By New Jersey has become famous for its connection to Italians, especially since the ‘Sopranos’ made its epic run on HBO. People from all over the world began to associate the Garden State the show, especially the lead, James Gandolfini who played Tony Soprano.Â
When they thought New Jersey, they thought of the mob.
As a showcase for the state, ‘Sopranos’ was a mixed bag,” Today wrote. “On the one hand, it focused on a niche culture of Italian-American gangsters while making extensive use of locations around the state. The series roamed easily between raw industrial warehouses, plush McMansioned suburbs and the lesser-known forested area known as the Pine Barrens, for which an entire episode was named.
Not every New Jersey resident — or Italian-American — loved Tony Soprano and his world; throughout the series run anti-defamation activists protested the portrayal of their ethnic group. Show creator David Chase rarely commented on that topic, noting to a group of TV critics in January 2000 that the activists tended to overlook, for example, that the show’s psychiatrist played by Lorraine Bracco was also Italian-American. ‘They just talk about this gangster s— and it’s really tiresome,’ he said then.”
But now, someone has taken the Italian mob thing a little too far. People walking along the river basin in Old Bridge, New Jersey, stumbled upon a ghastly sight.Â
The New York Post reported that “a New Jersey town was awash with mystery after hundreds of pounds of cooked noodles inexplicably appeared along a creek bed in the woods last week — before the town cleaned up the macaroni mess.
Mounds of spaghetti and piles of other pastas, including ziti, were seemingly dumped by the stream near Veterans Park in Old Bridge, according to images posted by resident Nina Jochnowitz last Wednesday.
Jochnowitz, a former council candidate, estimated that there had to be more than 500 pounds of pasta left behind in a Facebook post where she shared the photos of the sauce-less noodles.”
The pasta stretched for 25 feet along the river line.
According to Huffington Post, there are conflicting reports over whether the pasta was cooked.
“Jochnowitz insists it was, saying ‘it looked like someone filled up a wheelbarrow of pasta and dumped it.’
Others, including Himanshu Shah, the business administrator of Old Bridge Township, suggested the pasta was just wet from rain.
Shah confirmed to Today.com that 15 wheelbarrel loads of pasta were illegally dumped in the woods near a creek but said the spaghetti was uncooked.”
In a Reddit thread dedicated to the Garden State, many people shared pasta puns, getting a laugh at the pictures:
“We should send the perpetrators to the state penne tentiary.”
“Oh please, this isn’t something to make light of. The food waste alone is pastatively gross. Cleaning this up will cost the town a pretty penni. I don’t know what the criminals were on, they had to be totally sauced to do something like this. But I hope we spaghet justice.”
“This really makes my blood boil! Someone wasn’t using their noodle!”
“This can’t be real, someone must be stringing me along here.”
The pasta mess??