Dead Homer Society

“Marge, this is Andre.” – Patty Bouvier
“Hello.” – Andre
“I think you two would make a lovely couple.” – Patty Bouvier
“My husband is still alive!” – Marge Simpson
“Oh. Thank God. I hope he pulls through.” – Patty Bouvier
“Not me.” – Andre

I’m sitting in a hospital waiting room right now while my Dad has (long overdue) hip replacement surgery. It’s about as low risk as getting cut open and having the top of your femur cut off comes, so I’m not really worried, but I can’t get the above quote out of my head. Like so many Simpsons jokes, it works in about five different ways: Patty and Selma’s utter loathing of Homer, the complete sleaziness of Andre (down to the visible chest hair and chains), the wild inappropriateness of him being in the waiting room, his blase dirtbag delivery on “Not me”, Patty’s deadpan sarcasm as she hopes Homer pulls through, and I think I’m forgetting a couple.

Now, hospital waiting rooms are grim places. Nobody wants to be here, everyone’s bored, and a lot of people are seriously tense. There’s a kind of quiet decorum to it where any activity that passes the time is acceptable, but having fun in any way is not. And I keep chuckling to myself about Andre, the couple making out in the surgery viewing room, and Dr. Nick smelling gas. When they let us back to see my Dad pre-op, the first thought I had upon walking in the room was “bed goes up, bed goes down”.

Times like this are when I don’t feel the least bit wasteful having dedicated significant chunks of my brain to remembering the show. What other program could de-stress me two decades after the fact? A stray line or joke, that’s easy. The Simpsons has whole scenes and episodes that amuse me wherever I go.