So the nice girl next door at Evergreen Terrace is going to be sort of taking it off for Playboy. A Playboy spokeswoman seems to indicate that Marge Simpson will only be showing implied nudity in her three page pictorial, despite having landed the cover of Playboy for all newsstand copies. (Subscribers will get a non-cartoon celebrity on the cover. No word on whether it is a naked celeb.) The old saying goes, implied nudity is a lot like implied food. I don’t a hundred percent agree, but it seems like doing Playboy should equal conservative nudes because that is their format. Unless Marge were just doing an interview, in which case I’m not sure about her being the sexy covergirl, much as I love The Simpsons.

I think a number of people keep saying Lois Griffin from Family Guy should do Playboy next, because they know Lois Griffin would actually show the goods. Let’s be realistic here and see that Lois Griffin would be a great fit for Hustler. Regardless, Marge Simpson doing Playboy is a very cute way to celebrate The Simpsons 20th anniversary. Yup, The Simpsons have been on the air for twenty years.

Playboy CEO Scott Flanders, who replace Hugh Hefner offspring Christie Hefner this summer, states that he is really excited about having a cartoon on the cover for the first time because he really wants to bring in a younger audience. Yes, you read that correctly. I don’t know if he is any relation to Ned Flanders, but he does think that The Simpsons will really bring in the under-35 crowd. According to The Chicago Sun-Times, based in the city where Playboy is headquartered, CEO Scott Flanders thinks Playboy’s current audience is around thirty-five because of shows like The Girls Next Door. And putting a cartoon’s twenty year anniversary on the cover will bring in a younger audience. It’s not like he’s putting Abby the Cow from Nickelodeon’s Back at the Barnyard on the cover.

Given that The Simpsons came out of the underground and alternative comics world, it started off with an audience which would have been offended by the suggestion that cartoons are for kids. The Simpsons manages to be more subtle than others who have followed in its yellow animated footsteps, so kids can watch it, but the point was always that The Simpsons was also more sophisticated.

Raise your hand if you remember Life in Hell from before The Simpsons. Are you in your twenties? Yeah, didn’t think so.

Playboy is a brand which has always had such a genius for branding that it seems odd and unsettling to watch them flounder. Like when your first older relative or mentor starts to forget things or have random outbursts.

Putting Marge Simpson on the cover of Playboy is an awesome promo. Just not a promo which is actually designed to bring in readers born the same year as Bart Simpson. Bart read Playdude because he found Homer’s stash.

Writer John Updike passed away this morning. I used to confuse John Updike and John Irving, so I was, as a child, afraid to pick up a John Updike book, for fear someone would get their penis chomped during a blow job. Of course, that was “The World According to Garp”, but I already said I was a kid when this confused me.

Most obituaries today will probably mention the Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom novels which won John Updike two Pulitzers. The series is Rabbit Run, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit Is Rich, Rabbit At Rest, and Rabbit Remembered. I don’t really recall why I confused Rabbit and Garp, other than perhaps just the fact that both participated in somewhat unappealing grown-up sex I was too young to understand. I’ve seen a few obits today which refer to John Updike as a chronicler of small town life”, but only people from Manhattan think Ipswich, Massachusetts is small town America, John Updike wrote about the suburbs during a time when Americans were migrating from the cities to the burbs. On the topic of adulterers from suburban New England, John Updike once famously said, “if I have not exhausted it, it has exhausted me.” (Actually, I’ve seen that quote written a few ways over the years, so he once famously said something kinda like that which expressed that sentiment.)

For a writer, John Updike’s commitment to actually produce writing was inspiring. He was very candid about the fact that his prose writing paid the bills more than his fiction did, and that he liked the security of knowing that something along the lines of a book review would be published . . . and paid for. The Simpsons alluded to this in the episode “Insane Clown Poppy” where John Updike writes a Krusty the Klown bio called Your Shoes Too Big To Kickbox God. Your Shoes Too Big To Kickbox God is of about the same commerce/quality ratio as all Krusty endorsed products, which is to say it is comedically short and better for making money than whatever its stated purpose is. Krusty Burger, anyone? Delightfully, John Updike voiced himself on The Simpsons.

If, unlike me, your siblings don’t use Mr. Burns sound files as their custom ring tone for you, you would probably be most aware of John Updike as the writer of The Witches of Eastwick. The Witches of Eastwick is possibly the only time I saw a movie before I read the book and then didn’t read the book. (I saw Fight Club before reading the book, but I read it.) Ironically, the reason I didn’t like the movie enough to seek out the book was that the aforementioned witches conjure the perfect man and he is Jack Nicholson, who was not nearly femme-y enough for my taste at the time. Over the years, I’ve grown to appreciate Jack Nicholson more because, in adult life, fearlessness and force of personality are so deeply more important and enjoyable than sharp cheekbones and full lips. And I’ve grown to appreciate John Updike more because I am now more sympathetic to (or at least tolerant of) weakness of character, of the sort John Updike so deftly wrote about, than I was at age twelve. As a child, I thought that only bad people were imperfect. Part of growing up is accepting that nobody, including yourself, is as perfect as you wish.

Much is made of the fact that John Updike had one of his fictional characters win a Nobel Prize in Literature. The famous author did win a lifetime achievement Bad Sex in Fiction Prize. And, as mentioned, a couple Pulitzers. And a couple National Book Awards. And about a gajillion other honors. So I think his life can count as one well-lived, without the Nobel. I just looked at a listing of all the winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature from 1901 to the present. I’m pretty darn well read and I’ve only heard of maybe half a dozen of the winners from the past thirty years. You have to go back to Jean-Paul Sarte in 1964 before it is someone I’ve heard of, read, and thought was good. Sarte declined the prize. I took the ferry from Copenhagen to Sweden with a friend once and I feel that qualifies me to state categorically that playing yourself on The Simpsons is definitely cooler. Rest in peace, John Updike.

