“With the 300th episode of The Simpsons airing tonight, the show’s co-creator and executive producer Matt Groening is taking a moment to look into his cartoon past. Remember when the school principal commonly thrashed students with a wooden paddle? And the shop teacher kept his class under control by zapping them with the room’s electric generator? And when the boy started to cry, he was made to stand in the corner – in the garbage can?
Yes, it sounds like vintage Groening, straight out of the life of Bar Simpson, the defiant underachiever in The Simpsons, or, even more likely, from the weekly travails of the long-suffering cast of bunnies and gay, fez-wearing something-or-others in “Life in Hell.” Oh, that Matt. What an imagination. What a nut. Except for this: All that classroom torment actually happened in real life, back when Groening was a student at Ainsworth Elementary School in the ’60s. Read More >>>