the simpsons s16 e10 'there's something about marrying'

Recently I sort of accidentally started watching old episodes of The Simpsons, a show I stopped keeping up with solidly about twenty years ago. Maybe more. The season I randomly landed on was (I now appreciate) season 16, which was screened in I think 2005. I could tell it wasn't super-recent because the style of animation was, while not as primitive as the first episodes obviously, still not as pristine as it appears today, but tbh I could not otherwise really figure out what the year was. I was figuring 21st century. 

Anyway, this episode intrigued me and I had to check it out more because it really, really shows how much times have changed in, well, 18 years, which I have to admit is quite a long time and imagine if times hadn't changed? I'm going to spoil it, by the way. 

Essentially the plot is that gay marriage is legalised in Springfield to assist in tourism (I suppose it's 'tourism', though really the gay people who are coming to Springfield are simply getting married, they're not exactly having any other kind of touristic experience that we see). Reverend Lovejoy refuses to marry gay people (apparently no-one sorted this out with him before the law came in and apparently there is only one church in Springfield) so Homer gets a priest's license off the internet and marries gay people for $200 a pop. Marge's sister Patty asks Homer to marry her to her fiancee, a pro golfer called Veronica. Marge is challenged by the news that one of her sisters is a lesbian and then discovers that Veronica is, actually, a man who (it is revealed) pretended to be a woman to get into some golfing league which we are supposed to understand through its acronym so I don't know whether it's just women's golf or gay women's golf.* Not important. The point is he is not a woman but also only pretended to be a woman to get some privileges or something? 

It's amazing to imagine that this episode was groundbreaking and controversial in its day, but wikipedia assures me it was. I wonder if I would have thought so at the time. The jokes about anyone marrying anything (Homer marries Reverend Lovejoy to the bible without his consent, for instance, but at the very end we see a line of people going into Homer's chapel to marry inanimate objects eg the Sea Captain is going to marry the figurehead off a ship, etc) are extremely Cory Bernardi as far as I'm concerned. There is also a lot of stereotypical male gay shizzle that feels like a real throwback, far older than 2005, but what do I know, I'm not a gay man or woman and I am probably - like so many things in this world - not really qualified to have an opinion except broadly as a consumer of culture, and I guess as an ally. 

Of course I watch The Simpsons with the Finnish subtitles turned on as though I'm ever going to learn anything from this, other than that languages have words for everything and you have to learn them all and it's probably impossible.  

'Could we hurry up?'

'Veronica is a man!' (Finnish has no definite or indefinite articles which makes it somewhat easier at the same time as it makes it harder, lol). 

'Patty, I love you but I pretended to be a woman long before we met.' 

I guess there is a joke in here somewhere that 'Leslie' is a man's name that sounds like the woman's name 'Lesley', and 'Robin' can be a man's or a woman's name, I don't get the last name, 'Swisher', though (yes I know the caption says 'Swisherinä' and names are often presented in this kind of way in Finnish and I don't know why, but the character's real name is actually 'Swisher'. 

'Even if you are a lesbian you are the same'. (Who'd have thought the Finnish word for 'lesbian' would be 'lesbo'?! 

*I looked it up. Ladies' Professional Golf Association or something like that. I assume there's a belief at the heart of this that men are intrinsically better at sport than women? Not sure. 

a year ago today: publicity for the bogan delusion

I am writing on an aeroplane and watching Limitless at the same time, for my sins and guess what, I paid for it. Today I was in Brisbane to do a half-hour interview with Richard Fidler for his Conversation. I am pretty impressed with how I managed to find the ABC studios in Toowong, in a hire car, using nothing more than the gps in my phone and a very rough idea of directions in Brisbane which of the state capitals is probably the one I know least well. I got there with ten minutes to spare and then waited around for ¾ of an hour. But that was ok. I felt a bit frazzled anyway as I hadn’t slept well and the 2 hour flight + the rather fraught drive had made me more messy. Then we went and did the interview – it was originally slated to be live, but then for some reason it was recorded instead (while an interview RF had previously done was put to air) and will be played tomorrow.

I was pretty happy. I think I have the schtick down. Previously I’d done interviews so rarely, I felt I always wanted to be agreeable with things people said even if I didn’t technically believe them – or rather I would try and find common ground. Now, for whatever reason I am happy to contradict interviewers. I imagine once I go back to never being interviewed (which, honestly, is fine) I will return to my former state.

After the interview I had a few hours to fill so I went to Springfield, ostensibly a new town between Brisbane and Ipswich. I was just feeling my way around. I went to Springfield Central, which was just a shopping centre with a wavey street through the middle with cars parked either side of the main street, and I had some crappy coffee and arancini balls at a café there, and then I bought another coffee at a book shop there, and then I was really annoyed by both those coffees, so I went to Springfield Lakes which seems to be the most developed part of the area, very new nonetheless, and drove around a bit, and took some pictures and went to some display homes where a guy was very suspicious particularly after I stepped out and took two pictures from the verandah – he said, ‘You’ve been taking a lot of photographs’, which was a gross exaggeration. Then I started to worry that being so tired I was getting a bit reckless with getting my flight back, considering I had no idea how to get to the airport, so I started driving, and eschewed – foolishly, I now realise – the freeway to the airport because it was a toll road. Then I noticed there was a transponder in the car so that was cool.

So I got to the airport really too early and of course the plane was late to leave but at least I was on it and now I’m watching Limitless.*

I have a couple more radio interviews to do now, but nothing too special (sorry 6RTR and 3CR; I’m sure you’re very special; but you don’t reach millions like the Fidler interview; yes, this is what I’ve become).

* It still arrived ten minutes early, or so the pilot said.