Via Deadline.com

The Simpsons, the venerable Fox network animated series, made light of Karl Rove's election night antics--attempting to un-call a decisively won election for President Obama--with an animated "chalkboard joke" at the beginning of last night's episode. It reads "I will not concede the election till Karl Rove gives me permission"--a lesson Megyn Kelly et al. seem to have literally taken to heart for a time last Tuesday.

The series has a long history of teasing Fox News and the News Corporation, particularly in the episode's opening "chalkboard" sequence wherein Bart writes a moral on the board repeatedly--it's easier to animate with a short turnaround than jokes in the episode. (Another easily animated sequence: the fake Fox News "crawl" that led Fox News to reportedly threaten suit against The Simpsons in 2003.) One more memorable, and expensive, exception: graffiti artist Banksy's sequence for the show in 2010, depicting News Corp's sweatshop labor in Asia as integral to the production of the complicated animated series.

Gehry's rumpled set. (ArchPaper)

A close-up of the tossed-off set. (ArchPaper)

The infamous illustrated incident. (YouTube)

The hottest commission for starchitects these days is not some new condo or office tower, or a serious new cultural center, but instead an opera stage. Santiago Calatrava and Herzog & de Meuron are among the boldface designers who have come up with new stages, and now none other than Frank Gehry, king of them all, has had his star turn.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic is producing a run of Don Giovanni, at Mr. Gehry's Disney Concert Hall it turns out, and thus the starchitect extraordinaire has designed the set. Though the space is almost strictly for symphonic performances, as The Architect's Newspaper notes, how could the philharmonic not embrace the Gehry synergy to sell some tickets? ButThe Observer could not help feeling the set looked awfully familiar, from another piece of staged entertainment, in fact.

We already know that Frank Gehry hates his star turn on The Simpsons because so many people actually think he creates his building by crumpling up a piece of paper. "That was just a fun–fun thing," he once told CNN. "But it has–it has haunted me. People do–who’ve seen The Simpsons believe it."

Turns out, at least in this case, it was true, according to A|N:

Executing the evocative white and black sculptures was not easy.  Designed in model form by crumpling paper, they were built onstage by Gehry’s staff using 80 rolls of nine-foot wide paper hung on concealed wooden frames. In the end, Gehry said the executed set “did not look like the model at all.”  And because some of the singers physically interacted with the sculptures, about a fifth of them had to be repaired and reshaped after each performance.

So there you have it. Frank Gehry does design with crumpled up pieces of paper, at least some of the time.

The Internet is busy digesting the essay, so let's start with the donuts. One jelly donut is an energy boost, Einhorn writes, two donuts an indulgent breakfast:

"Three Jelly Donuts may induce a tummy ache. Six Jelly Donuts -- that's an eating disorder. Twelve Jelly Donuts is fraternity pledge hazing. My point is that you can have too much of a good thing and overdoses are destructive."

"Quit trying to fool them into thinking they're wealthy and instead give them the opportunity to retire with some financial security. With a little extra money in their pocket, Marge can go back to the beauty parlor, and Homer can support the beer and bowling economy."

Al Jean (Getty Images)

On a conference call yesterday, Al Jean, executive producer of The Simpsons, spoke about Julian Assange's cameo on the upcoming 500th episode. "Obviously, he's a controversial figure and that was discussed before we agreed to let him do it," said Mr. Jean. (The Simpsons' corporate cousins at Fox News have aired a call for Mr. Assange's assassination.) "It’s a funny cameo and it makes no judgments in the case against him.

"We had to record it over the phone—it was a cloak and dagger thing—but we specialize in finding people that can’t be found." Other tough-to-access Simpsons guest stars have included reclusive author Thomas Pynchon, British politician Tony Blair, and guest illustrator Banksy, whom Mr. Jean claimed never to have met. His recent favorite, though, may be Ted Nugent, who called into a table read from a helicopter on a hunting expedition.

While The Simpsons underwent contract renegotiations last year, the recent Christmas special "Holidays of Future Past" was set to be the series finale. After much back-and-forth, the cast all signed on for a deal that will take them to 559 episodes at least. "Had the cast not signed, I would have wanted to stop the show," said Mr. Jean.

