster window where I bought my first concert tickets, there would occasionally be people camped outside waiting for that window to open for the hard to find tickets. It was a world when AOL was just creeping into homes, and the Internet was a mystery, and no body was buying music or concert tickets on there yet.

Me and my friends would walk the aisles look at movies and CD’s and I would usually end up getting candy of some sort, either Nerds Rope or peach Smints which became kind of famous with the girls I was dating at the time.

The 18 and over section as kids held all of the mysteries of sex a teenage boy could want. When I got into Punk and independent labels The only places I could find the CD’s I craved were at tower or the concerts in the East Village and NYC I could rarely attend.

As I got older I would wander around the toy section starting my obsession with urban vinyl, and also got my first Ugly Doll there. Every time I would come home from college I would make at least one stop there, I would take an hour roll down the windows and take a slow drive down Sunrise Highway to Tower , and look for rare stuff I couldn’t find in Syracuse. Right before I left for Sacramento I picked up the imported double disk edition of UNKLE’S Never Never Land, and a Tower Branded Toy.

Tower was a stable of any night out with the guys… if we were bored and it was early we would head to tower and simply loiter around. It was just a place to go for no reason, we had cool friends who worked there heavily tattooed older kids, who would tell us about new music, and the ways of life. In High School they were outcasts; at Tower they were gods.

We would rarely buy anything, and when we did It was usually a gag or a joke. Cheap bizarre Japanese Movies on VHS and DVD with bad dubbing and plots edited to remove continuity and sense.

So as the stores began closing I made a religious trek there almost every week. I wasn’t the only one awed by Tower’s closure. I met people who hadn’t shopped there in years, but who had grown up going there. They couldn’t even say when they stopped going, but they just kind of grew out of it. I met workers who had been at tower their entire lives, people who loved music and loved working at Tower. For them it wasn’t a retail job it was a way of life.

So eventually the stores closed up. The lights were turned off and the stores locked up.

On the Marquee on the flagship Watt store there was Tower’s final goodbye – “Thanks for the Memories,” On the store on Broadway, was a sign that read “Your still the boss – thanks Russ.”

While this was the end for many people my relationship with Tower was not quite over. Months after the store closed, there was word of an auction. So this week, I got to go down to the old Tower offices Warehouse. It was in West Sacramento, and there they were auctioning off everything left over from the once great Tower Empire. They were selling shrink wrapping machines, desks, tables, palates of left over CD’S and one very odd crate of un purchased porno DVD’s. They were selling gold and platinum records awards for sales they helped artists achieve. Going under the hammer were plaques and giveaways items from Tower’s more than two decades of service to the Sacramento Community. (Included was a plaque from News 10 for its role in the coats for kids drive as well.) The warehouse and offices were covered in band stickers and music posters, graffittied, cut and pasted by smart-ass workers over the years. In the art room there were drafting tables and paint used to create the images of the tower campaigns. Anyone even after everything had been boxed up, and shuffled into lots could see it was a very cool place to work.

Right before the auction was set to begin I saw him, Russ Solomon, the man who created the chain that so impacted my life. He was there to watch the last bits of his dream slowly sold off to the highest bidder. I went over shyly and talked to him said hello, and said sorry. That it must have been hard to watch the end, of the end. However I hear he’s not quite done with the music business. While there will never be another Tower Records, with its famous Hollywood Blvd. Store that was the place celebs and rock stars popped in to visit there will be new life. Solomon is working on a new store called Resurrection Records.

So here’s to the future. That from the ashes of Tower Records will birth a Phoenix of Resurrection Records. Here’s to the hope that music stores will once again be a staple of cities nationwide, and that some kids will get the experience of a store dedicated to music, a place where they can one day look through more music then they could ever imagine, actually touching the cases and seeing the covers, finally picking out the perfect record, and getting to take something home, that you love from a store that holds seemingly unending possibilities for musical exploration.

Good Luck Russ – There is one person in Sacramento pulling for you – and can’t wait to walk into your new store.

Race(ism) In America

Recently the topic of race has been featured prominently in the news. There have been triumphs, and the breaking down of racial barriers, such as Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, and the ground breaking on the national mall of the Martin Luther King Memorial. However these achievements have been overshadowed – as the good news in the world often is - by the hate and intolerance that still lingers below the surface of our society.

