Early visits with the Simpsons

I'm so old I honestly remember watching the Tracy Ullman show and thinking it was a bit lame, with the sketches taking way too long to get to the point. But I also recall thinking that the segments with the cartoon family looked ace, and The Simpsons are still here, decades and decades later, still trucking along.

I also remember how much of a cultural phenomenon for a while, with tie-in albums at the top of the charts and all the right-wing dickwads losing their shit over it. I had a mate that would ring me up after every episode to talk about all the movie references, but you didn't need to get them when the comedy was so sharp and like nothing else on television.

That affection never went anywhere, even though, like almost everybody else, I probably haven't watched a single episode made in the past decade. There were only so many times you could tell the same jokes, especially when so many of them first appeared on that weird late night sketch show that nobody else watched.