Thank you so much, guys. Rory Calhoun. Smithers just… gets… Mr. Burns. It’s so cute.
I don’t know the show, Wolfian, but IMDb says Yeardley played Louise Fitzer. All I know is that she really sounds like Lisa, so you’d probably know if you heard her…
CalMeacham is correct about the Bride of Frankenstein reference.
Can someone actually explain “Brevity is the soul of wit” rather than just leaving me in the dark?
Are you thinking of the episode where Bart skips and sees the confrontation between the clumsy waiter and Diamond Joe Quimby’s nephew? Skinner is following him through all kinds of stuff, walks through a river, etc. I always thought it was referencing Terminator.
Didn’t really seem like Terminator, the river bit seemed kind direct. I don’t know, some of these seem to be more references to general cliches than anything in particular.
Okay, Ryle Dup, but it won’t be brief, so something will be lacking from it’s soul. 
Part One:
It’s (Brevity is the soul of wit) a commonplace truth. It appears to have first been penned by William Shakespeare (it’s a line from Hamlet, but I couldn’t give you the context. Probably when Hamlet is getting ready to stage the play that accuses his uncle of regi/fratricide, but I’m not guaranteeing that). It means that if you have something witty to say, and you take three paragraphs to say it, you will not have as great an impact as if you say it in a sentence or two.
Part Two:
The Reader’s Digest is a magazine, published monthly, that specializes in reprinting articles from other sources (other periodicals, books, collections of essays, etc.). It is common for the offerings in The Reader’s Digest to be abridged, or condensed, for considerations of space. The Reader’s Digest also offers condensations of books, primarily popular novels, for sale through their book club (typically, a three-inch thick volume will contain condensations of four to five books). That The Reader’s Digest will chop to pieces and shorten any bit of writing they get their mitts on is such a cliche that it’s a pretty easy-to-recognize joke (probably someone has suggested that they change their name to Rdr’s Dgst).
Part Three:
The quasi-Reader’s Digest featured in the Simpsons episode in question, has on its masthead, the motto: “Brevity is . . . wit.” The joke is that they even condensed the famous line they chose for their motto.
So, now that I’ve sucked all of the brilliance out of it, do you get the joke?
Aww, kaylasdad, the line isn’t even funny unless you get the context right! Yes, it’s a great truth - a lot of writers after Shakespeare have made similar remarks - but it’s FUNNY because Polonius says this in the middle of a typically obtuse speech.
From Act II, Scene ii:
Get it? He has been neither brief nor witty. And on he goes…
And then he shows them a letter Hamlet wrote to Ophelia and explains Hamlet is mad because Ophelia has rejected him. “Hath there been such a time… That I have positively said, “’Tis so,” When it prov’d otherwise?” he asks the King.
Of course, everything he assumes and says is dead wrong, and the audience knows it.
Oh, and I’d add that the Simpsons line is also funny because Reader’s Digest has shortened a quote about brevity. And it was a six-word quote to begin with. 
Actually, (just to pick a nit) in this case wit refers to intelligence, or wisdom. Polonius is actually saying that wise people don’t need to go on and on forever about a subject; they can make themselves understood without excessive excessive verbosity.
The irony is that Polonius unwittingly describes himself as stupid, not as lacking humour.
If you ever saw Greg’s secretary Marla on Dharma & Greg, you know what she looks like.
She was also in “Maximum Overdrive” as the screeching newlywed.
I have another one, also from the SpringShield episode (apparently a very confusing episode for me):
When Homer is in church trying to get people to help him fight Fat Tony, Barney stands up and says “Sorry, Homer, but I’m a coward now, like all recovering alcoholics.” WTF? Are they actually ripping on recovering alcoholics, or was I seriously whoosed?
This one always mystifies me. It was the episode with feel-good guru Brad Goodman, and when Homer pulls into the parking lot to the seminar with the fam he says something like; “Here we are at the seminar we all agreed to go to.”
And Bart says; “What an odd thing to say.” I mean, it IS an odd thing to say. Is that the point?
zuh?
Could someone explain why “Chuck’s Fuck & Suck” is funny? I mean, why would a store be called that? Especially a feed & seed store?
I think the point is that it’s the sort of odd thing people say in TV shows all the time, but not in real life. In a TV sitcom the dad might announce where they are and what they are doing there just so the audience will know, while in real life everyone in the car would already know that they had all agreed to go to a seminar and there’d be no reason to mention it.
It’s the implication that’s funny. The sign said “Snead’s Feed & Seed. Formerly Chuck’s.” It’s getting the very subtle, vulgar joke that’s funny. Or not.
I really never watched Dharma and Greg, but she did have a bit part in As Good As It Gets, and I saw that one.
In the Bobo episode there’s a really odd sequence where the family discovers the Teddy bear through the fish tank. I’ve asked about it countless times and it’s never been properly explained.
Yeardley Smith was the clerk with whom Daniel Stern’s character had an affair in “City Slickers”. Remember the argument he has with his wife before they go on the trip?