Alone Again, Natura-Diddily
"Alone Again, Natura-Diddily" is the fourteenth episode of the eleventh season of the American television series ''The Simpsons'', and marks the final regular appearance of the character Maude Flanders. In the episode, she is killed in an accident while watching an auto race, devastating Ned Flanders and prompting Homer to find a new woman for his grieving friend. After a series of unsuccessful dates, Ned begins to question his faith in God. However, his faith is restored after hearing the female lead singer of a Christian rock band, played by guest star Shawn Colvin, sing in church. The episode's title is a parody of the song title "Alone Again (Naturally)" by Gilbert O'Sullivan. The episode was written by Ian Maxtone-Graham and directed by Jim Reardon. Maude was voiced by Marcia Mitzman Gaven after regular voice actor Maggie Roswell had left the show over a pay dispute, and the producers decided to kill off the character to open up for new storylines. The episode was viewed in 1 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Jim Reardon
Jim Reardon is an American animator, storyboard artist, television writer, television director, and screenwriter. He is best known for his work on the animated TV series ''The Simpsons''. He has directed over 30 episodes of the series and was credited as a supervising director for seasons 9 through 15. Reardon attended the Character Animation program at the California Institute of the Arts in 1982, where one of his student projects, the satirical cartoon ''Bring Me the Head of Charlie Brown'' (1986), has become a cult classic through the likes of YouTube. He was hired by John Kricfalusi as a writer on ''Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures'' and later worked on ''Tiny Toon Adventures''. He has been described by Ralph Bakshi as "one of the best cartoon writers in the business". Reardon supervised the storyboard department and co-wrote the Pixar film ''WALL-E'' with Andrew Stanton, which was released on June 27, 2008. He was nominated for an Academy Awards, Academy Award for Academy Aw ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Gilbert O'Sullivan
Raymond Edward "Gilbert" O'Sullivan (born 1 December 1946) is an Irish singer-songwriter who achieved his most significant success during the early 1970s with hits including "Alone Again (Naturally)", " Clair", and " Get Down". O'Sullivan's songs are often marked by his distinctive, percussive piano playing style and observational lyrics using word play. Born in Waterford, Ireland, O'Sullivan settled in Swindon, England, as a child. In 1967, O'Sullivan began pursuing a career in music. Worldwide, he has charted 16 top 40 records including six No. 1 songs, the first of which was 1970's "Nothing Rhymed". Across his career, he has recorded 20 studio albums. The music magazine ''Record Mirror'' voted him the top UK male singer of 1972. He has received three Ivor Novello Awards, including “Songwriter of the Year” in 1973. Early life Raymond Edward O'Sullivan was born on 1 December 1946 in Cork Road, Waterford, Ireland. He was one of six children; his mother May ran a sweet s ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Yahoo!
Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Management and 10% by Verizon Communications. It provides a web portal, search engine Yahoo Search, and related services, including My Yahoo!, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports and its advertising platform, Yahoo! Native. Yahoo was established by Jerry Yang and David Filo in January 1994 and was one of the pioneers of the early Internet era in the 1990s. However, usage declined in the late 2000s as some services discontinued and it lost market share to Facebook and Google. History Founding In January 1994, Yang and Filo were electrical engineering graduate students at Stanford University, when they created a website named "Jerry and David's guide to the World Wide Web". The site was a human-edited web directory, or ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
I'm Goin' To Praiseland
"I'm Goin' to Praiseland" is the nineteenth episode of the twelfth season of the American animated television series ''The Simpsons''. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on May 6, 2001. In the episode, Ned Flanders builds a Christian-themed amusement park to commemorate his dead wife, Maude Flanders. The episode marked the return of the character Rachel Jordan (voiced by Shawn Colvin), who had previously appeared in the season eleven episode "Alone Again, Natura-Diddily". Since airing, "I'm Goin' to Praiseland" has received mixed reviews from critics. Plot During an ice cream social at church, Ned Flanders reunites with Rachel Jordan, a woman he met after hearing her and her Christian rock band sing at church after suffering the loss of his wife Maude. Rachel decides to stay with Ned for the night, but leaves after waking up to find Ned, who she notices has not gotten over Maude's death, cutting her hair to resemble Maude's. Ned asks the Simpson family t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
List Of Celebrities In The Simpsons
The American animated television series ''The Simpsons'' contains a wide range of minor and supporting characters like co-workers, teachers, students, family friends, extended relatives, townspeople, local celebrities, and even animals. The writers originally intended many of these characters as one-time jokes or for fulfilling needed functions in the town of Springfield, where the series primarily takes place. A number of these characters have gained expanded roles and have subsequently starred in their own episodes. According to the creator of ''The Simpsons'', Matt Groening, the show adopted the concept of a large supporting cast from the Canadian sketch comedy show ''Second City Television''. A Agnes Skinner Agnes Skinner (voiced by Tress MacNeille) is the mother of Principal Skinner and first appears in the first season episode "The Crepes of Wrath" as an old woman who embarrassingly calls her son "Spanky". However, as episodes progress, the character turns bitter.''The Sim ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
T-shirt
A T-shirt (also spelled tee shirt), or tee, is a style of fabric shirt named after the T shape of its body and sleeves. Traditionally, it has short sleeves and a round neckline, known as a ''crew neck'', which lacks a collar. T-shirts are generally made of a stretchy, light, and inexpensive fabric and are easy to clean. The T-shirt evolved from undergarments used in the 19th century and, in the mid-20th century, transitioned from undergarment to general-use casual clothing. They are typically made of cotton textile in a stockinette or jersey knit, which has a distinctively pliable texture compared to shirts made of woven cloth. Some modern versions have a body made from a continuously knitted tube, produced on a circular knitting machine, such that the torso has no side seams. The manufacture of T-shirts has become highly automated and may include cutting fabric with a laser or a water jet. T-shirts are inexpensive to produce and are often part of fast fashion, leading to outs ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Stock Car Racing
