The Greatest Television Asset Of All Time

In one of television’s biggest syndication deals, “The Simpsons,” the longest-running scripted show in TV history, will finally be moving to cable television... Fox sold the reruns to its FXX network... and ... has acquired both cable and streaming rights to the more than 550 episodes. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but a representative of one of the other companies that pursued the package said that the bidding was highly competitive and estimated that the per-episode figure reached $1.5 million to $1.6 million. That would put the value of the deal at close to $900 million.

Irony-Free Tuesday

Thanks to Mike/Matt who originally helped us get our Oatmeal on.
The website "Funny Junk" - which stole, re-hosted and monetized The Oatmeal - is now extorting The Oatmeal's creator for $20,000 under threat of a federal lawsuit. Story here. That's some straight, shameless, irony-free hubris!
Although our Bastardus Emeritus and British barrister could probably explain the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and other relevant legal minutiae to us in excruciating detail... the best thing by far is The Oatmeal's response. Enjoy.

I need your bastardy help

My school is entered in a video contest with a prize of $10K at stake. We're a small school so I hope you'll go HERE, register to vote for us, and then vote up to 10x per day starting Monday. If you can beg, blackmail, or blow your co-workers and loved ones into doing the same, I'd much appreciate it. Our school is Josephine Dobbs Clement Early College High School.

D'ough!

The voice actors for The Simpsons are going at it with 20th Century Fox Television. Story here. Apparently they make $8 million each per season. Worth every penny?
If I was in a room with Harry Shearer I'd make him do Mr. Burns until he punched me in the face.
Would any of you bastards watch the show with different voice actors?

Sounds promising

It seems that a couple of documentarians are hard at work creating some cool sounding projects. I have to admit, at the risk of bastard hazing, I am not exactly familiar with the Big Star body of work. I am, however, familiar with R.E.M., Let's Active, and The dB's all of which will have various members helping perform Big Star's album Sister Lovers at the Cat's Cradle in North Carolina this December. the shows will be filmed as part of the documentary Nothing Can Hurt Me: The Big Star Story. See, it's right here

In other documentary news, there is a documentary called Anyone Can Play Guitar about the Oxford music scene which spawned the likes of Supergrass, Ride, and some other band that I can't seem to remember the name of but I think they used to call themselves On A Friday. Here's the trailer ...

Anyone Can Play Guitar Trailer from video jon on Vimeo.

Here's a link to the film's website where they will happily take your money to contribute to the cause, but a least you will get tickets to the premiere and have your name in the credits.

I think Jay needs to get off his ass and start on the documentary about the Memphis music scene.

It's The Thought That Counts

I was going to get this book for you bastards, but buying and sending four copies got too pricey. Looks good though, doesn't it?

Good God, I've Been Busy

It's good to know I've been missed, Deighve.

After years and years and years of designing Web sites using table-based layouts (hey, that's how everybody did it back in the day), I have taken the plunge and taught myself to use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), a much more elegant and efficient way of doing things that separates a page's content from its layout. Why was I a hold-out, you may be asking?

1) Even just a couple of years ago, there were many people in my company still using Netscape 4.x, an ancient browser that was incapable of rendering CSS at all. However, a recent glance at our statistics verified that all my current customers are on board with IE6 (ugh), IE7 or Firefox.

2) I had heard some real horror stories about browser rendering differences with CSS and how the same things that rendered beautifully in one browser looked absolutely shitty in another. Weird indents here and there, odd overlaps where there shouldn't be any, who needs that? The only way around, and this is still true with IE6, is to use various CSS hacks to fool the errant browser into doing the right thing. ("* html" has become my new best friend.)

3) I, like most people, tend to stick with what I know.

I've done this completely on my own, with no prodding from anyone else - or hope of monetary compensation - because it's the right thing to do if I want to be regarded as a serious designer. (The look on my non-techie boss's face was priceless when I tried to explain CSS and its benefits to all concerned.) I've worked through a lot of lunches and even made a trip to work last weekend to figure something out that was making me crazy. (Thanks again, IE6!)

I'm still Johnny Newguy, and I'm relatively certain that my CSS will be a source of secret embarrassment in a few months, but to get a real sense of how powerful this stuff is, check out css Zen Garden and select some of the different designs in the right-hand column. Keep in mind as you do that the content for each page is exactly the same, only the CSS is changing.

Mind-blowing stuff.

Dig through the couch cushions for Juvenile Diabetes

OK Bastards, we take and we take and we take. Now here's an opportunity to give back. My older bro is going to get off of his lazy ass and participate in a walk to support research into juvenile diabetes. He's set a pretty ambitious goal this year so I told him I'd spread the word. If any of you bastards have an extra ten spot lying around, then skip the hookers and blow this weekend and give to a good cause. If you'd like to donate, go here and tell 'em LBU sent you.