Sunday, September 24, 2006

Watching the Simpsons of the last four or five years is a little like having your 95-year-old grandma to Sunday dinner...

You love your grandmother. You have many, many happy memories with her. She has been so good to you for so many years. She was a crucial part of you growing up, and you often spent all week looking forward to a happy Sunday spent with her. Her contribution to your life is immeasurable, and you will always be grateful...

...but now, things are starting to go. You love her, and you want the best for her, and it pains you to see her slowly failing. She doesn't remember who she was, her thoughts are often rambling and incoherent, she keeps telling the same stories over and over again. And, periodically, she pees her pants.

You don't laugh, because it's not funny. It's sad. Every week you hope she'll be more like she use to be than like she is. And you work hard to remember the younger, present, coherent, dignified woman she used to be You still keep inviting her to Sunday dinners because of all she has done for you. But it's not fun anymore...it's more for her than for you.

So, with that in mind, I offer this open letter to the producers of The Simpsons:

Dear James L. Brooks, Sam Simon, and Matt Groening,

I love your show. I have loved your show from its first season. I owned and proudly wore my "Who The Hell Are You?" tee to my eighth grade Catholic school math class, knowing full well I would be asked to remove it in lieu of a school-issued lost-and-found tee, complete with a note sent home to my mother. I gladly accepted this persecution...damn near proudly...because it was for The Simpsons, the first prime-time show in my lifetime with the guts to tell it like is, the willingness to offend me, and the humor to make me laugh about it. Your show changed television forever, and forever upped the bar for comedy TV, cartoons, and adult prime-time entertainment. You created a cultural mega-icon that changed the way we think about marriage, gender roles, politics, religion, and what's really funny, and I am forever grateful.

In that gratitude, I'd like to entreat you to please stop making your show. Please let the film project quietly disappear, let the existing merchandise work it's way through the gift-shops and fast-food happy meals, and let this season's episodes stay vaulted until they can be gifted to your great-grandchildren as a personal reminder of your powerful legacy. Please stop production on everything Simpsons, save for the DVD sets of your existing shows.

I want to remember you as you were, and not as you are now. I want to remember a show that is fresh, clever, biting, subversive, fearless, counter-cultural, and, most of all, funny. Before the weekly random guest-stars, before the nonsensical rambling plot-lines, before Homer went pseduo-effeminate and clinically retarded, before your writers started taking the easy jokes and kitschy pop-culture slams, and before you accurately recognized that true Simpsons fans will watch anything, and were willing to rest into complacency with your ideation and writing.

I want to celebrate everything you were. I continue to tune in every week out of respect...which is my choice, and for which I can't hold you accountable...but I have to admit, I keep hoping every week that you've been canceled. I want to relish my Simpsons DVD's (I will continue to buy them the day they come out...all the way through Season 11) and watch and re-watch your brilliant show in its prime.

Please, save your dignity, and make sure your legacy gets the celebrated and virtually untarnished reputation it deserves. After holding out hope for the last four or five years that you would go out strong, the unfortunate truth is that I'm now begging you to just go out.

Please let me enjoy The Simpsons for its brilliant inception and eleven brilliant seasons. Please stop making The Simpsons, and let's celebrate your hard work together with a glass of champagne as we watch and laugh at those magnificent years.

Thanks.

Respectfully,
Justin Masterson

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

I have reason to believe that nearly a dozen uteruses are conspiring against me.

In the last six months, approximately all of our friends either got pregnant or had babies. It's not a perfect statistic, but it's pretty damn close.

When the first couple were born, I thought, "Wow, how cool...what are the odds of two of my friends having babies at the same time? I should introduce them...perhaps the little bundles of cry could play together some day." When the next couple were born, I thought, "Wow, how fortunate...that God, in all of His generous bounty, had decided to bless our community of friends with such a cornucopia of little souls for us to tend to." When the next couple were born, I thought, "Wow, how creepy...the condoms around here sure are unreliable." Finally, when the most recent six were born and four more friends got pregnant...the truth became all too clear...

...there is a global conspiracy to try to get me to have a baby.

Somewhere underneath the streets of Cincinnati there is a an underground HQ, complete with large-screen plasma displays constantly updating with new pregnancy info, vertical pieces of glass that you can write on with markers from both sides in order to chart my progress, and a big black onyx table where all of the women in my life meet to plot every nuanced move necessary to change my heart from irresponsible young ragamuffin to responsible, reliable Pop.

...and at the head of that table sits my dear wife...hands tented together, head tilted slightly downward, an evil grin on her face and holding another picture of another cousin who just gave birth to another wrinkly squish-dough screamster.

...


Here's the weird part: it's kind of working. No, I'm not the hardened, wild-oats sowing bachelor who is turning into a big soft teddy bear. I was never that wild, and I'm not that teddybeary now. But my heart is changing. I think I like babies...at least a bit. More likely a lot.

My favorite part is when I get to be one-on-one with them. Nobody taking a picture of me holding the baby, nobody asking me how I'd like to be a daddy, nobody gesturing with their elbow at me holding the baby and then knowingly winking at Stacy. Just me and the baby...little, breathing, warm, helpless, surreal and perfect. That's my favorite part.

I want a son. I want a daughter. I want a newborn baby that kind of looks like me and kind of looks like Stacy and mostly looks like an old man. I want to hold my baby and know that I don't have to give her back. I want to wonder what my tiny son will be like when he's done fighting to stay asleep at night and has begun pulling the covers over his own head to dampen the wail of the alarm clock so he can stay in bed for a few more minutes. I want to fear the rise and fall of her chest, impossibly small and complex in my hand, as her eyes dart wildly beneath closed lids in her newborn dreams. I want a son to teach, a daughter to be perplexed by, and Saturday mornings of fallen Cheerios and headless Barbies.

I want it to be safe, I want it to be scary, I want it to go right and I want to build a rebel. I don't know what I want, but I want the experience as much as I fear it.

We're thinking about it. I'm thinking about it. A lot.

Peace,
Justin

Friday, September 01, 2006

My friends are in a hurricane right now, and I'm very afraid for their safety.

Please stop what you're doing and do this:

Those who pray, pray.
Those who meditate, meditate.
Those who intend, intend.
Those who envision, envision.

Evan and Ellen.
Cabo San Lucas.
Hurrican John.

Make it stop, keep them safe.

Thanks.