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This is the story of how the Monorail T-shirt I designed for me and my family got a shout out on “The Simpsons.”

In August 2019, my wife and I took our two kids to the D23 convention in Anaheim. For those who don’t know, D23 is a big convention for all things Disney - kind of like Disney Comic-Con.

As Disney had acquired 20th Century Fox in March 2019, Disney now owned “The Simpsons.” Our family loves “The Simpsons.” I’ve been a fan since the show started, over 30 years ago, and our kids watched all the old episodes pretty obsessively. So we were thrilled when D23 added a “Simpsons” panel discussion and autograph signing to the convention.

D23 allowed attendees to make advanced reservations for special sessions. Unfortunately, each person making reservations could only reserve for 2 people at a time. So, when reservations opened, my son and I both logged on to make reservations for the 4 of us. Among other sessions, we were able to get reservations for the 4 of us to attend “The Simpsons” panel discussion, but only 2 people to attend the autograph signing.

Leading up to D23, I wanted to get some cool “Simpsons” shirts for me and the kids to wear, but I couldn’t find anything just right. Plus, we wanted to show the melding of Disney and “Simpsons.” So I decided to make a shirt about that confluence - and the Monorail T-shirt was born.

For those who might not know, the t-shirt is a reference to the “Marge vs. the Monorail” episode of “The Simpsons.”

The kids and I all wore the Monorail T-shirt to D23. It didn’t get much attention until we lined up for “The Simpsons” panel. Unsurprisingly, among a bunch of “Simpsons” fans, it was popular, with several people taking pictures of the shirt.

The panel was lots of fun. It featured Matt Groening (creator of “The Simpsons”), Yeardley Smith (voice of Lisa), Nancy Cartwright (voice of Bart and many others), Al Jean (showrunner), Matt Selman (Executive Producer), and Mike B Anderson (Supervising Director).

The autograph session was right after the panel. But we only had two spots for that. And both kids wanted to go. I desperately wanted to meet Matt Groening. But how could I say no to the kids. So they went.

When they got to the front of the line, my wife and I could see, almost immediately, that their shirts caught the attention of “The Simpsons” folks. Matt Groening and Matt Selman took pictures of it. Yeardley Smith gave a big smile while talking to the kids about it. It was so cool, and the kids were on cloud nine after that. I felt great.

We spent the rest of the day at the D23 expo, checking out all sorts of cool stuff. In the afternoon, I got a text from a friend, saying, “Garth, you’re famous!” He sent a link to the Twitter feed of Matt Selman, the Executive Producer from “The Simpsons” panel and autograph session. Matt had taken a photo of the Monorail T-shirt that my son was wearing and tweeted it out with the caption, “Best t-shirt at @DisneyD23.” I flipped out.

I replied to Matt Selman and thanked him for saying that and for being so good chatting up the kids at the autograph session. The tweet blew up, with thousands of likes, hundreds of re-tweets, and people asking where they could get the shirt. Unfortunately, along with that attention came the bootleggers. People took the Monorail T-shirt design - some even taking the photo Matt Selman posted of my son wearing the shirt - and put it up for sale on some of the direct-to-garment shirt printing web sites. We had to battle against the bootleggers.

The next day, our family went to Disneyland. While waiting in line for the Tiki Room, my phone dinged. I read it and smiled to my wife, “The Executive Producer of ‘The Simpsons’ just followed me on Twitter!” As we went into the Tiki Room I got a direct message from Matt Selman. He said, “I saw that people online are selling bootleg versions of your very cool, albeit also bootleg, t-shirt.”

And then came two lines I’ll never forget: “Let me know if you & the kids ever want to come to a Simpsons table read.” My heart jumped - the opportunity to see a live performance of a not-yet-made Simpsons episode! “Also this will probably turn into a Simpsons episode.” Mind. Blown.

Knowing that I couldn’t sell bootleg IP (both Mickey Mouse and Simpsons) and knowing that an invitation to a table read is WAY better anyway, I had no choice but to just have some fun with it all. So I kept it going.

This was a play on the Mr. Sparkle ad from the “In Marge We Trust” episode.

I followed up with different plays on the Monorail T-shirt design, each with different Simpsons references. I kept it going for over two months.

In October 2019 we arranged to visit the Fox Studios lot to attend a table read of a new episode of “The Simpsons” in development. We got to see a live read with many of the voice actors. We got to meet several folks who work on the show. We got take home copies of the script. We got to hang out in the writers’ room. Several writers told me they’d been following along with the Monorail T-shirt posts. One of the writers told me, “You get mad respect in the writers’ room.” Not gonna lie, it was amazing.

A few more months passed. In February 2020, I got a message from Executive Producer Matt Selman saying, “Garth, watch this Sunday’s show very carefully.” I had no idea what to expect.

The day of the show, Matt Selman live-tweeted along with the episode and shared this shout out.

The show had included a version of the Monorail T-shirt in the show. A show I’ve watched for over 30 years. The greatest show in the history of television.

The official Simpsons twitter account even tweeted out a snippet of the show including the part with the Monorail T-shirt shout out.

I’ve long said that you know you’ve truly “made it” when you appear on “The Simpsons” - on March 1, 2020, the Monorail T-shirt truly made it.

All thanks to some fun guys at the show who played along. A big thank you to Matt Selman for making all of this happen.

And a shout out to White Malik - the greatest character in the history of “The Simpsons.”