Jokes We Don't Get

[Andy]

I think it's time we let the topic rest and move on. It's not really fun or interesting to ask or answer questions when people are constantly trying to trump and then completely dismiss others' answers. Everybody who submitted an answer was right. Let's just leave it at that, and move on. Please.

[whisman]

QUESTION:

Watched Large Marge last night. Why is a tank of chopped liver being pumped into the Friars Club exactly?

[Roger Myers III]

Its a reference to the fact that, despite its name, an overwhelming amount of the comedian members of the Friars' Club are Jewish. (Chopped Liver is a traditional Jewish delicacy.

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At PEF's request, I won't answer JSAD. Hell, even I am Oreo'd out.

But, PEF, I find your comments bizarre. You administer hundreds and hundreds of threads below, many of which, in the spirit of being so "fun and interesting," run on with pages and pages of in-depth analysis and point-by-point refutation of - for the most part - matters of pure opinion. Down there, truly, "everyone who submitted an answer was right." Except, of course, for the posts of pure venom and incitements to arguments. And there are plenty of those fires that some mods do try to put out.

But yet you can't stand an ongoing analysis of a joke? Sometimes, an interesting embellishment or correction only seems like a "trump and complete dismissal" when you're on the receiving end. Above, I admit it when I've got something wrong. Believe me, there's always another layer to the show to scratch or another joke to get. We're all doing just fine here. Its a very good reference thread.

[Ranadok]

This isn't so much a "didn't get", but more of a "didn't hear" that I don't want to make a thread about on its own. In Frinkinstien, who did Frink Sr, say built the pyramids?

[InputSelect]

Sears

[Andy]

RM: Not upset at ongoing analysis of a joke, I'm just not too pleased at the guesswork comment and how you continue to defend it. He tried his best to answer, and you actually DID dismiss him by making a somewhat snarky comment. You may have had the better answer (like you do most of the time), but that doesn't mean you can tell off the previous poster like that. I just won't stand for it. The only thing you're really trying to discuss is how much better your argument is than everyone else's, and that's not really 'analysis.'

There, I said it.

[MaxpowerAK79]

PEF: As long as you said it first, RM has pretty much dismissed any answer anybody else gives, no matter how accurate and complete it is, and restates it.

Go check out previous posts, it's a running trend. Thanks for bringing it up, PEF.

[prince jafar allah]

now that's unfair and plain untrue. RMIII may "restate" other people's answers, but i've never seen him do it without adding at least an equivalent amount (if not more) of his own information which usually puts an originally glib or simplistic explanation in a much clearer context. and he only "dismisses" answers if they are indeed wrong.

though i wish he would shut the fuck up about irregular oreos.

[Roger Myers III]

Hey, c'mon, I already said I would stfu about the oreos!

PEF, to address your real, underlying issue, I actually thought that I was being "kind" to SPDO by saying "guesswork" instead of something like "faulty logic" or "ignorance" or something that's truly "dismissive" or "telling him off". Characterizing my comment -fairly - as "snarky" only brings it in line with 85% of comments of all board members (being generous). Its just avery odd matter to choose to "take a stand" on - and a very basic read-through of the posts shows that it is indeed "analysis", in which everybody took part. If SPDO was as insulted as you (and I don't believe he was,) then I do apologize tp him.

[And I actually thought I was far more "dismissive" and insulting of Yes Guy in that very same post, and for that I owe him a word of "sorry".]

[Tibor]

If this can be really answered and not just speculated on, does the story of Mona Simpson a reference of sorts to Abbie Hoffman's stint on the lam? She was reading "Steal This Book" in Mother Simpson, though while it could be a hint at it doesn't at all necessarily point to this as it's something any hippie radical would read.

[Roger Myers III]

Very close. Not Abbie Hoffman, per se, but the "trend" that occurred in 1993 and -4, of the surfacing of 3 or 4 female radical 1960's activists who had skipped out on criminal trials and gone underground, assuming new identities and raising families. (IIRC, 2 came forward voluntarily, and 2 were identified, including Katherine Anne Powers. Hoffman died in '89.) I don't believe that any of them were actually members of Hoffman's specific group, the Yippies, but of the more revolutionary (and violent) groups, like the Weather Underground. They were all fleeing charges of murder (the resulting victims of their activities,) rather than committing the acts themselves.

[Andy]

Okay, glad that's sorted out.

[Charmy]

Okay: Like many others on this board, I have never seen Evita. In fact, I had never heard of it before this episode. So most of the references are lost on me. So... what's the deal? With the stuff? And the things? Help?

[Moose of Doom!]

