Where is the 'Krapopolis' discourse?

The cast of the animated series Krapopolis.

The Fox animated series Krapopolis is currently in its third season. It has already been renewed for two more. Fifty episodes have already aired. The show's creator, Dan Harmon, is the man behind the cult classic NBC series Community and the co-creator of the pop culture juggernaut Rick & Morty. The voice cast includes Richard Ayoade and Matt Berry of The IT Crowd, as well as Hannah Waddingham of Ted Lasso. Numerous famous comedians and character actors have lent their voices to the show as well.

Fox has not been bashful in its promotion of Krapopolis, which currently airs in the 9:00 EST Sunday night timeslot as part of the Animation Domination block alongside such hits as The Simpsons and Bob's Burgers. The animation budget is obviously robust, and the stories are often quite ambitious, referencing both ancient history and Greek mythology while commenting slyly on the foibles of modern times.

So why is no one talking about this show?

Seemingly every aspect of The Simpsons has been scrutinized, parodied, analyzed, criticized, and recontextualized over the course of the last few decades. Similar attention has been paid to South Park, King of the Hill, Bob's Burgers, Beavis & Butt-head, and many other so-called "adult animation" shows. This genre tends to attract obsessives with strong opinions. But it's rare that I see anyone online discussing Krapopolis. Where are the video essays? Where are the think pieces? Where is the fan art? Where are the memes? Where are the tweets?

There should be plenty to discuss here. Krapopolis is set in Ancient Greece and centers around a family that contains gods, humans, and monsters. (Yes, all three in one family.) These characters have a lot to deal with, since they're always fighting among themselves and fending off attacks (often supernatural ones) from outsiders. And if that's not enough, the family is also attempting to get civilization off the ground and govern the first-ever city, despite the general public not understanding what a city is, what civilization is, or how government even works. Big things happen every week on Krapopolis. The characters embark upon quests, go to battle, cast spells, etc. Just this season, a major power shift has occurred within the family, with neurotic human Tyrannis (Ayoade) ceding the crown to his jovial, hard-partying father, Shlub (Berry), a combination centaur and manticore. And, again, this is all presented as satirical commentary on the modern world.

Somehow, despite its prominence on the Fox schedule, Krapopolis has managed to remain functionally invisible since it premiered in 2023. I think this is the first time I've written about it, and I've seen nearly every episode. That's the weirdest thing about this show. I generally find myself indifferent to it—not bored or irritated, necessarily, just strangely unmoved. In the abstract, I can appreciate the cleverness of the writing, but I can't honestly say the show has ever provoked me to genuine laughter. I'll never find myself thinking back on some joke from Krapopolis and snickering with delight.

My guess is that the rest of the world is as indifferent to the show as I am. And so, Krapopolis exists in an airless, soundless comedic vacuum. Fox will continue to produce and air episodes of it. The public will continue not to care. And the cycle will continue for, what, eight or nine more seasons? It's like this show is a "blockbuster" movie that plays to empty houses but continues to get sequels that no one asked for. I'm starting to suspect this entire enterprise is some sort of money laundering scheme or tax writeoff.

Am I wrong? Do you have strong opinions, positive or negative, about Krapopolis? Let me know.

Podcast Tuesday: "Marion's Life Goes Downhill"

Marion Ross and Marcia Lewis on Happy Days.

Fans of The Simpsons will undoubtedly remember the classic 1993 episode "Marge in Chains" in which the family's sensible matriarch goes to prison for a short stint after absentmindedly stealing a bottle of bourbon from the local Kwik-E-Mart. So many great moments in that episode: "I'll miss Sheriff Lobo!" "What kind of slime would I marry?" "He's history's greatest monster!" There's a brilliant court sequence featuring Phil Hartman as incompetent lawyer Lionel Hutz. And it ends up being a really sweet story about how much the Simpson family and the entire town of Springfield rely on Marge.

Fourteen years earlier, Happy Days did a very similar episode called "Marion Goes to Jail." The plot has Marion (Marion Ross) getting locked up for a slew of traffic violations after her car rolls downhill and crashes through the wall of Arnold's restaurant. The incident ultimately serves to make Marion's husband Howard (Tom Bosley), who'd previously been behaving like a jerk, appreciate her all the more. In a weird coincidence, when this episode originally aired on ABC, it was up against Homer's favorite show, The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo. I'm not sure if Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein, the authors of "Marge in Chains," ever saw "Marion Goes to Jail." They're very pop culture savvy, though, so it's likely they did. Maybe it was a subliminal influence on them.

