A Dysfunctional Family

Let’s get this straight: you’re paying hundreds of dollars to fly cross-country to have dinner with the people with whom you work every day...and a bunch of college kids?

D’oh!

For approximately 15 current and former writers for “The Simpsons,” that was last Saturday’s agenda.

The Simpsons “festival” was hosted by the Harvard Lampoon, a semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization that used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine. According to Lampoon President Ross E. Arbes ’08 and Treasurer Hayes H. Davenport ’08 (who, curiously, asked that all quotations be attributed to both of them), “The Lampoon has had a long-standing tradition and relationship with the Simpsons. In fact, 36 of our grads went on to become Simpsons’ writers and one of them went on to become a director.”

One of the grads attending was Michael L. Reiss ’81, a former Lampoon President and current Simpsons producer.

“I loved the Lampoon,” says Reiss, explaining his 3000 mile trek. “I’ll put it this way: I hated Harvard, I hated it, I hate it to this day. If it hadn’t been for the Lampoon, I would not have had one good memory or experience out of Harvard.”

Before Saturday night, the Lampoon was putting out place settings for “somewhere between 15 and 20” guests, but they were also “expecting a bunch of random people to pop up,” Arbes and Davenport say. The identities of the crashers were impossible to discover, given the Lampoon’s typical semi-secrecy.