Still Springfield

I spent years thinking anime had replaced Western animation in my head. The energy, the honesty, the sex—American cartoons felt slow by comparison. But The Simpsons never left. It’s still there, some older circuit, voices I’ve known longer than most real people.

Converse made a 25th anniversary edition with Simpson characters on the shoes. Sixty euros, mid-September onward. Standard collaboration product.

The Simpsons doesn’t feel like nostalgia though. It feels real. Homer’s stubborn idiocy that somehow doesn’t destroy everything. Lisa’s intelligence hitting against the family’s stupidity. Bart’s pure destructive instinct. Even Marge—tired in a way that’s almost philosophical. These characters don’t try to be anything else. They just are.

I’ll get the shoes. Not for the anniversary or to own my past or any of it. Just because having The Simpsons with me every day feels honest.