And what did we think of "Marion Goes to Jail"? Well, you can find out on the latest installment of These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast.

It's an old-fashioned summertime comics roundup! (Part 2)

Which one's Mutt and which one's Mindy? I can never remember.

Comics. We all love them. And you know what they say. You always hurt the ones you love.

That said, let's continue with our survey of comic strip parodies, mashups, and pastiches.

The many movie references of 'The Simpsons,' cheek by jowl with their inspirations

I'm always up for scenes of Mr. Burns doing sick stuff.

Note: This was an article of mine that was recently cut from The A.V. Club. It turns out, they'd already covered this topic. Whoops. Anyway, I thought I'd get some mileage out of it by posting it here. Enjoy or don't. Your call.

Very early in the run of The Simpsons, as revealed through DVD commentary tracks, the writers and animators on the show discovered that the relatively recent advent of VCRs made it possible for them to reference motion pictures in an extremely accurate and detailed way. A 1990 episode called “Itchy & Scratchy & Marge,” for instance, includes a parody of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho that borrows shots and angles directly from the original movie. Over the decades, The Simpsons referenced countless motion pictures with a similar or even greater level of fidelity. The writers sometimes joke that Citizen Kane and The Godfather have been spoofed so often on the Fox animated series that those movies could be reconstructed entirely out of Simpsons clips. That may or may not be true, but “ginger communicologist” Celia Gómez of Madrid, Spain has uploaded to Vimeo a highly compelling supercut called “The Simpsons’ Movie References” that helpfully juxtaposes scenes from the show with the classic movie moments that inspired them.

Citizen Kane and The Godfather both show up here, as expected, but so do Pulp Fiction, Dr. Strangelove, Basic Instinct, Risky Business, Taxi Driver, The Shining, and more. It may often seem that the show prefers to spoof movies that are already decades old and well familiar to most viewers, but that’s not always the case. When trying to convey the artificially enhanced nirvana that Homer experiences while eating a Ribwich from Krusty Burger in “I’m Spelling As Fast As I Can,” the animators chose to quote Darren Aronofsky’s drug-fueled nightmare Requiem For A Dream, then only three years old and not quite a mainstream, across-the-board hit. Considering that it takes about a year to complete an episode of The Simpsons, that makes this scene almost avant garde.

Just in time for whatever International Literacy Day is

Behold, the disappointments of the English language. Sorry, Bart.

Today, Twitter tells me, is International Literacy Day. Yeah, I've never heard of it either. Apparently, it's an annual observance the United Nations thought up back in 1965, which makes this the fiftieth or "golden" anniversary of the hitherto-unknown event. Anyway, in observance of International Literacy Day, here is a little literary vignette from a 2000 episode of The Simpsons entitled "Insane Clown Poppy." They were only in their 12th season back then, if you can imagine that. Not even at the halfway point. The episode in question is mainly about Krusty and his long-lost daughter (cutely voiced by Drew Barrymore), but in typical Simpsons fashion, "Insane Clown Poppy" takes a while to get to the main story and instead starts with material which is almost totally unrelated to the A-plot. In this case, it's a visit to a book festival, where Bart's attempt to vandalize a sign is thwarted by the vagaries of the English language. His loss, our gain. I barely remember the rest of the episode, but this one little joke has stuck with me for 15 years.

So that's what it's like to get stuck in an elevator. Hmm.

Sorry, Butt-head, according to Archer, that won't work.

It happened to Archie Bunker. It happened to Beavis and Butt-head. A couple of weeks ago, it even happened to the gang on Archer. And today, my friends, it happened to me. After a lifetime of riding elevators without incident, I finally had the experience of getting stuck on one.

Obviously, I got out alive and unharmed. I'm not blogging from inside an elevator car, in case you were wondering. My "ordeal" only lasted about half an hour -- perfect sitcom length -- and was not even that unpleasant. Disconcerting, sure, but not traumatizing. Anyway, here's what happened.

(Note: I use the word "happened" advisedly. Like most of my "stories," this barely qualifies as a series of events.)

