It's a regional expression

April 8, 2018 8:13 PM

Maybe you were aware of the steamed hams scene from the Simpsons season 7, episode 21. Maybe it was brought to your attention. But did you know that it's been reinterpreted as an anime, as a GTA: San Andreas mission, as Twin Peaks and Twin Peaks: The Return, Arrested Development and Blade Runner?

More:

Steamed Hams but it's Goldeneye for N64
Steamed Hams but it's Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
Steamed Hams but it's the French New Wave
Steamed Hams but it's Star Wars
Steamed Hams but it's Seinfeld
Steamed Hams but it's Pulp Fiction

In a more musically inclined mood?

Steamed Hams but it's All-Star
Steamed Hams but it's from Le Mis

posted by phack (48 comments total)

This thing popped up on Imgur awhile ago, but I still don't know how it came about (I'm guessing from Reddit?). Anyone have any ideas?
posted by littlesq at 8:17 PM on April 8, 2018

littlesq, possibly via the recently popular (and seemingly strangely omitted) Steamed Hams but it's voiced by Jeff Goldblum?

also, great post
posted by Rinku at 8:24 PM on April 8, 2018 [9 favorites]

I howled at the French New Wave one.

Steamed Hams but it's Metal Gear Solid
posted by chinesefood at 8:30 PM on April 8, 2018 [8 favorites]

Neon Genesis Hamveglion (Okay, so I remember the theme song, but not from where) was good. Ham Runner not so much. The Seinburger one just cut around too much.
posted by Samizdata at 8:36 PM on April 8, 2018

Steamed Hams Inc.
posted by Apocryphon at 8:43 PM on April 8, 2018 [10 favorites]

Came in to see if the Metal Gear version had been posted, was not disappointed.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 8:49 PM on April 8, 2018 [2 favorites]

littlesq, possibly via the recently popular (and seemingly strangely omitted) Steamed Hams but it's voiced by Jeff Goldblum yt ?

Proof of a just and loving God. Checkmate, atheists.
posted by Sangermaine at 8:51 PM on April 8, 2018 [3 favorites]

littlesq, possibly via the recently popular (and seemingly strangely omitted) Steamed Hams but it's voiced by Jeff Goldblum ?

Dang it, I had a tab with that one open, but it must have gotten lost in the shuffle.
posted by phack at 9:04 PM on April 8, 2018

This Is Just To Not Say

I have ruined
the roast
that was in
the oven

and which
was going to be
an unforgettable
luncheon

Anyway enjoy
these steamed hams
as they call hamburgers
in Albany
posted by ckape at 9:11 PM on April 8, 2018 [34 favorites]

There's probably hundreds of these things now. Here is one of them, Banjo-Kazooie remix.
posted by JHarris at 9:12 PM on April 8, 2018 [2 favorites]

Proof of a just and loving God. Checkmate, atheists.

One of my fav Stewart Lee bits:

I don’t know if I’m the right person to be doing jokes about religion; in the past few months, I’ve become religious, I’ve started to believe in god, creationism and intelligent design, and the reason that I now believe in god and creationism and intelligent design is because of Professor Richard Dawkins. Because when I look at something as complex and intricate and beautiful as Professor Richard Dawkins, I don’t think that just could’ve evolved by chance! Professor Richard Dawkins was put there by god to test us, like fossils. And facts.
posted by Meatbomb at 9:33 PM on April 8, 2018 [6 favorites]

Steamed Hams, Inc. really takes the music angle to a new level.
posted by little onion at 9:57 PM on April 8, 2018 [3 favorites]

re: Jeff Goldblum, Bill Oakley, the Simpsons writer who wrote the Steamed Hams script, expressed frustration on Twitter that Gamestop was monetizing a YouTube video of Oakley's exact script without crediting him in any way and Gamestop took it down. (He seems to have been supportive of the meme in the past, and in January tweeted out his copy of the skit's original draft, though that tweet has since been deleted.)

(He also made a metaphor that I did not understand, saying it's annoying to get Goldblum to do this because he already plays a completely different character in the Simpsons—"so this is like asking John Waters to read lines for a character he did not play in the show for no reason." Why is John Waters more elucidating?)

