I'm just an Italian girl from Brooklyn

Autumnal pop culture baking, Jersey Shore academia, Lady Gaga = copycat? 🇮🇹

These screenshots made my week, thank u love u!!!!! 🫶

Today’s issue:
🥧 Autumnal Baking Section: 🥧
🍫 Rihanna hired The Chocolate Guy to create an A$AP Rocky Lego sculpture
🍪 You’ll just have to taste this Sabrina Carpenter cookie
🥧 A gorgeous Smashing Pumpkins pie
📞 No, YOU hang up!!!!! Ghostface cake

🇮🇹 Italian American Heritage Month Section: 🇮🇹
🦆 The perfect Sopranos miniature
👩🏻‍🏫 “Guido” Culture: The Destabilization of Italian-American Identity on Jersey Shore
📺 Connecticut Italians don’t make for very dramatic TV
📈 Lady Gaga’s 12 Most Italian Moments, Ranked
🗣 The terrible accents in House of Gucci
✨ Did Lady Gaga copy Jo Squillo?
🤌🏼 I’m more Italian than Lady Gaga is, but you can hear her talk about it for a minute an hour

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ICYMI, last week’s issue included lots on Mean Girls – it was October 3rd, after all – plus it answers the questions, “What happens when you sell counterfeit American Girl Dolls?”, “What was the real color was Rachel Green’s dress?”, and “What would a nostalgic modern still life painting look like?” Catch up on these before they enter the archive! 🔐

On October 3rd, he asked me what day it was

Where you lead, I will follow

So long sweet summer

Support Nicstalgia with a paid subscription for less than a pie from Pepe’s Pizza.¹

Huge thank you to Nicstalgia supporters who I will love forever: Janine, Marie, Liv, Mitra, CY, and Chet! 💐💐💐

📲 I’m just a simple girl in a high-tech digital world

🥧 Autumnal Baking Section 🥧

How am I just finding out about The Chocolate Guy? His work is incredible. Rihanna commissioned him to make a super cool A$AP Rocky chocolate Lego sculpture for his birthday party!

I’m so impressed by the shading and fine detail work on this Sabrina Carpenter cookie! I always wondered how cookie artists render perfectly accurate celebrity faces. Naively, I assumed they were just really talented at drawing. Now that I know they use a projector to trace, my toxic trait is thinking that I could make a cookie like this. Will have to host a Nicstalgia Nailed It! party this holiday season and keep you posted.

This Smashing Pumpkins caramel bottom, apple and pumpkin sauce pie is a magical work of whimsigothic ART!! I would love to eat this pie while watching 90s music videos. The ultimate fall activity.

Never thought I’d use the words “Ghostface” and “cute” in the same sentence, but here we go! I am obsessed with this extremely cute Ghostface (from Scream) pink and black oreo cake!!! I’m not a scary movie person, but I’ve seen Scream – if only for the reason that I find Gen X ensemble casts very comforting – and it’s a classic.

🇮🇹 Italian American Heritage Month Section 🇮🇹

Woke up this morning, got yourself a [glue] gun. David Miniatures made Tony Soprano’s house in 1/220th scale. Yes, the ducks are there!

The only American TV show that received more [fair, righteous] criticism than The Sopranos for depicting negative Italian American stereotypes is Jersey Shore. I was intrigued by this 2013 paper from Sara Troyani of the University of California, “Guido” Culture: The Destabilization of Italian-American Identity on Jersey Shore. I love to explore identity, media, Italian American culture, and the intellectualization of lowbrow, yet significant, contributions to popular culture and entertainment.

While I understand and agree that reinforced negative media portrayals of Italian Americans are problematic, I personally do not relate to most of what is depicted on shows like The Sopranos and Jersey Shore. Everyone equates Italian Americanism specifically with New York and New Jersey, but they’re forgetting an integral part of the tri-state area. Did you know that my home state has the highest percentage of Italian Americans in the country? Guess Connecticut Italians just don’t make for compelling, dramatic TV.

I very much got a kick out of

coleman spilde

’s ranking of Lady Gaga’s 12 Most Italian Moments, Ranked. Can’t believe I went 15 years of my life without seeing the “Eh, Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say)” music video, rife with Italian American stereotypes.²

Also got a kick out of Antonello Zanini’s What an Italian Thinks of the Italian Accent in House of Gucci. I’ve never seen this movie, but one time I tried to watch it on someone else’s screen on the airplane. They didn’t even put on subtitles so I could know what was going on from two rows back. Rude!!