My train into Chicago was actually running a little ahead of schedule, so I arrived at my place of business a good ten minutes early. I was actually looking forward to beginning my day in a leisurely manner, decadently sipping my artificially-sweetened tea without having to glance nervously at the little clock in the lower right hand corner of my computer monitor. I work in a 35-story skyscraper, so there are three big banks of elevators, and a whole mess of 'em seemed to arrive in the lobby at the exact same time.

I chose (unwisely, as it turned out) Car #3 simply because I could have it all to myself. For some reason, at 7:20am, I considered this a coup. Remember that Simpsons episode with the theme park employee greedily rubbing his hands together? "All for Silas! All for Silas!" That was me, Undisputed Lord God and King of the Elevator. I work on the fifth floor, so this should have been a short ride. Somewhere between floors 3 and 4, however, I had the sensation that my elevator car had just been hit by a Buick or possibly a Plymouth.

This was not entirely unexpected. The elevators in our building have been malfunctioning for the last few months, and reports of hapless riders getting stranded en route were common. But this time, it was happening to me and not some schmucks I don't even know. Therefore: relevant.

The elevator car came immediately to a stop. The "5" button was no longer lit. In fact, none of the buttons, including the blessed "Door Open," responded to my touch. The one button which did work was the one which contacted the security guard. A genuinely concerned-sounding woman told me that (by chance, I guess?) an elevator technician was in the building and would immediately start to work on the problem. She also asked if I was okay, which I thought was a nice touch. I said I was fine and thanked her.

From there, not having a copy of Hungry Hungry Hippos on hand, I had no choice but to play the waiting game. (Damn, that's my second Simpsons reference in one article.) It was weird and solitary, sort of Twilight Zone-y.

Does it add anything to my story that I've been repeatedly listening for the last few days to the soundtrack for John Carpenter's Dark Star, which includes a lengthy elevator-based suspense sequence? It's true. In that sci-fi comedy, set in the far reaches of space aboard a lonely scout ship, poor astronaut Pinback (Dan O'Bannon) is almost crushed by an elevator while trying to feed an uncooperative alien. Now, I was Pinback!

The "repair" process was halting and strange, from what I could tell of it. At one point, the power went out on the elevator, but this was very brief. The security guard -- who kept in fairly regular contact throughout the ordeal, bless her heart -- told me it was necessary for the technician to restart the elevator this way. None of the buttons were responding yet.

After a while -- and I deliberately refrained from checking my watch -- the elevator came back to life and started to move upwards, only to crash again. A few more minutes of silence later, the elevator started going up, up, way up, way past the fifth floor. I frantically pressed all the buttons. Nothing happened. This particular bank of elevators only goes up as high as the 12th floor, which is where the Car #3 finally topped out.

Then it started descending slowly, slowly, and very slowly toward the lobby. I had that "car crash" sensation again when Car #3 eventually touched down. When the doors opened (and this was not immediate), I was rather surprised to see that the elevator car was not flush with the floor. In fact, the lobby floor was about at waist level or so, and I would have to climb up to it. It would be sort of like climbing up on your kitchen counter, if you're trying to picture it, i.e. easier for a cat than a person. But, lucky me, there was a guy in a blazer who extended his arm to help me up and out.

Sadly, I still had to get to work, so I thanked the man and got in the next elevator car over. Knowing the rules of television as I do, I half-suspected that this second elevator would stall, too. It didn't.

So today, I had the experience of actually living through the plot of so many sitcom episodes. Minus all the jokes and plot complications and so forth. Now, I'm hoping to get bonked on the head and get amnesia.

So who is Karl Wiedergott, anyway?

German-born actor Karl Wiedergott in the movie 2 Days. Inset: one of Karl's many, many Simpsons characters

Bill Clinton on The Simpsons

If you have been following the 12-day Simpsons marathon on FXX, there is one name you have undoubtedly seen in the cast credits but may not be able to immediately connect to any particular role. Born in Germany in 1969, Karl Wiedergott lent his vocal talents to a staggering 248 episodes of the extremely long-running animated series, joining the cast in 1998 and staying with the show until 2010 when he left the United States.

In addition to its six principal cast members (Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, etc.) and recurring guest stars (Kelsey Grammar, Marcia Wallace, et al.), The Simpsons employs a talented and versatile troupe of additional voice actors, nearly all of them women. Performers like Russi Taylor, Tress MacNeille, Pamela Hayden, and Maggie Roswell have been with the show for decades, voicing a slew of child and adult characters.

