THE SIMPSONS NEWS
Season premier happened last Sunday with the Halloween special.  There was a season premier party for all the people who work on the show.  It took place at Universal Studios this year.  It happened at night. The park was closed, except for us.  We were only allowed to be around a small fenced in section that surrounded the Simpsons’ Ride.  As far as food went, this was by far the party with the most variety. All of the food restaurants directly around the ride where available to us for free.  That was very cool.

I went with my Alesha, of course, and after we had eaten and finished watching the show (which I enjoyed), we went on the ride.  It was the first time for Alesha.  I pointed out the things I had worked on as we waited in line and she took pictures.  We then went on the ride.  She really liked it.  I had fun going on it again as well.

Afterward Alesha wanted coffee so we went and go some.  I got a hot chocolate.  It was really cold and it helped out.  We left shortly after that, mostly because we didn’t want to keep my parents (who were watching the kids) up too late.  It was a Sunday night, after all.  Alesha hadn’t managed to finish her coffee before we left and the guard at the exit wouldn’t let her leave with her coffee.  He said that open drinks were not allowed outside the park.  She ended up throwing the rest away and was very annoyed after that.

Overall, we had fun.  Alesha had been very stressed out lately and going out, just the two of us, to a party with a ride in it, really helped her unwind.

FAMILY

This was the first Halloween that my daughter was “aware” that it was Halloween. Alesha got her a Snow White costume to wear.  I think she liked it, but I’m not really sure because she was a bit puzzled by it when we first put it on.

She went to work with my wife instead of getting dropped off at daycare with Dante.  There was a big Halloween celebration at the school and Alesha said she was had a blast.  Midday Alesha came by  my work and dropped her off on her way to do an errand.   There was a Halloween party going on at that time at my job, so it was fine.  When I took her out the car, she was asleep and I carried her around for about an hour because she didn’t want to wake up.  After she finally did, it took her about thirty minutes before she stopped being cranky.  She finally livened up and she started having a good time at the party.  One of my fellow co-workers also dressed up as Snow White.  Munchkin didn’t want to leave her side.  She wanted to be everywhere Snow White was.  It was very funny.  Everyone loved Munchkin and she had a great day.

On the way home, we stopped for the night at my parents house.  Dante and Munchkin spent the rest of the night playing with the toys they have at their house.  Dante had a great time too. There was so much he could play with, he was overwhelmed.  We didn’t take Munchkin out “treat or treating” because she was having too much fun playing and I don’t think we really had the energy for it anyway.  Still, she and Dante had fun.

She stayed up very late that night and by the time we got home, she was out cold.

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THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Looks like we’ve actually managed to layout most of the scenes in the show before deadline.  There are only six scenes left to finish.  There are so few scenes left that there isn’t enough work to go around.  Two of my fellow crew members took the day off today and tomorrow.  There wasn’t anything for them to do.  They were happy to do it.  I’m one of the few people to still have a scene left to finish, but it will be done by the end of the day.  I hope I don’t have to take the day off Friday, I rather not use up a vacation day.

FAMILY

Dante got baptized this weekend (finally).  The ceremony was very nice.  We didn’t invite very many people to come, mostly because there wasn’t going to be a party afterward.  Our house is too small to host one.  We were planning on having it at my mom’s house but she’s out of town visiting my sister and my little niece in Pennsylvania.  We’ll be having the baptism party when she gets back.

The baptism itself went very well.  The only hiccup was how late Dante’s Godmother showed up.  Her car was overheating and she had to drive real slow.  The ceremony began before she even got there but she got there in time for the more important parts.

We were asked to not dress Dante in his nice clothes until after the water was poured on him.  He was in his “underwear” for half the ceremony.   Poor baby had no idea what was going on.  He wasn’t very bothered by it though. He didn’t cry or anything but by the end, he started getting fussy because he was getting sleepy.

A few people came over to the house afterward and stayed for about an hour or two.  The rest of the day was spent recovering from all the fuss.  It was a good day.

FAMILY

Sunday, we went out to an outdoor shopping mall with the kids.  It was a very nice time and it was fun to just do something like that, just the four of us.  The mall has a little kid train ride that goes around a small part of the mall.  The train is not really a train on a track, it’s just a train shaped car that has two small “passenger” carts that it pulls.  The rides cost two bucks and Munchkin and I went on it.  I don’t think Munchkin understood what we were going to do up until the moment we actually got in the train.  Even though she saw the train would stop and let kids out to allow other kids to get in while we waited in line. She was just waiting in line with me because I asked her to.