Also can I add that But it's a custom Guitar Hero song really wowed me.
posted by little onion at 10:15 PM on April 8, 2018 [4 favorites]

Speaking of which, my kingdom for a video of John Waters voicing Skinner in this bit.
posted by Rinku at 10:30 PM on April 8, 2018

YES. FINALLY MY KNOWLEDGE OF BIZARRE MEMES IS USEFUL. My personal favorites that haven't already been mentioned:

Steamed Hams 10 times, sync point when Chalmers says "Aurora Borealis"

Steamed Hams but it's on VHS and when someone says "steam" or "ham" it suffers from generation loss

Steamed Hams but it's Coach and Nick

Steamed Hams But it's Badly Animated

Steamed Hams, but it's a Viral Meme from 2001

Steamed Hams but every adjective is "steamed"

Steamed Hams translated in to Chinese and then back in to English on google translate

Steamed Hams but it's Hotline Miami

Steamed Hams but Chalmers' Clones are invited too

Steamed Hams But It's Game Grumps

Steamed Hams but Chalmers speaks 6% slower and Skinner speaks 6% faster each time.

Steamed Hams but it's recreated with puppets

Steamed Hams but it's a Custom Guitar Hero Song
posted by AlSweigart at 10:37 PM on April 8, 2018 [15 favorites]

Almost all of my favourites are already mentioned, but I have to link this one because it’s just so perfectly done.
Steamed Hams but it’s a Ghost Trick chapter
posted by AirExplosive at 11:26 PM on April 8, 2018 [1 favorite]

Years later, Superintendent Chalmers happened to be visiting Albany and tried to order a hamburger using the proper regional expression.

The bellowed "Seymour" could be heard for miles around.
posted by ckape at 11:27 PM on April 8, 2018 [10 favorites]

If you have nearly three hours to spend in a way that no human being will ever believe you spent that time, you can watch Steam Hams slowed down x60.

Go ahead and tell me you watched the entire thing, with your eyes on the screen. I will not believe you.
posted by el io at 2:31 AM on April 9, 2018 [2 favorites]

Years later, Superintendentnintendo Chalmers happened to be visiting Albany and tried to order a hamburger using the proper regional expression.

Living here, I suspect the vast majority of the places I'd order a burger woundn't blink an eye, but just serve it.
posted by mikelieman at 2:43 AM on April 9, 2018 [3 favorites]

Weren't actual steamed hams a cheap, common fast food that was popular around a hundred years ago, which has been eclipsed from cultural memory by modern junk food and now just seems faintly unappetising? I keep imagining black-and-white scenes of streets with streetcars and men universally wearing hats and such, and shops with hand-painted signage reading something like “STEAMED HAMS 25¢”
posted by acb at 3:24 AM on April 9, 2018

Steamed Hams but it’s The Ancestor from Darkest Dungeon
posted by rodlymight at 4:08 AM on April 9, 2018 [2 favorites]

Steamed Hams but it's NieR: Automata

I could swear we've had a Steamed Hams thread already, though.
posted by tobascodagama at 5:27 AM on April 9, 2018 [1 favorite]

With all these amusing Steamed Hams videos I wonder if anybody thought to do one with ... yup.
posted by lagomorphius at 5:47 AM on April 9, 2018 [4 favorites]

A quick search around the usual sites suggests a failure of Rule 34.
posted by flabdablet at 6:23 AM on April 9, 2018 [5 favorites]

The Les Mis video totally made my morning!
posted by Captain_Science at 6:28 AM on April 9, 2018 [1 favorite]

This really has taken over certain portions of the internet. Anyway an odd one I haven't seen mentioned yet.

Steamed Hams but you're on bath salts
posted by cirhosis at 7:02 AM on April 9, 2018 [1 favorite]

Steamed Floyd - The Hams: A mashup of the complete Pink Floyd - The Wall movie with Steamed Hams.
posted by SansPoint at 7:26 AM on April 9, 2018

Oddly enough, there is a Maryland dish called Stuffed Ham, which involves cutting slits into a ham, stuffing it with kale, and boiling it. It is apparently common as a church supper dish and one church that had been preparing it traditionally for decades changed the method under recommendation from health officials and used a 3rd party to cook the hams via, yeah - you guessed it - steaming. The result was 746 sick parishoners and 1 death by steamed hams.
posted by plinth at 7:28 AM on April 9, 2018 [7 favorites]

The Know Your Meme page linked here has some of the history of the meme. The Simpsons episode is from 1996. There's a Facebook group dating back to November 2009 and one of the first remix videos is from 2010. Unfortunately the meme historians don't really talk about the first really good remix video, the one that presumably sparked the meme. Would be interesting to find the oldest Youtube video with significant views. Searches for the meme took off around November 2017.

