Talking Simpsons - Special Edna With Scott Gairdner
Added 2023-09-20 04:00:02 +0000 UTCAs The Simpsons head to EPCOT for a special episode, we welcomed back Scott Gairdner, EPCOT lover/writer/actor/cohost of Podcast: The Ride! Not only do we dig into all of the theme park trivia that's stuffed into this ep, we also discuss the complex love affair with Edna and Skinner, special guest stars who might not read scripts correctly, and tons more. So grab some pie and listen while waiting to board Spaceship Earth!
Comments
Some of your guests audio was reminiscent of millhouse on speaker phone at barts party
Dan Hughes
2023-09-26 08:32:00 +0000 UTCYeah, I think the common attitude in the US is that it was some elaborate European concern, only declaring war in 1917 and then sending over troops for a few months of battle in 1918. The years of deadlocked trench warfare in France leading up to that point don't help. That said, I was riveted by the weekly Great War series on YouTube that covered the goings on from one hundred years in the past, as well as the broader historical strokes, from the end of the Napoleonic Wars through the Russian Revolution and Civil War, and then into WW2. It's taught largely as grim, dull, and foreign, though, in the US.
Bradford A Barker
2023-09-25 05:31:39 +0000 UTCIs WW1 being boring a common trope in America? Because I see that fairly often and it kinda blows my mind.
Adam Esat
2023-09-25 04:05:15 +0000 UTCeven as a native floridian, i had no idea there was a difference between Disneyland, Magic Kingdom, and Disney World (though admittedly I'm not a parks person)
trasparenti
2023-09-24 21:37:44 +0000 UTCMy mom and I watched The Music Man together a lot!
Aaron Alcott
2023-09-22 21:59:22 +0000 UTCI found it surprising when Bob mentioned he didnt really do full research papers like Bart until he was in college. Granted, i am ten years younger than the guys. I was in fifth grade when this episode came out and at that point annual research papers were a big thing i had to do since second grade. It wasnt deep subjects like WW1 but stuff like animals, presidents, historical figures and other random specific subjects the teacher would assign us. We didnt get to pick our own interests until Jr. High. It was always a huge project that basically took over our entire english class for a little over a month. We spent our entire english periods in the library for around a week finding books and were expected to do a handwritten rough draft, a typed second draft to make sure we made our word count, and a third final draft. We also had a minimum amount of citations we had to include that got larger every year. It was still early enough that the internet didn't count because everybody used to lie on there and nothing is reliable! Our teachers were really serious about formatting, font, and word size. Any kids that didnt have computers and printers at home were sent to the computer lab to type it out when it came close to our assignment deadline. It was pretty much our entire english class for nearly six weeks. Apparently this was a thing district wide in my city and i grew up in Texas of all places! I always assumed this was a normal millennial school experience. Honestly, that was my favorite part of the year. I loved having nothing to do but spending time in the library, reading and writing for nearly six weeks straight. Also, the Romeo and Juliet thing made me laugh because we watched it in my freshman high school year, by then i was at a private christian school. Instead of showing the Baz Luhrmann which the whole class insisted on but our teacher acted like that was inferior, inaccurate, and dirtier (totally not true) and even got mad at us for wanting to watch it (we a bunch of sinners) she showed us the old one with underage nudity. Instead of doing the much better solutions Bob and Henry's teachers had, she just paused right before the scene, held up a big blanket during the scene and continued to let it play so we could hear the audio while she kept peaking behind the blanket to check if the nudity finished. I get she's a christian but she also let me my emo ass do a research paper that year on Kurt Cobain so i dont know why she got so weird about the movie. Im guessing because the old one was PG, by old timey standards, and even for older classes the private school had strict restrictions that nothing beyond PG could be showed to any classes even the seniors. That's probally why there's so many weird religious people i went to highschool with still consider Hoodwinked and Monty Python The Holy Grail(which is fine) the hight of cinema in their thirties because we watched them ad nauseam every time the teacher was too tired or finals was over and we had a week left of nothing. Wow, i typed a lot. Sorry!
