D’oh!

All right, it has been on television for 16 years and 356 episodes. All right, it is the longest-running animated series in the history of American television.

I just discovered “The Simpsons.”

It took a newspaper editor (ptui!), a little Jim Beam and the movie “Snatch” to make it happen. I made the mistake of being at David Grima’s house one night last week when “The Simpsons” came on at 7 p.m. I always thought it was a kids’ show.

As I have for the past 16 years, I was getting up to leave to avoid the show when Grima, who occasionally turns out the Camden Herald, said “Jim Beam?”

Grima and Boston Leo have been touting the show for, well, 16 years. I have better things to do, like contemplate the universe.

You have to remember that Grima is an Englishman who is kept around solely for abuse on the Fourth of July and the anniversary of Dunkirk, so no one pays much attention to him. But there was “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” and then “Snatch,” English films directed by Guy Ritchie (Madonna’s main squeeze) and which were both recommended by Grima and both absolute classics.

Now, you have to at least consider his recommendations.

Then there was the Jim Beam.

Normally, Grima discourages visitors by serving Carstairs, Isle of Jura and other undrinkable potions.

That day he had Jim Beam. Must have been a gift. So I sat.

And I laughed.

If you are a television snob like I am, you probably don’t know the Simpson family. My only connection with the show was cryptic references in The New York Times crossword puzzle.

Homer Simpson is the world’s most bumbling creature this side of Inspector Clouseau and he is, frighteningly, the safety inspector at the local nuclear power plant. When the weekly effort fails, right on schedule, Homer grunts his now famous “d’oh!”

In this, my first peek at the show, he is assembling some simple project at work, where a power plant assistant must remind him “right-tighty, lefty loosey.”

I don’t care who you are, that’s funny.

In the second show, Homer looks for a new bar after Moe’s ejects him for some slight and he ends up at “Cheers,” where the original cast members make a brief appearance. Sam, Carla, Norm and the rest are all here – or at least their voices are. But this night Norm starts a fight with a broken beer bottle, emptying out the place where “everybody knows your name.”

Homer continues to an airport bar, where a collection of pilots are falling-down drunk, waiting for their flights to be called.

I couldn’t stop laughing, secure in the knowledge that I would never fly again.

Marge is the consummate housewife whose life is limited to the best method of cleaning clothes and her house. On an airplane flight she worries that she never cleaned the clothes dryer’s lint filter before leaving. Her greatest fear (other than flying): “Suppose someone breaks in and does their wash?”

The children, the infamously underachieving Bart Simpson and sisters Maggie and Lisa, are hardly Wally and the Beav.

The show opens each week with Bart writing something on the blackboard in atonement for his latest transgression.

You never know who will show up on the show. When Marge sought psychological help for her fear of flying, her shrink was Anne Bancroft. Anybody who is anybody appears. One of the best parts of the show is the closing credits, where you can finally see which celebrities were involved in that week’s show.

No authority figure escapes derision. The police chief, Clancy Wiggum, is, to quote the Wikipedia Web site, “obese, stupid, lazy, corrupt and not overly concerned with Constitutional rights.” Mayor Quimby is “a corrupt, spendthrift womanizer.” Principal Seymour Skinner is “an uptight, humorous bachelor who lives with his mother.” But the real villain is Montgomery Burns, who owns the nuclear power plant.

Even the town entertainer, Krusty the Clown, is a “jaded, cynical hack, poor in health from a long history of overindulgence and substance abuse.”

Sound like your town?

Another character is Milhouse Van Houten, named for Richard Nixon’s middle name and a member of the Manson gang.

And I thought it was a kids’ show.

Now, each night at 7 p.m. I sit on the Cobb Manor couch and laugh out loud for one hour at the back-to-back shows.

Better late than never.

D’oh!

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.