The perfect Lady Gaga meme for fall: baby, there’s no other sup– soup!

One of my favorite pop culture phenomenons is Lady Gaga’s The Fame era (2008). The Fame era is often painted as groundbreaking, and as much as I loved it, it really wasn’t. Gaga pushed the envelope just enough for the right audience at the right time, and what’s more familiar to popular culture than themes of fame, money, sex, and excess? Gaga’s entrance onto the music scene is the perfect emblem of the MAYA Principle – most advanced yet acceptable. Disco Bambino asked the important question: is her striking resemblance to Italian singer Jo Squillo and her 1985 track “Roulette” mere coincidence or a direct reference? I say the latter! It’s not just the cowl hood, it’s the entire look: round sunglasses, red lipstick, bleach blonde hair, a wig with blunt bangs, and costume jewelry. Looks like there’s continued inspiration throughout Gaga eras.

Some of these might be a little bit of a reach, but don’t you see the resemblance?

Odd facts about Lady Gaga’s Italian American heritage specifically:

1. Lady Gaga has been known to act in character or blatantly lie in interviews. I usually find this hilarious. She’s stated more times than I can count that she’s “an Italian girl from Brooklyn”. She’s an Italian girl from Brooklyn as much as I am. (I’m not from Brooklyn.) Her Wikipedia now says she was born in Manhattan, but in her early days, it was alleged that she was from Yonkers, in Westchester County. She said in a 2009 Jay Leno interview, “I love the Bronx, but I'm not from Yonkers. There's all sorts of rumors about me, but that's my least favorite.” (Yonkers is not in the Bronx.)

2. While I, Nicole Tremaglio, am 100% Italian, Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta is not. She is 75% Italian, as her mother is half-Italian and part French, German, and Scottish. Due to her French Canadian heritage, she is also apparently ninth cousins once removed with another one of the most famous not 100% Italian Americans, Madonna.³

3. One of my favorite YouTube videos is One minute of Lady Gaga sayings she's Italian. I was not ready for – and the world truly does not need – Lady Gaga saying "I'm Italian" for one hour, but here it is!⁴

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🏃🏻‍♀️ This week’s class schedule

Will start including my teaching schedule in here! Click on the pics to see the full page on my site – it’s always up-to-date. Don’t you think Jesse McCartney needs to join me when he’s here next week for his concert? I undoubtedly think so. Please send along to any CT friends :)

My themed classes at Elliptica this upcoming week. Come ride IRL! 💪🏼

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🦋 Social butterfly

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¹ Real ones know the best pizza in the country is objectively New Haven-style. Pepe’s, Sallys, Modern, whateva!!! New Jersey and New York can fight over who has the best bagels, but if we’re talking about pizza, Connecticut wins. I am not open to rebuttals here. Sorry Chicago. (I do love deep dish too, don’t get me wrong.)

² Not gonna lie, I ironically love those Little Italy/Chinatown souvenir shirts. I really want a vintage Peacock Papers one too, either, “Life’s too short not to be Italian” or “Not only am I perfect, but I’m Italian, too!” The Daddy’s Little Meatball and Hug Me I’m 1/2 Italian shirts, as popularized by Dimes Square-type Gen Z downtowners and Jeannie from the TV show Jury Duty, respectively, both went viral last year.

³ I feel like a lot of people still don’t know that a cousin “once removed” doesn’t mean a divorce or something, it means a difference in generation as it relates to a common ancestor. For example, my first cousin and I share the same grandparents, one generational link away (our parents). My first cousin’s kid and I will never share the same set of ancestors (my grandparent is their great-grandparent), so they would be considered my first cousin once removed. My second cousin and I share the same set of great-grandparents, two generational links away (our parents and grandparents). My second cousin’s kid is my second cousin once removed. Get it??

⁴ Gaga butchers the Italian language in this one. I don’t have time to get into the racialization of Italian Americans throughout the history of the twentieth century, but it’s an anthropological topic I’m very invested in. It’s interesting how Americans, specifically born-and-raised New Yorkers, play into their ancestral roots despite being unilingual and provincial, i.e. Lady Gaga and JLo. In contrast to Gaga, other prominent Italian Americans blatantly appropriate other cultures and ethnic groups, i.e. Ariana Grande and Gwen Stefani. So much to unpack!