Below The Beltway

Those darn Diebold machines !

Apparently, it’s not just Venezuela where The Simpsons are having public relations problems:
BUENOS AIRES, April 16 — If Homer Simpson and his family are planning any South American vacations in the near future, they might want to come up with a backup plan.
The television show “The Simpsons” is nothing short of a cultural phenomenon in [...]

Personally, I’m betting on Bart:
Luxurious chest hair and little red trunks versus doughnuts and “D’oh!”. In the battle of the US television heavyweights, The Hoff has vanquished Homer.
Or at least in Venezuela, where The Simpsons has been ordered from television schedules by President Hugo Chavez after being deemed unsuitable for children. Controversial enough, but in [...]

Apparently, our entire universe is nothing more that a giant cosmic doughnut:
 WASHINGTON — Astronomers have stumbled upon a tremendous hole in the universe. That’s got them scratching their heads about what’s just not there. The cosmic blank spot has no stray stars, no galaxies, no sucking black holes, not even mysterious dark matter. It is [...]

Rick Sincere’s been doing some traveling lately, and while he was out in California, he visited another 7-11 turned Kwik-E-Mart.
Rick also reports that the promotion is now over, but the materials will live on:
The curtain may have closed on the Kwik-E-Mart, the fictional convenience store on The Simpsons brought to life in 11 markets by [...]

To the tune of about 71.9 million dollars:
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) — Woo Hoo!
“The Simpsons Movie” turned doughnuts into dollars over the weekend, raking in $71.9 million to debut as the top movie this week.
The big screen tale of the lovable, if dysfunctional, family rolled over the competition, sending last week’s top movie, Universal Studio’s [...]

Kellie and I went to see The Simpsons Movie yesterday morning up in Tysons Corner. Now, to be fair, I am far an away a bigger Simpsons than my wife, but she came along anyway and we both enjoyed it.
To be honest, I don’t think I’ve laughed quite as much for that long in quite [...]

First, Stephen Hunter in the Washington Post:
In “The Simpsons Movie,” no good deed goes uncrushed.
This merry celebration of mayhem, hostility, carnage, wanton destruction, power lust, dysfunction, nihilism and the proper application of gigantic plastic domes to American cities will certainly satisfy those who’ve seen all 400-odd episodes of the TV show twice, as well as [...]

Momma Marge discovers the Internet

Early Bart, but still pretty fun