Once in the train, she wouldn’t stop smiling.  It was really a bumpy and uncomfortable ride but Munchkin was loving it.  She turned up and looked at me smiling like crazy.  I tried to get her to look out the window and I even tried to get her to wave at people, which she did, for about fifteen seconds only to turn back to look at me and smile.  It left such an impression on me that whenever I think about it I still get the mental picture of it.  It’s something like this:

Later, after we told mommy what we did,  she saw the train pass by.  She started running after it yelling, “Wait! Wait!”  She would have chased it all over it’s route if Alesha hadn’t stopped her in her tracks by asking her if she wanted ice cream.

FAMILY

At work, Alesha proposed a “Great Books” class.  She really wanted to teach it.  She knew that it would be a great class for the Seniors and Juniors in her school. They gave her permission to teach it.  She was so excited.  The class is an elective and many Seniors and Juniors told her that they had signed up for it.  Alesha prepared and the syllabus for the class and she showed it to me.  She explained why she had picked certain books for the first semester and we talked about what other books she might want to put in for the second.  I could tell she was happily anticipating teaching the class.

There were a few problems the first two weeks of school with schedules and she had to wait until the third week before actually being able to start teaching any of her classes.  When she finally started teaching the class this week (the class she had proposed for Seniors and Juniors), she discovered, to her great dismay, that the class was all six graders.  There had been a huge mix up with the class schedules.  Many of the kids didn’t even know what the class was or what it was about.

One of the books they are going to read is The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis. The only time she got any kind of reaction from the class about the books they were going to read was when they discovered he was the same author who wrote The Chronicles of Narnia series.  Then everyone cheered.

Needless to say, Alesha is horribly disappointed and she hopes that she could at least get some of the students the class was designed for, in the class.

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THE SIMPSONS NEWS
I finished doing storyboard revisions this week.  I’m glad I was able to do it.  It was fun. Now we have to get all the rest of the scenes done so the show can ship on time.  It has CGI element in it which may get in the way of that goal.  Lance is really worried about that.

This week I also got into a huge discussion about Catholicism with a co-worker.  It was interesting and I learned a few things about the Bible because of it.  He’s a “fallen away Catholic” who has a lot of gripes about the Church and has a few conspiracy theories about it. A day later, by the time we ended our discussion, we parted in really good terms, considering  how heated the discussion got (by heated, I don’t mean we got angry, I just mean it was very passionate).

FAMILY
We went to the Zoo this weekend.  It was a spontaneous thing.  We were out, for a thing that my wife’s job was holding at the location of her new school.  On the way back, we were going to stop off at a park.  The closest one was Griffith Park in Burbank.  The LA Zoo happens to be in the same area and Alesha decided she wanted to take the kids. So off we went to the Zoo.

It was really fun.  We had a great time.  Munchkin was in awe of all the animals.  It was great seeing her reaction to them all.  The boy spent the whole trip in his stroller.  He didn’t really know what was going on.  He spent the day staring and smiling at his mommy.  We didn’t stay at the Zoo for too long. I think we spent about three hours or so there.  We were really glad we went.

FAMILY

I had tried other Disney movies before this one.  The closest ones to really grab her attention have been Toy Story, The Incredibles and some parts of Cinderella.  Snow White, really has really gotten under her skin though.  I don’t know why exactly.  Maybe it’s the simplicity of the characters.  They are just archetypes and they’re easy to understand.  The interesting thing, is that when I first showed her the movie, the only thing she was truly interested in was the scary parts.  Especially the beginning with the evil queen and The Magic mirror and the part where Snow White runs into the scary forest after the her failed assassination attempt.  That was the only parts that Munchkin would really watch.  Little by little she started liking the rest of it.  Now she sings along with all the songs and dances around to all of them and asks to watch the movie anytime she can. When it ends, she want me to start it over again.  I also find it interesting that the part that intrigues her most about  The Incredibles, is the first fight that Mr. Incredible has with the robot on the island.  I guess there is something about the intensity of these scenes that really speaks to her at some level.

FAMILY
So Dante now scoots around.  He doesn’t quite crawl but he scoops around on his belly as he pushes with his feet.  The first time we saw him do it, we couldn’t stop laughing.  He looks so darn cute doing it.

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THE SIMPSONS NEWS
Took some classes on the new program we’re going to be using when we go digital.  It’s not as complicated as I thought it would be.  It’s really quite easy.  Unfortunately, we are not using the program as it was intended so there are things in it that aren’t quite in line with what we need it to do. We have a lot of work around solutions for those problems.  It’s the cheapest program the company could afford to license.  As I’ve stated earlier, the production side of the show gets the least amount of the money the show earns.  Which basically means we don’t really get the programs or equipment that would be ideal for us to use.  It really kinda sux.

