“Come on, Homer, Japan will be fun! You liked Rashomon.”
“That’s not the way I remember it.”
Nope but I am posting from work. 
I’ve tried but there’s no way I can justify swearing as business related. Well, not typing it anyway.
And I thank you for providing the first reasonable explanation of that joke. Usually people give some long winded spiel about “Well in the pre-Castro days Havana was famous for live sex shows and remember in the Godfather when…” etc etc.
I saw that. I don’t get it.
My two-year old son loves the Bruce Campbell/Kurt Russell movie Sky High. Each time we watch it (at least 20 times so far), I seem to catch on to something I missing the first N times before, such as:[ul][]The dificult-to-decipher (due to background noise) loudspeaker announcement in the lunchroom that the cafeteria staff would like to ask the Sidekicks to stop ordering “Hero” sandwiches[]When Josie Stronghold offers Layla eggs and bacon for breakfast, Layla responds that her mother has the power to talk to animals and it turns out that the animals don’t enjoy being eatenThe Commander (Kurt Russell) and Jetstream (Kelly Preston) spring into action when they get a call on the special red cell phone. If you watch the deleted scene which shows their first battle together against Royal Pain, you’ll see that even back in the 1980’s Jetstream had a special red phone then too - the giant 1980’s-era kind.[/ul]
Really? Try this:
Say “Somerset Maugham” out loud. If you require a pronunciation guide, it goes like this:
Sum-mer-set Mom
On one of the last episodes of Arrested Development, their business gets promoted to “risky” by Jim Kramer on Mad Money.
The proceed to have a “Risky Business” party. When we cut to the preparations being made at the office, we first see a man being lead out on crutches. Michael looks over and sees the “Risky Business” sign half hung up with a ladder toppled over beneath it.
Clearly, the hurt man was putting up the sign when someone immitated Tom Cruises famous “slide out” from the movie Risky business. They had then hid the ladder, causing the man to fall and get hurt.
It took me several viewings to realize what the joke was.
Great show!
Just thought of another one. I was watching Cruel Intentions the other day for the second time, (nothing else on), and there’s a scene where they visit an old folks home. One elderly woman is doting on a parrot in the corner of the shot.
It only lasts a few seconds, but if you pay closer attention you’ll see that the woman is spraying water on the parrot, and every time she does, the parrot says “Stop it!”
I laughed out loud, the first time during the movie I did so. (When I was supposed to, anyway).
You can see it about the 8:18 mark here.
In the Seinfeld episode where Jerry is buying a car from Puddy, they talk about the chimp Koko, to which Puddy says “That chimp’s all right!”
In a later episode where George is nicknamed Koko the Monkey, Jerry finds out that there is a girl working at his cleaning service named Koko. His girlfriend who works there says “That girl’s all right.”
Please tell me his last name is Diaz.
I just started rewatching Arrested Development to prepare for the imminent arrival of my season 3 DVDs, which should be any day now. In the very first episode, they show Maeby “rebelling” against her parents by wanting to compete in a beauty pageant, which comes up again a year or two later.
Also, when Tobias introduces himself at his first audition, he mentions that he worked in “psycholinguistics”. This from the guy that is constantly accidentally hinting at his own suppressed homosexuality through poorly chosen words. Great stuff.
It’s internally consistent as a joke about cartoon-land, where proprietors of shops are often shown to be particularly suited to their line of work, in this case in name.
I’m going to disagree about Havana. ‘Superman’ of Havana was pretty famous.
http://www.theoldie.co.uk/feature04_greene.htmlhttp://www.theoldie.co.uk/feature04_greene.html
http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2006/08/16/james-brady-on-media-cx_jb_0817fidel.html
Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear.
I have, for the past ten years, pronounced it ‘Mor-gam’
Hopefully not out loud.
STUPID! YOU SO STUPID!!
Sorry, but I figured someone was going to say it sooner or later. 
Kicking the bucket in It’s a Mad, Mad Mad, Mad World. Took me decades to get that joke.
Spitting Image on British TV waaaay back had a skit where the Grim Reaper enters a pub, he leans on the bar and sighs heavily
the barman says “hard day Mr Death?”
GR says “too right, I feel like Kieth Richards warmed up”
Me: <looks blank>
Many years later I was watching something on TV and up pops a clip of Keith Richards - I fell about laughing having now gotten the Spitting Image joke…
Oh and an aside - for years I thought Spinal Tap were a real HM group :o
Well actually you’re both wrong. It’s more like “Mawm”, to rhyme with “lawn”. Or “Vaughan”, but certainly not “mom”.
I get that Maugham sort of sounds like mom. Is that the whole joke? Is there something that I am missing in the Somerset pat of his name?
You’re overthinking it; it was just a throwaway reference by Peter who really didn’t want to talk to Lois at the point (he’d mortgaged the house while she was on vacation) and desperately hoped Chris meant someone else when he said “Mom’s on the phone.”
If there’d been a slightly more famous writer named Julius Maugham, Peter would’ve been using that name instead.