This Monday, a Monday like any other (“working” from home, planning to “catch up” on the Real Housewives of Potomac aka play Candy Crush in between Candiace talking heads, being “dressed” aka wearing a size 4X band hoodie and underweards) I went on Twitter and saw something that made my pastafied Italian heart stop.
Chris Pratt is playing the Pringles man in a Superb Owl commercial.
And he must be stopped.
This unseasoned white menace. This faux Italo. This medigan1.
I paced. I roiled. I kicked Matt out of the room with a, to quote one of our seminal cultural texts, “Not now, Chief, I’m in the fuckin’ zone.” I got to work.
I, being the tenured journalist (Substacker of less than one calendar year with 20 paid subscribers) that I am, endeavored to deeply research Pratt’s origins to make sure that I was not writing off one of my low-vowel brethren. This is real: it’s like the Indian caste system. The low-voweled of us can come to the party, but they had better bring Baci.
So I went to Wikipedia. Christopher Michael Pratt. Christopha? Yes. A very Italo name. A saint’s name. An acceptable confirmation name. Michael? Absolutely. I know many. I have at least two in my family.
Pratt. Unless that shit was lopped off at Ellis Island and my dude’s given name was Prattanzio, Prattolino, Prattoli, no. That Pratt is a wet fart thud, Frank Sinatra getting cut off at the Grammys.
Chris Pratt is from Virginia, Minnesota. Two of the whitest-ass state names paired together, some gruesome twosome where you know the pizza is just nasty. The Goodfellas egg noodles and ketchup in Henry Hill’s witness protection enclave. He is listed as being of Norwegian ancestry. Yeah girl, we don’t know the fjord people like that.
“Pratt dropped out of community college halfway through the first semester and, after working as a discount ticket salesman and daytime stripper, he ended up homeless in Maui, Hawaii, sleeping in a van and a tent on the beach.”
No Italian mother would allow this. I wake up each morning to 3-4 LinkedIn Easy Apply job postings from my mother. I am 32. I make six figures. I started a new job a month ago. “But this one pays 130K!!!!!!!!” Italian mothers do not rest. They are not dissimilar from Nigerian moms you’ll hear about in Ayo Edibiri’s Saturday Night Live monologue or on some of my reality shows. An Italian mother would have gotten her ass on a plane with enough Star Magazines and rice cakes for that 16-hour flight and dragged his ass back on home by the ear, making his father call everyone he knew in construction to get that boy a summer job. There is no WAY an Italian mother is letting her son be the gossip of the wedding season that year. We continue on.
“During his time in Maui, he worked for Christian missionary organization Jews for Jesus.”
Now. Jews and Italians are similar peoples. They are made from the same stuff (like Snapple, the best stuff on Earth). Agita, heartburn, indigestion, upset mothers, diarrhea. (Heyyy Cherry Pepto!) We are bickerers and the best in bed. The studio executives asked Fran Drescher to make Fran Fine Italian on The Nanny. While she said no, there is very little that would have had to change. Italian girls dress like Fran. Jewish girls love Mona Lisa Vito. This was a false-flag operation on behalf of Pratt’s publicist, but I did not buy it.
Some may argue the Pringles man is not an Italian. First of all. His name is Stefano Pringolo2, everyone knows this. Second, as Matt asked me, “is it just because of the mustache?” Yes. All mustaches are Italian except for that fuckass Charlie Chaplin cosplay Adolf did. We don’t claim that one. The preponderance of evidence of his Italian ancestry boils down to this, simply: the pizza Pringle. Now baby that is a chip.
Columbus was a pillaging little bitch. Any second glance into the written text of The Sopranos makes unforgivable racists of our main cast. I love my show, naturally, but it is an exclusionary text. Andrew Cuomo and his nipple rings and the “I’m not perverted, I’m just Italian” of it all? Hysterical, relatable, but we know good and goddamn well that the man is a goon and we can not exalt him as one of our shiningest. The Pringles man does not discriminate. He does not play grab-ass with the interns. He is simply here to let you make duck lips from his impressive array of flavored offerings. His only crime? That the fun don’t stop. And in this world of finite resources and commodified leisure, where is the harm?