hugejeanmanjackman
2023-09-22 20:01:35 +0000 UTC"Well, why didn't you tell the rest of us? WHY DID YOU KEEP IT A SECRET?!?!"
littleterr0r
2023-09-22 04:07:40 +0000 UTCAs a kid I heard that Epcot was the 'boring one' and this episode cemented that perception in my mind. When I eventually went to WDW with a friend I did Homer's groan every time Epcot came up until he told me to knock it off. I remember liking it alright. Homer singing about pie over the credits is similar to the Family Guy episode "Road to the Multiverse". In that episode Stewie and Brian go to a universe animated by Disney where they also sing about pie. That segment also ends with the cast attacking Mort because he's Jewish and Disney was allegedly an anti-Semite. With Family Guy airing on Disney+ in some countries, I wonder if that gag is still in there.
PurpleComet
2023-09-21 19:41:52 +0000 UTClike scott, early epcot center is a cornerstone of my love for the disney parks. my first trip was in 1994, after some of the original attractions had already started closing down (the sponsors signed on for 10 year contracts in 1982, and some didn't re-up once the decade was over). my parents recently liquidated their decades-long disney memorabilia collection, and i specifically asked for right of first refusal of any early epcot stuff (and tiki room and haunted mansion, i contain multitudes). one of the items i now proudly own is the epcot center teachers guide and several faxed correspondence between my mom (who was a preschool teacher before i was born) and the folks at epcot's education resource office. if you thought the rides struggled to entertain while educating the public on the history of energy and agriculture, these guides were literally designed for educators to bring back to their classrooms. to the best of my knowledge, my mom only ever intended to keep these guides as collectables, leaving her preschoolers to 'journey into imagination' on their own time.
Eric Schuman
2023-09-21 17:53:58 +0000 UTCAs someone who really enjoys Epcot, I can totally see where this episode is coming from. I went to Epcot as a kid in 1988 for the first time and my takeaway was definitely more in-line with this episode. Aside from Figment, who I can't stress enough was immensely popular for a time, the rest of the park was of little interest to a kid. There was no Mickey and friends and most of the rides felt educational - because they were! And I remember Body Wars completely messing everyone up. I was there as a teen in 1998 and felt it was okay by then, even if a lot of the stuff was still boring compared to the then open MGM Studios, and like a great many, I very much enjoy the place as an adult because it's where I can eat decent food and get some good drinks at barely affordable prices! It's also a lot more entertaining now, mostly by virtue of the company more or less abandoning the park's original mission statement, but what do I care when the new Guardians of the Galaxy ride is a lot of fun! The Robin Williams stuff mostly feels like a reaction to his almost omnipresence in the 90s. Like Jim Carrey, I think a lot of people got sick of his schtick and it became easy to poke fun at. I don't get the sense that the show is taking any sort of malicious jabs at him. It sure felt like he was almost universally loved when he was alive and certainly in death. Very good timing on your part though to have this episode come up since Pop Arena just posted a very excellent look back at Mork & Mindy via the Nick Nacks series. Highly recommended.
Joe Hodgson
2023-09-21 13:50:38 +0000 UTCMy Epcot experiences either time I went to Disney World were particularly good (though not necessarily the park itself fault). The main thing I recall is the time I went with my family in 5th grade and my mom got food poisoning from the Rootin Tootin Revue restaurant at one of the hotels. She wound up puking 'round the world in Epcot the next day...
Patrick McClafferty
2023-09-21 13:21:48 +0000 UTCHousebroken is so good!!!
Bryce Hope
2023-09-21 12:43:45 +0000 UTCGod bless you, 7the grade teacher that didn’t know they were going to show me Olivia Hussey’s titties.
Nick Grayson
2023-09-21 07:42:41 +0000 UTCDid your teachers, when making you watch Stand and Deliver, act like they had inspired a group of inner city children by showing you a movie about a guy who did? My teacher seemed to want to take some form of credit, like an inspiration contact high.
Christian Kiddle
2023-09-21 04:38:11 +0000 UTCMy Mom helped a few teenagers sneak into "American Wedding", the 3rd American Pie movie. She showed them how one person goes in, you just show them an old stub, and go to the emergency exit and let the boys in. I remember waiting by an emergency exit with 3 strangers and my Mom busting open the door and letting us in. Good times.
Thoren Murphy
2023-09-21 02:17:04 +0000 UTCNancy Cartwright’s reading on “aye carumba indeed” is just perfection.
Steve D
2023-09-21 00:18:15 +0000 UTCMy mum (she's Australian so not a mom) is pushing 70 and I've spent my whole life going to movies with her, she's super kool and knows lots about movies lol seriously though she took me to so many movies as a child, now we've switched roles & I take her to see movies. She's a rad movie going buddy and I love her. Her zeal for film may be more responsible for my career than fully realised. Everyone should regularly goto the movies with their mum (or mom). I remember the first few IMAX cinemas, they only showed extremely dull documentaries shot exclusively for that format and those cinemas. In many ways quite reminiscent of the dull experiences associated with the EPCOT centre.. Battle across time is rad! The concept for the T-100000 was lightly appropriated into concepts that would later appear in Rise of the Machines and Gensys
Rob MacBride
2023-09-21 00:12:44 +0000 UTCFormer guest Poparena just dropped a new Nick Knacks yesterday on Mork and Mindy. Great watch after all the Pam Dawber and Robin Williams talk.
Adam Voyde
2023-09-20 20:41:28 +0000 UTCThe Little Richard thing you are talking about was him on Blossom lol
Michael Recon
2023-09-20 16:34:20 +0000 UTCYes the Tesla and the handle - I remember getting a Lyft and getting picked up in one and couldn’t figure out to open the door lol
Michael Recon
2023-09-20 16:11:02 +0000 UTCI had to pause when it was said that Democrats today are to the right of Republicans in the 90s. I guess I’m old but I remember Patrick Buchanan, Newt Gingrich, and Rush Limbaugh. For those too young to remember, they didn’t veer to the left of any current Democratic leaders (although the 90s New Democrats certainly veered to the right, which is a different story!). Here’s a thick but interesting discussion on 90s politics: https://www.publicbooks.org/what-the-1990s-did-to-america/
John Halski
2023-09-20 15:01:43 +0000 UTCSpeaking of the American Teacher Awards - I think Christina Aguilera performed the year of 2000 when she was just starting out
Michael Recon
2023-09-20 14:46:21 +0000 UTCFantasia 2000 was the first time I've heard of an "Imax" event that wasnt tied to a museum presentation, but with the Imax near me being almost a 2 hour trip my family opted to wait for the film to hit regular theaters instead. The first Imax event I was actually able to see in a proper Imax was Cyberworld 3d, the one that had a sort of unedit but quite edited version of Homer3, which included a lot of the deleted scenes intact in a weird, blue outlined floating square for the 2D scenes to keep up the "SEE IT IN 3D" angle for the film. At least up to the part with Homer falling apart echoing "crap", as they cut to the original commissioned wrap around segments with the host, voiced by Jenna Elfman, dealing with Homer's black hole invading her home world. Its lost media now but for some reason that version of the ToH segment stuck with me due to the Imax version of it using the final "CRAP" homer yelled near the end to transfer into this corny action sequence for Cyberworld 3D of Jenna "saving the cyberworld", just felt humorously mismatched in terms of context to stick with me like that.
WaitWhat
2023-09-20 13:29:20 +0000 UTCThe “Evil Arab” character in WWE that Henry mentioned from the post 9/11 era was called Mohammed Hassan. I feel it was remiss not to mention probably the most distasteful aspect of the character, that he was played by an Italian American, Marc Copani.
Miles Galaska
2023-09-20 06:54:13 +0000 UTCI knew at least one of the PTR guys would be on for this
Eyal Shachar
2023-09-20 04:01:30 +0000 UTC
