Team Work

On today’s episode of the Simpsons learned about the importance of team work. Mr. Burns was very energetic in the morning after he drank his coffee so he decided to have a good old fashioned fire drill. Well it turns out that it took the entire nuclear plant of ten minutes to get out of the building, so Mr. Burns was mad and decided to have a company workshop weekend to build on their team working skills. So they all met up in the mountains and were randomly assigned a partner so that they could climb up this mountain to get to the cabin the quickest because the last team to arrive would get fired. Well all the teams worked pretty good they all managed to work together and make it to the spot where the cabin should have been. The reason the cabin wasn’t there was because Homer and Mr. Burns were on the same team and cheated by riding a motorized sled, when they got inside they caused a number of avalanches which buried the house under tons of snow. This episode is a great episode because it teaches the importance of good team work, and it teaches that cheating is never the answer. The reason I feel that this is such a important topic is because many of my professors keep stressing the importance of team work in and out of school. They constantly remind us that study groups work very good and that even after school you will most likely work in some sort of team at your future career. In the end if you look past all the humor the Simpsons really teach good lessons.

I Robot

For this week’s reading for class we were to read an essay called Deciphering I, Robot. This essay talks about the recent film I Robot starring Will Smith and a book called I, Robot written by Isaac Asimov. In this essay the author shows us how to break apart a movie and see what it brings to the table, and some of the elements that may snuck past us. For example, the fact that Will Smith is the main character in this film didn’t strike me as weird until after I read the essay. After reading the essay I started to remember the film a little better and just know realized that this is an entirely knew role for Smith, considering the fact that he is most famous for his comical role in the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, it was really different to see him take on such a serious role. Before I read this essay I wasn’t aware of the book I, Robot by Isaac Asimov and after reading this essay I found it interesting that this move was loosely based on a book. I say loosely because I’m almost positive that they didn’t stick to the entire storyline of the book. Still the fact that this book was written before major computers and now it is being used in a Hollywood movie is cool. Besides that the author of the essay did a good job on helping you analyze the elements of the movie such as the graphics. Most of the movie was computer animated but I really didn’t pay too much attention to that, I guess it goes to show you that if you really look into a move and try to analyze it you will see some things that you wouldn’t catch by just watching it.

Essay # 2

Today I turned in my second essay for my English class; it was called Comedy Equals Reality. I this essay I wrote an argumentative essay stating that comedy television is reality based because of the issues that they tackle in their shows. By comedy shows addressing these issues it makes the show more appealing to the viewers because they can relate to the characters because they themselves have been in that same situation. Anyways I feel that this essay went much smoother than the first. I don’t know why maybe it was because I had to knock off the dust or what, but I definitely feel much better about this one. It hasn’t been a very long time since I wrote an essay but I guess I just had to really get into the topic and into the writing mood. Besides that I never really wrote anything on television before it was always about the literature in out textbooks. Personally, that stuff never interested me, so now when I got a chance to write and essay about television I became interested in the subject and was able to just flow when I wrote my essay. Even when I went to write the rough draft for peer conferences I ended up writing two and a half pages unintentionally, not to say that I didn’t want to write I lot. I mean the way it came out I expected to sit there and stare at a blank page for a long time trying to figure out what I wanted to write about, but I didn’t it just completely flowed. So I feel pretty good about this essay so I will see how good I did after spring break.

Cheaters

In yesterday’s episode of The Simpsons, Homer and Bart learned a very valuable lesson in life; they learned that cheating doesn’t get you too far. In the episode Homer is driving and a huge fish lands on the hood of his car and messes it up bad. So he took the car to the body shop to get an estimate, the guy takes a look at the car and then the fish and says “yup it’s foreign, it’s gonna cost ya” so now Homer needs a lot of money to fix his car, so he decides to cheat people out of their money. So Homer then teams up with Bart to get the money to fix the car. In this episode they execute many schemes but my favorite is when Bart is looking for his lost dog, Dr. Hibbert asks him what the dog looked Bart replies by saying the dog was brown with a white spot shaped like a heart on it and it was wearing a red collar with bells on it. After Bart’s description Dr. Hibbert sees a newly caught shark being weighed with the red collar on it’s teeth. Feeling bad for the Bart he said that he would buy him a new dog so luckily Homer was walking by with a dog that looked exactly like he described earlier so Dr. Hibbert bought it. Now after a few schemes they got enough money and fixed the car, but decided to keeping cheating people for their money because it’s easy. Well it turns out that Grandpa used to be a big cheater so they use his help to try and pull off the biggest scheme of them all, to scam money from the old folk’s home. They pretend Grandpa won ten thousand dollars, so because of the shock he dies. So they tell the rest of the people that if they give him money he will be able to cash the large check and let them split the check. Well some was pretending to be and old person but really was a cop and arrested Homer and Bart. When they arrive to the police station he tells them that he will let them turn themselves in, in order to receive a lighter punishment. So Homer tells Wiggum that he wants to scare Bart straight so they go inside the cell. Once the cop sees that there in jail he steals their car, it turns out he wasn’t a cop he was trying to cheat people the same way they were. In the end the guy didn’t really steal their car Marge used him to teach them a lesson, so they would stop. So it goes to show you that cheating really doesn’t get you anyway, you may be ahead at first but not for too long your luck will catch up with you.