In the last few months, I think we can all think of several cases of individual bigotry splashed on front pages and headlines worldwide. The top three that come to me: Mel Gibson, Michael Richards, and most recently Tim Hardaway. In these three you can see that the most historic hate and bias still exists, not only in the places we consider backwards and behind, and but in people Americans consider the upper echelon of society. These are the heroes and the celebrities of our movies, television shows, and sports.

Mel Gibson’s Jew bashing, brings back thoughts of Nazi rhetoric, and propaganda which led a country to believe that the a religion and it’s people could be responsible for all of it’s ills. Him claiming Jews were responsible for all wars, is something anyone could imagine Adolf screeching before lines of goose-stepping storm troopers.

Richards racial tirade against blacks and his the use of the N-word reflect decades of America’s Jim Crow society that existed for years after slavery, in the north and south, that pushed Black families into ghettos and slums, and spurred a white flight from America’s cities into it’s suburbs.

Hardaway’s deep-seated belief that being homosexual is simply wrong, and doesn’t belong in America or the world, seem extreme when broadcast all over the media but the same opinion and attitude is broadcast and accepted in churches and in the family first campaign.

Even here in Sacramento, a community with many different races and cultures, there is hate. These cases don’t make network news, but show that at all levels, there is hate. Since I have been here there have been a number of racial crimes – hate signs, carved into cars, and teens in an upscale Stockton community attacking minority security guards with fire bombs, and slurs.

All of these things show that there is a still deep intolerance that still exists in our country. In Obama’s new book Audacity of Hope he talks at length about race. He citing the divide that still exists, how a black teen on a street late at night could strike fear in a white couple, yet if their son or daughter had a black friend from school, they would have no problem inviting them over for dinner. However the same kid is left wondering why he is more qualified then his black best friend but he gets the scholarship, or the admission letter because of affirmative action.

Even the steps forward seem too be rife with setbacks. Obama’s presidential race will certainly show a spotlight on race, like when Joe Biden’s called him the first black candidate that is “clean” and articulate.” The media pounced on these words, reading into what Biden meant and if he was calling all other blacks dirty, and all candidates before him inarticulate.

I look at the money that will soon be spent on building a tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. on the national mall. It will be a great achievement, the first tribute on the mall to a black man. Yet I can’t help but think if that is what he would have wanted. Would he want that money go to programs that help move his dream forward? Ways to eliminate racism and hate that is so clearly still prevalent in our society?

It is being built and will serve as a beacon of hope for racial equality, but it is being built at time where the KKK and neo-nazi parties are seeing their ranks swell, and it is not so far fetched to say that hate seems to be on the rise.

I think of the dream that King had, and if we ever will reach a place where children of all races and creeds will be able to call each other brother. Of course I think of the old joke that says we should just keep screwing each other until there is no Black White Mexican or Asian left just one mixed race…but I guess when we have no outward differences we can still hate one another for who we love, and what we worship.

Bah Humbug

So it’s Christmas time again. So far I haven’t said anything about the holiday. Not the fact that ads started a week before Thanksgiving, or that it just doesn’t seem like the holidays to me since it is still 60 degrees and sunny here in Sacramento.

Though I would like to make a brief comment on mega store Wal-Mart. Since the chain drastically cut prices on toys and electronics the big box store may actually lose money this holiday season. This year’s loss would follow a gain last holiday season when the chain was actually protested by its decision to abandon “Merry Christmas” in favor of the more neutral “Happy Holidays.”

This year the company re-instituted the “Merry Christmas” message and it really seems to be working out for them.

However there is one thing this holiday season that is so absurd, so insane, it has me frothing at the mouth. So what toy could possible have pissed off me, the child slowly being dragged into the adult world?

Could it be the PlayStation 3 that had people losing their jobs to camp out for days for days in front of stores just to get their hands on one? Or that people were almost killed in trampling incidents when the store did open, and were killed in mugging incidents when the system was stolen? No…this toy is crazier.

Could it be the Nintendo Wii that in less then a week has begun to cripple many in our overweight, un-athletic, and obese, generation of gamers? The Wall Street Journal ran an article over the weekend describing the soreness some have experienced after playing the Wii. The article quotes adults and kids having soreness in their shoulders from using the motion sensitive controllers. One user said he was soaked in sweat and sore following a session of Wii boxing. Nintendo's response is quote: "If people are finding themselves sore, they may need to exercise more."

