“Eating spaghetti with a spoon”
Most people eat spaghetti with a fork. “Eating spaghetti with a spoon” has come to have a larger meaning in American English, indicating something done using the wrong tool and with great difficulty.
“Eating spaghetti with a spoon” began to be frequently talked about since the 1950s. In the 1960s, Franco-American advertised that its Spaghetti-Os product allowed “kids (and everybody)” to eat spaghetti with a spoon.
11 September 1955, New Orleans (LA) Times-Picayune, “Don’t Spoon Spaghetti,” sec. 3, pg. 8, cols. 7-8:
So says Brooklyn-born Vincent F. La Rosa, president of a large manufacturing concern, who claimed that persons who gobble spaghetti with a spoon are “just amateurs.”
He says that goes for kids who have it cut up first by their parents and the older folks, too, who use a spinningspoon technique to wrap their spaghetti around a fork.
La Rosa said the people of Italian descent—the real spaghetti authorities—never use a spoon but wrap the delectable food around the fork with one hand, and no gimmicks.
Google Books
They’re a weird mob: a novel
By Nino Culotta
Sydney: Ure-Smith
1957
Pg. 8:
I met her in a cafe, when she was trying to eat spaghetti with a spoon. This is not possible, I told her so, and she told me to mind my own business. You wouldn’t think that could lead to marriage, but it can.
Google Books
Electron-microscopic structure of protozoa
By Dorothy Riggs Pitelka
New York, NY: Pergamon Press
1963
Pg. IX:
PREFACE
ATTEMPTING an analytical review of a rapidly developing field is rather like eating spaghetti with a spoon. In order to manage at all, one has to cut some strands off short, while others elude one altogether.
Google News Archive
9 December 1965, Milwaukee (WI) Journal, pt. 4, pg. 17, col. 4 ad:
Now kids (and everybody) can eat spaghetti with a spoon!
(Franco-American “Spaghetti-Os”—ed.)
Google Groups: atl.tv.sesame-street
Newsgroups: alt.tv.sesame-street
From: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) (Eve Cunning)
Date: 1996/07/07
Subject: Re: The Electric Company
Here’s more Electric Company bits:
(...)
SPAGHETTI WITH A SPOON: Messy song about how you can’t eat spaghetti with a spoon.
OCLC WorldCat record
Eating Spaghetti with a Spoon Review of Patterns of American Jurisprudence
Author: Laura Kalman; Neil Duxbury
Edition/Format: Article : English
Publication: Stanford Law Review, Jul., 1997, vol. 49, no. 6, p. 1547-1581
Database: JSTOR
Summary: In this essay, Laura Kalman examines Neil Duxbury’s “Patterns of American Jurisprudence”. She dissects his treatment of the six significant jurisprudential movements of this century: legal formalism, legal realism, policy science, process theory, law and economics, and critical legal studies. Kalman especially admires Duxbury’s discussions of realism, policy science, and process theory. She also finds his history of law and economics at the University of Chicago valuable. Kalman is critical, however, of Duxbury’s criticism of the critical legal studies movement.
Google Groups: ba.food
Newsgroups: ba.food
From: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) (Steve Fenwick)
Date: 1998/12/21
Subject: Re: twirling spagetti against the spoon…
To quote Miss Manners:
“In the civilized world, which includes the United States and Italy, it is incorrect to eat spaghetti with a spoon. The definition of ‘civilized’ is a society that does not consider it correct to eat spaghetti with a spoon.”
(from Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, p.164.)
Google Books
Economics and the Law:
From Posner to post-modernism
By Nicholas Mercuro and Steven G. Medema
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
1999
Pg. 171:
Defining the subject is like trying to eat spaghetti with a spoon.
Google Books
Miss Manners’ guide to excruciatingly correct behavior
By Judith Martin
New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co.
2005
Pg. 201:
DEAR MISS MANNERS:
How do you eat spaghetti with a spoon?
GENTLE READER:
Bite your tongue. This is not an eating instruction, but an old-fashioned reprimand to anyone who would even entertain such an outrageous idea as eating spaghetti with a spoon.
Wu-Tang Corp.
View Full Version : Worst rap lines, or verses ever
VikeMan1986
10-04-2005, 04:57 PM
But not if you’re a loafer
You’ll get nowhere, no place, no time, no girls
Soon—Oh my God, homeboy, you’ll probably be eatin
Spaghetti with a spoon! Come on and say it! -Vanilla Ice “Play That Funky Music” 89/90
Washington (DC) Post
Excerpts from Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY)
By Emi Kolawole | June 28, 2010; 3:12 PM ET
(Confirmation hearings of Elana Kagan for the U.S. Supreme Court—ed.)
The following are excerpts from Sen. Charles Schumer’s (D-NY) opening remarks:
“Frankly, there are not many blanks left to fill in. Given how forthcoming General Kagan has already been, I would think that we could finish this hearing in one round of questioning.”
“I also believe that the quality of answers matters more than the quantity, and we can expect very high quality from you, General Kagan.”
“As we begin these hearings, I have three points I’d like to make. First, a confirmation hearing, no matter who’s sitting in the chair over there, has the potential to be like eating spaghetti with a spoon. It’s a lot of work and it’s hard to feel satisfied at the end. I believe that this will not be our experience this week with this nominee.”