Stock car racing is a form of automobile racing run on oval tracks and road courses measuring approximately . It originally used production-model cars, hence the name "stock car", but is now run using cars specifically built for racing. It originated in the southern United States; the world's largest governing body is the American NASCAR. Its NASCAR Cup Series is the premier top-level series of professional stock car racing. Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Mexico, Brazil and the United Kingdom also have forms of stock car racing. Top-level races typically range between in length. Top-level stock cars exceed at speedway tracks and on superspeedway tracks such as Daytona International Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway. Contemporary NASCAR-spec top-level cars produce maximum power outputs of 860–900 hp from their naturally aspirated V8 engines. In October 2007 American race car driver Russ Wicks set a speed record for stock cars in a 2007-season Dodge Charger built ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Oval Racing
Oval track racing is a form of closed-circuit motorsport that is contested on an oval-shaped race track. An oval track differs from a road course in that the layout resembles an oval with turns in only one direction, and the direction of traffic is almost universally counter-clockwise. Oval tracks are dedicated motorsport circuits, used predominantly in the United States. They often have banked turns and some, despite the name, are not precisely oval, and the shape of the track can vary. Major forms of oval track racing include stock car racing, open-wheel racing, sprint car racing, modified car racing, midget car racing and dirt track motorcycles. Oval track racing is the predominant form of auto racing in the United States. According to the 2013 National Speedway Directory, the total number of oval tracks, drag strips and road courses in the United States is 1,262, with 901 of those being oval tracks and 683 of those being dirt tracks. Among the most famous oval tracks in ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Simpson Family
The Simpson family are the fictional characters featured in the animated television series ''The Simpsons''. The Simpsons are a nuclear family consisting of married couple Homer and Marge and their three children, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie. They live at 742 Evergreen Terrace in the fictional town of Springfield, United States, and they were created by cartoonist Matt Groening, who conceived the characters after his own family members, substituting "Bart" for his own name. The family debuted on Fox on April 19, 1987, in ''The Tracey Ullman Show'' short "Good Night" and were later spun off into their own series, which debuted on Fox in the U.S. on December 17, 1989. Alongside the five main family members, there are a number of other major and minor characters in their family. The most commonly recurring characters are Homer's father Abraham "Grampa" Simpson; Marge's sisters Patty and Selma Bouvier; and the family's two pets, Santa's Little Helper and Snowball II. Other family m ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
WCCB
WCCB (channel 18) is a television station in Charlotte, North Carolina, United States, affiliated with The CW. It serves as the flagship station of locally based Bahakel Communications. WCCB's studios are located just outside Uptown Charlotte, off Independence Boulevard (across from Bojangles' Coliseum), and its transmitter is located in Newell, an unincorporated area of Mecklenburg County just northeast of the Charlotte city limits. History Beginnings WCCB traces its roots to WAYS-TV, a primary ABC and secondary NBC affiliate, which signed on the air on January 5, 1954. Broadcasting on UHF channel 36, it was North Carolina's second UHF station (after WNAO-TV in Raleigh), as well as the second television station in the Charlotte market. It was owned by George Dowdy and his company, Inter-City Advertising, owners of WAYS radio (610 AM, now WFNZ); Intercity had filed for channel 11 prior to the 1948 TV freeze, amended its application to specify channel 9 in 1952, then soug ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Charlotte, North Carolina
Charlotte ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Located in the Piedmont region, it is the county seat of Mecklenburg County. The population was 874,579 at the 2020 census, making Charlotte the 16th-most populous city in the U.S., the seventh most populous city in the South, and the second most populous city in the Southeast behind Jacksonville, Florida. The city is the cultural, economic, and transportation center of the Charlotte metropolitan area, whose 2020 population of 2,660,329 ranked 22nd in the U.S. Metrolina is part of a sixteen-county market region or combined statistical area with a 2020 census-estimated population of 2,846,550. Between 2004 and 2014, Charlotte was ranked as the country's fastest-growing metro area, with 888,000 new residents. Based on U.S. Census data from 2005 to 2015, Charlotte tops the U.S. in millennial population growth. It is the third-fastest-growing major city in the United States. Residents are referr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Charlotte Motor Speedway
Charlotte Motor Speedway (previously known as Lowe's Motor Speedway from 1999 to 2009) is a motorsport complex located in Concord, North Carolina, outside Charlotte. The complex features a quad oval track that hosts NASCAR racing including the prestigious Coca-Cola 600 on Memorial Day weekend, and the Bank of America Roval 400. The speedway was built in 1959 by Bruton Smith and is considered the home track for NASCAR with many race teams located in the Charlotte area. The track is owned and operated by Speedway Motorsports with Greg Walter as track president. The complex also features a state-of-the-art drag racing strip, ZMAX Dragway. It is the only all-concrete, four-lane drag strip in the United States and hosts NHRA events. Alongside the drag strip is a state-of-the-art clay oval that hosts dirt racing including the World of Outlaws finals among other popular racing events. History Charlotte Motor Speedway was designed and built by Bruton Smith and partner and driv ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |