The Sporkful Screen: Applying the psychology of pasta to movies...and life
How pasta--and Dan Pashman--changed my world
Welcome back! This one is written by Alan (Sarah comments in a side bar). In two weeks, we’ll switch. Why? just because
I had COVID. I was quarantined and losing my sanity.
Between bingeing movies that I’d never gotten around to watching (2001: A Space Odyssey) and books I’d never gotten around to reading (James Joyce’s Ulysses), I was also bingeing podcasts and I came across The Sporkful.
Sarah: I think there might have been some Batman: The Brave and the Bold and Scooby Doo in there, too.
But more than that, I came across Cascatelli, Vesuvio, and Quattrotini, three designer pastas from Dan Pashman the host of The Sporkful.
But more than that, in my bleak isolation, I was touched by divinity. The concepts of The Sporkful—not the pitches of fever—were my burning bush that heated the previously cold recesses of my mind and my heart, and my world changed.
You see, this new pasta by Pashman was designed to fulfill the holy trinity of pasta purpose:
1) Sauceability: How readily sauce adheres to the shape
2) Forkability: How easy it is to get the shape on your fork and keep it there, and
3) Toothsinkability: How satisfying it is to sink your teeth into it.
I had, apparently, been eating wrong.
Sarah: I don’t know. Is eating pasta in the bathtub really wrong? Or is it genius? Jury is still out. On the bright side, it didn’t make a mess.
I lacked the intellectual scaffolding to even comprehend that I was eating pasta. I had my opinions regarding fettuccine and linguine and thought I had game. Now with my eyes opened to this new dimensionality of pasta, I realized my folly. It was like when I heard “Defying Gravity” (from Wicked) sung by a pro in person — apparently there were dimensions I was previously blind to.
Sarah: Yes. Goosebumps.
But this wasn’t my burning bush moment. That came when I realized that the kind people at The Sporkful had not given me fish but had given me fishing (note: there is no fish in Cascatelli).
Sarah: Oh, I see. This explains the bathtub.
This realization only became apparent when my long-suffering beautiful and intelligent wife came to visit my leper colony of one, and asked me about my seemingly endless day. I started to tell her about watching 2001: A Space Odyssey and how artificial intelligence was represented and I was immediately hushed. My linear and limited narrative was stifled. She didn’t want to know that. She wanted to know if the movie was sauceable, was it forkable, and how was its toothsinkablity? It wasn’t sufficient to say if I liked the movie or not.
Sarah: Or ramble on about AI.
It wasn’t enough to say what stood out to me. To truly appreciate it and its ramifications, I needed to view it through the refined mind of sporkful—or the psychology behind pasta.
Sarah: You’re welcome.
Did the movie tell me something of society or of people? Was it embedded in the context of a broader world of thought? In a word: sauceable.
Sarah: Yes, I like this definition. How much “stuff” comes with the plot. The world building, the culture, the emotionality, etc.
Did it have long stretches of time that seemed to dangle in time like uncut spaghetti? Was it forkable?
Sarah: For me, forkable is how easy it is to grab onto the plot. Scooby Doo? High forkability. Everything Everywhere All at Once? Much less forkable (But so worth it!).
Did Stanley Kubrick put thoughts in there to chew on and mull over? Was there meaning? How was its toothsinkability?
Sarah: Big fan of high tooth sinkability over here. Love it when we get to dissect a movie the next day and what it means. Such as Groundhog’s Day. So much to think about. And Tucker & Dale vs. Evil…okay, maybe not that one, so much. But my opinion still stands on Groundhog’s Day.
The walls that confined me were not the walls of my viral prison. The walls that had confined me was the limited dimensionality with which I was approaching the world.
Sarah: Me too, sweets.
I was walking the line between two points. But my Sporkful renaissance challenged me to think beyond these confines, to embrace the dimensionality in all things. The dimensionality that exists only when we challenge ourselves to see things in new ways.
As Fyodor Dostoyevsky aptly said — The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he’s in prison. But the luminary Dan Pashman had shown me the walls were of my own making and I was free.
Well not that free. I still had to sit in that room smelling of old socks for 7 more days.
Sarah: That’s the real reason I wore the N95 when I visited.
But I finally had a clear and free mind. Admittedly, it was during my time with COVID that I bought a few different sets of Sporkful pasta.
Sarah: Twelve boxes. He bought twelves boxes of Cascatelli, Vesuvio, and Quattrotini. We had pasta coming out of our eyeballs.
Don’t judge.
Sarah: Sorry.
Sarah: In Boots and the Brain we think about things then translate it into action. I think Sporkful is very cool because it gives a nice framework to think about things—dare I say, everything?
Think about the people in your life.
Who are the forkable friends in your life? (That sounds really wrong.) Highly forkable people are very social, talkative, and friendly-- easy to get to know.
What about sauceability? For me, this means bringing lots of knowledge with them—it could be facts, trivia, knowledge, or just how to get things done-- street smarts.
Lastly, tooth sinkability. Conversations with this friend stretch late into the night and range from the ramifications of political change to societal constructs to a fractal theory of everything. This is a person who makes you mull over the universe and your place in it. That’s right, Alan, you’re my tooth sinkable, saucy, eye candy.
Now that you’ve thought about your friends, what is your forkability, sauceability, and tooth sinkability? Are you Sporkful in the way you want to be? There’s always time to boil some pasta, think it over, and make some changes.
And by the way, back in the early days, he’ll really did used to eat spaghetti while taking a bath. I know. So weird.
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