Monday, January 20, 2020

Revitalizing the Simpsons after Thirty Years

This is Monday January 20, 2020, Martin Luther King Day.  In a few days we’ll have a new moon and it will be the start of the Year of the Rat in Asian countries.   The US Senate is working on a holiday trying to organize the rules for Trump’s impeachment trial that starts tomorrow and will be covered on the networks.  Jeff Flake was on channel two and he says he chose not to run again for the Senate rather than to sacrifice his principles.  He was a guy who was in the news a lot a couple of years ago.  “Paracite” won best movie in the Screen Actors Guilt Awards alias the SAG.   There were three horse deaths at Santa Anita on three consecutive days of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  Yesterday two horses collided in training and one horse had to be euthanized and the other was uninjured.  Two geldings broke their ankle on Friday and Saturday.  It seems a high percentage of the deaths has been from geldings.   Meanwhile Prince Harry is saying now that he “had no choice” but to separate himself from some royal duties.  The queen is said to be in a bad mood coming home from church.  She didn’t greet people.  There seem to be a lot of bad feelings.  Of course the Tabloids in England are playing the race card and there is absolutely no place for that.   As you know around here the hanger rod collapsed in the closet Friday morning and this is Monday morning already and Augustine has made us wait three days and he won’t be here till tomorrow.   Harry and Magen will no longer be addressed as “your highness” in public.  And apparently they have to give back three million dollars.   Prince Harry and Magen both wanted to do commercial stuff but the Queen would not allow that happening part time.  They either had to be “all in” or completely removed from royal duties.  

Without a warning, they should advance the Simpson’s plot 28 years skipping from 1992 to 2020 as far as maturation of characters is concerned.   They are dropping Apu because the character is said to be racially insensitive with a white guy voicing Apu since 1990.  The series started in December of 1989.   Here is how I would do the characters.  I would have Homer and Marge living in the same house.  They would remark that at the Quickie Mart that Apu retired just last year.  I would have the death of grandpa Simpson also occur just the previous year after living over thirty years in the same board and care home.  There is no need to update his image because he already looked like death warmed over.  But they would do repleated flashbacks of rememberances of Grandpa Simpson by Marge and Homer.  I would have Homer Simpson look not that different except maybe a few wrinkles.  I would also have him take on some of his father’s habit of telling long and confusing stories with no point to them.  I would have him recently retire from the Nuclear plant.  The government finally stepped in and closed the place down to to dangerous conditions.   He would still hang out with Carl and Lennie at the bar but I would have them reluctant to tell all the times when each of them screwed up badly.   And of course Homer took a lot of time off to take the cure for alcoholism that never really worked.   The deal was to give Homer "early retirement".  They would pay him just to get rid of him and this would occur before the plant was even shut down.  I would have Marge look grayer and a little frumpier but basically not change that much except she is a little more grandmotherly and sentimental.   I would have Bart Simpson at age 38 to be a good looking adult and married to a really hot chick and they would also have a son and daughter.   Lisa I would have married to Milhouse for the past ten years.   I would have Lisa developing a weight problem and looking like a slob now and losing all interest in her former successes and interests.  They have been trying to have children and there is talk of adopting but the doctor says Milhouse has “tired sperm”, which comes as a surprise to no one.  I would have Milhouse look surprisingly like his father.  I would have Maggie as by far the most successful and intelligent and articulate in some scientific technical capacity.   There would be a few new characters introduced naturally to fill out the story.  Maybe you could bring back Nelson from prison serving 25 years for some fatal stabbing in a fight.    Maybe bring back Dr Hibbert for an episode as some dottering old man out to consult with Milhouse and Lisa.   I’d have Bart as a police officer or something.   On second thought I’d have Bart as an assistant DA doing paperwork for his boss all the time.  

I agree with the Democratic Virginia governor to not allow any guns at this big second amendment rights rally today in Virginia.  You don’t want to have agitators from “The Base” or any other exreme right wing groups at this rally where violence might break out like it did with Charolette a couple of years ago.  The key to being a political leader is to protect the public and “insure the peace” and if that means slapping on a few executive orders than so be it.  Hopefully the next Democratic president will usher in a climate of more peace and harmony.  You can do a lot with speeches and I think Joe Biden is just the sort of candidate who will do the trick.  

The Kansas City Chiefs are going to the Super Bowl in Miami for the first time since January of 1970 or fifty years.  That’s a long drought.  KC beat the Tennessee Titans by a score of 35 to 24.  I just reviewed the entire game on Google sports.  It was 17 to 7 Titans at one time but then the KC Chiefs came back just like they did a year ago.  That game started at noon and ran till after three.  The game ended when the Titans ran out of luck on fourth down.  In the late afternoon the SF ‘49ers beat the GB Packers 37 to 20.  Most of Green Bay’s scoring was late in the game.  When I first tuned into this game it was San Francisco 21 and Green Bay nothing.  Then it was 27 to nothing before Green Bay began scoring making it 37 to 20.  The game ran till about six thirty.  There was confetti and trophies and celebrations with both games.  Then Sixty Minutes had a thing on wild life.  They had great white sharks in the first segment.  Shen “Jaws” game out in 1975 there were far fewer great white sharks in Cape Cod or any place else.  The sharks have made a comeback thanks to conservation laws. Then it was a thing on wolves in Yellowstone.  Wolves were completely wiped out in the early 20th century in the western United States.  About a hundred of them were reintroduced to Yellowstone in 1995 and they have a stable population and have organized themselves into ten packs.  Only the Alpha Male mates with the females.  I didn’t watch the third segment on animal photography.  I was getting my medication or something.  At eight it was NCIS on the CBS network.   I think “God Friended Me” has about bitten the dust.   I so enjoyed picking each episode apart.  

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