In other news, my director Lance told me he set up a blog site.  He’s putting he’s earliest non Simpsons related stuff on it and he’s working his way up to the side projects he does now.  I can’t wait until he starts putting pictures of his sculptures.  He does these really great cartoon sculptures and they are really fun to look at.

FAMILY
Alesha invited people over to celebrate her birthday this weekend. She had a great day that day, even though there were times when she was a little stressed out.  Meanwhile I was pretty stressed out almost through out the day.  It started off pretty nice, and then it just got really stressful for me.  Still, the party was fun, despite my stress and Munchkin had a fantastic time, playing, dancing and singing.  I hadn’t seen her so happy in a long time.  Perhaps that was the only thing that kept my stress from totally ruining the party for me

FAMILY
Started dropping the kids off at Day Care this week.  Woke up at my usual time (4:00am), got ready and then got the kids ready.  I would tell Munchkin that they were going to Day Care so she would learn the word and understand where we were going.  I’d try to get to the daycar place at 6:30am so we would leave around 5:30am.  The Day Care is in Altadena which is a convenient 20 minute drive from my work but a slightly less convenient 30 minute drive from home.  Traffic was a bit of a hassle.  Lucky for us, we can use the carpool lane, so that helps out a lot.  Still, most of the time we got there in an hour due to accidents on the way there.

Once we got there, that’s when it got difficult.  Mainly because it meant dropping them off and leaving them there.  Dante wasn’t much of a problem, he doesn’t understand what’s going on.  Munchkin though…OH BOY.  She was breaking my heart.  It’s tough to leave them. Sticking a hot poker in my eye would have hurt less.

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THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Last week Father Roderick, from the Daily Breakfast Podcast and founder of SQPN (among other things), decided to go look through two seasons worth of Simpsons shows and sent me a bunch of show suggestions. (Click here to find out why he sent these in)I gave them to production as soon as I was able. For those of you who might be interested in turning some suggestions in, here are the ones Father Roderick sent in so you won’t repeat them:

Homer getting hurt in season 8:

Treehouse of Horror VII 4F02
00:02 Homer sets himself on fire while trying to light a Jack-o-Lantern
13:12 Homer gets abducted by a UFO, but they drop him
18:12 Homer gets kicked out of an election convention by security guards

The Homer they Fall 4F03
4:22 Homer gets beat up at Moe’s
9:10 Homer gets punched repeatedly in a boxing match at Moe’s
17:24 Homer gets beat up in a boxing match against Tatum

Burns, Baby Burns 4F05
18:05 Homer gets shot and dies (in what turns out to be a computer simulation)

A Milhouse Divided 4F04
11:44 Bart smashes a chair on Homer’s head while he is having a bath

Hurricane Neddy 4F07
5:25 Homer get’s almost sucked up by a tornado

El Viaje Misterioso de nuestro Jomer 3F24
5:34 Homer burns his tongue while eating super spicy chili

The Springfield Files 3G01
14:56 Homer steps into a campfire with his foot while greeting an alien

Homer vs. the 18th amendment 4F15
17:40 Homer’s beer factory blows up, Homer is on fire, rolls on grass
to extinguish the flames
19: 18 Homer tied up and to be catapulted

Grade School Confidential 4F09
1:35 Homer runs a cart into his hammock and gets stuck

Homer getting hurt in season 9:

City of NY vs H Simpson (4F22)
5:30 Young Homer gets contents of trash can dumped upon him by Woody Allen
20:51 gets hit with garbage from a sanitation car in front of him

The two Mrs Nahasapeemapetilons (5F05)
20:29 Homer gets attacked by an elephant after having eaten its peanuts.

Lisa the Skeptic (5F05)
7:09 Prehistoric Homer gets attacked by two sharks.

Reality bites (5F06)
18:00 Homer gets strangled by convict – fighting on car

Miracle on Evergreen Terrace (5F07)
2:15 Homer falls off the roof while he fixes the Xmas lights

Bart Carny (5F08)
9:28 Homer works on a fair/circus, has to sit on a high chair and when
someone hits a target with a ball, he falls in a water basin
(screaming)
18:15 Homer tries to put on his trousers in Bart’s tree hut and falls
out of the treehut (“stupid gravity!”)