Basically Eva Peron goes to Buenos Aires to become an actor. She eventually married the President of Argentina, became famous and tried to help the poor, died, then after her corspe was embalmed she went on a wacky series of misadventures without ever leaving her coffin.

[Roger Myers III]

In honor of MaxPower, here's one of my typical "restatements":

First, the real Evita's bio:

She was born María Eva Ibarguren on May 7, 1919, in a tiny town on the edge of the vast Argentina pampas. The daughter of a ranch manager and his mistress, Eva lived under a cloud of illegitimacy for most of her childhood. A lively, intelligent girl in love with American films and yearning for a life beyond the endless expanse of grassland, seventeen-year-old Eva left her home for the bright lights of Buenos Aires.

Within three years of her arrival, Eva had carved out a career as a radio and film actress, and the press linked her to a number of powerful suitors. In 1944, Eva encountered a fast-rising and immensely popular politician named Juan Perón at a fund-raising concert organized to help earthquake victims. Within weeks, she was sharing his apartment. Perón went on to become Minister of War and Vice President of the Republic, but political unrest at the end of World War II eventually led to his arrest and imprisonment. Freed in a populist revolt, Perón subsequently married Eva and was elected President of Argentina with a huge popular mandate.

With a blend of democratic principle and despotism dubbed "Peronism," Juan Perón became one of the most admired and maligned leaders of the modern era. Yet even as she shared her husband's vision of Argentina's manifest destiny, Eva herself became the object of intense, almost mystical adoration by the country's common people. She gained international attention during her Rainbow Tour of Europe to promote Argentinean interests, and at home she was instrumental in the formation of the Perónist Women's Party, as well as The Eva Perón Foundation for charitable works among the nation's poor.

The poor, in turn, clamored for Eva to assume political office beside her husband, and despite growing dissent from military and political opponents, she was put forward as the vice-presidential candidate. It was, however, a goal Eva would never realize; she was subsequently diagnosed with terminal cancer. Renouncing her political aspirations, Eva Perón fell into a steep and sudden decline, and on July 26, 1952, she died at the age of 33.

Close to a million Argentineans crowded the streets of Buenos Aires for her funeral procession, and an estimated three million filed past her casket to pay their last respects.

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Second: what did "Pearls" have to do with "Evita," the musical?

In the musical, Evita was "de-fanged" from any true power by the government's layer of bureacrats and ministers, who, while appealing to her dreams by keeping her in the finest of dress & jewels, saddled down her daily schedule with meaningless tasks and photo-ops to keep her too occupied to fulfill her professed true goals of lifting up the populace out of poverty and terrible working conditions. The ministers used her to keep the populace distracted from their lives and united under Peron, cementing Peron's -and their- status & power.

So, that dynamic makes the transition to Springfield Elementary - the teachers, fearing Lisa's sway over the students, pile on meaningless fancy ceremonial duties and distract her with flattery in order to keep her from making any actual changes, while they actually rip off the kids further. But there's obviously no Juan Peron figure, and, rather than dying during a campaign, Lisa is (temporarily) transferred from school. Bart is sort of playing the "Rebel Spokeskid" part that was the composite Che character in "Evita" (Antonio Banderas in the film version,) but there's obviously no romantic overtones to their interaction.

Lisa's new hairdo & outfits are directly from Eva, as were the live & film versions of "Evita". Her campaign logo (the b&w portrait) is a 'Lisa' version of the Musical's logo. The songs are knock-off of songs from the musical - "Vote Lisa" and the follow-up "Poor Lisa" are parodies of the recurrent crowd chanting/singing "Evita". I do not remember the rest of the musical's book, so I'm quoting from "jesle" in the "Pearls" review thread for these specific match-ups:

"Vote for a Winner"= "Don't Cry For Me, Argentina"
"I Am Their Queen"= "Rainbow High"
"Skinner's Evil Plan"= ?
"A Tango Takes Two"= "Waltz for Eva and Che" (?)
"Smart Girl Six Three"= "Eva's Final Broadcast"

Personally, I thought that "Skinner's Evil Plan" was a very funny tweak of a "filmed musical" cliche: the climactic song in which different stanzas, sung by conflicting parties in separate locations, (and usually 'commenting' on the others,) are edited together into one sweeping song. (Think "Tonight" in "West Side Story".) In "Pearls", they do this with Skinner, Bart, and Willie - and Willie's verses have absolutely nothing to to with the others.
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Bonus reference: Skinner's "S.L.A.A.A.P." organization is a play on Bill Gragham's "S.N.A.A.C.K." organization from the mid-1970s. The concert promoter funded his charity, "Students Need Athletics, Art, Culture, and Kicks", with a few great rock concerts in the U.S. with major acts (Dylan, The Band, Neil Young, the Allmans, and the Grateful Dead).

