Parlor Spider...Step In, Little Fly

Insightful thoughts and/or rants from atop the soapbox from one who wishes to share the "right" opinion with everyone.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Springfield's Secret No Longer Safe




101st Place to visit Before You Die


Apparently, there's no place like home for The Simpson family. While millions of people travel worldwide to see the famous sights: Eiffel Tower, Red Square, the Blue Mosque, The Hollywood sign, Angkor Wat, and the Field of Dreams, there has been one place unavailable to everyone: the real Springfield, home of the Simpson Family (no, NOT Jessica; Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie). The mythical town of Springfield seemed to be a made up name, but the various Springfields around the U.S. always wanted it to be "their" Springfield that was the focal point for the wacky adventures with which we've all been mesmerized since that first "Don't have a cow, man" 23 years ago.
After 27 Emmy awards for television greatness, it is impossible to deny this dysfunctional family its place in the world (so to speak). After all, Homer made it into the Oxford dictionary in 2011 with his famous "D'oh!" Maybe that's a sign of a decaying culture, but I can assure you, the Roman Empire had nothing like this at its fall. Oh sure, there were the twelve crazy Caesars, but they were CRAZY, not ironic and funny.
Anyway, the creator of all this zaniness, Matt Groening, recently revealed in an interview with Smithsonian magazine that there was an actual city of Springfield that he used as inspiration; he even named some of the characters after streets in the "real" Springfield, where there is a Lovejoy Street as well as a Flanders street. Not surprisingly, the characters of the Simpsons were named after real people in Groening's family, with the exception of "Bart" substituting for "Matt" because it sounded better to the artist (more like dog noises!).
Groening was a television watcher as a youth and discovered on a show entitled Father Knows Best the city that would eventually become mysteriously famous...noted probably all the more so since it was also the city in which Groening and his family resided.
Now, the secret is out, and the tourists will be flocking to the city of Springfield in droves. Maps of the significant places will be hawked on street corners, and paparazzi will swarm, seeking out the family members and dishing the dirt. I mean, Joan Rivers will probably do a live remote from there, and you KNOW She-Whose-Name-Must-Not-Be-Mentioned will probably host the Today show from there at least once.
I must get to Springfield before the iconic city is just another Krusty's T-shirt Shop and Whoopie Cushion Emporium.

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