July 16, 2008 6:02

Defending ChunkyLover53

This week, the internet has been ablaze with stories like this one on CNET.

Okay, not ablaze. But a bunch of articles. Here's the deal. A Simpsons episode I wrote, called "The Dad Who Knew Too Little," had a joke in it where Homer gave his email address as: ChunkyLover53@aol.com. Ha ha. Homer thinks of himself as fat and sexy. Ha ha ha.

Before the show aired in 2003, I signed up for the ChunkyLover53 email address on my personal AOL account. The thinking was that if anyone wanted to write an email to Homer, it would be fun to answer back. Within minutes of the show's first airing, ChunkyLover53's inbox was packed to its 999-message limit. Oops. Fun over.

Many of the messages to Homer were of the simple, "Who is this?" or "Are U Matt Groening?" or "LOL Homer Rulzzz LOL!" variety. But many people wrote long, thoughtful, attempting-to-be funny missives to, lets face it, the most popular and beloved cartoon character in the world. If not ever. Many, many, many women sent messages to Homer that were designed to make him, uh, stray from his hopefully rock-solid marriage to Marge.

At one point I attempted to save the cream of the "Letters to Homer" crop for posterity, but dumbly lost them. Even more dumbly, I also attempted to ANSWER EVERY LETTER TO HOMER. If ever there was a Sisyphean (or, should I say, WifePissyOffy-an) task, this was it. At first, I would write clever individual responses, then not-clever ones, than paste pre-written gags in again and again, like:

Dear Nerd, I didn't even know the internet was on computers these days, let alone some kind of electric mail dealie. Please send all future letters (and beer) to: 642 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield USA then a zip code. Praise Jebus! —Homer Simpson.

But, fairly quickly, anyone who wrote to Homer was lucky to get a "Doh!" in return, some time between five weeks and three years later. Surely, the vast majority of fans who wrote to Homer never heard anything in response. Which is too bad (I.E. my bad), because Simpsons fans are extremely smart, interesting and passionate people, and deserve more than a "Stupid Flanders" for sticking with this crazy show all these years.

Cut to now, where some clever internet hacker has somehow snagged the ChunkyLover53 AOL Instant Messager address, and is using it to trick people into downloading viruses in the guise of exclusive Simpsons content.

Well, just to set the record straight, that I am not that hacker. I am a Mac user, which means I don't know what an "exe" file is, let alone a "computer virus." Also, I just logged on to the AOL email account of ChunkyLover53, and everything seems normal. 895 messages in the inbox, mostly spam, but a few winners, like:

Hey hello!! I love the Simpsons! I FROM VENEZUELA CONGRATULATION!!! by you show!! jajaja sorry my inglish ist bag!! This ist the e-mail the homero!! I love that!

(Homer's South American email buddies have always been adorably vocal.)

I would call AOL to try to straighten this mess out, but it's a dead end. Because of its "fame," ChunkyLover53 is on some crazy "scam-alert" status with AOL. There is a security notation on the account, so that if anyone calls about "ChunkyLover53," they are assumed to be a mischief-maker, and are put on hold for a super-long time and then cut off. Trust me, it's impossible.

(A side story. Once, I also registered the name of a website Lisa had mentioned on the show. A few days after the episode aired, I got a call from someone who wanted to buy the rights to Lisa's site for "marketing purposes," which I assumed to mean "porn purposes." Knowing I couldn't sell it, I fearlessly bid the price up to $10,000, before putting him on hold, then telling him I just got another bid for $100,000. Was he still interested? Too rich for Marketing Porn Guy's blood.)

So, what have we learned from all this? 1) Homer is not a hacker. 2) Don't attempt to answer 999 emails a day and keep your marriage intact. 3) Any boring news story with any Simpsons angle at all, no matter how thin, gets huge internet coverage. 4) NEVER CLICK ON ANYTHING ON THE INTERNET IF YOU DON'T KNOW EXACTLY WHAT IT IS -- EVEN IF IT'S FROM AS ROCK-SOLID A SOURCE AS A PRETEND PERSON'S COMPUTER NAME.

Sadly, we'll probably never find the fiend behind this AIM virus scam. But my money is on Bart.

July 16, 2008 3:23

Dr. Horrible Is the iPhone of Web Video

I was trying to remember the last time I'd seen this kind of nerd feeding frenzy over something. Then I remembered.

And truly, it is a thing to behold. I got impatient yesterday with the server problems and bought a season pass on iTunes (where the evil Doctor is currently holding down the #1 slot in the TV category). $3.99 well spent -- the rewatchability of Dr. Horrible is impressive. The melancholy with which Doogie delivers the line, "I just need to rule it," gets me every time. And to think that he does that opening monologue in one shot. Nice.

James P. has catalogued the multitudinous greatnesses of Dr. Horrible. I will just add a peeve, which is the love interest, who so far hasn't had much to do. And does she have to be helping the homeless? I get it, I get it, she's a good person.

But that's a peeve. I've been rewatching clips from "Once More With Feeling" to get me through the wait for Act II. I wonder how much Whedon and co. are making off this thing? If anybody can make webisodes economically viable, it's him. Balls!

July 16, 2008 12:07

My Life in 3G

I've been using the iPhone 3G since last Friday. Anita did a proper review, with, you know, testing and such. I will merely add: it's very sweet. All the new features, even that extra G, pale beside the achievement of the App store. I was expecting a lot of rigmarole, a lot of dragging and dropping and syncing and authenticating, but the process of acquiring and installing an App is actually very quick and very slick. If I'm on the subway, and the train goes over a bridge, I can sometimes get a new App on there before it goes underground again.

There is no particular App that I'm love with. The Facebook App is useful, and does things that a Facebook App should do. The mere fact that I can significally extend the phone's functionality on the fly is what's amazing. I don't feel like I'm fiddling with a gadget anymore, I feel like I'm computing.

July 15, 2008 10:58

E3 by the Trailers

I'm not at E3. I read about it on blogs like a normal person. While I am doing so the only thing I really care about is the trailers. So I'm going to paste all the major trailers together into one post and say things about them. Because I care.

First up: The Sims 3.

Yeah. I still don't get it.

July 14, 2008 12:55

Joss Whedon on Dr. Horrible, Nathan Fillion, Admiral Akbar

Periodically I find myself simply linking to Joss Whedon interviews, without comment, just for their extreme funniness. Some people have to mine and smelt humor, like some exotic alloy. For Whedon humor just seems to be a naturally occurring resource. I'm sure he has tons of inner pain or something. God I hope so.

Update: Dr. Horrible has launched! And then his server fell over and died.