The story of how two brothers and five other men parlayed a small business loan into a thriving paper goods concern is a long and interesting one … and here it is. — Box factory manager, “Bart Gets Famous”

Happy Memorial Day! Per company policy, SHS is off today. Go outside! But before you do, check out today’s gallery, consisting of some of my personal favorite one-offs, characters who may have only appeared in a single episode, but still managed to burrow their way into our hearts. Who are your favorites?

Goodbye, Bart! Remember: Lie, cheat, steal, and listen to heavy metal music! — Satan, “Bart Gets Hit By A Car”

The scenery accompanying Bart’s post-collision arrival in Hell wraps up many elements from Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Garden Of Earthly Delights” in a neat little package. While the Simpsons layout team pulled off this kind of mimicry several times, I would say this instance is unique in that it’s one where they don’t really use any animation tricks to make the scene seem more Springfieldian — the source material pretty much stands as is. Compared to something like this, for example.

The above scene from Bosch’s painting is actually just one third (fourth, really) of his famous triptych, which depicts a wide range of human activity. Camping, for example:

And nobody likes jury duty:

Hey good lookin’, we’ll be back to pick you up later! — Some guy

[whistle] He’s in for some lovin’. — Homer, “Radio Bart”

I can’t believe they invented it! Mr. Microphone: a wireless microphone that dialed into your FM radio for merriment galore. Keep in mind that this was the 70s, and this website didn’t exist yet — people had to pass the time somehow.

While The Simpsons properly parodied the catcalling Roger Daltrey type, they sadly left any riffs of this guy on the cutting room floor.

On a related note, cinephiles may also recall that the Toy Story movies included a character named “Mr. Mike” who fulfilled the toys’ broadcasting needs.

—ockman, just outside the county courtroom, where an argument about chowder has spilled over into the biggest trial in Springfield history. Behind these doors, a federal judge will ladle out steaming bowls of rich, creamy justice in a case the media have dubbed, “Beat-Up Waiter”. This reporter suggested “Waitergate”, but was shouted down at the press club. — Kent Brockman, “The Boy Who Knew Too Much”

A very subtle reference tucked into The Boy Who Knew Too Much is Brockman having the first bit of his name cut off when covering the Freddy Quimby trial, a hat tip to newshound Wally Ballou of the Bob & Ray radio show, who would begin his broadcasts in the same way.

Ballou, played by Bob Elliott (father of Chris, grandfather of Abby) both in the studio and in the live production above, was apparently also the inspiration for the schmo working in a box factory in Bart Gets Famous, but I can’t say I see it. Hear it, maybe.

I’m not convinced! I’ve had bad luck with aphrodisiacs! — Some guy, “Grampa vs. Sexual Inadequacy”

(Today’s post was recommended by SHSer @tjl via Twitter. Are you following SHS? Do so right now: @mcgarnagle_shs)

Though his image may just be a combination of other Simpsons characters (I see a cross between Lenny and Milhouse), the voice of the aphrodisiac-scorned Spittle County rube appears to be a take on a ubiquitous vocal styling popularized by vaudeville-radio-talkie star Ed Wynn.

Wynn’s ululating delivery made him a popular comic actor in a 60-year-long career that took him all over the map, but he’s probably best known in popular culture for his performance as the Mad Hatter in Disney’s animated Alice In Wonderland:

Tonight, on Eye On Springfield, we meet a man who’s been hiccuping for 45 years. — Kent Brockman

[hic] Kill me. — Hiccuping guy, “Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie”

The unfortunate man depicted above is most likely based on Charles Osborne, an American who in 1922 emerged from a pig slaughtering accident with a nonstop case of the ol’ singultus.

And henceforth he was the hiccup guy. For 68 years straight, Osborne hiccuped between 20 and 40 times per minute, an ailment supposedly caused by a malfunction of the part of the brain that normally inhibits such behavior. Apparently, the hiccups abruptly stopped a year before his death, which must have been unsettling at that point.

But the previous factoids have all been a mean ruse to cover my true motives for today’s entry. Presenting … Mr. Hiccup (!), a bizarre Italian cartoon I discovered in my research. I know I casually drop a lot of YouTube videos on this site, but you would be advised to round out the remainder of your trip watching this one:

Whatever team of geniuses came up with Mr. Hiccup gives the various Simpsons writers rooms a run for their money, di certo.

