Every so often on the internet – and in real life – you’ll hear someone say The Simpsons is past its prime, well past its use by date. Mostly I agree, but occasionally, just occasionally there’s an episode which demonstrates what a fantastic, relevant program it continues be. For example, I watched the episode today – the current season in the US – where Smithers convinces Moe to turn Moe’s Tavern into a gay bar, and absolutely loved it.
The premise for the episode is that Smithers discovers he’s not in Mr Burns will because Burns isn’t convinced Smithers has much drive and ambition. Feeling deflated Smithers heads off to the local gay bar – so it’s now confirmed, obviously – and is rejected by the bouncer. Looking across the road he sees Moe’s Tavern where no one is ever rejected. Smithers then convinces Moe to transform Moe’s Tavern into a gay bar for the more ordinary run of the mill – dull – homosexual. It’s quite a hit.
A lot of people conclude Moe is, himself, gay: something which Moe himself doesn’t deny until he absolutely has to, when he’s on the verge of being elected as Springfield’s first openly gay councillor. It’s an episode which has all of the drama, the irony, and the comedy you expect from The Simpsons. I love the reference of “Tom of Shelbyville” erotic gay art, for example.
Anyway, that’s pretty much how I spent most of the day: watching catch-up tv. I had a bunch of material on the pvr and a bunch of material in the download box that I just haven’t had the time to watch until today. There was nothing else of note in what I watched, and Keanu Reeves was still boring on Graham Norton the second time around :)
The only other bit of excitement in the day was a trip to Officeworks. I have a friend in hospital at the moment and I wanted to buy him a reasonably easy to use mp3 player. He’s a great music fan, and having been in hospital for a few weeks, I thought he would be really missing some of his favourite tunes.
He’s a little older, these days and finding technology a little tougher than he used tro, and so I wanted to find an mp3 player that was pretty straight-forward and easy to use. Do you know how hard that is? They all seem to come with multiple options. You can watch video. You can control the equalisation. You can do anything. But all I really wanted one that had an on-off switch, and simple controls for volume and the next track. I settled on the latest ipod shuffle. It seems to do the trick. Cheap as chips also.
And so the part of the day that wasn’t involved in watching television was involved in selecting some of his favourite music and loading it up.