A Simpsons episode has "Marge reminding Homer that he loved the movie Rashomon, which elicits in Homer the rejoinder, "That’s not how I remember it."

Do you get that joke/reference? Maybe you do. Maybe you even get it without even having seen Rashomon. It's the reference game, the frantic cannibalization that keeps pop culture alive. I'm not a serious student of pop phenomena, but here's a good article that discusses what concerns me most with the popular arts (similar to this more alarmist article I blogged some time ago).