I also think this cookywook blog post from March 2017 is important. It talks about the original Steamed Hams video and discusses how it's a sort of perfection of comedy writing.

The format of the scene as a parody of a typical sitcom farce is sublime, and succeeds on both levels: being funny in itself, and spot-on as satire.

Turns out it's also fertile ground for remixing.
posted by Nelson at 7:41 AM on April 9, 2018 [3 favorites]

A couple of delightful doofuses from Polygon tried to do the scene from memory. Yorkshire?
posted by Rock Steady at 7:52 AM on April 9, 2018 [1 favorite]

my name's Seymour ,
and wen its lunch,
or wen my oven's
shiyning brite,
and Super Chalmer's
gettin mad -
i steam up hams.
i lik the bred.
posted by chavenet at 8:00 AM on April 9, 2018 [3 favorites]

littlesq, possibly via the recently popular (and seemingly strangely omitted) Steamed Hams but it's voiced by Jeff Goldblum yt ?

The thing that impresses me about this version is what a complete pro Goldblum is; he's apparently never seen or heard the scene before but gives it a perfect first read (which I'm assuming this had to be). He even manages a convincing level of lipsync and timing with the animation, and I'm not even sure that he was trying for it. The man is an acting treasure.
posted by Strange Interlude at 8:08 AM on April 9, 2018 [5 favorites]

He can't have been doing the lipsync on purpose, because he asks at the end where the piece was from. If he had been watching the scene to lipsync to it, he'd have certainly recognised the Simpsons. (He was on an episode, so he definitely knows what it is.)
posted by tobascodagama at 9:02 AM on April 9, 2018 [1 favorite]

(He also made a metaphor that I did not understand, saying it's annoying to get Goldblum to do this because he already plays a completely different character in the Simpsons—"so this is like asking John Waters to read lines for a character he did not play in the show for no reason." Why is John Waters more elucidating?)

I think he's saying it's annoying that the meme-maker is using Goldblum as clout, (i.e. "Isn't it so crazy that we got Jeff Goldblum to read a Simpsons scene!?") whereas Goldblum's voice was already a part of the Simpsons universe, which makes the 'randomness' of that particular version of the meme kind of pointless. For the meme to work, it would make more sense to get someone whom you would never in a million years expect to do a guest appearance on the Simpsons; though to be honest, I'm struggling to think of that person—Daniel Day Lewis? Queen Elizabeth? O.J.?
posted by Atom Eyes at 9:10 AM on April 9, 2018 [1 favorite]

(Oh, and I assume he was just using John Waters as a hypothetical example of another unique personality with whom the meme wouldn't work because of his past work on the Simpsons.)
posted by Atom Eyes at 9:15 AM on April 9, 2018

"This thing popped up on Imgur awhile ago, but I still don't know how it came about (I'm guessing from Reddit?). Anyone have any ideas?"

Seems like the meme itself started years ago but in the past few months it just caught on in a big way inspiring all the various versions. It's become a meme format in and of itself. I think it's interesting because the original bit is so brilliant and self-contained and most of the variants do very little to change anything significant because the formula is already so spicy.
posted by GoblinHoney at 10:10 AM on April 9, 2018 [2 favorites]

Steamed Hams but Chalmers is obsessively investigative
posted by Iridic at 12:29 PM on April 9, 2018 [3 favorites]

The best ones for me are those which use the piece to satirise, nay skewer, nay steam their chosen medium. Of the ones I've watched the Metal Gear Solid and All Your Base and to a lesser extent Pulp Fiction ones seemed clever in that regard. Not just porting the scene to the language of their target game, meme or film but trying to say something about it too.

As to the proper crediting of the original writer of the scene, it honestly hadn't occurred to me that such a thing existed. I guess I've bought too heavily into the idea of an all-scripting writers room peopled by snappy oneupmanship made flesh.
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 12:46 PM on April 9, 2018 [1 favorite]

A quick search around the usual sites suggests a failure of Rule 34.

It's never a good idea to point out a Rule 34 violation, because some of the interpretations of Rule 35 put the responsibility of correcting the Rule 34 gap on the party who pointed it out.

