Wednesday, November 26, 2008

This one falls under "and stuff"

When my family wants pre-fab spaghetti sauce we have taken to preferring the marinara with Paul Newman’s face on the jar. I sometimes slide some garlic and/or onion into the pot to pretend that I made it myself, but for sauce from a jar it gets the job done pretty well. Prior to the last jar I hadn’t really noticed the label, apart from the floating head of the movie star. But this time as I was waiting for the water to boil up for the pasta, I checked out the jar more closely. What I found so dazzled and confused me that after supper I peeled the label off and scanned it in. Behold!


Usually I find those “story of our product” narratives you find on the back of stuff to be utterly banal, but not so with Mr. Newman. Dig this stream-of-consciousness spiel:


I love how the piece is signed P. Loquesto Newman, just so we can be assured of the creator's authentic Eye-talian heritage. I wonder how many fewer jars the company would sell if this product were called Loquesto’s Own? But the thing that really caught my eye and led to this post were these two words:

The idea of industrial strength spaghetti sauce seems… unsettling. Industrial Strength Paul Newman would make a pretty cool band name, though. At least until the band got signed to a major label and the legal department made them change it to avoid hassles with the Newman estate or the folks who make the sauce. Maybe they could switch to Industrial Strength Loquesto.

5 comments:

  1. Industrial Strength Paul Newman

    Yeah. Well, if my friends who I play Rock Band with continue to not let me use the band name Millipede Urethral Insertion, this is a close second!

    ReplyDelete
  2. There actually is, or was, an indie rock band called Paul Newman. The bassist's name, also, was actually Paul Newman. Maybe that kept them out of trouble with the moviestar/spaghetti sauce guy's lawyers.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Activate Spagetti?

    Somewhere there exists a copy of Paul Newman's Cooking with Ultraman.

    I'm just sorry he never jammed with Dr. Bronner.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Wow. That's something.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous8:28 AM

    His Sockarooni sauce is the best jarred pasta sauce ever.

    That is all.

    ReplyDelete