As you might have heard, Fox only recently managed to get the voice cast of The Simpsons to agree to do another season, giving the show a record-breaking twentieth. However, Verne Gay of Newsday suspects this could be the series' swan song. The reason? Increasing costs -- especially with those increased voice cast salaries -- while ratings have been trending downwards.

After twenty years (twenty years? Aw, gee, once more I'm feeling like I should go join Abe in yelling at clouds), it's hard to imagine TV without new episodes of The Simpsons, especially considering all the great gay moments the TV series gave us.

Harvey Fiersten's super-assistant Karl

In 1990, we got our first gay Simpsons guest appearance when Harvey Fierstein appeared as Homer's secretary, Karl. Karl was a one-man Queer Eye crew, helping Homer pick out a suit, helps him speak before executives and generally helps his confidence. Karl also sacrifices himself to save Homer's job, kissing Homer before departing the series. In hindsight, the role was a pretty stereotypical, but at the time it broke new ground for animated series.

Simpsons voice actor and former Helen Hunt captive Hank Azaria recently appeared on an Internet chat show called LateNet with Ray Ellin (I know, me neither) in which he spoke candidly about all things Simpsons, including why out actor (and former Mr. Sulu) George Takei hasn't been back lately:

Azaria: <George Takei voice> George Takei came and did the first show, and then he didn't want to do anymore. So afterwards I did George Takei. So whenever you hear (the waiter), that is me. </George Takei voice>

He was ... he creeped out a lot of the staff. He did. There was a young intern named CJ, a young man who would hand out the new rewrites and he handed George his rewrites and George said to him, <George Takei>" Ooh, thank you. I am going to call you 'Angel'."</George Takei> So we all called CJ Angel.

Ellin: That is really creepy.

Azaria: Isn't it?

Ellin: Great. Have you run into him at all since then?

Azaria: <George Takei> Not since, nooo.</George Takei>

Azaria also discusses the trajectory of several smaller, recurring characters, which basically goes like this: funny ... then kind of annoying ... then gay.

You can check out the video yourself if you'd like to hear more. It's taught me one thing, for sure: doing a spot-on imitation of someone apparently makes talking trash about them on a talk show infinitely more palatable to a live studio audience.