on July 31st, 2007 at 2:24 pm #

Pagz and I also saw the Simpsons movie this weekend (oh ye of little faith!). I enjoyed it tremendously as did he. We did not get trailers for Bratz, but rather an entirely different series of crappy trailers for crappy movies. Bionicle the movie? That was probably the closest thing to Bratz.

As far as a review of the Simpsons movie, I’ll simply say this: if you have ever enjoyed the TV show, the movie won’t disappoint.

on July 31st, 2007 at 3:00 pm #

Cut the man a little slack. He had to sit through those movie trailers. I kept thinking to myself that all that money that’s being wasted on making those crappy films, that’s money that they could be giving to me

on July 31st, 2007 at 4:43 pm #

Not just a poop joke — an eating poop joke.

I’d take cupcakes over eating poop jokes any day.

on August 1st, 2007 at 3:32 pm #

Say what you will about my grumpiness but there is nothing like a passive-aggressive, sarcastic guilt trip to get people off their asses. Well done, me.

on May 29th, 2007 at 11:58 am #

Ummmm……. You have your phrase backwards. Fading away implies turning to shit, and burning out implies leaving on a high note.

on May 29th, 2007 at 1:25 pm #

According to this article, Neil Young was very broken up when Kurt Cobain quoted his song in his suicide note, because he had misinterpreted the line. As you can see, I include Kurt in the “Fade Away” category, but he considered himself to have “Burnt Out.” http://www.thrasherswheat.org/jammin/nirvana.htm

on May 29th, 2007 at 4:56 pm #

I’m sorry but I agree with Ashblaster. I read the article you linked to, and I don’t think Neil Young was upset that Kurt had gotten the message of the song backwards, more that an artist that Young really admired had killed himself and used Young’s lyrics to explain himself. That’s got to be pretty devastating. Young wrote that song at a time when he was wondering whether or not he could still be relevant in an era where the rock and roll of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the 60’s was viewed as completely stale and outdated, replaced by Punk and New Wave. In the song he says ‘it’s better to burn out than it is to rust’. Rusting in this context means getting old, decrepit and useless: a shell of your former self (perhaps like Stevie Wonder in the 80’s). The people he mentions in the song are Elvis and Johnny Rotten. Elvis hung around forever, well past his prime, making horrible cheesy movies and getting fat. Eventually he was doing shows in sequin studded spacesuits in Vegas before he eventually died on his toilet. That’s the quintessential example of a career that should have ended sooner. Elvis faded or rusted away. Johnny Rotten walked off stage at the height of his fame and popularity - really perhaps even before - leaving people wanting more and wondering what the hell just happened. That’s burning out quickly and brightly, like a book of matches all lit at once. Until Cobain came along, he would have been the perfect example of burning out fast.

The lyrics to the song, judge for yourselves:

My my, hey hey
Rock and roll is here to stay
It’s better to burn out
Than to fade away
My my, hey hey.

Hey hey, my my
Rock and roll can never die
There’s more to the picture
Than meets the eye.
Hey hey, my my.

on May 30th, 2007 at 12:35 am #

Ashblaster is right about the Neil Young quote. He also said ‘rust never sleeps’ and he had spent the years leading up to that album turning away from the public and alienating the crowd that had made him a superstar. On subsequent albums he would just play whatever he felt like, as a result getting kicked off a series of different record labels. He was committed to fading away so he could just do his own thing. His revival in the nineties as ‘the godfather of grunge’ brought him back into the spotlight in a weird way, and Kurt Cobain’s suicide was devastating to him (he wrote the song “Sleeps With Angels” as a tribute shortly thereafter), and on tour with Pearl Jam, he went back to his old ways of alienating audiences and stepping away from the limelight. Burning out was not necessarily the quick flash of punk - it was leaving a small body of work and not embarrassing yourself in your later years the way Elvis (and many others) did. He had spent the seventies watching many compatriots burn out on drugs and for a time there was every indication he would do the same until he became disenfranchised with the music business in general. As for Johnny Rotten, his band fell apart in the midst of their first big tour with just one landmark album to their name. By the time Neil wrote the song, he was already in a new and successful undergroudn band of an entirely different type and approaching music as a corporate entity as his former bandmates disappeared into regular jobs or hopeless drug addictions - he blazed bright then went right on to do his own thing on his own terms, something which Neil respected. The song isn’t in support of rock and roll or punk, it’s his epitaph for the seventies, and Neil was absolutely prepared to fade away. There wasn’t a concern of punk taking over by any means, because punk had quite entirely burnt out already, it was a very brief phenomenon like the parallel American Hardcore movement a couple years later on. It left an indelible mark on the face of music but all of the major bands rapidly imploded or adopted other styles (even The Clash were considered an embarrassing self-parody by their second album). In short, Neil Young had missed his opportunity to burn out, having demolished his public image out of disgust for the press in the previous five years, so he set about fading away on his own terms. Johnny Rotten (or John Lydon as he had reverted to his real name already by this point) had burnt out spectacularly and made his mark, allowing him to do whatever he wanted with relatively little scrutiny from the press. An enviable position indeed.
Anyway. Better to burn out. It worked for Mozart.

on May 30th, 2007 at 4:49 pm #

I don’t agree with any of your definitions of “fading” and “burning”! But I’m also not smart enough to engage in this epic debate over song meanings that I’ve never heard before.

Anywho,

“Fading out”: Continuing on but falling from the forethoughts of everyone’s mind while still doing what you’ve been doing all along. Think anyone that isn’t on the billboard top 10 right now. Unless you are a mega-amazing artist using witchcraft (ie: The Beatles), you will typically release and album, fade for a while, then release another album to pick you back up again.

