It's hard to say if The Simpsons predicts the future or if the future imitates The Simpsons. What we do know is much of what happens in The Simpsons eventually comes to fruition.
In one of the greatest Simpsons episodes of all time, "Homer's Barbershop Quartet," the family patriarch embarks on a successful music career that mirrors The Beatles' rise to fame. When Homer's band, The Be Sharps ("a name that's witty at first but seems less funny every time you hear it"), are at the height of their fame, Barney starts dating an artsy woman who gets in the middle of the band's chemistry. This woman is creative, kind of bizarre, and doesn't really fit in—especially, of all places, at Moe's Tavern, where drinkers go to drown their sorrows in dim lighting with the grim bartender. There, Barney orders a beer and his Yoko Ono-type date orders a "single plum, floating in perfume, served in a mans hat."
It's one of The Simpsons' greatest throwaway jokes, and it has inspired one of the works on display in a recent Ono-curated art exhibit at the Reykjavik Art Museum called Yoko Ono: One More Story... This piece of art is exactly what the Simpsonised Ono orders.
You can see photos of the real-life plum floating in perfume served in a man's hat over at Pitchfork. Then, you can marvel at the fact that international fine art is imitating cartoons imitating life. Truly our culture exists in a Simpsons vacuum from which we'll never escape.
