(S21E16) It's always tricky to try and mix comedy with Jerusalem. Unless you're willing to throw caution to the wind and risk offending various religious groups and individuals, you almost always wind up with something that's bland and lame. For 'The Simpsons,' cutting edge and risque seems to be a thing long in their past, and the latter product is what we got.

Everything from Sacha Baron Cohen's aggressive tour guide to the jokes and the storyline in general didn't work this week. I'm not sure if it's because the writer, Kevin Curran, was trying too hard not to offend Muslims, Jews or Christians, but he wound up wringing every bit of humor out of the episode.

Normally, at least one or two jokes can hit, even in a bad episode of 'The Simpsons,' but this one actually got painful to continue sitting through.

Now that Shrek-mania, Spider-mania, Pirates-mania, Transformers-mania, Rat-mania, Potter-mania and Evan Almighty-mania have come and gone this summer it's time for Simpsons-mania to rev itself up in anticipation of The Simpsons theatrical release at the end of this month. What better way to get into the swing of things than to vote for your favorite Simpsons character.

That's easily done, courtesy of The Chicago Tribune's Redeye website. The first round of voting featured sixteen match-ups. Among those competing were Homer versus Selma and Patty, Marge versus Fat Tony, and Bart versus Principal Skinner. The best match-up, according to the website, was Comic Book Guy versus Apu. Out of nearly 10,000 responses Apu beat C.B.G. with 62% of the vote.