Family Values

In yesterday’s episode of the Simpsons, the whole family attended a renaissance festival. Well during the festival Lisa is chasing an animal from the petting zoo in the forest and finds a tent with a fortune teller inside. So Lisa decides to gets her fortune told, in the future she finds her true love and is going to get married. Lisa’s new fiancé is English and is trying to be nice to her family mainly Homer and Bart because of their stupidity. People say that you get wiser as you get older, but this is definitely not true in Homer’s case. He decides to make Lisa’s new fiancé feel at home by driving on the opposite side of the road. So now let’s skip to the wedding day, Homer wanted Lisa’s future husband to wear these pig cufflinks but he didn’t want to so Lisa went to go talk to him. Well he says that their just a joke he didn’t think that he actually had to wear them but since Lisa insisted he did. After he put them he made a comment saying that after the wedding we can go to England and never see her family again. Lisa couldn’t believe that he actually said that so the wedding was off because she said that can’t be with someone who can’t respect her family. Now you wouldn’t expect things like this from the Simpsons but in most of the episodes they have a good moral and instill family values, in this case it is to stick with your family even thought they might not be perfect, and sometimes aggravate you.

Mellow Out

In the reading assignment for Monday’s class we were supposed to read an essay about the queer in Seinfeld. Now let me start off by saying that I like watching Seinfeld because it is very funny, well in this essay the author shows how they have a few episodes about queers. These episodes try to show Jerry and George gay, now in the show they do this in a comical way not meant to hurt any body, but some people take it offensive. While reading the essay I began to remember watching these episodes on television and thought nothing wrong of it, I just simply saw it as another episode of Seinfeld. Well other people may have not and were offended by it, well I fell that many times people go looking for ways to say they were offended or discriminated against when they should just mellow out and realize it’s all in good fun. For example in the essay the author talks about when Jerry, George, and Kramer are in the locker room after some sort of activity (sports) and how Jerry saw his baseball idol. Well Jerry approaches his idol and tells him that he is a big fan, well it turns out that his idol is a big fan of Jerry’s comedy, so they hit it off. Later in the show they show Jerry talking to Elaine about how his idol wasn’t returning any of his calls and how men always do that sort of thing, wait a very long time to call you back. Well this scene makes it seem like Jerry and his idol have a relationship, but all they want is to be good friends. I guess what I’m trying to say is that in television nobody is safe and somebody will always be made fun of, so just take it and try not to dig so deep into it to intentionally find something that offends you.

Daddy's Little Girl

In today’s episode of the Simpsons Lisa’s birthday is coming up and there is this new diary that every little girl wants, so she’s been dropping hints. So Marge sends Homer to go and buy the diary at the toy store for her but when Homer gets there Mr. Burns buys the last one. So Homer hits the mall to find her another diary or at least something that is really cool. Well he bumps into Ned Flanders and sees him buying a personal move for one of his sons, so homer to decides to do that for Lisa’s birthday. Well it her birthday and she opens the book shaped package to see that it is a tape, so she them plays it. It turns out that Homer knows nothing about her in the video he said that her favorite food was chicken McNuggets but she’s a vegetarian. After watching this tape Lisa becomes very upset because her father doesn’t care about her and doesn’t know anything about her. Now the Simpsons always has a way of taking a serious issue and making I humorous while still getting the message out. The hidden message in this episode is that in the United States there are many fathers that don’t take interest in their children, and it’s very sad. The worst part about their father not having any interest in them is because they tend to put the blame on themselves saying that its their fault that their dad doesn’t care. This may not seem like a big deal but after feeling like that the child will have self-esteem issues when growing up which can lead to many serious problems.