The Voice Of Hank Azaria

Hi friends and welcome to another Simpsons Sunday. This week I would like to say right off the bat, happy birthday tomorrow to main cast member Hank Azaria. He of course voices many male characters including: Moe Szislak (bar tender at Moe’s Tavern), Comic Book Guy aka Jeffrey Albertson, Apu Nahasapeemapetilon (behind the counter and target of being robbed at the Quik-E Mart, Chief Wiggum and many other minor characters. One of his most memorable one time characters is Frank Grimes and he played that part tremendously well and it’s a shame that he was killed off at the end of the episode Homer’s Enemy.

We also get to hear Hank’s real speaking voice from time to time, as mostly minor characters, who are trying to cell something or as a one time character. For example: The schoolteacher Zachary Vaughnn in the season 21 episode Bart Gets A Z. This is when Bart and the rest of his class accidentally gets Mrs. Krabappel fired, by lacing her coffee with booze, because she took their cel-phones away. This was hoped to make her much more laid-back and well, nicer. Obviously, this backfired and she got canned and Mr. von replaced her, for the episode. We find out that he actually has a drinking problem and he declares that he hates children at the end of the episode and is fired. He is heard to be chanting “I hate children, children suck” in the hallway. So, he is gone and Mrs. Krabappel returns, with muffins. For more on the episode you can find it on iTunes.

That is just one example of Hank’s real voice coming out. Another more obvious example is Duffman, when he isn’t referring to himself in the third person and uttering his catch fraise “OH YEAH” he uses his normal voice for the character. An example of this is in the episode Eternal Moonshine Of The Simpson Mind (Season 19) where he hosts Marge’s surprise party for Homer. He does his usual third person reference but his watch alarm goes off. He says “Um, it’s 11:00. Do you wanna pay for the extra hour. Or…” and the party continues when Marge says “okay.” There are many more examples, with and without his own natural dialect. For example: Krusty The Clowns agent is voiced by him in a New York accent. There are many other examples of his voice in the series and I can’t name them all here because there are that many.

Well that’s about it for this weeks post. Check out Chris Ladesma’s blog. He is the Music Editor for The Simpsons and has been since day 1.
http://simpsonsmusic500.wordpress.com/author/simpsonsmusic500/
Also, check out Yeardley Smith’s blog at http://gobbingoff.tumblr.com
Don’t forget about Marchez Vous, which is her women’s shoe designer company, which she started earlier in the decade. You can check out their website at
http://www.marchesvous.com
Additionally, for more news on The Simpsons, you can go to http://news.simpsonswiki.com/
You can also comment here or you can email me at blindgordie@gmail.com and I will reply as soon as I can to all messages I receive. If you follow me on Twitter or are my friend on Facebook you can comment directly to me that way too.
You can follow Simpsons Executive Producer Al Jean on Twitter and his Twitter handle is @AlJean.
He has ran the show since Season 13 and has ran it during Seasons 3 and 4.
Anyway, that is it for this weeks post. Talk to you again next Sunday

Happy Birthday Bill Oakley

Hi folks and welcome to another Simpsons Sunday. Did you enjoy Gal Of Constant Sorrow? I will write a post on it next week.

This weeks post is in celebration of a milestone birthday for a former Show Runner of The Simpsons. Bill Oakley turned 50 years old yesterday and he co-ran the show with Josh Weinstein from Season’s 7 to Season 9.

Some see this as the beginning of the End of the so called “golden era of The Simpsons but to me, it is another progression in the show’s evolution. To give you somewhat of a starting point as to when this began, in Season 8, The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show was the episode where The Simpsons surpassed The Flintstones’s longest running show mark. Then the episode Homer’s Phobia aired and the tone of the plots began to be centred on a “what if” premise. That is how we ran across Brother From Another Series, in which Sideshow Bob becomes a changed man and actually helps Bart and Lisa with foiling his brother’s skeem. The episode Homer’s Enemy is another example of this, where we see Frank Grimes working alongside Homer as a regular person in Homer’s world. You could also say that the seeds for this new plot structure were sow’n in the Season 7 episode Two Bad Neighbours. Most people see Homer’s enemy as a companion piece to this episode, in which what if a celebrity tried to become a regular person in Springfield and had to deal with Homer and even Bart. In this case it was George Bush, who had a feud with The Simpsons, from the early 90s .He gave a speech on family values in which he said something like wanting America to be “more like The Waltons and less like The Simpsons”. I love Two Bad Neighbours because it gave us a funny episode, poking fun at the man’s crotchetyness. Even teasing him about being a wimp, which is a call back to just before the first Gulf War, when some people saw him as such Because of his reputation as a whiner. This was also before he started ramping up the rhetoric in the fall of 1990, leading up to the Gulf War in January 1991. Whether the portrayal is true or not, I think it is one of the best episodes and especially from that period.