They also recommended stretching before playing. (Just wait in a year I bet the news will be lauding the Wii for helping our overweight generation lose weight.)

Still there is a more destructive force out there this holiday season.

The answer? Barbie. Yes that 11 1/2 -inch embodiment of every man and woman’s fantasy. But it is not just any Barbie. In fact it’s not a doll at all. It’s the Barbie ATM. That’s right. It’s a talking make believe Automated Teller Machine.

For too long Barbie has been creating unrealistic goals and dreams for our nation’s youth. Men will never find a girl who looks like Barbie, and girls will never grow up to look like her. Without massive and unrealistic surgery they will never match the dolls 39-21-33 measurements. They will most likely never own a dream house, or the hottest clothes that often stuff the diminutive blonde’s tiny closet in girl’s rooms around the world. She will never have the jewelry found on Bling Bling Barbie Styling Head or play on the Yankees, most likely won’t be an astronaut, and she will always have nipples.

Yes Barbie is unrealistic. However here have always been toys that have promoted unattainable fantasies. I know I played with Ninja Turtle X-men, and Spider-man toys my entire life. But no matter how many times I hung out in sewers rolling in medical waste or got bit by spiders I knew I would never become a mutant or a superhero.

On the flip side I doubt any child who play with Mc Donald’s make believe play sets dreams about working in fast food industry, despite that being the goal of the toys. Experts show if kids link flipping imaginary burgers with fun – they will be well groomed to take up the spatula when they are older. You can thank Spongebob Square Pants job at the Krusty Krab for spawning a full generation of imaginary and soon to be real life burger flippers.

However I don’t see what can be accomplished by playing with a make believe ATM. I mean, “Hey kids before you head out to the Barbie Mall don’t forget to get money out of the Barbie ATM buy more Barbie clothes and accessories!” I dread going to the ATM. I wonder will I get the dreaded INSUFFICIENT FUNDS message. All it reminds me of is how little money I have and I can’t see how playing with that could be any fun.

Barbie has always been the apex of materialism in the toy world. For every helicopter G.I. Joe had, Barbie had two cars and a yacht. According to Mattel’s website a Barbie is sold roughly every two seconds. After this Christmas Mattel and Barbie will be grooming a whole new generation of shoppers to take money out of very real ATM’s to go and spend at the very real mall, trying to live out the impossible dream of mimicking the life of their very plastic and fake childhood idol.

The Curious Incident of Walking the Dog in the Day-time.

So this is an unusual story that happened to me this past week.

I was walking my dog near my apartment, when someone drove by and yelled out FAG! And then drove off.

I had no response. At first I didn’t even think the comment was directed at me. Though I realized I was the only one on the street.

So I was shocked. First because I am not gay, nor do I understand why walking my dog would make me gay.

At the outset this seems like an outright case of unprovoked homophobia.

The incident struck me as so odd I decided to think about it a little more.

First I do live a block away from the Lavender Heights area of Sacramento, which as you may guess from the name is the gay area.

Second I was walking my dog, which isn’t a Great Dane, Pit Bull, Bull dog or Lab. It is a tiny full-grown female two pound Yorkie Terrier.

Third she did have a bandanna, bow in her hair, and her nails were painted since she just came from the groomers.

So with this added information a 20 something man is walking down the street in a gay neighborhood, walking a tiny lap dog with painted nails ribbons and bows at about seven in the morning. So I guess I did look like a stereotypical gay.

So maybe the folks in the pickup thought it was an astute deduction, instead of a random slur.

Just goes to show you looks can be deceiving which is especially true around here on drag nights.

Me and George or Prime Time and the President

There is a good chance that on Tuesday October second President Bush was watching my Five a.m. newscast. Impossible you say? Why would the leader of the free world be watching something I produced? Logic. Before you scoff, allow me to explain. Most producers of local news in this country (except for maybe Washington) don’t really have an opportunity to produce news that could be seen by the Commander in Chief. The President is either outside the coverage area, (98 percent of markets except Washington and often in the case of Mr. Bush Texas) or outside of the country. So for the second time in the last six years President Bush made a stop in Northern California, which let me step up to the plate to produce a show that could possibly logically be seen by the Leader of the Free World.

