*FIGURES AMENDED (MAY 1 UPDATE)* The audience has recovered from last week, as 7.57 million viewers watched last night's episode "The Boys Of Bummer" and 8.23 million tuned in to watch the rerun at 8.30. Family Guy at 9:00 had 8.13 million. Fox was in fourth place at 8pm, behind Dateline, Extreme Home Makeover, and The Amazing Race All Stars. Overall for the night Fox came fourth, but managed to hit second place among adults 18 - 49.

Two promotional images for You Kent Always Say What You Want have been released by Fox. The first, pictured above, is self explanatory, while the second is much akin to the Rudy Giuliani image you all hate, this time, featuring guest star Chris Bridges, otherwise known as rapper 'Ludacris' (it's a character model, folks, it's not designed to be pretty).

Bart becomes a hero when he makes the game-winning catch at his Little League game, sending the Springfield Isotots to the Little League championship for the first time ever. However, Springfield turns on him when he drops an easy pop fly in the bottom of the ninth, losing the game for his team. As the citizens of Springfield continue to mock and terrorize Bart, his guilt and shame threaten to send him over the edge. Meanwhile, after falling asleep in a department store display bed, Homer is saved from disaster when a customer mistakes Homer’s crafty excuses for a sales pitch, leading the store owner to hire Homer as a salesperson. When the Lovejoys return a mattress they had purchased in hopes of spicing up their sex life, they find success on Homer’s personal mattress and convince him to trade, a transaction Homer and Marge immediately regret and seek to remedy.

Fox has released a promo image for this year's season finale titled "24 Minutes". In the episode which parodies 24, Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) and Chloe O’Brian (Mary Lynn Rajskub) help Bart and Lisa, agents of the Counter Truancy Unit, stop bullies Dolph, Kearney and Jimbo from releasing the ultimate stink bomb at the school’s annual bake sale.

This is the 400th Episode and will air at the special time of 8.30pm on May 20, following an all new episode titled "You Kent Always Say What You Want", previously known as "The Kent State Massacre", retitled for obvious reasons.

Simon Cowell met his match when the Simpsons panned his attempt at singing The Pussycat Dolls’ hit Don’t Cha in a special TV charity show. The show’s charity special featuring Bono and Madonna raised money for kids in Africa and America. Idol Gives Back screened by US TV included live performances from Annie Lennox and Kelly Clarkson as well as the talent show’s contestants. You can view the Simpsons clip below.

Think you know what The Simpsons Movie is about? Think again. Simpsons Producer James L Brooks claims that 70% of the theatrical trailer is not even in the finished film: “It started out as people wanting to know what it was about, and then we were having fun with it, putting out false story lines. We’ve revealed more with each successive trailer. We’ll continue to do that,” Brooks told EW. “We saw a trailer the other day, and somebody said 70 percent of the things in it — based on where we were eight weeks ago — are no longer in the movie, because we keep on fooling around.” Brooks also revealed that “there are 94 speaking parts [so far]. And our animals don’t speak,” and “at least one [new character]. If you count nonhuman, two.”


Meanwhile, Newsweek is reporting that we'll be seeing more of Bart Simpson than anybody wants to in the movie. "In one shocking moment, little Bart flashes his little part to the entire world. Which may make this the first Hollywood film to show that kind of skin and to escape an R rating." And we're going to leave that one alone.

A total of 6.4 million viewers tuned in to watch Marge Gamer last night. If you do the math based on our last ratings post, this makes the episode the second-least watched premiere episode on record (behind Season 15's The Way We Weren't with 6.2 million). An 8.30 repeat has more viewers (6.5 million), as did two repeats of Family Guy (6.5 million). It was a night for new lows, as ABC's Desperate Housewives also scored an all-time low in the adult demographic. At 8pm, The Simpsons was in third place behind Extreme Makeover and The Amazing Race All Stars.

Meanwhile, The Boys Of Bummer has been moved ahead to air next Sunday to avoid people drawing comparisons between 'Stop Or My Dog Will Shoot' and the recent Virginia Tech shootings. That episode will now air on May 13 while Crook & Ladder airs May 6.

Marge becomes a spectacle during a PTA meeting for not having an e-mail address, and she decides to take a chance on using the Internet. Amazed and delighted by all the Internet has to offer, Marge joins a popular role-playing fantasy game called “Earthland Realms.” To Marge’s dismay, the game has her interacting with practically the whole town of Springfield including Bart, who happens to be the game’s most feared and destructive player. Meanwhile, Homer saves Lisa’s soccer game from cancellation after he volunteers to take the place of a referee who recently quit. However, Homer’s refereeing skills only exasperate Lisa, and her competitive streak gets the best of her.

Simpsons Comics #129: (Out Now!)
Homer is guilty of yet another Seven Deadly Sin when he purchases the latest in scooter technology - the Sloth-Around! How will the world react to a man who refuses to walk let alone stand up again?


Bart Simpson Comics #35: (Out Wednesday)
Otto and Bart find the once high and mighty Truckasaurus in a junkyard and share dreams of its resurrected glory; Bart and Milhouse imagine themselves in an Itchy & Scratchy cartoon; Professor Frink returns with another lesson in weird science; and Bart enlists the help of a certain someone to get the best of Principal Skinner!

Simpsons Classics #12: (Out Wednesday)
pringfield super-capitalist Mr. Burns gets his Squishee on, and drafts the town's other savvy salesman Apu Nahasapeemapetilon to manage a new Mega-Kwik-E-Mart. Then, Bart returns to France and this time he's bringing the clown and Milhouse.

A new promo card for the April 29 episode 'Stop Or My Dog Will Shoot' was released by Fox today. It features guest star Rudolph Giuliani. Click for a full view.

Homer is upset when he realizes that Marge brought him and the family to a boring Harvest Fest instead of his much-anticipated day of debauchery at October Fest. Attempting to leave, Homer accidentally drags the family into a puzzling cornfield maze. When the whole family manages to escape except for Homer, they send out Santa’s Little Helper, who sniffs out Homer and rescues him. Santa’s Little Helper becomes a local hero and the Simpsons decide to enroll him in Police Dog Academy, where he’s teamed with a grizzled veteran cop named Lou and they become a crime-busting duo.

Back in July last year we spoke of rumors of a Simpsons Movie themed ride. More rumors have been flying around courteousy of LA Weekly, revealing the Simpsons ride will be called "Travel with Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie" and it will be the same kind of ride as Back to the Future. That is, the ride will be a motion simulated ride in which visitors board a stationary "car" that shifts in conjunction with the camera movements of an animated film projected onto a screen. The brain will process the coordinated movements so as to trick the viewer into thinking they are actually in transit.


The original title of this Imax format film was to be the "Simpsons: Sprint Through Springfield." Apparently, some of the suits at Universal Orlando must have gotten convinced that people not fervently and fanatically tied to the show wouldn't understand that Springfield is the town in which the show takes place. There's no word yet on the actual "plot" of the film that will be used in the ride. And if you're planning on heading down to Orlando this summer to find out, your wait will be slightly longer than the usual wait at the Jaws ride. If the columnists rumors are to be believed, the ride will open in Summer 2008.

There's a fair wait until the next new episode "Marge Gamer", which airs on April 22nd, but this promotional image featuring Homer and Ronaldo was released today. And the episode? Here's the rundown:

Marge decides to see what all the fuss about the Internet is about, and soon joins an online role-playing game that includes pretty much everybody else in Springfield, including the game's best player - Bart; when Lisa's soccer game is about to be cancelled because there's no referee, Homer volunteers