Another thing he did was develop some of the secondary characters and once again, put them in a what if type of situation. For example: the episode Lisa’s Date With Density shows Lisa and Nelson dating during the episode. Hurricane Neddy gave us a glimpse into how Ned Flanders ticks and into his past too. We also saw his faith and nice guy demeanor being tested by a weather event which destroys his home. We may also remember Troy McClure’s episode A Fish Called Selma and thankfully, we had the chance to get a better idea of what he is actually like, outside of his educational movies and infomercials.

Also during that period the show began to explore some of the characters backstories. In the episode Burns, Baby Burns we meet Mr. Burns’s son Larry who was voiced by Rodney Dangerfield. It is also revealed that Apu is an illegal alien and is made an American citizen by the end of the episode Much Apu About Nothing. The most controversial example of this was the episode The Principal And The Pauper from Season 9. A lot of people hated the episode because of what it did to make Seymour Skinner into an imposter. It doesn’t bother me that much but I understand other people’s negativity toward the episode. The thing I liked was that Agnes Skinner was actually challenged for the first time, by the real Seymour and it would actually be nice if the current Seymour would do the same. She needs to learn that Seymour has to be a man and make his own decisions.

Of course, my favourite episode from this period will always be Homer’s Enemy because of how great a character Frank Grimes was. All the same, it would have been nice if Homer and Grimy actually liked each other instead. It would add something new in a new character and a new dimension to Homer’s character. Frank lived between two bowling alleys and Homer likes to bowl. Maybe if it was discovered that they had that one comonality they would have got along and well, maybe it wouldn’t have been as funny but other comedic moments could have sprung from this. However, the episode is fine the way it is.

This was also the period when blindness was also mentioned on The Simpsons for the first of few times during the series. A blind man whom we know only as Mr. Mitchell briefly owned Santa’s Little Helper in the episode The Canine Mutiny. Later on, a blind boy named Kevin would be introduced in Season 21, with a prominent roll in the episode Stealing First Base as Nelson’s friend. Also, we see: Bart, Milhouse, Nelson and Martin all going on a road trip in the episode Bart On The Road, without adult supervision. Best of all, we see Homer getting a new job with a really cool boss, in the shape of Hank Scorpio (You Only Move Twice) but the rest of the family aren’t happy with their new home setting for various reasons.

For more on Bill Oakley, check out this Simpsons Wiki page. http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/Bill_Oakley

I follow Bill on Twitter and he has always liked and retweeted my tweets but has yet to reply to them. If he does that’s cool and if not, that’s cool too.
Well that’s about it for this weeks post. Check out Chris Ladesma’s blog. He is the Music Editor for The Simpsons and has been since day 1.
http://simpsonsmusic500.wordpress.com/author/simpsonsmusic500/
Also, check out Yeardley Smith’s blog at http://gobbingoff.tumblr.com
Don’t forget about Marchez Vous, which is her women’s shoe designer company, which she started earlier in the decade. You can check out their website at
http://www.marchesvous.com
Additionally, for more news on The Simpsons, you can go to http://news.simpsonswiki.com/
You can also comment here or you can email me at blindgordie@gmail.com and I will reply as soon as I can to all messages I receive. If you follow me on Twitter or are my friend on Facebook you can comment directly to me that way too.
You can follow Simpsons Executive Producer Al Jean on Twitter and his Twitter handle is @AlJean.
He has ran the show since Season 13 and has ran it during Seasons 3 and 4.
Anyway, that is it for this weeks post. Talk to you again next Sunday

Let’s Talk About Death

Hi folks and welcome to another Simpsons Sunday. Okay, we have another death in the entertainment industry to talk about and that is Glenn Frey of the band The Eagles. He was 67 years old and sang the lead on such songs as: New Kid In Town, Take It Easy, Already Gone, Heartache Tonight, among others. He also had some success as a solo artist with hits like: Smugglers Blues, The Heat Is On, You Belong To The City and True Love in the 1980s on movie soundtracks and on his solo albums.

