Here at last, here at last, thank God almighty, here at last!

I can still remember the first time I ever saw the Simpsons in those halcyon days of yesteryear. It was a revelation! Having grown up with Knight Rider, Remington Steele, and the A-Team, this was a breath of fresh air... parody, antiestablishment, AND roll-on-the-floor hilarious, all rolled up in a neat animated package. My best friend growing up would record them... and on VIDEOTAPE! It was THAT long ago!... and let me borrow the tape. (We lived out in the country and didn't get FOX. In fact, we only got one channel and it came in blurry on good days and completely snowy or not at all on others. In fact I can remember my dad outside in the pouring rain with a pipe wrench trying to turn the antenna to get better reception just to watch Murder She Wrote. Yes, life WAS hard out in the country.) Anyway, upon watching the very first episode, my family was hooked. In fact my little brother completely related to and absorbed the hellion lessons taught by Bart Simpson (Lessons that evidently soaked in, as he's still just as irreverent and cynical as ever). That videotape got completely worn out from recording and watching and rewatching it week after week after week. It became something precious to be passed back and forth between my friend and me, endlessly discussed and reenacted... usually at church. My friend's mom, though, couldn't stand the show and made no qualms about telling him how it was so evil, contrary to church teachings, downfall of the family, harbinger of the Second Coming©, etc., etc. (Which, as any parent should know, made him want to watch it even more.) Well one day my friend's little brother, either hoping to garner favor from his mother or just being a complete brown-noser, took the precious videotape and crushed it to oblivion in a vise! Yes... a VISE! How cliché. The least he could have done was cast it into holy water or burning brimstone or something more symbolic. I remember even my MOM being pissed that the tape was destroyed. Those brothers still don't get along too well, and I think it stems back to that fateful day when the episodes died. Fortunately now in the age of DVDs and watching Simpsons on iPhones, it's all just a bad memory.

Which brings me to tonight's premiere! Eighteen long years of waiting have finally brought us to the Simpsons movie. We've collected a gang to go to the flick... although I'm not shaving my head and drawing on two comb over lines for a costume. (I'll leave that to my brother-in-law.) I'll suffice with just not shave this morning so I'll have a Homer Simpson-like five o'clock shadow.