This trend of high-brow and low-burp can be dated back to last November, when South Park featured a tiny, tattooed Marc Jacobs as "Muscle Man Marc." Check out all the cartoons in our slideshow and consider how lucky Ms. Chanel was to not have been born as a Demospongiae Porifera.

Via TV.com, a recap of the segment entitled "The Diving Bell and the Butterball":

It started off parodying one of the best foreign films of the last ten years, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly—a touching and imaginative movie about a man who learns to communicate despite being unable to move anything but his eyelids. Homer found himself in a similar position after being bitten by a spider, but instead of blinking, his communicated by farting. And farting. And farting. Despite realizing that it was completely stupid, I secretly giggled every time Homer pushed methane. Hey, you're either all in or you're not. At one point Marge hushed Homer's butt, which was funny, but the sketch took a bizarre turn when Homer suffered another spider bite and became a paralyzed Spider-Man, swinging around Springfield and stopping crime despite not being able to move. I commend this sketch for saying "F**k it" and going completely absurd. But really, how did this make it to air?

Spider Man: Turn Off The Dark made headlines after being one of the most costly and dangerous productions in the history of Broadway theater. Actors have fallen from stunt cues and been injured on stage, in front of audiences. A re-worked of the show even included self-referential moments taking note of the New York Post's notoriously cruel coverage of the show's major failings and bloopers.

This morning, producers of the show responded with the following press release through the show's spokesman, Rick Miramontez:

Everyone at SPIDER-MAN Turn Off The Dark was extremely flattered by last night’s tribute on ‘The Simpsons.’ ‘The Simpsons’ is an iconic American institution, and being part of last night’s episode was an honor and dream come true. As a token of their appreciation, the SPIDER-MAN Turn Off The Dark producers, Michael Cohl and Jeremiah J. Harris, have invited the entire Simpsons family (including, and especially Bart) on an all-expense-paid trip to New York City to sit front row at a performance of SPIDER-MAN Turn Off The Dark, and then come backstage for a meet-and-greet with the cast and for a champagne toast (the French stuff).”

If "an honor and a dream come true" constitutes your shows' reputation for being one of the most injury-prone, expensive, confusing productions on Broadway still manically trying to recoup the initial investment at (literally) any cost being enshrined into pop culture, then by all means, Spider Man producers are having a hell of a day.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Frank Gehry, you're a genius!

Because of his successful style, Frank Gehry sometimes comes under criticism for being a hack whose buildings all look the same—even if in their 50th iteration, those waving bands of metal still look amazing, fresh and different. This sensibility was, like so many other things, immortalized on The Simpsons, in which Mr. Gehry was perhaps the first and only architect to ever make a guest appearance—an appearance that still haunts him to this day.

Mr. Gehry was on Fahreed Zakaria's CNN program GPS yesterday, where he complained about how a throwaway joke (literally!) on The Simpsons has dogged his career ever since. (The video has not been posted online, but the transcript is here.)

ZAKARIA: But the strangeness comes from where?

GEHRY: Well, I don't know these whys, but there's - to me it's not strange. It looks like everything else is strange. And so stuff starts to unfold and little models and ideas and sketches. A lot - there are about 50 to 100 models made in that process.

ZAKARIA: And it's very deliberative.

GEHRY: Yes. And then when I understand it completely, when I think I know, then I kind of put it away and then I call that the candy store. I call that when I know the problem, everything about it that I can imagine. And then I start to make the real design and the ideas. [snip]

ZAKARIA: So this - the famous story that you took a piece of paper and crumpled it and looked at it and that was the Disney Hall in L.A.

GEHRY: But that's a famous story because the Simpsons had me do that.

ZAKARIA: But in fact, it was a long, long -

GEHRY: No, no, no, no. That was just a fun - fun thing. But it has - it has haunted me. People do - who've seen "The Simpson's" believe it.

How hard it must be to be Frank Gehry, being an internationally acclaimed architect who has to go on T.V. all the time. If you don't know The Simpsons episode in question—what's wrong with you! Seriously, here it is.

[The Observer is aware the above video is not in English, unfortunately it is the only version of the scene in question we could find online.]

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

The events depicted stay close to the actual warring that's been ongoing between writers at "The Simpsons" and the conservative cable news channel. And as the NMA video points out at the end, though one may think Rupert Murdoch would end the bickering between his two properties, in reality he's "laughing all the way to the bank."

