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The same can't be said of Joel Cohen, the Calgary writer who has helped put the "Doh!" in the animated icon's mouth for three years now.
In Sunday's 14th opener of The Simpsons (last week's Treehouse of Horror was, as always, an unofficial entry into the show's continuity), TV's first family encounter a who's who of dinosaur rockers, including Rolling Stones Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.
For Cohen, that meant a chance to rub elbows with the aging music gods.
"I kind of met Mick," Cohen tells the Sun in a phone interview from Los Angeles. "You have the recording studio and next to it, the engineering room. So you'll have people drop in to watch the stars record, depending on who they are. When Mick was there, the room was jam-packed. He didn't shake hands or show pictures of his family or anything. And I missed Keith (Richards). But Elvis (Costello) I met. A lot of times you get to meet the guest voices."
Other rockers lending their voices to the episode, entitled How I Spent My Strummer Vacation, are Lenny Kravitz, Brian Setzer and Tom Petty.
"We've been pretty lucky. We get very big stars. The guy who wrote it, Mike Scully, was friendly with Elvis. He had done some rock 'n' roll documentaries and he put it all together.
"The Stones thought it would be a good promotion for their tour. It's not bad. I have no complaints."
SUDDENLY SIMPSONS
Born and raised in Calgary, Cohen attended the University of Alberta and lived in Toronto before moving to Los Angeles where he got a stint writing for the Brooke Shields sitcom Suddenly Susan which led to The Simpsons, where Cohen is one of 20 staff writers.
"I started on the last year of (Susan), which is no coincidence," the habitually self-deprecating Cohen jokes.
"And the woman who ran it was friendly with The Simpsons show runner. She put in a good word for me."
Not surprisingly, writing for the show is the most coveted gig a sitcom scribe can land.
What other comedy, animated or otherwise, can boast a Peabody Award, 18 Emmys, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and accolades including being named the best TV show of the 20th century by Time?
Cohen remembers, on his first day of work, watching a rough cut of Behind The Laughter, the riotous satire of VH1's Behind The Music. "Oh my God, the quality just blew me away. It reminded me of the environment I was in and I've done everything I could since I got here to lower that quality. But the people are very normal. Everyone approaches it like a job ... There's no juggling or shaving chimpanzees at lunch."
It helped already having a connection to the show. His brother, Rob, wrote several episodes, including the famous Flaming Moe instalment, before moving on. (Rob is currently working on a project for The WB.)
Being Canadian didn't hurt either.
As evidenced by staffers such as Cohen and Tim Long, who hails from Ontario -- and last season's journey to Toronto -- The Simpsons head honcos love Canucks, eh.
"I have some organs missing," Cohen says. "The executive producers keep bragging about their seven kidneys and the fine Canadian shape they're in."
NO END IN SIGHT
Cohen is currently penning two episodes that won't air for another year.
A single Simpsons takes more than eight months to produce.
"We write one in three weeks and then we're constantly revising," says Cohen, who penned the 2001 Treehouse of Horror in which Homer turns Lisa into a centaur.
"The nature of animation is that we are in production right now for stories in season 15. We are getting back the animatics and the rough versions recorded by the actors," he says.
"I wrote an episode that won't air for another year. That one involves Homer fighting a bear. That'll probably air in December, 2003. Then I've got another one that will probably air sometime in January 2004."
As for a return trip to Canada, Cohen doubts it, citing the simple fact that there are simply too many other countries to burn -- including England.
"That episode won't air for another year, so don't get too excited. Tell the British embassy to cool their jets."
(When Homer and Co. jetted to Rio, you may recall, the episode in question resulted in the Brazilian government officially denouncing the characters.)
All this talk about upcoming seasons leads to the inevitable question of how long The Simpsons, which has already become one of the longest-running series in history and become part of the pop culture lexicon, can go on.
"We're all wondering that and we're hoping it goes on forever," Cohen says.
"The ratings are good and presumably the quality is there, so there's no end in sight. The cast is really happy and it's not hard to find writers for the show."
Indeed, last week's Halloween special topped the competition with more than 16 million viewers.
"It's just getting harder coming up with ideas. There is so much packed into each episode, it's becoming increasingly difficult not to duplicate something we've done," he says.
As for the day the writers simply run out of ideas, Cohen quips: "Yeah, there'll be some tears and we'll know we went down cowardly."