From the Oregonian:

As high school valedictorian and Miss Everett, Margaret's highest honor was being named May Queen of Linfield College. She graduated from Linfield in 1941 and married classmate Homer Groening, whom she chose because he made her laugh the most. Margaret taught high school English before starting a family, and her love of language was apparent in the many Double-Crostics she completed (in ink). Margaret and Homer supported the Oregon Symphony, the Portland Trail Blazers and many local yarn shops (Margaret was a talented needlework artist).

Many of the fictional "Simpsons" character names came from the Greoning family, including Lisa, Homer, Marge, Maggie, Patty and Chief Wiggum (Wiggum was Margaret's maiden name). The show's main character, Bart, however, was named as an anagram for "brat."

Margaret's husband, cartoonist Homer Groening, died in 1996.

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h/t THR

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H/T Splitsider

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What else is there to say? Oh, right: If you're wondering where "Dial Z for Zombies" is, it's No. 11, which means it's not on here. I love it -- especially the immortal line "Is this the end of Zombie Shakespeare?" -- but I like these just a little bit more. List your own favorites in the Letters section. To quote Marge in "The Shinning," go crazy.

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The piece started with an anecdote about watching a fourth-season episode of "The Simpsons," "Krusty Gets Kancelled," with my kids. Upon hearing me laugh at a particular gag -- action star Rainer Wolfcastle telling "Springfield Squares" host Kent Brockman about his new film, in which a man visits his son at college and is horrified to discover that he has become a nerd -- my 7-year-old son laughed, too. Then he asked, "Dad, why is that funny?" I realized my reflexive laughter was generational. I'm in my early 40s, and the joke presumed thorough knowledge of pop culture made within my lifetime, much of it arcane. I realized the entire episode -- one of the greatest of all "Simpsons" episodes, without question -- was so strongly rooted in pop culture trivia that "if it were a poem, it would need to have nearly as many footnotes as 'The Waste Land,'" and that "the further away from its original air date we get, the truer that's going to be."

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So it only stands to reason that the next decade to look forward -- er, back -- to is the '90s, which last time I checked was a bastion of huge hair, terrible fashion choices, and crappy rave music. But there must have been some good stuff that happened last decade, or this new nostalgia kick wouldn't be in full swing. Here are five signs that we are all going to be wearing fluorescent-colored fanny packs and talking about Jordan Catalano sooner rather than later.

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Wolfcastle: "My son returns from a fancy East Coast college, and I'm horrified to find he's a nerd."

Kent Brockman: "Ha, ha, ha! I'm laughing already!"

Rainier Wolfcastle: "It's not a comedy."

I laughed at this. My son laughed, too -- but after a moment he asked, "Dad, why is that funny?"

I told him it was too complicated to explain, because it was.

Wolfcastle was "The Simpsons"' stand-in for Arnold Schwarzenegger, a wildly popular movie star circa 1992-93, when that episode first aired. Schwarzenegger built his fortune on bloody action thrillers, but had recently begun playing against type in such dumb but harmless comedies as "Twins" and "Kindergarten Cop." The movie Wolfcastle was promoting was obviously in that vein, but the plot evoked the 1986 Rodney Dangerfield comedy "Back to School." Wolfcastle's line, "It's not a comedy" was also a joke at the expense of phony '80s macho; the very idea of nerdiness would horrify a gym-muscled dolt like Wolfcastle.

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Either way, "Cedar Rapids" is often hilarious, although I found it so amped-up and overly broad that I was exhausted before the movie was over. Ed Helms of "The Hangover" and TV's "The Office" stars as the severely unworldly Tim Lippe, a small-town Wisconsin insurance agent whose mettle will be tested in the crucible of Cedar Rapids. If the resulting movie resembles those two influences a bit too much, at least those aren't bad starting points. Tim is 30ish without so much as a pet, and doesn't seem to grasp that his clandestine liaisons with his one-time middle-school teacher (a nifty cameo for Sigourney Weaver!) are cougarish recreation, and not the pathway to matrimony.

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Nicholson's presence is arguably more a problem than a strength in "How Do You Know." In essence, the movie is an ungainly but irresistible romantic-triangle comedy built around Rudd, Reese Witherspoon and Owen Wilson, with Nicholson rambling around its periphery like a demonic bear, part comic relief and part distraction. But in that moment of mock-self-knowledge I saw the presence of one of America's greatest screen actors, in an extraneous old-guy role, as purely symbolic: Nicholson is a stand-in for 70-year-old James L. Brooks, the genius of American comic melodrama, who is, after all, manipulating all the younger characters in the movie, and everybody watching it, the whole time.