The Joy of Sect (5F23)
15:27 Homer gets hit in the car by rev. Lovejoy, Willy and Marge baseball bats

Dumbbell indemnity (5F12)
12:20 Homer drives a car from a cliff into the water and sinks several times

Simpson tide (3G04)
1:08 Homer gets eaten by a donut
10:50 Homer thinks back of a moment when two toy robots beat him up.

The trouble with trillions (5F14)
5:34 Homer’s head gets stuck in closing gate of post office

Trash of the Titans (5F09)
10:46 Homer gets beaten up by security guards during a U2 concert

King of the Hill (5F16)
4:47 Homer gets egged by lots of kids
7:42 Homer hits his own head repeatedly with weights while working out.
17:34 Homer slides of a mountain backwards and hits his head a few times.

Lost our Lisa (5F17)
15:16 Homer loses control of a crane and suffers all sorts of painful
disasters while the crane goes downhill

Natural born kissers (5F18)
2:04 Homer gets hit by hundreds of forks and knives falling from a
luggage compartment in a knife.
4:34 Homer slips on some water while coming down the stairs and falls
on his back.
18:40: Homer suffers several painful moments while hanging naked on an
airbaloon.

The show is slowly getting done. Our Animatic date is August 27th and we’re now working on Act III of VI. I get the impression that we might be doing pretty well so far. I think we’ve been given some extra help from some other artists that have been put on board. Hope we can finish on time.

FAMILY

This Saturday Munchkin turned two years old. To celebrate, Alesha decided to hold a party at Chucky E. Cheese’s. If you’re not familiar with Chucky E. Cheese’s, it’s a pizza place/arcade where little kids (and big kids like myself) can spend “tokens” and play video games. There is a stage with animatronic Chucky E. Cheese characters who sing songs while videos play on monitors next to them. When we first got to the restaurant, Munchkin didn’t quite know what to make of it. She knew only one thing, the animatronic characters scared the heck out of her. I took her around the arcade while we waited for the her guests to arrive. I tried at first to get her to go on a coin operated horse, but when I put her in it, she got really sad. When it began to move after I put the money in, she started crying. Not exactly the reaction I was hoping for. I quickly took her out and had her lead me to where she wanted to go. Turns out, she wanted to get into one of the car video games. The ones you sit in with the steering wheel and pedals. At first she sat there turning the wheel but then I thought I’d put a coin in the machine. I put her on my lap played the game to see what she thought. I wasn’t sure if she liked it or not so afterward, I just let her sit there and turn the wheel again. It seemed she liked when the game moved because she motioned to me to put in another coin. We played the game a bit more and then wandered around the arcade. She began to slowly get more interested in all the coin operated “rides” when her guests finally began to arrived.

It wasn’t long before she was the center of attention and was taken from me. I didn’t mind too much since my cousin had shown up unexpectedly after he had told me he wouldn’t. We grabbed a handful of Tokens and off we went to play video games. The guests ate and went off to play games as well. Meanwhile Munchkin went around and played more video games with my parents. She finally got up enough courage to get on the coin op rides and began to have fun in them. Even my five month old son, Dante, got to go on some rides. Cutes thing ever.

Then it was time to sing Happy Birthday, Chucky E. Cheese style. It was a big performance with restaurant’s hosts and the animatronic characters as they sang along with the video monitors. At the climax of the singing Chucky E. Cheese showed up, (that is, a person in a costume dressed up like Chucky E. Cheese showed up) to sing along and hand out medals to the birthday kids. Munchkin’s cousin Cristal ran away in fear from him while Munchkin didn’t quite seem to mind as much. At least, not until he came near, then she got all freaked out and started to cry.

It seemed that, as long as he wasn’t too near, she was alright with the Chucky E. Cheese being around. The singing and the dancing, kept her distracted most of the time he was around, so it was okay. In any case, she had a great time. We cut the cake, and passed out the pieces. The cake was made by my mom. It was really good. It was a chocolate cake, I usually don’t like chocolate cake but this one was really good. As of the time of this writing, we still have cake left. There was so much left after the party. The cake was HUGE.

Afterwards my parents decided to ignore my protests and began torturing Munchkin by getting her close to Chucky E. Cheese to get her picture with him, with predictable results. I passed out some ice cream to everyone and had some myself, my cousin and I went off to play some more. We got interupted a few times for various reasons, like moving all our stuff to different tables and paying for the the party (which was expensive 🙁 ), but we played a lot of games. We even beat one of the games we played. Near the end, we ended up taking care of Munchkin again for a little while. She seemed to be very happy about being there at my party playing games. I asked my parents to get her something with some price tickets we had. I was personally trying to spend all the token we had so that I could feel like I got my money’s worth. Before we got the chance though, everyone began to leave. Including my cousin. My party was coming to an end and I hadn’t finished using all my tokens. I had to finish as soon as I could so I spent the last of the tokens playing a Pirates of the Caribbean Pinball game. Over all we all had a great time at my birthday party…uh…I mean my daughter’s birthday party (oh uh…have I been saying “my party” all this time?)

