Once just a beloved Simpsons bit, “Steamed Hams” has become a genre of art unto itself. It has morphed from simple meme to a platform for elaborate jokes, roping in everyone from its creators and Jeff Goldblum to comment or take part in a gag that’s now birthed an entire world of musical remixes. After multiple instances of the meme reaching what seems like an un-toppable level of ridiculousness—like, for instance, “Steamed Hams Mixed With Smash Mouth’s ‘All Star’”—it should come as no surprise that its latest iteration is both painstakingly made and terrifyingly strange.
Welcome to “Steamed Hams But It’s ‘Basket Case’ By Green Day.”
The above video sees YouTube user Juliana Egg pair piratecovejoe’s upsettingly titled work, “Steam Day – Hamsket Case” to the original “Steamed Hams” clip. Just like the Smash Mouth remix, the music is extremely disconcerting. The “Basket Case” instrumental is immediately familiar, but the vocals are replaced with a hideous, auto-tuned mockery of the human voice only seconds into it. Alien warbles and staccato word fragments from the classic Simpsons episode are contorted to follow Green Days’ melody, everything shoved together, square-block-into-round-hole-style, in order to make the song and scene just barely match length and pitch.
It’s certainly an accomplishment, but one that feels like an affront to whatever small shred of natural order we all hope still exists in this world. Computer and human, Simpsons and Green Day, melded together into a single, ill-fitting, freakish whole—now and forever, this mash-up will exist, one more sentence in the great story of human history that can never be forgotten.
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