The odd man out here, in more ways than one, is Wiedergott. Not only is he male and German, but (unlike the women I just mentioned) he doesn't really have any recurring characters on the show. Instead, along with impersonating celebrities like Bill Clinton and John Travolta, Karl Wiedergott spent his time on The Simpsons bringing life to such parts as "Care Worker," "Angry Man," and "Boyfriend 2." Ironically, this thankless work is probably what Wiedergott is best known for, even though he has appeared in dozens of television shows and movies for nearly 30 years. His CV includes such well-known titles as Coach, Columbo, 21 Jump Street, and Star Trek: Voyager. In 2003, he wrote and acted in Two Days, an indie drama whose cast included Paul Rudd, Adam Scott, and Donal Logue. Other film credits for the actor include 18 Again! (1988) and Breakfast of Champions (1999), in which he coincidentally plays a character named Homer. So there you have it, folks. That's the scoop on Karl Wiedergott. And now you know... the rest of the story.
      

Mill Creek comedy classics #8: "All Over Town" (1937)

Oh, happy day! Olsen and Johnson are back for more in All Over Town.

The flick: All Over Town (Republic, 1937) [buy the set]

Current IMDb rating: 5.1

Director: James W. Horne (Way Out West, Big Business, and other Laurel & Hardy features and shorts)

Actors of note:

• Olsen and Johnson (Hellzapoppin', Country Gentlemen, Ghost Catchers)

• Mary Howard (The Great Ziegfeld)

• Harry Stockwell (voice of the Prince in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, father of Dean Stockwell)

• Franklin Pangborn (Sullivan's Travels, My Man Godfrey)

• James Finlayson (To Be Or Not to Be, Foreign Correspondent, many Laurel & Hardy features and shorts, and the guy who popularized the expression "D'oh!" later adopted by Homer Simpson)

The gist of it: Olsen and Johnson, playing fictionalized versions of themselves, are struggling vaudevillians ("the last of their tribe, the true vanishing Americans" according to some title cards at the start of the film) living in a $12-a-week theatrical boarding house in Manhattan and trying to make a star of their trained seal, Sally, who can do the usual seal tricks: balance a ball on her nose, play a tune by honking horns, clap, etc. They bring this dynamite act to the "jinxed" Elridge Theater, a grand old place which has been closed since a murder was committed there two years earlier. During rehearsals for the new show, another murder is committed, setting up a climax in which Olsen and Johnson promise to reveal the identity of the killer live on the radio.

Scooby and Shaggy's signature bit.

My take: All Over Town is not terribly fitting as a title for this frantic backstage farce, but it comes close to describing the film's scattershot, all-over-the-place approach to storytelling.

At first, I thought it was going to be one of those "save the orphanage"-type movies with Olsen and Johnson's trained seal act reviving the troubled Eldridge Theater and rescuing pretty young Miss Eldridge (Howard), the heavily-in-debt daughter of the theater's deceased owner, who in turn pursues a chaste romance with an up-and-coming piano player (Stockwell) with big showbiz ambitions.

Then, when O&J actually get to the theater and are menaced by various flying objects, strange echoes, and a raving lunatic who seems to live there, I thought All Over Town was going to be one of those "scaredy cats in a haunted house" stories, like Scooby-Doo and at least a dozen Three Stooges shorts. They even do the classic Scooby/Shaggy bit where one jumps into the arms of the other.

After that, there are some comic misunderstandings which lead everyone else in the movie to believe that O&J are oil millionaires, so I thought the film was going to be a rehash of Country Gentlemen, with the boys as fly-by-night swindlers. Then, when grouchy old Mr. Bailey (who wants Miss Eldridge to sell the theater) is shot by a mysterious figure, I thought the film was going to turn into a comedy whodunnit.

It ultimately winds up as a wacky, anything-goes live-action cartoon in its last few minutes, with a bumbling cop getting tangled in ropes, a brass band dodging gunfire until only a tuba player is left onstage, and lots of fake "theater snow" falling on everyone and everything as Olsen provides a running commentary for the radio audience. I wasn't bored by All Over Town, but I wasn't really satisfied by it either. The film tries a little of everything, perhaps to distract us from the fact that none of it is really all that good. If nothing else, this movie provides a glimpse of the dying days of Vaudeville, a form of entertainment which (ironically) was displaced by the distribution of motion pictures just like this one.

