Conan O'Brien: I was very nervous [after joining The Simpsons, where he crafted such memorable episodes as "Marge vs. the Monorail" (a takeoff on The Music Man in which a straw-hatted shyster sells Springfield a dilapidated monorail) and "Homer Goes to College" (Homer lives out his college fantasies, which have been informed entirely by 80s Animal House rip-offs)]. They showed me into this office and told me to start writing down some ideas. They left me alone in that office, and I remember leaving after five minutes to go get a cup of coffee. And I heard a crash, and I walked back to the office, and there was a hole in the window and a dead bird on the floor—literally in my first 10 minutes at The Simpsons, a bird had flown through the glass of my window, hit the far wall, broken its neck, and fallen dead on the floor. And I remember George Meyer came in and looked at it, and he was like, "Man, this is some kind of weird omen."
Sources
Vanity Fair, Aug. 2007
