Simpsonized!

I am not overly fond of the Simpsons, but my children are. And since sights and sounds in and around the house have a way of creeping into my eyes and ears, I get to watch or hear them.

At the moment, son #3 has the TV set blaring. Bart's and Homer's voices are unmistakable. They are arguing. They are whining. They are complaining. Often, you can't tell which plays which role. Bart and the other kids have as much authority as their parents. And their parents don't teach them or model values. Not overtly anyway.

It takes a certain amount of maturity and appreciation of sarcasm and satire to learn from these yellow irreverent characters. Well, it takes the same maturity to learn from life's lessons. At my age, I have experienced all sorts of horror stories so I guess at this point, I look forward to shows which remind me of the simple stories I learned as a child from children's books and the Bible:

Good prevails over evil. Heroes don't die, villains do. That's what the good Book says about eternal life, implicitly and explicitly, with as many examples as there are possible—from Genesis to Revelation.

Putting myself in my children's shoes, however, I see what draws them to the Simpsons—a hit since it debuted on television in 1987.


I also see why, in my blog hopping, my friend Aleks (a hundred years my junior) took time to Simpsonize himself. In one of his posts, he has a character of himself in yellow skin. Lest you think of me as ancient and unbending, I followed Alek's example. I simpsonized myself.
Here's how I see me from my own eyes, in the inimitable style of Matt Groening. Of course, with a little help from Adobe, give or take a few lines and bumps here and there.

After this self-portrait, I might even be talked by my boys into watching Simpsons, the movie.