Lucky for you, there's no violation here, as there exists at least one example of Rule 34 by way of Rule 63 that I could find: [Do not click this Not Safe for Work, Not Safe for Life, Not Safe for Sanity Link. I Warned You.] In addition to checking the "usual sites", apparently it's also on Know Your Meme, and Funny Junk and was in the 4th row of images on my Google Image Search for Rule 34 Steamed Hams.
posted by radwolf76 at 1:14 PM on April 9, 2018 [2 favorites]

The episode 22 Short Films About Springfield aired on April 26, 1996, 22 years ago. As an old person who saw this episode live when it aired, I wonder exactly how today's (presumably younger) meme-making tastemakers (or taste-making mememakers?) contextualize this sketch. Have they seen this episode in reruns? Or is it a sketch stripped of all context and exists purely as free-floating meme fodder? I mean, other weird meme obsessions like Bee Movie, Shrek, or Spongebob seem to be placed easily within the conscious timelines of today's mememakers. But 22 years is a long time ago. I mean, 22 years before 1996 would be 1974, the year that Little House on the Prairie, Happy Days, and Good Times debuted.
posted by mhum at 2:03 PM on April 9, 2018 [5 favorites]

mhum: I do know The Simpsons is syndicated, so it's not hard to come across a rerun.

I have a theory that Simpsons Shitposting, of which Steamed Hams is a subcategory, exists because there's only a fairly fixed Golden Era of Simpsons, roughly Seasons 3-10. You can only watch that set of episodes so many times before merely quoting them as a shibboleth loses its thrill. Shitposting allows fans to create a new corpus of material built out of the components of that golden era of The Simpsons, plus the occasional incorporation of other eras when needed for a joke.
posted by SansPoint at 2:14 PM on April 9, 2018 [5 favorites]

I mean, 22 years before 1996 would be 1974, the year that Little House on the Prairie, Happy Days, and Good Times debuted.

I remember each and every one of those.
posted by mikelieman at 2:29 PM on April 9, 2018

I do know The Simpsons is syndicated, so it's not hard to come across a rerun.

Indeed. But with such an enormous back catalog of episodes, the odds of coming across any specific episode by chance are slim. I recall that one of the FX channels appears to have the broadcast (and maybe streaming?) rights to the entire Simpsons back catalog. Is it possible that's how the youngsters are being exposed to this era of the Simpsons? I mean, with some other zeitgeisty phenomena, it's easier to spot the the vector of transmission: Netflix. For example, I strongly suspect that's why everyone was suddenly re-appraising Frasier a few months ago.
posted by mhum at 2:39 PM on April 9, 2018

I'm a huge Simpsons fan (golden era) and I've been kind of disappointed by how other long time Simpsons fans seem to dislike the steamed hams meme. I don't know if it's gatekeeping or something but personally I love the idea of people discovering and remixing the show, especially a scene as great as steamed hams.

I can't wait till the meme makers take on Homer's sugar monologue (s06e02).
posted by laptolain at 7:49 PM on April 9, 2018 [3 favorites]

I mean, 22 years before 1996 would be 1974, the year that Little House on the Prairie, Happy Days, and Good Times debuted.

I remember each and every one of those.

I recall begging my mom to be allowed to watch TV on a school night because there was a "world television premiere." It was Rhoda.
posted by lagomorphius at 7:05 AM on April 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

Thought about doing an FPP (but video-game focused) for this but never finished. Dropping off some links at the pool!
Steamed Hams but L.A. Noire

Steamed Hams but Persona 5

Steamed Hams but Animal Crossing (my favorite)

Steamed Hams but playable 2D indie game

Steamed Hams but Ace Attorney

Steamed Hams but Danganronpa


Unrelated to video games:
Steamed Hams but a Newgrounds Flash from 2005

Steamed Hams but without any verbs

Steamed Hams but with paper cutouts

Steamed Hams but Gundam
posted by coolname at 9:46 AM on April 13, 2018 [2 favorites]

I know this thread is old, but Albino Blacksheep(!) posted one a few days ago that's pretty great:

Steamed Hams but There's a Different Animator Every 13 Seconds
posted by a car full of lions at 10:14 PM on April 18, 2018 [3 favorites]

I'll admit, this one impressed me:
Steamed Hams but it's Earthbound
posted by radwolf76 at 3:47 AM on April 20, 2018 [1 favorite]