Franklin Pangborn and James Finlayson

Is it funny: Well, it's funny-ish. I'll give it that. All Over Town is certainly more madcap and adventurous than the previous year's Country Gentlemen. I suppose it all depends on how amusing you consider Olsen and Johnson to be. Personally, I can take or leave them. They're zanier and consequently not as relatable as, say, Abbott and Costello or even Martin and Lewis, yet they lack the pure inspiration of wilder teams like the Marx Brothers or Laurel and Hardy at their best.

This film gives them plenty of opportunities to do their trademark schtick, and at least twice, the movie stops dead so that they can do a bit: one is a phony ventriloquist act with Johnson pretending to be the dummy and another is a musical comedy number with O&J shamelessly stalling before they butcher Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C sharp minor.

At one point, they attempt some Groucho/Chico-style verbal humor, with Olsen trying without success to get Johnson to memorize and repeat a single line of dialogue for the show. None of this really catches fire. Fortunately, for you hardcore comedy nerds out there, the supporting cast includes at least two legends. Franklin Pangborn, famous for portraying "prissy" (today we'd say "gay"), uptight characters, is the show's Costumer.

And the radio show's sponsor, Mr. McDougal of McDougal's Mackerels,  is the impatient, always-agitated James Finlayson, usually a foil to Laurel and Hardy. If you've ever derived pleasure from Homer Simpson yelling "D'oh!" (a contraction of "damn" and "oh") after some setback, you can thank Mr. Finlayson, who made that word his calling card. And, yes, he says it at least twice in All Over Town.

My grade: B-

P.S. - Not even a hint of racial stereotyping here, though PETA folks will probably cringe at the treatment of Sally the seal.

Something I'd never noticed in an old "Simpsons" episode

The Simpsons and The Shining side by side.

On the left are screenshots from "Bart to the Future," an episode of The Simpsons which aired March 19, 2000. On the right are screenshots from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. It took me 13 years to notice this.

Homer

This is the earliest episode of The Simpsons.

Let me explain this one a little bit.

Apparently, an Icelandic magazine ran a comic in 1949 with a character who looked incredibly like Homer Simpson.

Here's the Buzzfeed article which alerted me to the existence of this comic.

What I have done is take the panels from this particular comic and turn them into an animated GIF, thus creating the oldest animated Simpsons episode in existence. I want you to imagine that the show was originally just about Homer and his misadventures in wood chopping.

It turns out I'm actually Steve Buscemi in "Ghost World"

"Oh my God! He just ordered a giant glass of milk!"

Well, that didn't turn out as planned.

"Tai chi, chai tea."

If you read my last post, you know that I was expecting to meet up with a young lady I'd met while in a behavioral health center. We'd exchanged several phone calls over the past two days, and she suggested meeting at a local Starbucks at 5:00 tonight. Long story short: I showed, she didn't. I got to the agreed-upon rendezvous about twenty minutes early and waited outside in the cold for her to appear. At the appointed time, I went into the establishment (side note: this was literally my first time ever in a Starbucks) and ordered a tall chai tea latte, largely because Lisa had recommended it in an episode of The Simpsons once. She was right, by the way. It was delicious. I sat at the counter and nursed that chai tea for about twenty-five minutes before heading for the door and beginning the long walk back to my car. Being a homebody, I'm not too familiar with the layout of my own city's downtown, so I parked rather ridiculously far from the coffee shop.

All the while, I could not help but think of a scene from the movie Ghost World. If you haven't seen it, the film concerns two young women (Enid and Rebecca) who have just graduated from high school and generally realize over the course of a summer that their lives are going in different directions. Before their friendship slowly dissolves, however, they do spend a lot of time hanging out together and snarking on the rest of the world. Just to amuse themselves, they pretend to answer the personal ad placed by a rather hapless nerd, Seymour (portrayed by Steve Buscemi), so that they can stalk him and see how he reacts when he realizes he's been stood up. Surprisingly, this prank proves to be a major catalyst in the plot, and the lives of Enid, Rebecca, and Seymour all change because of it. I do not know Helen's reasons for skipping our meeting. Maybe she has a perfectly good excuse. When I got back home, there were no new voicemail messages. I have decided not to call her but to wait for her to call me if and when she is interested in doing so. If that turns out to be never, then so be it.

