This is not a person who is taking themselves seriously:
> I felt more determined than ever to solve this mystery, not just for myself but for the cast of Saturday Night Live and also the rest of the people of the United States of America, who had been through too much for too long to then have insult added to injury via the spontaneous and inexplicable disappearance of the best noodle.
I agree that the writing is well done, though the story didn’t hold my attention. I bailed at about the halfway point.
Wow, I hope you reserved some of your outrage for pasta from other cuisines. Or do they not count lol
It might be a coastal thing. My Brooklyn friends are usually camp A, my California people skew more camp B, but that's not a hard rule and super subject to sample bias.
That’s the thing - I am sure they (and the readers) do feel superior for their choice of pasta - or something equally pedestrian, it is what makes the whole “hyperbolic lampooning” work - it wouldn’t be funny if didn’t have a vein of truth.
That’s off-putting, maybe because we cant identify with that attitude anymore. Different life stages (I’d be surprised if the author is over 26).
Maybe that style of dry humor is off-putting and associated with a specific age to you, but I find it to be timeless.
The author's in her mid 30s, and there are numerous other older people who use a similar sardonic wry sense of humor well, from David Sedaris to the kindhearted kvetching of old jewish grandmothers.
What you're doing with this comment is both similar and different. You're effectively saying "Well, I don't like it because I'm more mature; I can recognize that there's a grain of truth in her self-depreciation, and by recognizing that, I'm better than her". Effectively, you're aggrandizing yourself in the same way you accuse her of doing so, but without any of the humor.
I find that likely as well - that the author really feels some superiority over the pedestrian spagetti - but then they started shaming orecchiette and satire becomes the most likely explanation.
But hey, other people like it so who am I too judge ;-)
If this were just a matter-of-fact reportage on a particular type of pasta shortage I doubt it'd hold much interest for anyone. The whole enjoyment for me was the gonzo reporting style of someone going off the rails about the shortage of a particular type of noodle.