Here's the video below. You don't want to miss the part when the writers for "The Simpsons" -- a "22-year-old show" as the subtitles point out -- jump the shark. They jump over an actual shark in a kiddie pool, and the shark morphs into Murdoch himself. Man, these NMA videos are just too good.

Earlier: Seeing Is Believing! The Very Best of Animated News [VIDEO]

The Webby Awards just announced their nominees for their 13th annual awards show. No surprise that NYTimes.com got 13 nominations, including the "Newspaper" category (The New York Observer was also nominated, along with the UK's The Guardian and The Independent). NBC.com and TheOnion.com also received multiple nods, along with The Daily Beast, which received two nominations in the "Best Practices" (maybe it was for the three-part advertorial about handbags?) and "News" categories. There are more than 70 categories of nominees, including "Politics" (nominees include OpenSecrets.org and FactCheck.org) and "Weird" (see: FAILblog.org or CrappyCat.com). Sites like Yearbook Yourself and Whopper Sacrifice were honored, and even YouTube sensations like the "Shiba Inu Live Puppy Cam" and "Bill O'Reilly Flips Out - Dance Remix" were given a shoutout.

The awards are presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a group of more than 500 "Web experts," celebrities, magazine editors and writers and business folks including Arianna Huffington, whose Huffington Post has three nominations this year, Simpsons creator Matt Groening, Virgin Atlantic chairman Richard Branson and Harvey Weinstein of The Weinstein Co., among others.

Starting today, users can cast their own votes for their favorite sites at The Webby People's Voice Awards. Polls close on April 30.

Here's a highlight reel of the nominees, from the Webby Awards' YouTube channel:

Official winners will be announced on May 5 and the awards ceremony will take place in New York City on June 8, hosted by SNL's Seth Meyers and featuring "five-word speeches" by Al Gore and Stephen Colbert.

7 p.m. Gay Men's Health Crisis hosts Savor, an annual four-course "New American dinner" prepared by "all-star, world-famous chefs." This year's event will include a special performance by Sutton Foster, hosted by Ted Allen of Food Detectives. At Skylight Studios, 275 Hudson Street.

7 p.m.  “Loesser Is More,” will be held at the New-York Historical Society to celebrate the work of Frank Loesser. Writer of the score for Guys and Dolls and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (among other famous works). The concert will feature "vocal stylings" of Sally Wilfert and Jim Weaver. At 170 Central Park West, between 76th and 77th streets. Ticket prices range from $30–$45.

7:30 p.m. The Freedom Socialist Party hosts “Economics for Activists,”  a panel discussion held to explain  "capitalism as a sham." At Freedom Hall, 113 West 128th Street and Malcolm X Boulevard. Admission is free.

7:30 p.m. Christopher Wheeldon shows excerpts from ballet Commedia and discusses his collaboration with design team Isabel and Ruben Toledo. At the Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Ave at 89th Street. Tickets are $30.

7:30 p.m. The Mingus Orchestra will perform at the Jazz Standard, 116 East 27th Street, between Park Avenue South and Lexington Avenue. Ticket Price: $25.

8 p.m. Political commentators Bill Maher and Ann Coulter kick off M.S.G. Entertainment's 2009 "Speaker Series: The Minds That Move The World" in a "lively political faceoff." At Radio City Music Hall, Sixth Avenue and 50th Street.

8 p.m. The American Ballroom Theater holds a viewing party for the premiere of Dancing With the Stars, 25 West 31st Street, on the fourth floor.

8 p.m. Black Lips, Gentlemen Jesse and His Men, and Georgiana Starlington will perform at the Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey Street. Ticket Price: $17.

8 p.m. The Emerging Comics of New York Awards ceremony will be held at Comix, 353 West 14th Street, between Eighth and Ninth avenues. Tickets are $20, $15 in advance, with a two-drink minimum.

8 p.m. The Shushan Channel Purim Party ’09 is performed by writers from The Daily Show, Dennis Miller Live, and The Simpsons, for a spin-off/ spoof, pop-culture take on the Jewish holiday. At 92YTribeca, 200 Hudson Street. Tickets: $35, advance $25, includes one drink. Also a Traditional Megillah Reading will be held at 5:30 p.m., Contemporary Megillah Reading at 7:00 pm.