Pizza

And then he shot his eye out.
San Francisco, California - April 2005

Two posts in one day? Yes, there is a Santa Claus.

When i got back from getting my burger, my boss came over to me desk. I thought he was going to yell at me for wrecking social security or getting this new pope elected.

"Have you tried this out?" That's one the many lines of attack he uses when he feels he's gone too long without micromanaging me. He's under the impression that I never try out or play with the software I'm documenting, so I'm just sitting at my desk blindly documenting stuff with immpecable accuracy. I'm sort of imagining that bit from SNL 30 years ago when Stevie Wonder is doing a commercial for a camera, and he's taking all the photos, missing them all, of course.

I sighed as he walked over to the tables near between my cube and the windows, where people usually eat lunch. The mental games these guys have been playing with me made me start to panic, maybe I haven't checked it out? Maybe there's been some massive change that I've missed? I sighed. "Yes, I've been...."

"Have some," he interrupted, and I could see a pizza box flip open out past the edge of my monitor.

I walked over next to him, and made some pensive yet surprised and happy sound, "Hmm," or "Oh," or "Hey!"

"They were eating this before, and they bought too much, so I'm going to have some." I went on to tell him that had I known, I wouldn't have gone out for a burger, so I'm going to pass, but there's something comforting to know that there was pizza there if I needed it. I saw him lift up a slice. The crust was thin. THIN. I mean thin like a boarding pass that has been compressed for 2000 years. I gasped. Could it be true? Could this be the thing, the one thing, that keeps us from having to pack all our crap, and the dog, and all the dog's crap, and move across the country again?

"You eat too heathy," he said as he took a bite. "Have some pizza." He often comments on my tendancy to eat fruits and vegetables and not spend my day in a Pepsi-induced seizure on the floor of my cube. If I did, that would, at least, start to explain why I'm doing the generally shitty job that I do. It's the closest thing he and I have to positive interactions, and is actually the one thing in my mind that leads me to believe he'll let me keep this job when I tell him i'd rather swallow the Transamerica Pyramid than keep living in 'Frisco.

Keep in mind, now, I've got a cheeseburger and fries on my desk. The woman at the counter, when I asked for no mayo, pulled a Paula Deen on me and "because i like you shirt," slipped me a second slice of cheese, in exchange for me smiling back at her flirtily. I feel so dirty. With this lunch waiting for me, and I'm sure something other than a big bowl of spinach about to appear at happy hour at 4:00, I am, in this nitwit's mind, eating "too healthy." And America has an obesity problem.

Well, he's my boss, and an order is an order, so rather than having to deal with him having yet another reason to tell me I suck, I said "OK, fine, twist my arm. I'll eat pizza." I picked up the smallest slice, walekd back to my desk, staring at the skinny crust, the scant layer of cheese, the curves, bumpy in the right places, smooth in the other right places. I drooled.

I took a bite.

Now, I'm not a pizza connessieur. I like the stuff. I like it a lot, but I primarily see it as a vehicle for melted cheese and tomato sauce that just by sheer chance happens to go so unbelievably well with cheap beer and baseball that it makes me question my agnosticism. I mean, I think pizza in California sucks, but that's not enough for me to throw myself from the bridge. My main problem is that it costs so much in the process of sucking. However, I do have some rules. Basically, yes on sauce, no on pineapple. Everything else is open for debate.

I've been to restaurants where it seems like the chefs have read recipes for the food they were cooking, maybe even seen some Food Channel documentaries about them, but never actually eaten the food themselves. Paella made with fake crab and ground beef in Albuquerque. Lasagne served with the pasta in one dish and everything else in another in FitzArmpit, Ireland. Risotto with the broth of Satan in San Francisco.

I don't think the chef responsible for this pizza even got past the "Pizza for Dummies" book. I'm not even sure he made it to the library.

I bit into the pizza. No, not through it. That would be too easy. I bit into it, stopped at the gate by the petrified aluminum crust. You know that feeling you get when some Nelson Muntz-type scratches chalk? I felt the shivers as I my teeth scratched across the crust, desparately trying to saw through it.

While this was going on, I started to taste the truth behind those bumps and curves. Strips of carrot. An unmistakeable taste of fennel. Mustard! Something leafy and green that I'm not convinced wasn't mint. CHEDDAR CHEESE.

Ok. Something is going on here. I couldn't believe what I was tasting. I was waiting for Alan Funt to leap from his grave and appear to tell me to smile, that I was on Candid Camera. This couldn't be true. This had to be some vague stab at a Pacific Rim-inspired pizza, but they missed like me at a Coney Island batting cage.

Mustard?!

I swallowed the bit in my mouth, threw the rest of the slice I had away, shook my fist in the direction of my boss's office, and took comfort in my burger. My sweet, sweet delicious burger.

Sadly, the boxes aren't labeled. The criminal behind what's in them will live to make pizza tomorrow.

Friday

I was traded for Gary Gaetti.
San Francisco, California - April 2005

Ah... Friday. That pretty much says it all. After a week like this one, a week in which in the dizzying high points were when people told me they didn't know what the words "DUMMY TEXT--TO BE REMOVED 4/22/05" that they found in a document meant, and a week when a coworker told me that the word "inclusive" is wrong--that I should use "includive" instead, I'm applauding myself for the small victory of making it this far, making it through the week with a job. I sort of figure that if you need more than two hands to count the number of times in a week in which you almost dropped your resignation on your boss's desk, something's not right.

In the past, I'd have taken all this, and headed out straight after work to cram all the Guinness and gin I could into myself on the way to some murky, gelatinous, pressure-treated burrito, or to the delicious dishwater at Katz's. Maybe I'd check out some music before being woken up by a bus driver, as he got off his shift, telling me how to get home from the Gun Hill depot.

Tonight, though, I think, I'll try to duck out of here early, rent something funny and mindless (suggestions?), make some pasta sauce, and wake up early tomorrow evening. How times have changed.

-=-
By popular demand, I've brought back some old favorites and immortalized them in the Sidebar's "Good Eats!" section. Enjoy.

Take Five

The politics of feeling cool.
San Francisco, California - March 2005

There's a quote in the liner notes to Time Out by the Dave Brubeck Quartet that says "Take Five wasn't supposed to be a hit. It was supposed to be a Joe Morello Drum Solo." Paul Desmond, who wrote the song said that.

Joli, Tanja, and I went to see The Dave Brubeck Quartet on Nob Hill over the weekend, and even in his mid-80s, Brubeck can still do whatever the jazz equivalent of rocking out is. It's amazing how he and the rest of the guys, none of them kids, can do what they did for those two hours.

I have to admit, I don't know much about Brubeck's music. I've only got the one album, and a greatest hits compilaiton, so I was mostly there to hear "Take Five," which I happen to be listening to now as I write this, though I've really liked what I've heard. The current drummer, Randy Jones, knows waht he was doing. His solo went on for close to ten minutes, mesmerizing. It was one of the most incredible bits of live music I've ever wittnessed. I could go on, but I have to go home.

If you ever have the chance to see the Dave Brubkeck Quartet, run, don't walk, to your nearest online ticket-selling website and get tickets. You won't regret it.

-=-
No, the dog wasn't caught in a fire. The latch on my old SRT-201 doesn't work so well, so the film door swung open while I was walking, about a block after I took that photo. That kids, is just another reason to not use digital. If not for that, this would be just another boring and uninteresting photo, rather than a boring, uniniteresting and oddly red-washed photo.