MORE FAMILY
In 1997 a family bought a Schnauzer that they discovered they couldn’t keep for whatever reason. That’s how 9th month old Louie XXV (a.k.a. Louie) came into our lives. My parents were asked if they wanted to adopt the Schnauzer and they said yes. Even though he and I had similar names, we chose not to change it. Soon after he joined our family, we wondered how we could have possibly lived without him. He accepted us as his new pack quickly enough and he was a blast to have around; he made our lives fun.

He was a very vigilant dog.

Very protective of his territory. He more than once showed his skill as a mouser by finding and killing mice that had infested our house. He was a pain in the butt to walk. Practically choking himself on the leash because he pulled ahead as if trying to run every time he was taken out. Most everyone liked him and Louie was quick to accept other people, as long he realized that they were a friend of his Pack.

Louie was with us for many many years. He saw his Pack graduate from high school and was there when we moved from one house to another. He saw us find jobs, lose jobs, deal with broken hearts, find new loves, move out (which must have made his Pack seem to dwindle), get married and he was even there to see his Pack begin to grow with new baby Pack members. Unfortunately, Louie was not able to stay with us. Little by little he began to grow sicker. He grew a tumor on his belly and he perhaps had one in his brain as well. He began to grow blind and in his last days, he shown extreme signs of dementia from the tumor in his brain. Funny enough, no matter how sick he got, he was always on the prowl for food. Something he never stopped looking for no matter what.

Louie is no longer with us. His sickness won out and finally got him only a few weeks ago. My parents house seems so lonely now and I can’t help but miss him everytime I visit. I always expect him to come running down the stairs barking at me until he recognizes it’s just me, in which case he would then jump on me and begin yipping and whining with gladness. Because I miss him, I’ve decided to put up some pictures of Louie with some of his Pack:

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THE SIMPSONS NEWS

So I was called from the show last week and was told that I needed to clean out my desk. No, it’s not what you think. I have to move all my stuff from my old desk to a new one. While working on the movie, many of us, (myself included) worked at the Fox Studio Lot and drew directly into computers in order to get the story reels done faster. The producers suddenly realized that we might want to do something similar on the TV show. It seems that the time is now. Some artists, like myself, who have experience using Cintiqs, have been asked to do the work we usually do on paper, in a digital format. If successful, I think the entire show may very well go digital, either by the end of this season or by next season.

FAMILY

The library by our house has kid shows. This Saturday was the first. My cousin, who is also Munchkins Godmother, suggested that we take her to one. Alesha and I thought it was a good idea so we went. It was balloon show. There was a guy on stage making jokes and balloon animals. We thought she would be into it because she loves balloons.

It turned out that she got really into it…for about five minutes, then she just wanted to run around and play. For the rest of the hour we were there, she just played around while Alesha and I watched the show. It was fun. Too bad Munchkin missed it.

In other Munchkin news…

So Munchkin tends to watch a bit of TV. Mostly educational shows like Sesame Street, Word World, Dora the Explorer…things like that. Because of this, she can now sorta count to twenty in English, count to ten in Spanish, and she can even tell you the names of all the letters in the alphabet when she sees them individually (but only the capital letters). She also often surprises me with new phrases she picks up.

Well, a couple of days ago, Munchkin and I were going through her bedtime routine. We went upstairs to the kids bathroom, brushed her teeth and then I sat her on the pottie (where she doesn’t really do anything but sit, talk and play, but that’s okay because we are just getting her used to the toilet.) In any case, she was sitting there and we happen to have a large toy flower by the pottie and she wanted it so I gave it to her. She then began to smell it, because she knows that that’s one of the things that you do with flowers. Then she surprised me by suddenly exclaiming passionately:

It was really cute. At first, I thought she had just come up with that on her own, but later I found out she got that phrase from watching a show on Nick Jr. called Yo Gabba Gabba. Still, as my wife said, it’s great that she knew how to apply that phrase.

BLOGS

Okay, so I was reading one of my favorite blogs. Maria Johnson’s blog (which I highly recommend) and she had posted up a video that was so great, I wanted to put it up on my blog as well. Behold the wonder that is The Dance off with Star Wars stars:

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