Hope you all had a great weekend. Thanks to my friend Jeremy for flagging this story for me! And apologies to Patrick S., who I credited as Peter S., in Friday’s email — my fault! — Dan

The video above comes from a 1994 episode of The Simpsons titled “Itchy & Scratchy Land.” The episode is named for a fictitious theme park which, as the clip suggests, has a gift shop. Bart (and I’m going to assume you’re familiar with Bart Simpson!) goes into the gift shop, looking for a tiny vanity license plate with his name on it — but fails. There’s a Barry, a Bert, and even a “Bort” plate, even though no one is named “Bort”… or so Bart believes, as you’ll see in the clip.

This brief moment of Simpsons history has a warm place in the hearts of fans of the show. And for one Simpsons superfan, Katie Unis of Gloucester, Massachusetts, it’s gone further. Katie pays $50 a year to the Registry of Motor Vehicles to have a legal version of the plate on her car. That’s right: Unis has a state-issued license plate that reads “BORT.” It’s really cool, as seen below.

The guy standing next to the license plate isn’t Katie Unis, though. It’s Matt Shearer, a reporter for WBZ NewsRadio in Boston. Shearer (who may be related to Harry, I have no idea!) wanted to talk to Unis because Itchy & Scratchy Land isn’t the only place one can buy a fake “BORT” license plate. You can also get one on Amazon, as seen here. And that caused a problem for Unis.

As Shearer reported, the plate on Amazon is “obviously not legal — it just says “Itchy & Scratchy Land” on the top [instead of “Massachusetts”], but it looks enough like a Massachusetts plate that now anytime someone goes through E-ZPass with one, Katie gets the bill.” And the fake Bort plate driver doesn’t even have to be doing anything illegal. In some states, front plates are optional (and fake ones like this one are fine), and in some other cases, the driver has the plate on their dashboard, and the E-ZPass reader is picking up on that.

That’s not ideal, as fighting any sort of ticket or fee from E-ZPass can be hard. As the Daily Dot noted, “Although Unis and her husband admit the predicament is funny, the couple doesn’t care to be held responsible for other Simpsons fans’ road tolls.” They’ve rung up a few hundred bucks in wrong fees so far — more than the $50 annual fee it costs to have a vanity plate in Massachusetts — and they’d rather not have to pay that extra amount. So they took to the press to plead for help, begging people to stop using “their” license plate.

To date — and in fairness, it’s only been a few weeks — those calls have been gone unheard. But Unis and her husband seem more willing to keep up the fight rather than give up this tiny piece of Simpsons in their lives.

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Today’s Bonus fact: In the 1975 movie, Jaws, a Louisiana license plate reading “007 o 981” briefly flashes on screen during an autopsy of the shark. As James Bond fan site Bond Lifestyle notes (with a screen capture of the plate), the plate is likely a reference to the fictional spy — 007 is James Bond’s code number, and the plate also references the years 1972 and 1973, the years Bond film “Live and Let Die” was produced and released, respectively.

But even if that’s more myth than fact, the plate has some staying power. The same Louisiana plate can be seen in the 1998 movie “Deep Blue Sea,” 2015’s “Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!”, and 2018’s “Ralph Breaks the Internet,” per Bond Lifestyle — making it a persistent easter egg across multiple films.

From the Archives: Operator Unknown: Why you don’t want a license plate that reads “NO TAGS.”

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And thanks! — Dan