[Moose of Doom!]

I'm surpised you didn't use the "Resistance Lives On" song from South Park: BLU as the example of the cliche.

Find anything on her corspe? I read about it a few years ago, but wasn't able to find the info or version I was looking for.

[Roger Myers III]

I would have used it, but its a parody of those songs themselves - though in a different way. I wanted to use a "pure" example that makes it a cliche - but you're right, most folks would know it that way.

I posted this originally, but I lopped it out this morning, because it really has nothing to do with the musical, film or episode, and because it made the post far too long. (Even for me.) But, Moose, if you insist:

After the funeral in early August, 1952, Eva's corpse was moved to the Confederation of Labor headquarters, where it remained for three years, while government officials worked out plans for a monument as huge as the Statue of Liberty. But when the military overthrew Perón in 1955, a lieutenant colonel with a squad of soldiers seized the building and removed the body, fearful that the Peronistas would snatch it for a totem to rally behind.

Concealed in a plain box, Evita's body was taken in an army truck to a marine base where the truch remained for a day before the commandant discovered its contents and nervously ordered it removed from his jurisdiction. For lack of a better destination, the truck was simply parked on a street in downtown Buenos Aires. It was Christmas Eve, but the grisly Christmas package was left unopened. The body was next loaded into a crate marked "radio equipment" and stashed in the office of the army's information chief until he was transferred in June 1956. The crate disappeared, its whereabouts known to only a few military officers.

In the late 1960's, Argentine journalist Tomas Eloy Martinez learned the closely guarded secret: Evita's body had been sent to Bonn as part of an Argentine military attache's household effects and was buried either in the embassy basement of in the garden of the embassador's residence. Martinez and a diplomat did some digging - literally - on the embassy property. But they were too late. The body had already been moved and reburied under a false name in a cemetery in Milan, Italy.

After negotiations with Perón, who was living in exile in Madrid with his third wife, Isabel, Evita's body was turned over to the Peróns on September 23, 1971. The coffin was usually kept in an upstairs room, though visitors sometimes saw it on the dining room table. According to one fascinating report, Perón's private secretary, Jose Lopez Rega, an astrologer and spiritualist, encouraged Isabel to lie on the coffin to soak up Evita's magic vibrations - while Lopez chanted incantations.

Perón returned to power in 1973, and after Isabel succeeded him the next year, she brought Evita's coffin back home and put it on display in a Buenos Aires suburb. But the magic proved non-transferrable. A military junta overthrew Isabel in 1976 and Evita's itinerant corpse was quietly turned over to her two sisters the next year. It now lies in a family crypt in the Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires.

[Crotis Jivefunk]

That's coming back to me, I remember studying that and viewing the film in 6th grade histroy. Anyways, in Frinkenstein in THOH XIV, what's with the nude blonde chick in the street?

[Roger Myers III]

Though I have no concrete idea why (because I've always understood it to be a serious, even "depressing" country in real life), Americans tend to associate Sweden with blondes who emblemize uninhibited sexual freedom and nudity. (i.e.: The Miller beer ad campaign of "The Swedish Bikini Team," lusty Swedish foreign exchange students named "Inga" or "Greta" in countless movies & sitcoms, the gyrating secretary in "The Producers", and more. It may be due to our getting the first wave of "porn" movies with narrative from Sweden in the 1960s (like "I am Curious: Orange.")

The blonde chick in the street was a traffic cop - so the joke was that, in Sweden, even the civil servants are irrepressable nudists.

(Note to Charmy: That info about Eva's corpse was NOT ottomh - it was from an Argentine history website.)

[dr.foot]

OK in the episode where JFK says "Ich bin ein Berliner" I didn't get that that is actually something he said in a speach.
So the joke was that he was just practiceing his speach and they attacked him.
I also just found out that that quote is a joke. He used the wrong translation.
He wanted to say I am a Berliner.
He said, "I am a jelly dougnut"

ha ha

[prince jafar allah]

no.

http://urbanlegends.about.com/cs/his...k_berliner.htm

[matt]

ich wohne in berlin.

[kuje]

Originally posted by Roger Myers III
Though I have no concrete idea why (because I've always understood it to be a serious, even "depressing" country in real life), Americans tend to associate Sweden with blondes who emblemize uninhibited sexual freedom and nudity. (i.e.: The Miller beer ad campaign of "The Swedish Bikini Team," lusty Swedish foreign exchange students named "Inga" or "Greta" in countless movies & sitcoms, the gyrating secretary in "The Producers", and more. It may be due to our getting the first wave of "porn" movies with narrative from Sweden in the 1960s (like "I am Curious: Orange.")

