This window is in my office on the Fox lot, where I've been hiding out during the pandemic. We never missed a day of work. We went to Zoom in March of 2020 and carried right on.
It's corny, but what inspires me is that when I'm here I think about all the people that have been in this office working on the show - starting with Sam Simon [The Simpsons co-creator], Conan O'Brien was another one. You just go, "What a lucky place to have spent 30 years."
It doesn't feel that long. I saw a video the other day from backstage of season three and it feels like you could walk into that room and it wouldn't have changed.
Before The Simpsons I wrote on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. The man himself, in a year-and-a-half, I met three times. I met him when I started the job, I met him when we did a spot with new products where he would meet with the writers and I met him at an anniversary dinner where all the writers performed at his request. At the dinner he said, "Keep your day job." Then we lost the day job a month later. That's my experience personally with Johnny Carson. But it was like meeting JFK or something. You were star-struck in his presence.
Working on [80s alien comedy series] Alf was a magical thing. There were actually two Alfs. There was a rehearsal Alf and an upgraded version. Rehearsal Alf was really funny, he was not politically correct. When he wasn't being filmed he was knocking around pretending he was drunk. That would've been a funny show.