"Whoah, I can't believe I got booted off the team for Mr. Businessman," Otto grumbles as he turns to play the game. "I'll bet I get a little respect once I get that Harvard diploma." And there, among the stuffed toys, is a rolled-up Harvard diploma tied in a red ribbon.

But not all the Harvard-related jokes have been one-liners.

An on-going character, Mr. Burns, the snooty nuclear plant owner, has been recently exposed as a Yale man, as has Sideshow Bob, Bart's sociopathic nemesis.

More subtly, in a reference that perhaps was not caught by the non-Harvard world, the Springfield Town historian who was introduced this season, was named "Hollis Hurlbut."

And in a truly inside joke that would not be caught by anyone without a VCR and an acquaintance with the Lampoon, Principal Skinner receives an airline ticket in an envelope addressed to "Springfield Elementary School, 18 Plympton Street" and when Bart and Lisa discover that Homer's long-lost mother has a collection of phony drivers' licenses, one lists her address as 44 Bow Street.

"The show has a lot of freeze-frame jokes...where you have to have a VCR," says William L. Oakley '88, the show's executive producer. "There's lot's of things that go by too quick for you to see them."

Both 18 Plympton Street and 44 Bow Street are addresses for the Lampoon Castle.

The Writers

From the inception of the show seven years ago, The Simpsons had a core of writers that graduated from Harvard and were editors at the Lampoon, a semi-secret Bow St. social organization that occasionally publishes a so-called humor magazine.

Michael L. Reiss '81 and his writing partner from Leverett House, Alfred E. Jean III '81, were two of the show's four executive producers through the first four seasons.

Another Leveritte, Jeff S. Martin '82, Jonathan M. Vitti '81 and Conan O'Brien '85 also wrote for the show in its early years.

In the last three seasons, however, a younger generation of 'poonsters has taken over the reigns of the show.

For the last two seasons, the Simpsons has been run by Oakley and his childhood friend and writing partner Josh Weinstein, a Stanford graduate who is an honorary member of the Harvard Lampoon because of the summers he spent with Oakley in Cambridge working on the Lampoon's occasional parodies of better known publications.

Oakley joined long-time writers George A. Meyer '78, Jonathan K. Collier '83 and Kenneth C. Keeler '83 on the show.

"We've been running the show for the seventh and eighth season--the seventh season has just about finished airing but the eighth season is in production now," says Oakley.