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Hey gang, here's what happening in the world of cartoons:

A new Simpsons game, possibly created to coincide with the movie, has been showing up on some retailer's list as "The Simpsons Game." Electronic Arts is publishing the game, which will be available for pretty much all the major platforms, including Wii.

As we all know, the Stephen King / Peter Straub novel The Talisman is being made into a six-part miniseries for TNT for the 2008 season.

Now TNT has told advertisers that the Stephen Spielberg-produced miniseries could also become a regular series in 2009.

The original novel, the first collaboration between King and Straub, focused on a young boy named Jack Sawyer who flips back and forth between two worlds: our world and a mystical but malevolent world known as the Territories as he attempts to secure the titular talisman that may save his dying mother. A sequel, Black House, followed many years later. Both stories also tie into King's larger Dark Tower series, which may also be developed for television.

Enron: the Smartest Guys in the Room, the Academy Award-nominated documentary from 2005 that tells the story of the Enron scandal, will be featured on PBS' Independent Lens showcase on April 24 at 10:00 p.m. The televised version also features a new conversation from January 2007 with co-authors Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, two Fortune reporters who wrote the book The Smartest Guys in the Room, on which the documentary is based.

Citing sources close to OJ Simpson, Time is reporting that certain publication rights from his book, If I Did It, Here's How it Happened, could revert back to him before next Christmas. That means the book may still see the light of day, somewhere. Several European publishers have expressed an interest in the book, a "fictional" account of how Simpson would have committed the murders he was accused of had he actually done it. If the book ever gets published, here or abroad, Simpson is welcome to use this hypothetical blurb, written in the spirit of the book, based on what I would have said had I actually read it:

Rumors about Steven Spielberg helming an adaptation of The Talisman, the novel by Stephen King and Peter Straub, have been circulating for almost as long as the book itself has been in print, almost three decades. Last year reports began to pop up again that a film adaptation was in the works, but still nothing. Now, however, it's official: Steven Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy will be executive producing the six-hour adaptation for DreamWorks Television, set to air on TNT in the summer of 2008. Ehren Krueger (Arlington Road, The Ring, The Brothers Grimm) is penning the script.

The novel focuses on Jack Sawyer, a young boy who sets out on a quest to find the titular talisman, a magic artifact that may save his mother, who is dying of cancer. Jack flips back and forth between parallel worlds, his own reality and another called "the Territories." This novel, along with its sequel, 2001's Black House, also ties into King's seven-part Dark Tower series, as does a large portion of his other works.

Yay! My first rhyming headline! Allow me to skip around clapping my hands like a little girl while twirling a parasol behind my back. Actually, that would be impossible, I'd need like four hands to accomplish that.

Come to think of it, maybe that's the key component of OJ's upcoming book, If I Did It, Here's How It Happened: that he could only have committed the murders if he had four arms. Not that anyone who watches the nine FOX affiliates run by Lin Broadcasting and Pappas Broadcasting will ever know, because they've decided not to run the two-part interview scheduled for November 27 and 29.

Awhile back, cartoon historian Jerry Beck mentioned the upcoming book Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies: A Companion to the Classic Cartoon Series by Russell Merritt and J.B. Kaufman. Beck was able to get his hand on an advanced copy, not a small feat considering the book isn't even available in the United States yet (keep an eye on the Indiana University Press site, though).

As some of you know, I loves me some classic animation, but I've always been more of a fan of Warner Bros. and Hanna-Barbera than Walt Disney. Nevertheless, I don't think one can ignore that Disney helped open a lot of doors for other animators and studios, many of which went on to carve out their own niche far removed from the Disney aesthetic.

The book covers every "Silly Symphony" created by the studio in great detail, or so says Beck, who, unlike me, has actually seen the book. I've always enjoyed Beck's writing, not to mention his audio commentaries on the "Looney Tunes Golden Collection" DVDs, so when he says this book is a "must have" for animation fans, I take him at his word.

And speaking of "Silly Symphonies," I've placed one of my favorites, "The Skeleton Dance" after the jump. Enjoy.

Here you go, a bit of humor for your Saturday, or whatever day you happen to be reading this. The comedic minds over at Cracked have come up with some titles for books OJ Simpson might want to write as a follow up to his "hypothetical" book If I Did It, his account of how he would have committed the murders, had he actually done it. My favorite title: 'I Wish I Could Go Back In Time And Not Commit Murder.' That's What I'd Be Saying If I Did It.

There's never any event so tragic that someone, somewhere won't find humor in it, but I always find it interesting how some events seem to require more passing of time before people joke about them, while others are made the subject of humor right away. South Park touched on this with the "Jared has Aides" episode, announcing it was now okay to make fun of AIDS because it had been around for over twenty years. How long until jokes about 9/11 become the norm? It seems weird to think about, but tragedies like the Titanic and the Hindenburg have become punchlines in the modern age, so it seems naive to believe that future generations won't do the same with events from our era.