I’m glad the Eagles reunited when they did for the fans in 1994 and even released new music since then too. The other thing that was good is that nothing really was tarnished from what we remember them for because everyone was in great health and sounded great on their instruments. Sadly, Glenn is gone now and I was shocked to hear that he died because he has always had a great healthy body, with the exception of some stomach problems in 1994. He was one of the driving forces of the band, along with Don Henley and will be missed.

Speaking of death, this weeks post talks about such deaths which have occurred in The Simpsons timeline. I have a few that are of significans to characters in the sho Which I will acknowledge here.

The first one is Bleeding Gums Murphy, who appeared in the episodes: Moaning Lisa, Dancin’ Homer and ‘Round Springfield. This last one was when he met his unfortunate demise in the hospital, after he loaned Lisa his saxophone so she could play it with her school band; most of whom were getting their appendix taken out, after Bart had his taken out. This death obviously hit Lisa pretty hard and I don’t blame her for wanting everyone in Springfield to know all about Bleeding Gums, especially after Reverend Lovejoy screwed up his name And ocupation, while conducting the funeral service for him. It would have been nice if the joke was actually revealed that Dr. Hibburt and Bleeding Gums were actually long lost half brothers before his death. But how would this have shaped the rest of the show from there on in?

The second death may not have been as important to Homer as it is to his son. Frank Grimes appeared in the episode Homer’s Enemy and had been driven crazy by the incompetence of Homer and how he had everything he wanted despite his short comings. This is while Frank had to work for everything he had and after trying to make a fool of Homer by entering him in a contest for children, Homer wins. Frank runs a muck throughout the plant and comes across a sign saying “very high voltage” and decides to touch the wires anyway and dies as a result. What if Homer and Frank actually liked each other? Would it have been as funny? What if Frank Grimes Jr. Hadn’t tried to kill Homer in a later episode and just fixed his car, while introducing himself. Homer seems to have no recollection of Frank Grimes when he is mentioned so, I’m not sure how I would approach it if I was to write a fan fiction story about Frank Grimes Jr in Homer’s life. However, I have been thinking about it ever since watching the episode Homer’s Enemy.

The third death which is important to not only Ned Flanders but to the show itself is Maude Flanders. She was killed after a volley of t-shirts hit her, as she was going to get hot dogs for Ned and the kids. Homer even felt remorse for what happened and tried to help Ned anyway he could, in his own idiotic way. He made a video revealing dangerously personal information about Ned and somehow, Ned had some dates but nothing ever really panned out. Until he met a Christian Rock singer who was playing a song at the church service that week, after Ned almost didn’t go. He found love later of course, when he met and married Edna Krabappel and now she’s gone too. Will Ned remarry again?

There are other deaths I could have mentioned here but these are the 3 most important ones which have happened within the timeline of The Simpsons. I made sure not to include any deaths from the Treehouse Of Horror series because they are not within the timeline and they only happen for that short within the episode. For example: Groundskeeper Willie was killed 3 times during Treehouse Of Horror V and Homer and Bart have died a few times within varius Treehouse episodes too.

Well that’s about it for this weeks post. Check out Chris Ladesma’s blog. He is the Music Editor for The Simpsons and has been since day 1.
http://simpsonsmusic500.wordpress.com/author/simpsonsmusic500/
Also, check out Yeardley Smith’s blog at http://gobbingoff.tumblr.com
Don’t forget about Marchez Vous, which is her women’s shoe designer company, which she started earlier in the decade. You can check out their website at
http://www.marchesvous.com
Additionally, for more news on The Simpsons, you can go to http://news.simpsonswiki.com/
You can also comment here or you can email me at blindgordie@gmail.com and I will reply as soon as I can to all messages I receive. If you follow me on Twitter or are my friend on Facebook you can comment directly to me that way too.
You can follow Simpsons Executive Producer Al Jean on Twitter and his Twitter handle is @AlJean.
He has ran the show since Season 13 and has ran it during Seasons 3 and 4.
Anyway, that is it for this weeks post. Talk to you again next Sunday