“What’d he say, Lisa? What’d he say?” – Marge Simpson
“He said there’s no shame in their forbidden love.” – Lisa Simpson
“Ooh, Diego’s not gonna like that.” – Marge Simpson
“Oh, Raul, llevame alla abajo de la bola de bailar!” – Soap Opera Lady
“Take me here, under the disco ball.” – Lisa Simpson
Happy birthday Yeardley Smith!
“Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday, overlooked middle child. Happy birthday to me.” – Lisa Simpson
Happy birthday Yeardley Smith!
“I don’t know if I like you experimenting on your brother.” – Marge Simpson
“Please, mother, it’s purely in the interest of science.” – Lisa Simpson
“That’ll learn him to bust my tomater!” – Lisa’s Brain
Happy birthday Yeardley Smith!
“Mom! I found Sideshow Bob’s hideout and I got a secret message to the police and I had a blimp fall on me and I was in an atomic blast but I’m okay now!” – Lisa Simpson
“Well, I wrecked the gate but you don’t hear me bragging.” – Homer Simpson
Happy birthday Yeardley Smith!
“I’ve got to stop being so petty. I should be Alison’s friend, not her competitor. I mean, she is a wonderful person.” – Lisa Simpson
“Way to go, Lis. Why compete with someone who’s just gonna to kick your butt anyway?” – Bart Simpson
“I prefer my phrasing.” – Lisa Simpson
Happy birthday Yeardley Smith!
“Oh, Dad, I just spent the day with the most wonderful people.” – Lisa Simpson
“Aw, that’s great, honey. You tell me everything you can before the commercial’s over.” – Homer Simpson
Happy birthday Yeardley Smith!
“Wow, you’ve had some career! Although the moral seems to be that a lifetime of jazz leaves you sad and lonely.” – Lisa Simpson
“Well, before you came to visit, I would have agreed with you.” – Bleeding Gums Murphy
Happy birthday Yeardley Smith!
“C’mon Dad, doesn’t take a genius to realize that Houston’s failed to cover their last ten outings on away turf the week after scoring more than three touchdowns in a conference game.” – Lisa Simpson
“Oh, my little girl says the cutest things.” – Homer Simpson
Happy birthday Yeardley Smith!
“It seems like I’ve been wearing this same red dress forever!” – Lisa Simpson
Happy birthday Yeardley Smith!
The voice of Lisa showed up in a recent episode of People Will Watch Anything (a/k/a The Big Bang Theory). She was playing a clerk in an unemployment office of some kind. If you want to get an idea of how it went down without actually subjecting yourself to the horror of watching it, Entertainment Weekly has you covered:
But did we really need the scene between Sheldon and Yeardley Smith (a.k.a. the voice of Lisa Simpson) in the employment office as he looked for a menial job to help goad his brain into decoding his problem? For one, it boiled down to yet another Sheldon-cluelessly-drives-someone-crazy scene, a trope that’s maintaining a rapidly diminishing half-life. For another, the best moment in the scene — Smith “checking” her computer to satisfy Sheldon’s desire for a job best described as Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Building Slave — had already been done much better in the “Computer Says No” sketch on BBC America’s Little Britain.
I realize that teevee is mostly just dumb entertainment and that a guy who habitually watches twenty year old cartoon episodes he’s seen dozens of times before has little to no right to criticize anyone else’s dumb entertainment. But I refuse to cede ground to anything that has a laughtrack. Laughtracks are to laughter what someone shooting a pistol at your feet is to dancing.
Through a marvelous coincidence I recently came across a video of this exact program without its Pavlovian crutch. Behold the brutal emptiness that is The Big Bang Theory Without a Laughtrack (via):
Anyway, I’m glad Smith was able to pick up a check. Other than that I eagerly anticipate the demise of this show and its entire genre.
Yeardley Smith has donated a combined $1.14 million dollars to a couple of microfinance organizations. The idea behind microfinance is that poor countries harbor plenty of hard-working, would-be entrepreneurs who, with just a little bit of capital, can launch small businesses that will make them less poor. Smith jumped in with both feet:
Smith was first introduced to microfinance after seeing 2006 Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus on Oprah. Inspired to become actively involved, she traveled to Haiti, accompanied by Grameen Foundation president Alex Counts, to visit with women in remote villages to learn how microfinance and complementary health and literacy services improve the quality of life for them and their families.
“I’m greatly inspired by people who demonstrate initiative and perseverance. I saw with my own eyes how eager these women are to be self-sustaining and that the smallest bit of success can rebuild a person from the inside out,” said Smith.
Were I writing this as a newspaper lead I’d probably have to put in some horrible piece of dreck about how playing do-gooder Lisa has rubbed off on Smith. For example:
Isn’t this post much better without that crap? I sure think so.
Update November 5th: Nailed it! Here’s the lead from John Zorabedian from the site The Daily Tell:
The actress Yeardley Smith seems to have the conscience of Lisa Simpson, the famously activist character she voices for the popular TV show The Simpsons.
This was not the most difficult thing to predict, but still, nailed it. Hopefully there will be more.
This has been noted elsewhere, and I didn’t get around to watching it until last night, but Yeardley Smith had a small role as the waiting room nurse on Mad Men this week. (Oddly, especially for someone with such pop-culture juice, it hasn’t popped up on her IMDB page yet.) She gets to tell off a guy who’s waiting for his wife to have their first kid. He’s kind of a dick to her, hence the wry smile you see at right.
Hallmark: A Tax on Your Emotions & Relationships
Happy Birthday Yeardley Smith!
charliesweatpants.com
(The crotch really does wear out too fast.)
The Mob Has Spoken