I tried to enroll in school, but your Principal Skinner turned me away because of my shabby clothes. — “Timmy O’Toole”, “Radio Bart”

Timmy O’Toole’s ill-considered trip down the well is based on a similarly subterranean fishing expedition made by toddler Jessica McClure back in 1987.

Jessica (pictured above post-fall, with a scar visible from a scrape sustained in her rescue) became a media sensation when she tumbled down an eight-inch-wide abandoned well casing in her backyard in Midland, Texas.

As in the Simpsons ep, her rescue was effected by digging a tunnel parallel to the well shaft and then slowly digging horizontally to free her as she hung out in the dark without food and water (which would have aggravated any internal injuries she might have picked up in the fall) for 58 hours. But then: light.

Ultimately, Jessica turned to be pretty much fine, merely sustaining an amputated toe and the aforementioned scar throughout the ordeal. Today, she is alive and well, and enriched by a $800k trust fund that donors built up for her during her time underground. Unsure if she got a cut of the revenues from the ensuing TV movie adaptation of the episode, which I was not expecting to feature a young Will Oldham.

… but, first, let’s take a look back at the year 1928, a year when you might have seen Al Capone dancing the Charleston on top of a flagpole. — Kent Brockman, “Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie”

Second only to the exciting world of frame nudging, the pole sitting craze that swept America in the 1920s was perhaps best embodied in the exploits of one Alvin Aloysius “Shipwreck” Kelly, a hearty cherub of a man who had no taste for terra firma.

Kelly was a pioneer and a master pole sitter, hitting a personal best 49 days + 1 hour session in 1930, and logging more than 20,000 elevated hours over the course of his career. Though the pole sitting craze died down shortly thereafter, certain renaissance sitters have since emerged, including one fellow who clocked 439 days back in the ’80s.

Of course, it’s worth noting that pole sitting was also a practice of the Stylites, an ancient ascetic group whose members perched themselves on top of columns in order to get closer to God or somesuch. The champion of this group was Simeon Stylites, who did such a thing for 37 years. Impressive, but sure ’tis no pole, English:

All right! Fangoria will give me 25 bucks for this shot! — Otto, “22 Short Films About Springfield”

Billing itself as “The First In Fright Since 1979″, Fangoria is a surviving relic of an era when horror magazines (not to be confused with terror magazines, which totally suck) were a hot item in the nerd community. Behold!

Try to remember a time in your childhood, long before you became a cynical blogger wed to your laptop, when the phrase “GIANT ROBOT POSTER” was enough to draw you in. Goodbye.

Anyway, among the various minutiae included in the “In Other Media” section of Fango’s Wikipedia entry is this informative nugget:

Chucky masturbates while looking at an issue of Fangoria in the film Seed of Chucky (2004).

No, wait, one up from that …

In The Simpsons episode “22 Short Films About Springfield” (1996), bus driver Otto Mann takes a photograph of Lisa Simpson with various foodstuff stuck in her hair, claiming, “Fangoria will pay me twenty-five bucks for this shot!” Several months later, the magazine published the “pic” of Lisa with the gum in her hair.

Whoa! If this is true, my hat is off to you, Fangoria. I tried to research the matter as best I could, but was unable to come up with verification. This will not help my cause. Nonetheless: 22SFAS first aired in April 1996. Fangoria apparently runs 10 issues a year. The options are limited. The truth is out there.

You bet your sweet … ass! — Homer, “Homer the Heretic”

The socially awkward younger cousin of the infamous “Aristocrats” joke, “No Soap, Radio” is either an early example of alt comedy or a primer on crowd psychology. Basically, a joke is told and the “NS, R” phrase is used in place of a sensible punchline. Audience plants apply peer pressure, in the form of laughter. Hilarity, sayeth Wikipedia, ensues:

The purpose of the prank is to make the victim of the punchline have one of two responses:

• False understanding – when the victim acts as if the joke is humorous, when in fact the victim does not understand the joke at all.

• Negative understanding – when the victim expresses confusion about what the joke means and feels left out (e.g., “I don’t get it”). The conspirators are now prepared to mock the victim for the victim’s “inability to get it.”

So, basically one of those don’t-call-me-a-joke jokes. Why the phrase, “no soap, radio” got picked for the misdirect is a subject of speculation, but it most likely traded the bees anterior going. See, not so hard.

Oh, and, like every other phrase ever passed through man’s lips, No Soap, Radio was also the name of a short-lived television series in the ’80s. Starring …