Fobidden Doughnut

The chubby, yellow fellow above is one Homer J. Simpson, and of course today isn't his birthday. But July is BY FAR the worst month I have had in the search for heroes, and we are getting close to the one year time limit of the blog. Not that it matters Homer would be a hero regardless of how bereft the month might be, but since the month is a wasteland of real heroes, I have decided to draft Homer into the stand-in hero ranks.

Homer is the embodiment of American blue collar workers, even though his job is a desk job, Homer's collar is distinctly blue, He is fat, crude, incompetent, and a borderline alcoholic (hmm reminds me of someone I know). He is the American male draw in yellow, and possessing only four fingers. When the Simpson's started being about Homer, and stopped being the Bart is bad show, it reached its apex. Homer is, in many ways, THE Simpson's. Without him, things would fall apart very soon. He has been called "the greatest comic creation of all time", and was voted the second (after Bugs Bunny) greatest cartoon character of all time.

He and I share an affinity for doughnuts, though I am not sure I would sell my soul for one, but you never know until the offer is made. He might be, in some respects, an absolute horrible human being, but he has he good points as well. He is a devoted family man, and his love for Marge is beyond question, and one of the greatest TV romances of all time. He is able to serve as example to his drinking buddies by "making our alcoholism look less raging." He has provided years, and years of some of the best comedy I have ever seen, and one of my all time favourite lines of his is "to alcohol, the cause of, and solution to all of life's problems." On its surface that is just a funny line, but you put some thought into, and you will see that maybe Homer is on to something there. Not that it is necessarily a good thing, it just happens to be way to close to the true for comfort.

It is that type of line, and that love for his family that help Homer's popularity, and make it impossible to hate him for his obvious flaws. He might not be the best father or spouse in the world, but he tries, and we no longer live in a Ward Cleaver type of world. The family unit is much closer to Homer's family that to Ward's. He has been called "a dog trapped in a man's body" and "a slave to his stomach," and those are probably true, but all the while he provides us with a great deal of humour, a little bit of philosophy, and a glimpse into what it is like to be human in today's America. So, for all those laughs, and all those wonderfully quotable lines, Homer J. Simpson (???-present), you are my (343rd) hero of the day.