The best food yoke of 1996 now has the oral history it deserves

I try not to be walking Simpsons encyclopedia at times that do not ask for it; hence, every moment of my life is an exercise in limitation. (Or subterfuge: if anyone asks me: Have you ever seen [X]? “I secretly enjoy the opportunity to respond,”Yes, once!”) But today there is an article on the internet where I am free and encouraged to let my Homer quoting flag fly. Brian VanHooker at MEL Magazine has dedicated to providing a oral history of “Steamed Hams”, three-minute ephemera from Simpsons that has been meme’d, reimagined, and re-played so much in the last quarter century that the origins of the clip as a one-time season 7-gag have been perpetuated by the pop culture legend it has become . For the uninitiated, here is the exceptional excerpt known as Steamed Hams.

According to Bill Oakley, author of the famous sketch and a Simpsons showrunner from 1995-1997, “Steamed Hams” took years to catch on as an internet darling. But once it did, it was like a fireball. The clip spent a decade percolating as a growing in-joke among people who bought whole seasons of Simpsons DVDs in (very restless) character-shaped newscasts, and phrases like “Not in Utica, no – it’s an Albany phrase!” treated as the shared folklore of a particular streak of geekdom. Eventually ‘Steamed Hams’ became a canvas for the creative and technological civilization: there were clips from the sketch repeated 10 times, reimagined by various animators, hammered in musician videos, you call it. (And oral history mentions a many more.) VanHooker consults the makers of various Simpsons fansites and the experts at KnowYourMeme, like everyone else, from astrophysicists to personal trainers, to trace the history of this ultra-slow-burning cultural phenomenon.

“I’m glad people actually thought the sketch was funny because it took me about 20 years to figure out that people liked it,” says Oakley, who makes it clear that he loves all the remixes and memes of keeps his original sketch. ‘It pushes that nostalgia buzzer … It’s words like a code word for Simpsons fans who then became snowballs and fed themselves and became a microcosm of Simpsons nostalgia. ”

Read the full convoluted oral history over here, and remember to exercise caution around the Northern Lights.