Heaven is supposed to be a magical place but the Italians are trying to ruin it for us. Heaven’s grand opening was right around 0 AD with the birth of Christ. According to Dante’s Inferno prior to 0 AD everybody went to Limbo which I picture as a really big apartment complex. This is important because if angels were interacting with humans around this time period (even earlier according to Judaism) then that means we had over a thousand years of quality relations with heaven’s caretakers before the Italians decided to coin the insane name Angel Hair Pasta. A frightening image everyone in Limbo never has to imagine.
You’re on earth having the time of your life. Then you lose at Russian Roulette. You’re standing in front of the gates of Heaven. St. Peter is holding a clipboard dressed exactly like a night club bouncer. Brief aside, imagine being St Peter and stuck outside of Heaven but not actually inside, you think they would have a shift schedule so he can experience heaven every once in a while.
So St. Peter lets you in, you put on your free I Heart Heaven T Shirt and go to the group of newbies waiting for the grand tour. The tour guide, an angel, steps out of his office and for a second you think this is a trick and you’re in hell. The angel’s hair is moist dangly pasta noodles. More horrifying than Medusa’s snake hair.
You start the Heaven Tour but can’t hear a single word the angel says because you’re so focused on his Angel Hair Pasta. “You seeing this?” you say to the guy on your right. He doesn’t look at you, he just nods his head also entranced by pasta hair. Is Willy Wonka in charge of Heaven and he quit the chocolate game and took up pasta?
The angel must be used to this. He stops the tour bus and says, “Look I know it’s hard getting used to my hair.”
“I’m fine with it! No problems over here.” A passenger in the front says.
“Well you’re Italian. Your country is comfortable with Angel Hair Pasta. Not everyone else is so lucky.” The angel goes back to addressing all of us. “You think this is weird? Imagine if my hair was pre-cooked pasta. All straight, rigid and oh so brittle.”
You stand up, “I understand some people’s hair can be a little unfortunate but there is one thing I don’t understand. You would rather have pasta hair than be bald? Why not just shave it off?”
The angel mutters to himself. “Every time. Someone asks that every time.” Then looking back up at you, “I don’t shave it off because it isn’t the weirdest thing here. We have managerial babies with wings. You’re familiar with the cherub concept, right?”
“Cherubs don’t bother me either.” Says the same guy in the front of the bus.
You chime in again, “So I just looked it up on Heaven Wikipedia. Cherubs are an Italian thing too. Renaissance painters used them and it looks like they were modeled after Greece’s Eros.” You don’t know what to believe anymore. “Are those clouds over there or rolling hills of lasagna?”
“Well,” the angel tour guide says. “It’s Heaven so I guess it could be lasagna if you want.”
It’s around this time on the tour that Limbo starts looking really appealing. In Limbo you get an apartment unit next to Socrates. After taking the first 20 years to casually learn ancient Greek you and Socrates can finally hold a conversation. You tell him about the past two decades of pasta nightmares.
He tells you what he knows of pasta hoping it will help the nightmares subside. Knowledge is power and Limbo actually has pretty good libraries.
Some attribute Italian pasta to Marco Polo bringing it back from China in the form of macaroni. However the Roman Empire had such staples as lagana, the predecessor of lasagna.
Even more fascinating is that the tomato originated in the Americas and it wasn’t until Christopher Columbus that it was introduced to Europe. Meaning Italians went close to a thousand years eating pasta without tomato sauce! The tomatoes reception in Europe is also suspect being called ‘the devil fruit’ for awhile. Which makes you wonder if Angels use tomato sauce as shampoo. Or maybe pesto sauce?
Around the 1700s, young European men of nobility would travel the continent absorbing art and culture. After their journeys such civilized men were nicknamed ‘macaroni’ and somehow this wasn’t used as an insult.
It is this fact sarcastically referenced in the song Yankee Doodle Dandy. When Yankee Doodle sticks a feather in his cap and calls himself macaroni it’s a reference that this idiot American actually thinks he’s cultured like us. Which is why the Europeans sung this song with a mocking tone towards uncivilized colonialists. ‘Cultured’ Europeans make pasta out of the hair of angels…
On your Limbo balcony staring up at the bottom of Heaven’s clouds you’re glad about your choice to live in Limbo. You don’t want to be a macaroni conversing with Angels who have pasta hair and thousand-year-old babies with wings.
The more you think about Angel Hair Pasta you think of John Milton’s Paradise Lost:
…Thou O Spirit…Illumine, what is low, raise and support.. And justify the ways of God to men