Has anyone besides me noticed that too many episodes of The Simpsons lately have the same theme: Marge is hot for some guy other than Homer but somehow ends up back with him.

One of the things which I felt always made The Simpsons really work was that Marge and Homer had a good relationship. Lots of sitcoms have had similar themes and jokes, but they were mean-spirited and short-lived. The Simpsons boasts more than 400 episodes, so they had to have something right to start off. The animated family at Evergreen Terrace was perhaps a bit of a menace to the neighborhood, but they loved each other. Marge kept Homer grounded and Homer gave Marge excitement. Homer might mess up extravagantly from time to time, but he’s still a good provider. How many men, in 2008, can support a stay-at-home wife and three kids and own their home and two cars?

Lately, Marge seems to be finding Homer more and more of an oaf. Tonight’s episode, rewrote the history of the Simpsons family in order to mock Kurt Cobain’s legacy. As part of the stupidity, Marge miraculously gets a retroactive college degree and a radically different set of values. And a crush on her womanizing womynist professor. She does this while Homer is working at his father’s Laser Tag establishment (which we’ve never heard of before) in order to pay for her college. For the moment I will leave aside the part where FOX’s send-up of the 90’s makes the VH1 I-Love-the series look positively academic in its depth and accuracy.

Just now, let’s look at how much Marge has stopped appreciating Homer over the last few years. In January, she had an affair while Homer paid for her personal enrichment. In November, she tortured Homer for not knowing her eye color, when her eyes are freaking hazel. In November, Homer and Marge also go the Mr. and Mrs. Smith route of being contract killers on opposing sides. In September, Homer becomes a celebrity and Marge begrudges him his success. Back in March, Homer showed a documentarian that his life had meaning because of what a wonderful family he has. Last January, Marge was thinking she might be happier with another man, so Homer revitalizes an entire beach town to make her happy. Last November, Homer briefly became an ice cream man and Marge begrudged him that and decided to make popsicle stick sculptures and was sure the entire time that Homer was deliberately sabotaging her budding art career. Last September, Marge decided she wanted to be a carpenter and she had Homer act as a front for her and then got furious at him for getting credit for things she told him to take credit for. A prior carpentry-themed episode featured Marge abusing Homer for not fixing the roof and being sweet on Ray the roof guy. In January of 2005, Marge flirts with having an affair with Moe. In April of 2004, Marge checked out Krabapple and Skinner’s impending nuptials and decided she was trapped in a passionless marriage. In January of 2004, Marge wrote a book where the villain is obviously a thinly-disguised Homer and the lust object is (ew) Ned Flanders.

Looking at the most recent episodes, maybe Marge just has a 12 month itch she longs to scratch at the start of every year. Hmm, January 2000, Marge is all hot and bothered over a prison inmate with painting talent. In all fairness, in January of 2001, Homer got drunk and married a floozy in Vegas.

I know they are cartoon characters. But I used to really love the show. If Homer is really wrong for Marge, I want her to grow a spine, and do what she needs to do, in order to live the life she requires. It makes me crazy when real people keep complaining about the same problem, without taking steps to fix it. But I don’t think Homer is wrong for Marge. I think some upper level writer at FOX is having personal problems and should keep them out of The Simpsons. I feel the Marge of the first decade of the show was not all hot to have an affair with every single male character.

If the kids don’t age, then I don’t think Homer and Marge’s relationship should sour.

As this year’s Comic Con looms near, it is time to take a look back at last year’s event. Looking at the gallery of snapshots from the Blue Blood crew’s Thursday at the show reminded me of some of the fun we had.

I was excited to pick up entertaining stuff from Shannon Wheeler of Too Much Coffee Man fame. I loved all the crazy Lego, including Lego Batman and Lego robots. Actually, all robots are cool, not just those made out of plastic bricks for kids. BlueBlood.com hottie Yolanda was in the house as well. The lovely blonde, Em, is almost my namesake and is a real mail order Russian bride. Special thanks to The Brotherhood for sponsoring the megabooth and making sure it came complete with a beautiful and personable mail order bride.

I was pleased to be able to literally buy a shirt off the back of the very kind Gwen from Sighco. Gwen and I are around the same size and she was wearing a shirt which read, “Guns don’t kill people. Supervillains kill people.” Everyone from our spooky ookie artistic folks megabooth was going on a Superhero and Supervillain-themed party bus that night. A bus complete with stripper pole, I might add. Oddly, the booth with the Simpsons costumes and various supergear was just displaying and was not renting or selling them at the convention. I kinda think they left some money on the table there. This meant I really did need that Supervillain shirt right away then and Sighco’s Gwen actually took her own shirt off, right on the Comic Con show floor, let me try it on, and then selected another shirt for herself. Yes, I do always have a +20 on any roll involving people around me getting naked.

Actually, we had more fun than you can see here because it was really freaking hot in San Diego. I mean hot in the sense of excessively high temperature, as opposed to merely exciting hot. So I was a little off and actually shot snaps of the first half of the day with nothing in the camera. Oops. The awesome purple superheroine with the secret identity actually fights crime with a blue-clad male partner, but, alas, I was not actually taking pictures of them, when I thought I was taking pictures of them. I’m a polar bear and the heat can be a tad difficult for me.