I've never understood the animosity that Andy Rooney attracts by a certain segment of the TV viewing population. Take his segment on last night's '60 Minutes' (video after the jump). He talked about the jobless rate and the jobs that are available now and how maybe - just maybe - we need more plumbers and other people who actually do something more than we need, well, people who do my job.

This isn't a new stance by Rooney. He's been saying the same thing for years. Rooney just turned 91 years old so he's earned the right to repeat things if he wants. But I know that Rooney has talked about this before because, well, I've actually read what Rooney has written over the years. Most people who dislike Rooney know him for only one thing, his weekly segments on '60 Minutes.'

But the guy has been a journalist since World War II and has written several books and a weekly column for decades, but the people who find him "unfunny" or "irrelevant" only know him from the CBS show.

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It must be all this 400th episode hoodly-hoo, but I'm getting a lot of Simpsons stuff forwarded to my inbox. Not that I'm complaining.

Following up on my recent post featuring a bunch of couch gags from the Simpsons comes this video list of every job Homer has held from season one through season seventeen. You can also see a list of his various occupations on this Wiki page.

The fact that Homer willing quits his job at the nuclear plant at the drop of a hat has been a running gag on the series for a long time, but it also makes me think about all the jobs I've held (and I sometimes feel I've had as many jobs as Homer) that I wasn't exactly qualified to do. Most of these jobs I held right out of college when I was desperate for any kind of work:

Last month, Rich told you all about NBC Universal's plans to cut costs by cutting jobs. Seven hundred jobs to be exact. The first wave of cuts came last week, where at least 17 people were laid off from Dateline NBC. Most of those jobs were based out of New York, with a handful in Washington, D.C. and Chicago. There is also an undisclosed number of people who volunteered for the company's buyout package.

More layoffs within NBC News will come this week, with even more coming in the next year. According to Broadcasting & Cable, NBC Universal is slashing costs mostly at the NBC television network, while its movie and cable networks remain untouched. That means the news division is going to take the biggest hit because it takes a lot of people to cover the news. I guess we know where NBCU's priorities are. If it's anything like the newsrooms I've worked in, the most expensive employees will be told to take a hike and they will be replaced by cheaper people with less experience. Does the quality of the product take a hit? You betcha.

[Via Lost Remote]

For a complete moron, Homer Simpson does pretty well for himself, doesn't he? First we learned the other day that his job as a nuclear safety inspector makes him over $67,000 per year; now comes a comprehensive list, sorted in alphabetical order, of all the jobs Homer has held in the eighteen seasons of The Simpsons, courtesy of our friends at Wikipedia.

Some of the more famous forays into other careers, like his time as an astronaut and as the voice of "Poochie" (listed under V for "voice actor"), but he was also a chiropractor, Death, a homophobe, a mob boss, and a panhandler. Most jobs have the names of the episodes in which he held the listed job (some jobs spread across episodes). In some cases, there's an explanation listed next to the job, especially if Homer only had that job for one scene. It's a good way to waste an afternoon; at least it's more fun than trying to figure out last night's Lost.

[via digg.com]

(S17E17) I thought Family Guy's recent reference to the Great Space Coaster was esoteric, but I think The Simpson's reference to Mac Tonight, a short-lived mascot created for McDonald's in the late 80s, may have topped that.

It's been awhile since I've seen this show running on all cylinders as it did last night. When I watch these shows for review I usually have a pen and paper sitting next to me so I can jot down lines of dialog and other things to write about, but the jokes kept coming so fast I finally gave up and, you know, just watched the show. The opening gag with Lenny having his skeleton exposed by nuclear waste was somewhat of a letdown, since that gag has been used numerous times already, but it was quickly followed by a short film about the joys of outsourcing, which pretty much made up for the lackluster opening gag and set the stage for the rest of the show, which was almost pitch perfect. I loved the reference to those old Calgon commercials when one of the workers in the film, lamenting his job, pleads, "Outsourcing, take them away!"