I'm surprisingly chill about all of this. Hey, at least I got out there and made an attempt. That's more than I might have done six months ago. I can't call this a victory, but I'll say it was a tie. In the meantime, here's a relevant clip from Ghost World.



EPILOGUE: I just got a call from Helen. (It's so weird to keep calling her "Helen," but I want to protect her privacy and anonymity.)  I asked her what happened and she said she'd just had a really bad day and couldn't talk about it right at the moment, but she wished me luck in my return to work tomorrow and told me to let her know how it went. She was glad I hadn't taken it too badly. ("Good! You're still alive!" were her words.) So I guess we'll leave the narrative there for now. It's a long, strange trip, readers.

The Los Angeles Way of Death!

Thirty years ago:

Incidentally, this very cartoon -- this self-same one you've just read -- led to the creation of The Simpsons. Producer James L. Brooks happened to see this cartoon and got in contact with its creator, Matt Groening, about producing some interstitial animation for The Tracey Ullman Show. Groening took him up on the offer, of course, and the result was The Simpsons, which spent a couple of seasons as a feature on Ullman before getting its own spinoff series in 1989.

(today's zomby) AND A SINGING ORANGE!

To paraphrase C. Montgomery Burns: Oh, Zomby, will you ever win?

But speaking of the legends of animation...

Forty years before the Annoying Orange

It's strange what sticks with you from childhood. For years, I have been haunted by the memory of a particular stop-motion film from Sesame Street. The clip in question involved an orange who comes to "life" and sings the famed "Habanera" aria from Georges Bizet's 1875 opera Carmen. A little research turns up the fact that this clip dates back to Episode 277 from November 9, 1971 -- almost exactly 40 years ago. A YouTube clip attributes the film to Jim Henson, but I could find no confirmation of this. In any event, the film aired regularly on the show for years, warping the minds of several generations in the process.

Here's the notorious clip:



There's an eerie, David Lynch-eseque quality to this film, heightened by the quasi-futuristic synthesizer music. I personally remember loving this as a kid, but also being sort of scared of it.

Others, meanwhile, were apparently scarred for life by this clip. (Warning: NSFW language!)

(today's zomby) AND THE POWERS OF TEN!

ZOMBY!!! returns... uh, a little earlier than expected:

So November didn't work out the way I'd planned it, but you know who can put my problems in perspective? Charles and Ray Eames!

Mr. & Mrs. Eames doing something

One of the definitive "fun couples" of the Twentieth Century, Charles (1907-1978) and Bernice "Ray" (1912-1988) Eames were pioneers of American design who worked in a variety of fields, including fine art, architecture, furniture design, and film. Still today, I covet one of their best-known creations: the iconic Eames Chair:

Technically "Eames Lounge and Ottoman." Cost: $3579.

But I'm not here today to talk about fancy furniture. I'm here instead sing the praises of the Eames' most famous short film, Powers of Ten (1968). I've watched this countless times, and I never get tired of it. I guess I just like the whole planetarium/science museum vibe of this piece. There are so many disparate elements at play here. Elmer Bernstein's memorably chilly score contrasts with the affable, plainspoken narration by physics professor Phillip Morrison. Sad to think that Bernstein, Morrison, and both of the Eames are dead now, but here's the movie which will place all of human existence into its proper context:



I've long felt that the "Galaxy Song" from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life would make a great companion piece to Powers of Ten. Same basic subject matter, but an entirely different approach:



P.S. Yes, The Simpsons did a nifty parody of Powers of Ten some years back:



I'm with you, Homer. Wooooooooowwwwwww! A big part of the appeal of Powers of Ten is its "mind blowing" trippiness, cool in that late 1960s way. Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey also came out in '68 and had a similar effect on its audiences. Appropriately, The Simpsons does a little mash-up of the two films by using "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" on the soundtrack.

(today's zomby) AND A WORLD WITHOUT ZINC!

You may never get a chance to see Squawker & The Stiff, but here's A World Without Zinc to tide you over.

At long last... ZOMBY!!! minus that annoying zombie character

Here's a special song for our lonely bank teller:



John Lennon took a swipe at this song in "How Do You Sleep," but I've always liked the simple story it tells and how it manages to be sad without being mawkish or maudlin. The Simpsons put this song to good use a couple of seasons back in an episode about Mrs. Krabappel.