“Burning Out” is losing your edge or talent, or whatever it was that made you so popular to start with.

Fading out implies a retention of talent but becoming less popular; burning out implies a loss of talent but does not imply a popularity change (though it usually does result in it).

Elvis was sort of an anomaly because he faded away but he still had mass hysteria surrounding him. He should have faded out a whole lot more before he died.

on May 30th, 2007 at 9:26 pm #

I’m positive I haven’t; I do recognize it is a popular song however, and the reasoning behind me not hearing it yet… well…

on May 31st, 2007 at 12:03 pm #

True, Burn Out and Burned Out are quite different. I mean, one of them is past-tense!

on May 31st, 2007 at 3:52 pm #

<p>Ash is right again. One more analogy and then I quit. Getting away from music and celestial bodies, let’s talk about Michael Jordan (people love sports analogies, right?!): undisputed king of the hill when he was with the Bulls. Wins back to back to back championship titles in 96 to 98, taking the winning shot on the last play of the last game. He retires as the reigning MVP of the league, MVP of the playoffs, the undisputed best player in the game. That’s going out on top. Burning out brightly.

And if he’d left it there, that might have been a perfect storybook ending. Instead, he comes back three years later at age 38, fatter, slower, barely even able to dunk anymore - a shell of his former self. He limps through 3 seasons like this, a parody of what he used to be, slowly fading away, tarnishing the memory of his former greatness. Jordan in a Wizards jersey: now THAT was fading away.

on May 31st, 2007 at 6:36 pm #

1) Burn out:
a. to consume rapidly, esp. to squander
b. to wear out; exhaust; be worn out; become exhausted.

2) Fade away:
a. to lose brightness or vividness of color.
b. to disappear or die gradually

I think these definitions from Dictionary.com are the two most common intended meanings of these phrases. We have all heard them used a million times and we all know what they mean without the need for any analogies. If the sentence “It’s better to burn out than to fade away.” had originally appeared in a vaccum, instead of in the context of a song which mentions Elvis (who fits definition 1b or 2a) and Johnny Rotten (who fits definition 1a or 2b), there would be absolutely no way to know the intended meaning for sure. I have since read an interview with NY confirming that you fuckers are right and I’m wrong. I’m done disputing that. What I want to know is how the HELL you would figure that out without reading an interview with him, when the OVERWHELMING message of the song is “Rock and Roll is here to stay/will never die.” If the song said “Johnny Rotten is gone but not forgotten” I could understand a little more, but even knowing now that my original interpretation was wrong, I don’t see anything in the lyrics that indicate what he really meant. Even the rust analogy, as I mentioned, is backward. Things that remain in use do not rust, even if they are old or outdated. To use one of your beloved sports analogies (though its the same for musicians), players are said to be “rusty” when they have been out of practice or have not played for a while, not when their careers go down hill.

on May 31st, 2007 at 9:15 pm #

Guh?

on June 1st, 2007 at 12:43 am #

Guh?

on June 1st, 2007 at 10:50 am #

Where are you getting all these animated Gif’s or whatever you call them all of a sudden. You’re like a 13 year old aim user… LOL…ROTFLMFAO

midget penis sex…

midget penis sex …

on June 28th, 2007 at 12:38 pm #

Oh man, Midget penis sex is so much better than midget vagina sex!

on May 24th, 2007 at 12:08 pm #

It always kind of bugs me when people talk about “Simpsons should hang it up” and it not being as good as Family Guy or South Park or whatever. Cause even if its not as good as either of those shows (and that’s debatable), its still better than 90% of what’s on TV.

I will agree that Family Guy was better than Simpsons this week. But I liked the Simpsons a few months back where Bart and Lisa built a cardboard box fortress better than both of them.

on May 29th, 2007 at 12:31 pm #

At the end of clip two Death lists the people killed and Peter admits he doesn’t know who those people are.
What chunk of the populations of the U.S. and Canada do you think know who those people are, and who are worse in the short and long runs, the people who support/like the Tucker Carlsons, etc, or the people who don’t even know who they are?

on May 29th, 2007 at 5:18 pm #

As far as Tucker et al. are concerned, it’s always easier to face the enemy you know.

on May 30th, 2007 at 6:54 am #

This may be more fitting to the other Iwright article comment section but whatever.

The trouble with this whole discussion is that we’re dealing with quality of music or television or whatever as a totally objective thing, but its subjective. One bee’s feces is another man’s honey so to speak.

Foley watched Simpsons until season 13 and then petered off. That’s fine, but I petered off at about season 8 and then got back into it about 13 cause the writing started to be a lot funnier to me.

Same thing applies to music, as discussed in the other article. Most people would tell you that Pink Floyd’s high point was around Dark Side of the Moon, but I love the early Syd Barrett stuff much more. And I know people who swear by their late 80’s early 90’s stuff. Personally, I think their later stuff wonks, but I don’t think that makes the people who like it wrong.

Because we’re all like snowflakes my children…

on May 30th, 2007 at 4:39 pm #

The Simpsons was one of the best shows back-in-the-day, but a lot of folks are forgetting that more shows are being made every day. Pretty soon we’ll have enough stellar-awesome-amazing shows on the tube that we would be able to sit down and really, really enjoy it, 24/7.

The Simpsons is better than many shows out there, but between all the heavyweights these days (Heroes/Lost/Family Guy/etc etc) there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to fit the Simpson’s in.

on May 30th, 2007 at 4:48 pm #

Don’t ask me man, I don’t even have cable

on May 16th, 2007 at 8:46 am #

I personally have the fridge door seal blues. I can’t even get any information on how to fix it. I’ve been to 2 huge home repair/appliance stores and nobody has any information whatsoever. It’s like I was asking them where I could buy the Ark of the Covenant or something.