PEABODY — If anybody should know not to take advice from Homer Simpson it's Mike Reiss.
But he listened to the big goof anyway.
"We came via a GPS (global positioning system) mistake," Reiss explained yesterday. "I have a Homer Simpson global positioning system. It speaks in the voice of Homer Simpson."
Reiss, 50, and wife, Denise, after staying with friends in Wenham, were looking for the Peabody Essex Museum. They followed Homer's directions with some skepticism.
"Are you sure, Homer?" they are apt to ask.
And with reason. Homer took them to the City of Peabody instead of the Salem museum.
D'oh!
All this is more than ironic when you consider that Reiss' GPS was a gift. "From the show," he said. It was given to celebrate his work as a writer for the Simpsons. In fact, since Homer's debut in 1989 as the yellow-hued animated star of the show, Reiss has been one of the few people consistently putting words (and doughnuts) in his mouth.
"Homer," he lamented. "It's a perfectly good name. And we ruined it."
Yet, his star is not only beloved all over the world ("Except in France," Reiss said), he's also likely the most reliably stupid fictional character in the history of television — if not the history of fiction.
Of course, as fans of "The Simpsons" know, all of Homer's weekly blunders work out by the end of each episode. For their part, the Reisses' unscheduled trip to Peabody yesterday ended likewise. They ran into Bill Power, chairman of the Historical Commission and the Historic Society.
Power is also Mr. Television, with an encyclopedic knowledge of virtually every program ever broadcast, as well as who was in it. "I watch too much television," he admitted. Thus, he was delighted to take the couple on a free tour of the city, giving special attention to its history, including the George Peabody House and the Nathaniel Felton House.
Some see a certain rightness in being delivered to the Tanner City by Homer Simpson. "We've got some of the same characters," observed Mayor Mike Bonfanti, who hastened to indicate that Peabody's Joe Quimby (the loutish, philandering mayor of "Springfield") isn't mayor here.
It's not an accident that locals can identify with "The Simpsons," Reiss explained. Many of the writers are Harvard graduates, usually people who have worked on the Harvard Lampoon. Moreover, he added, a third of the writers — and as many as 20 are put to work on each episode — grew up in Massachusetts, including a fair number in Springfield (yes, Springfield, Mass.).
Meanwhile, Reiss hails from Bristol, Conn. All the same, he confesses to complete ignorance regarding the North Shore. Once students park their cars in Harvard yard, he indicated, they seldom venture out.
Reiss' connection to the Lampoon got him started in Hollywood. Prior to the Simpsons, he worked for and was fired by Johnny Carson, who promptly offered to hire him back a few weeks later. "I don't know what I learned in those few weeks," he puzzled.
Originally a feature of the "Tracy Ullman Show," the weekly "Simpsons" became a spin-off. Reiss expected the show to last a few weeks. Television hadn't introduced a successful prime time cartoon in 30 years. By contrast, Homer, voiced by actor Dan Castellaneta, became headliner of one of the longest-running programs in television.
Reiss has some responsibility for that. In the third and fourth seasons, as the characters established themselves firmly with the public, he ran the whole show. He checked on the animation — including 35,000 hand drawn images — and wrote programs like the popular "Mary Poppins" episode. He especially liked crafting lines for Krusty the Clown, getting laughs out of a lot of unhappy show business experiences, and Kent Brockman, the television anchorman.
Yet, the workload proved punishing, giving Reiss little more than a week of vacation each year. More recently, he's writing screenplays for films like "My Life in Ruins" with Nia Vardalos and reporting to the show once a week. He hates Los Angeles traffic so much he commutes from Manhattan.
He spent most of yesterday touring historic Peabody. "My wife is interested in old houses," he said, "and I'm interested in my wife." The pair did the same thing recently in Nantucket. "But Peabody has a better class of old houses than Nantucket," Reiss observed.
The couple have been married a very un-Hollywood 22 years. It's the second-longest marriage on the show, the college sweethearts agreed, topped only by the Castellanetas.
Meanwhile, with so many episodes, the show is always hungering for new ideas. Everything and anything that happens to the Reisses could be sucked into the plot. Even a trip to Peabody.
"I like it," Reiss said of the city. "It reminds me of my hometown with a lot more history. ... I'm sure it'll make its appearance somewhere. Nothing is wasted."
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