May 1st crowd on Nanjing Lu, Shanghai, China.

I used to be a huge fan of the Simpsons, when it was still funny until a couple of years ago, but stopped watching the show altogether when I tried to give it a chance but it was honestly too painful. I loved the fact that it had 2 (main) levels of humor. The “funny fat guy stupid” Homer that rednecks and censors can watch and feel it is fine for all audiences, and the “look at yourself” Homer that intellectuals and artists can appreciate. Meanwhile, the children of rednecks and censors everywhere would get the message little by little and perhaps recognize themselves and the world around them, and hopefully get exposed to a subversive message. But the writers who joined recently must have not seen there was a second level, and the show has become a joke within the joke, a parody of itself like the parody of showbiz that Krusty represents. In short, I loved it when it was original and clever. But the people making it now thought it would be easier to just make it easier and more mainstream so that it can compete with reality TV and such.

And then there is the Simpsons Movie coming out next month. I want to hope it will good. I know it will not be as good as I wish, or as it could, but I really hope they waited all this time to make something of high standard, and it is not just the rights holder who finally gave up and accepted Fox’s check… Why am I dubious about Fox? Have a look at this promo page: at the bottom, it says both “Host me on your site” (with appropriate HTML code) and “All rights reserved. Property of FOX. Private use only. Sale, duplication or other transfer of this material is strictly prohibited”… Sounds precisely like what the Simpsons used to make fun of.

Because I love the Coen Brothers, I love Steve Buscemi, and I have fond memories of the Parisian metro…
via

Found on National Geographic, an article on the disastrous conditions at Taiwan Zoo. Don’t mess with Nature…

I saw her for the first time in “The Larry Sanders Show“. I know, I’m late, but still, she’s not super famous yet, so I feel it was still time for me to discover her and talk about it. Sarah Silverman is very funny, bold, sexy, clever, and if I married her we’d have jewish kids. In other words, she’s very cool.

Her movie/one-woman-show “Jesus Is Magic” is hilarious. She pulls the same strings over and over again, and you let yourself fall into her traps every time because you kinda like it. She jokes about everything — no, really, EVERYTHING — and she can make things funny that would otherwise be quite shoking. That’s talent. Don’t watch it if you are so politically correct that you think we can’t joke about everything�

A joke she told in a US talkshow:
Yeah, you know, I got a jury duty notice and, you know, I said there�s nothing funny about jury duty, you know. Except for the obvious, you know, the �duty� part. But �

I had to fill � you fill out a � you fill out a form. You send it in. You�re randomly selected. And I don�t wanna get selected for jury duty. So I�m filling out the form. And my friend said, �Why don�t you just write something really inappropriate, like, �I hate Chinks�?� And I said, �Yeah, that�s a good idea.� But when you think about it, I don�t want people to think that of me, you know? I just wanna get out of jury duty. So I just filled out the form, and I wrote, �I love Chinks.�

And for those who like Seinfeld, she was Kramer’s girlfriend in the 8th season…

Read more on her Wikipedia page, and that Rolling Stone article (which I haven’t read because I was just too lazy)

The funny thing about Sarah is that I already knew and loved her sister Laura Silverman from her (voice) character Laura in the very excellently funny animated TV show “Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist“. And then she was the reality show director in the really good sitcom/drama “The Comeback“. So now I just realised they are sisters, and it makes me happy.