Crisp Rat in his sauceless, gravyless stolen valor has claimed one of our few tried and true cultural icons. And this is not his first siege.
I don’t need to say much about Mario. We know he violently stripped the ethnicity of another mustachioed prince, but you may not know my credentials to make this damning accusation.
My legal name is Tara Marie Giancaspro. Count the vowels. My grandmother once, trying to get Frank Sinatra’s attention, accidentally clocked him in the head and knocked his fedora off. I have a permanent and free reserved parking spot in Hoboken, because of generational and local Italian nepotism. I once hooked up with Big Ang’s nephew. I at 13 years old read “manicotti” on a menu and didn’t know what that was until my mother said “T, it’s munnigaut.” Oh. I have about 16 first cousins. I once ate so many struffulo that I had to make myself throw up into my friend’s unfinished basement toilet. I was 26 years old. Sylvester Stallone filmed part of the movie Lock Up in my grandfather’s auto body shop. My grandmother absolutely pinched his ass. I know about three people that casually knew Danny Aiello. My grandfather used to call the Irish “the ee-REESH.” He didn’t have an accent. That’s just the immigration rivalry fakakta nonsense coming into play. He wore jewel-tone windbreakers and emerald cuff links and electric blue sport coats. His name was Champ. He bet on the ponies a little too much and lost a LOTTA too much. The 30 Rock Teamsters sandwich is literally our family business, Fiore’s, and a portrait of my late uncle hangs in the deli. I am always given a small piece of wet, salty mutz to hold me over while I wait for my Thursday special. You can find no better expert witness.
Mario this, Mario that. I didn’t grow up with much Mario in my life. I’m fine with Mario. Where I take umbrage is his third strike, Garfield.
And here you are saying “But Tara is Garfield actually Ita-“ Yes. Yes, he is. Where do you look at that man with the Paulie Walnuts hair stripes and the gluten belly and the all-consuming love of lasagna and not see a proud Italian stallion?
The man was born in the back of an Italian restaurant. A very Italian thing to do.
“Welcome to my world?” The world of being Italian. Naturally. We move forward.
To an Italian woman, this is the finest compliment you can give. And you would only know that if you were raised in a home where an Italian king festooned his queen with the appropriate accolades.
Chris Pratt’s upcoming Garfield movie is set to hit cinemas in May 24, 2024. There is still time to act. While the supporting cast is fabulous (Hoult Hive RISE for Nicholas Hoult voicing John, for example) there is still time to Christopher Plummer this movie and remove the rotten errant factor. Wouldn’t you rather see Joe Pesci dive into this bed of lasagna meaty role? John Turturro? Leonardo DiCaprio doing something dramatically different? As he once stepped into that tauntaun or whatever the fuck in The Revenant (I fell asleep in the theater) I do trust that he could step into Garfield’s small, furred hooves. I’d even take Michael Bublé. Give me a little song and dance! Give me a little cover of “Volare” with Odie getting a little tapdance sequence! Give me something for the CULTURE.
I rest my case. I want some damn taralli.
I leave you with this, found in my research, set to haunt me for many years:
Love you bitches,
TG
P.S. This post is inspired by
, the cultural sage of our times and the funniest person on God’s green internet.A medigan is a non-Italian white person, essentially a whiteman without a whiff of a certain sabor. I have, and I feel this is a safe space to confess this, a relentless and dark history of dating medigans.
His name is actually Julius Pringles. I’m just being silly.
I have an Armenian mother, and Armenian mothers are like Italian mothers on speed. 😂
This article has inspired Mustard to create a chant that all humans (and condiments) to participate in:
What do we want?
Not that!
Not Chris Pratt!
Anything but that.