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There are a lot of towns called Springfield in the U.S., but only one is the Springfield: the fictional one where "The Simpsons" live. There are a lot of great cultural references in the animated TV series, and two California State Polytechnic (Pomona) students have fit the geographical ones onto a map as consistently as possible for a fictional place. Ever wonder where Mr. Burns lives, or exactly where the Simpsons' house is? (It's in Pressboard Estates, naturally!) Stop by Miss Tillingham's School for Snooty Girls and Mama's Boys on your way to Professor V.J. Cornucopia's Fantastic Foodmagorium and Great American Steakery. Mmmmm, steak! From This is True for 29 May 2005 Suggestions for further reading:
 By: Matt Groening List Price: $14.95 Amazon Price: $10.17  By: Chuck Jones List Price: $25.00 Amazon Price: $16.50 Editorial Review: Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist is a sort of autobiography of Chuck Jones, the brilliant Warner Brothers animator who created such enduring characters as Wile E. Coyote and Marvin the Martian. Like his best cartoons, Jones skips around to the fun parts, giving a bit of childhood here, a few words of drawing advice there, and a good yarn wherever one fits. Jones also manages to work in a detailed yet somehow never boring description of the long and silly process of making a cartoon. Jones is refreshingly generous about spreading credit around to others. He fondly remembers art teachers, tips his hat to fellow directors and mentors Friz Freleng and Tex Avery, and gives the reader a new appreciation of the layout men who create the backgrounds for animated features. Most engaging are Jones's accounts of office life at Warner Brothers, which sounds like just as much fun as you hope it would be. Jones recounts stories of drawing tables wired to wake up sleeping animators when the boss approached and Cal Howard, a gag writer who ran an illegal commissary out of his metal-lined desk. The book is filled with sketches and color plates of much-loved moments from Warner Brothers cartoons and even includes a quick Road Runner and Coyote scene that comes to life when the pages are flipped. Highly recommended for kids who like to draw and adults who have not lost their appreciation for Looney Toons. --Ali DavisThe illustrated classic, complete with a new preface by Matt Groening. Winner of three Academy Awards and numerous other prizes for his animated films, Chuck Jones is the director of scores of famous Warner Bros. cartoons and the creator of such memorable characters as the Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote, Pepé Le Pew, and Marvin Martian. In this beguiling memoir, Chuck Jones evokes the golden years of life at "Termite Terrace," the Warner Bros. studio in which he and his now-famous fellow animators conceived the cartoons that delighted millions of moviegoers throughout the world and entertain new generations of fans on television. Not a mere history, Chuck Amuck captures the antic spirit that created classic cartoons-such as Duck Dodgers in the 241/2 Century, One Froggy Evening, Duck Amuck, and What's Opera, Doc?-with some of the wittiest insights into the art of comedy since Mark Twain.  By: Matt Groening List Price: $12.95 Amazon Price: $10.36 Editorial Review: Get ready every Futurama and Matt Groening fan, here comes Futurama–o–rama, the very FIRST comic compilation based on the Emmy–nominated television show Futurama. It's a long way from making a pizza delivery on New Year's Eve to the bustling cityscape of New York in the 31st century, but for Phillip J. Fry it only took one little cryogenically frozen nap. Waking up in a future imagined by The Simpsons creator Matt Groening, Fry finds a job at an interplanetary messenger service and falls in with Leela, a sexy one–eyed space orphan, and Bender, an alcoholic misanthropic robot programmed to bend things. Blast off with this all–new Futurama comics collection, and leap feet first into a fun–filled future!  By: Matt Groening List Price: $14.95 Amazon Price: $10.17 Editorial Review: Follow Fry, Leela, Bender, and the crew of Planet Express as they fend off hostile takeovers, risk life and limb on a no–holds–barred game show, protect New New York City from the Santa Robot's annual slay ride, save the world from the fiendish machinations of Robot Devil, confound terminators from an altered future bent on destroying the past, form a superhero team and rid the universe of marauding break dancers, and fight off the effects of aging with a mind– bending transformation that could spell the end of all they hold dear. Take flight to the future of Futurama and leave the past behind ... today!  List Price: $14.00 Amazon Price: $11.20 Editorial Review: From Dave Eggers: For this year's edition of The Best American Nonrequired Reading, we wanted to expand the scope of the book to include shorter pieces, and fragments of stories, and transcripts, screenplays, television scripts -- lots of things that we hadn't included before. Our publisher readily agreed, and so you'll see that this year's edition is far more eclectic in form than previous editions. Along the way to making the book, we also came across a variety of things that didn't fit neatly anywhere, but which we felt should be included, so we conceived the front section, which is a loose Best American roundup of notable words and sentences from 2005. It is, like this book in general, obviously and completely incomplete, but might be interesting nevertheless. |
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