“Inside every hardened criminal beats the heart of a ten-year-old boy.”

Happy Birthday to Bart Simpson, who turns ten years old today, just as he does every year on December 29th. The Simpsons is the longest-running animated television series and sitcom series in U.S. television history, with sixteen seasons to boast of since the pilot episode aired and on December 17, 1989. Highly satirical, nothing is off limits for the writers of this show. Any topic is fair game for this satirical series, whether it involves politics, art, popular culture, authority, corporations, lazyasses, religious nutcases, barflies. Yet the largest target of all is the American culture. This is primarily illustrated through the middle American lifestyle that this nuclear (har har) family exhibits, including the “keeping up with the Jones” tendencies that the characters unwittingly display in abundance.

In 1997, The Simpsons replaced The Flintstones as the longest-running American prime-time animated series. Next year, it will complete the contract that booted The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet out of its previous title as longest-running American situation comedy. So many memorable episodes have aired that it’s impossible to mention even a fraction, but I must say that “Scotchtoberfest” has to be my favorite Simpson moment. Along with the time that Bart Simpson referred to his stomach as the “crap factory.”