On Monday night the President arrived in Stockton California one of the three major areas my television station covers, (Sacramento, Stockton, Modesto). He arrived on Air Force One and rode in his motorcade to a local Radisson hotel, (Yes the President actually stayed at a Radisson Hotel.) There he spent what experts believe was a quiet night before his busy day of Campaigning on Tuesday for two local Republican Congressmen up for re-election in the mid-term elections. So Bush is (presumably) alone in his hotel room. What do any of us do when in a Hotel room the night before a business trip? We watch TV. Which is were most morning show viewers come from. Most people watch the same channel in the morning they were watching the night before. So I looked at the evening line up on the big four and said to myself what is George more inclined to watch before heading to bed?

I first looked at NBC the number one rated news station in our market. They were showing the new show by the West Wing creative team, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Somehow I don’t think that’s the show that Mr. Bush would watch. In fact I think he would hate that show for a few reasons. One it’s basically the West Wing except it takes place in a Hollywood studio instead of the White House. As Stephen Cobert constantly says Hollywood hates America, and our troops. So watching a show about Hollywood types would be un-American, hell it’s practically communist. Second I’m sure Bush just hates creator Allen Sorkin, for the West Wing and all the grief it cause and probably will mentally boycott anything he ever does.

Next I highly doubt he was watching Fox’s new drama Vanished for similar though different reasons. The show involves the disappearance of a Senator’s wife. I have to assume that he has enough politics in his real life, he doesn’t need to watch it when he is trying to unwind.

So maybe he turned to CBS to watch the CSI Miami. I can tell you that Bush may really have wanted to watch this show but I know he wouldn’t. Why I personally know Mr. Bush hates CBS, and that he would never watch anything on the network no matter how attractive or alluring the setting or sexy the plot of a CSI. How do I know he has a deep-seated resentment to the Tiffany network? First He hates Dan Rather, the former face of the Network News, and the fall guy of the Rathergate debacle that questioned our Presidents commitment to our country and its freedom. So the feeling there is a mutual hate. When I worked for CBS Mr. Bush also had passive ways to take his hate out on CBS. He always went on the air with a speech or a special report during the last ten minutes of Survivor, Big Brother, and to a lesser extent the Amazing Race. The special reports would come as the tribe member/house mate/ race team were about to be voted off and there would be a barrage of calls to our station saying who cares about the president – I want to see how they voted on Survivor, (which coincidentally explains why he got re-elected since most people cared more about who got voted off the island than who got voted into the White House.)

So this leaves only one option. The President was watching the two-hour season premier of the Bachelor. Its mindless TV and had beautiful women fighting over a guy in a castle, granted it was taking place outside of America so there is a chance he was watching something else on cable - but I doubt the Stockton Radisson has a huge selection of cable options. So that means when the President went to sleep his TV was still on ABC. When he woke up this morning the leader of the free world did the same thing that most of us do when we get up in a hotel. Blink a few times question where we are, and how we got there, then flip on the TV and go to the bathroom. So when that TV turned on, hopefully somewhere between five and six am there was my newscast – proudly airing before the President.

The Hands That Rock the Keyboard

I am a famous actor, but you have never seen my face. On any give day you can see my work on a number of television stations, including some that run several times a day.

So who am I? I am the man behind the hands on the keyboard.

I am the hands that are videotaped with fingers clicking away on a keyboard for sexual predator stories. I am the man who provides the shots of the blurry computer with fingers clicking away trying to seduce underage kids into illicit sexual encounters. Anytime a news station does a story about a sexual predator on the computer they call me, and lately I have been getting a lot of work.

First this summer there were a number of under age MySpace stories that required my talents. Adults using the youth social site to meet kids then assault them. Though more of this work involved a mouse and that’s not really my main talent.

Then Dateline decided to continue its “To catch a Predator” series and again my digits were called in to action. It requires a slew of imaginary typing. Pretending to send messages to people and invite them over for sex only to be trapped by a camera crew and waiting police force.

But the real gold mine came last week when every station in the country was calling me to Washington for an emergency shoot to play the hands of disgraced Florida Congressman Foley. The number of times my hands were seen dramatically showing the sending illicit American Online instant messages and e-mails to underage House Pages was almost enough to finally let these hands push away from the keyboard.

But I am not in it for the money. I am in it for the art.