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"Few people know it and he does everything to hide it but it is true: Homer J. Simpson is Catholic," L'Osservatore Romano wrote in its weekend edition under the headline: "Homer and Bart are Catholic."

Last December, the newspaper praised the show on its 20th anniversary for its philosophical leanings and irreverent take on religion.

The weekend story was the latest example of the Vatican paper's efforts to be more relevant in the last few years, and follows stories not only lauding Harry Potter but even praising the Beatles and waxing philosophical about John Lennon's boast that the British band was more popular than Jesus.

The paper quoted an analysis by a Jesuit priest, the Rev. Francesco Occhetta, discussing Homer's and his son Bart's conversion in a 2005 episode after meeting with a sympathetic priest, Father Sean, voiced by actor Liam Neeson.

L'Osservatore says the analysis shows that behind the TV program's jokes are themes "linked to the sense and quality of life."

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The clip, easily one of the darkest, most despairing piece of animation to come down the pike since "Grave of the Fireflies," kicks off with a bird carrying a dead rodent through the Springfield skies – and then it turns grim. Sure, the theme music and the sequence of events stays true to the show's familiar themes – Bart cheekily writes "I must not write all over the walls" on the chalkboard, a Krusty billboard gets a little Banksied – but as the family takes its place on the couch, the action pulls away to an Asian animation sweatshop. How hellish is Banksy's vision of how "The Simpsons" gets made? It makes a real sweatshop look like Club Med. Children dip animation cels in toxic waste while rats carry off human bones. Kittens are wood-chippered into Bart Simpson dolls, hauled off by tragic pandas. And do you even want to know how they put the holes in your DVDs? Chained up unicorns.

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To mark the 20th anniversary of “The Simpsons,” the doyenne of Springfield USA appears nude and strategically posed on a bunny-shaped chair for the cover of the November issue, which hits newsstands next week. For the story, provocatively titled “The Devil in Marge Simpson,” the former Marge Bouvier opens up about her life and family, and, we’re promised, poses in sexy lingerie. The trailblazing MILF is the first cartoon character to snag the Playboy cover.

An iconoclast in the guise of a traditional housewife, Simpson has always steadfastly defied conventional expectations. As the wife of nuclear plant worker Homer J. Simpson and mother to three high-maintenance children, she fulfills the traditional domestic role of chief cook and bottle washer. But she has also been a cop and a pretzel entrepreneur, is active at her children’s school and local government, and, like Jack White and Anna Wintour, retains a fiercely independent personal style, resisting trends and favoring her trademark green wardrobe and blue bouffant.

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Apropos of your Sept. 25 discussion of cabin air, I accept that pilots do not manipulate the flow of oxygen to anaesthetize passengers, but what about temperature? I have heard that pilots make it warmer (or is it colder?) on overnight flights to facilitate sleeping.

Some pilots will raise the temperature slightly in the belief that it helps people sleep, but this is pretty rare. Adjusting the temp controllers is very common while on the ground or during climb and descent, but once at cruise, we set the dials to a recommended position (a known and stable comfort zone) and basically leave them alone until somebody complains.

On the jets I fly, there are three temperature zones adjustable from the cockpit (forward, mid and aft, plus a separate controller for the cockpit). The equipment does a very good job, though the temperature values we see on the gauges aren't always reflective of the exact comfort level. Over the course of a long flight, we'll typically get three or four calls from the cabin attendants asking us to raise or lower the temperature slightly.

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This year's FCBD coincides with National Cartoonists' Day and the opening of "Spider-Man 3," and lots of stores are also planning signings and other events. The crop of handouts includes 43 different comics, although most stores will only let you pick out a few of them; some of the free comics are particularly kid-friendly, others aren't kid-friendly at all, and some are a lot better than others. (This page is a useful resource to find the nearest store that's participating in the giveaway.) Here's a quick overview of what's available this year, sorted by category.

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Speaking of blondes, Paula Zahn is taking Connie Chung's place on CNN with a new show called "American Evening With Paula Zahn." We're glad they cleared up what country they're broadcasting from. (Washington Post)

We aren't really surprised that Jack Nicholson admitted to a reporter he's been in therapy on and off since the 1960s -- after all, he loves an audience. The surprise is that part of the process back then was with a doc experimenting with LSD and his co-subjects were director John Huston and Cary Grant. Now that's a screenplay. (Daily Telegraph)

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