Confession: I have not been a regular viewer of the The Simpsons in probably 20 years. Yes, it’s scary to think that I am that old, especially since my skin looks so dewy soft and I still have to call my mom for laundry advice when I get grease stains on my t-shirts. But this blog is about tv not how Liz looks so young and beautiful yet sloppy because she has stains on her shirt, so let’s move on.

Last fall I decided to reinstate The Simpsons into my DVR rotation just to see if it was still good. I usually ended up erasing episodes without watching them because there are only so many hours in the day and a girl has to watch her Ho’wives. But this weekend I was perusing through my DVR and a Simpsons episode caught my eye: “A Totally Fun Thing Bart Will Never Do Again” which aired on 4/29. Because I am a really erudite person, I knew INSTANTLY, without even reading the description, that this mean that the Simpson family was going on a cruise. And how did I know this very erudite fact? Well, in addition to being a connoisseur of useless knowledge, I am also a big reader. Not to brag or anything, but I read between 52 and 60 books a year. Not to brag. Anyway, one of my favorite authors to bitch about is the late David Foster Wallace, who wrote the trillion page opus Infinite Jest which is partly set in Boston and mentions the famed Ellis the Rim Man sign on Comm Ave in Allston (which sadly is no longer there).

This sign always made my dad giggle when he’d visit me when I lived in Boston.

Anyway, Wallace also wrote this book of essays called A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again about, you got it, going on a cruise! I have a love/hate relationship with David Foster Wallace, mostly hate because his books are so goddamn long, but I will read pretty much anything he has written because he infuriates me so. And plus he committed suicide in 2008 so there is a weird sad voyeuristic thing going on when I read him. Doesn’t that make me sound like a crazy cold bitch!

Overall, The Simpsons episode was funny and it made me want to go on a cruise, as long as someone else paid for it, plus I like that the title made me feel smart and insidery. I like their literary allusions . . . perhaps since the economy is still bad they will make an episode inspired by Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath! Oh wait . . . .