Don’t get me wrong I am not a one trick pony. Unlike most actors I have a range of talents, and over the years played a number of parts. I am best known for the black and white slightly slanted shots that twist around the blurry computer screen in the dark, my fingers seductively stroking the keys trying to lure kids or adults into taking advantage of one another that only scratches the surface of my work.

Recently the rise in computer crime has provided me with a steady stream of work. I have played the hands of a hacker, a diabolical set of hands craftily stealing people’s identities, or duping unsuspecting seniors out of thousands of dollars with phishing scams.

But I have done more than play the criminal, I was also the hands for a recent string of stories about You Tube and blogs, fueled by the film Snakes On a Plane, though I think I made more money then the film did in theaters.

But I digress most people know my ten fingers for their work connected to sexual perversion, and unfortunately sexual assault of often underage kids. So next time there is a movie of the week or a dateline piece on internet predators, think of my hands, and maybe when I am pretending to type dirty messages to 12 year old girls I will really be thinking about sending messages to you.

Tribute to the Simpsons or Worst Blog Ever

This Sunday September 10^th The Simpsons will start an unprecedented 18^th season.

This means most kids who graduate High School this year – never knew what it was like to have a Sunday night without the show. The show has been through a number of Presidents – including George Bush Senior and Bill Clinton appearing in episodes – and even George and Jeb Bush as cardboard cut outs in “Two bad Neighbors.” It inspired a new age of adult animation – paving the way for South Park, The Family Guy, and most of the shows running on Cartoon Networks Adult Swim.

It was the show that proved animation could be for kids and adults, and could be profitable in prime time. It featured some of the best writers in television and some of the best talent – and guest voices – including (though not at the same time) all of the surviving Beatles, most of the biggest baseball players on the 1990’s, a slew of the most influential comics musicians and actors of the last 20 years and a few politicians. Check out IGN’s list of Top 25 guest appearances and then of course the list of fan favorites they missed for a nice recap)

The show started of course in 1987 – as seven shorts on the Tracy Ullman show – now next year 20 years since we were first introduced to Bart, Marge, Lisa, Maggie and Homer they will be seen on the big screen.

I know it’s not saying much – but I think the show has done more for me socially then I could ever imagine. I think about all of the Monday morning talking about the episode that ran the night before. My friends grew up talking about it before class growing up – and then over e-mail and instant messenger when were split up and in college. During my job interview here in California - my now boss picked up on an obscure Simpson’s reference I used casually to answer a question – a moment that made me somewhat confident I would get the job.

Its funny – how much I remember about the show. How many lines and inside jokes there are – and things that seemed almost throw away in connection to the episode became a part of the lexicon of our language.

Granted a lot of people think the show peaked in the sixth, seventh, and eighth seasons. But even now as I watch on Sunday nights as religiously as going to church – there are moments smart, sarcastic, satirical lines that make me at worst smile and at best outright role on the floor in laughter. It’s also great to go back and watch old episodes again thanks to the technology of DVD. David O. Selznick was the man who produced "Gone with the Wind" and "Rebecca" and several other award winning pictures .He was impossible to work with , Directors often walked off the set and actors and actresses had some sort of break down. Comparing him to the dog was funny - then showing he could be tamed with a sort of Vulcan death grip was hilarious at least to me. It was a refernce only a few probably got - and was even funnier since I had just learned about it.
It was a moment that showed me as smart as I was the show was still smarter, and could still teach me a few things about culture. It's the same reason I love going back and watching old episodes, since jokes I didn't get at 15 I do get now that I am 24.

It’s easy to have a favorite moment that is out and out funny – Bart and Homer chasing down a run away pig in Lisa the Vegetarian. Homer doing his best Fred Flintstone impression sliding down the side of the plant flying through the window of his car and starting to sing – to the prior animated shows theme song - “Simpson, Homer Simpson, he’s the greatest guy in history…Simpson Homer Simpson he’s about to hit a chestnut tree.” Or Ralph saying “Me fail English? That’s unpossible,” or “I bent my Wookie.” But there is a moment I think for all Simpson’s fans that they think is just for them. A joke that is just for them that no one in the room laughs at – or no one else remembers on Monday. It’s these moments and a wealth of these moments throughout 18 seasons – that make the show a classic while its still on the air. So I end this with a Thank you to Matt Groening and the entire team of producers and writers – far to many to name or list here – for 17 great seasons – and hopefully two or three years more – enough to beat Gunsmoke as the longest running American sitcom ever.