Hi folks and welcome to another Simpsons Sunday. Before I get into the meat of this post, I would like to wish my American friends a happy belated Thanksgiving Thursday. Did you watch Lisa With An ‘S’ last Sunday? What got my attention was a couple of things: the Broadway call back to the season 17 episode My Fair Laddie and the song Indoors All Night, as well as referencing one of the signature songs by Ethel Merman. Other than that, this episode didn’t do anything for me but you may have your own opinions on it, when you get a chance to watch it.
This week I’m going to talk about things that I have a strong interest in, that The Simpsons haven’t poked fun at so far. One of them, which is a North American thing that I have a real interest in is Weather Radio. I’m curious if any of the writing or production staff know what NOAA Weather Radio is and if they even have one or two around the house. The voice actors can surely do the voices justus and as for Paul, well, they can use a similar robotic voice. After all, they’ve made fun of Siri in the past and even GPS navigation. I wonder what the reaction would be if the sound of the Emergency Alert came over the TV, as a part of a Simpsons story.
Okay, one of the things that Weather Radio in both the US and Canada has been using to alert listeners of severe weather is something called Specific Area Message Encoding or SAME. It consists of 3 long beeps then a either a warning message or canned voice message. Then there are 3 shorter beeps, known as the EOM. This newish alert protocol allows for text to be sent to Weather Alert Radios with SAME capability and you can program these radios to only alert you for your local area and in some cases, for only watches and warnings you wish to be warned about.
Another thing that I hope they can get into at some point is Ham Radio. They have mentioned it in passing with various characters but nobody has ever really tried it out in a story, throughout an episode. This could be a chance for Principal Skinner and Selma to finally get together as a couple of hams and talk on their radios together, despite Skinner’s Mother’s objections. This also makes me wonder about using CB radio in a story or even a police scanner. Some people use them to their advantage in many ways and I am a listener as well. All though, I mainly listen to rail or weather frequencies most of all. All though sometimes I listen to the VHF aircraft band too, among other things.
back to ham radio for a second, I think it would be cool if Tim Allen would guess star at some point. I like his comedy and I think a character he voices would get along great with Homer. Don’t you think?
Well that’s about it for my post on what I would like to see or hear on The Simpsons in the future. On the birthday front, Pamela Hayden, who voices Milhouse Van Houten, Jimbo Jones and other characters turned another year older yesterday. What I like about her is that she can voice a wide range of characters: from Milhouse to Jimbo Jones, to Sarah Wiggum and many other minor or one time characters so seamlessly. It is a real pleasure to have her voice on The Simpsons and I’m just happy that I know what she really sounds like, from searching on Youtube a couple of years ago.
Well that’s about it for this Simpsons Sunday post. In the mean time, I recommend checking 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 on Weather Wednesday.
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