The blonde chick in the street was a traffic cop - so the joke was that, in Sweden, even the civil servants are irrepressable nudists.

(Note to Charmy: That info about Eva's corpse was NOT ottomh - it was from an Argentine history website.)

Yeah, this is also referenced in Homer's Barbershop Quartet, when Homer is taling about going on tour and pretending to be unmarried:

"It's only 'til we finish our tour of Sweden!"
*Marge cries histerically*

Meaning that Marge knows about the Swedish people's 'reputation', and is even more upset about Homer going there.

P.s. It was because of the taste I tells ya!! Lol, no hard feelings by the way RM

[Charmy]

Originally posted by Roger Myers III
(Note to Charmy: That info about Eva's corpse was NOT ottomh - it was from an Argentine history website.)

Ah, I see. I wondered why you'd know so much about the misadventures of a corpse.

On to other things; I finally got around to watching all of C.E.D'oh!, but there's one joke I don't get. Burns, speaking of Smithers, says "I've never seen a man take to a Turkish prison so fast." While I assume this is another gay thing, and I get the prison connection, I don't really get the Turkey part.

[Roger Myers III]

Its a reference (as all "Turkish Prison" jokes tend to be,) to the 1977 film "Midnight Express", in which an American tourist is caught, at the film's opening, trying to smuggle heroin out of Turkey, (The THOH2 scene in Marrakesh at the airport was a parody of this,) and is sent to prison there, in which he's hit on (by John Hurt's fellow prisoner) in the showers. Its actually a 'softer' portrait than most prison films (or real prison, I assume,) but it forever joined the concepts of "Turkish prison" and 'willing homosexual activity'.

P.S. to SPDO: I knew you weren't 'insulted" - it was PEF who dragged this whole 'thing' out! And, btw, if "taste" was all that one noticed when one puts food in one's mouth - I might agree with you. But the point is, the point is vague - all we know is, its worse than the "irregular" label led Moe to believe. Now quit bringing it up already!

[E12 fan]

sorry kinda late but this refers to page 4 post, and the joke is so subtle i wanted to clarify, even though it was posted long ago...

Originally posted by Roger Myers III
An "AA chip" is a token one receives under one's Alchoholics Anonymous sponsorship/treatment program for going without drinking alchohol for an alloted amount of time (5 minutes is also not a realistic time for a AA Token - I think that the smallest time/token is 1 day). By all means it really can't and shouldn't be redeemed for a drink at a bar.

in regards to the AA chip, the joke is: Moe accepts the chips as payments for beer, because he sees it as a way to steal back customers from AA; kinda like, if they show their repentance for going to AA, they get a free beer, ya know?

[Miguel Sanchez]

Originally posted by Roger Myers III
Its a reference (as all "Turkish Prison" jokes tend to be,) to the 1977 film "Midnight Express", in which an American tourist is caught, at the film's opening, trying to smuggle heroin out of Turkey

It's hashish he has taped to his body, not heroin - his extended punishment wouldn't seem quite so harsh had it been the latter.

[Crotis Jivefunk]

In 'Scuse Me, While I Miss the Sky, why exactly did Moe reference making out with the gorilla?

[Tibor]

^^^ The joke is that making out with a gorilla is a more attractive prospect than making out with Selma, though I honestly couldn't say why he was lip-wrestling witha gorilla in the first place.

In Rosebud, after Burns announces that the TV and beer has been cut off until his demands are met, Barney appears at the Simpsons door in the rain holding a revolver. He says "Give him what he wants." Homer slams the door, the gun goes off and a woman screams. This seems like it should be a reference to something, but what?

[Roger Myers III]

Its not a reference to any movie or story in particular - but to the longtime cliched "Murder Mystery Novel Opening": "It was a dark and stormy night... a shot rang out... the maid screamed..." The New Yorker magazine (forgot which writer) parodied Agatha Christie in this manner once, and "Peanuts" used to use these lines whenever Snoopy would 'start writing his mystery novel'. Generally, though, he scene is meant to convey how muderously desparate Barney is to not lose beer - within a second of Burns' threat, he's willing to shoot his best friend to prevent the beer-drought.

Thanks for the correction, Miguel - what was I smoking? (Actually, I had "French Connection" on in the background.)

*edited when I remembered its "was heard" instead of "rang out"...see that MJ already did the full reference...all is well...