Mr. Irrelevant News Story of the DayIt's all about pizza today, folks: "Crust Is a Canvas for Pizza's New Wave" . OK, really, is pizza EVER irrelevant? Whether it's more relevant than
is a matter of personal opinion.
The writer, Frank Bruni, makes a good point about pizza: "[T]he surest element of success is balance." This is true, but it really serves more as a clarification of the points of contention than as a hard and fast metric for pizza success. Because balance is in the eye (mouth) of the beholder. If you take your basic pizza components--sauce, cheese, and toppings--the proper ratio is peculiar to each palate. Only a fool or Domino's would consider defaulting to a simple 33 1/3% apportionment of each. WOS, for example, is a 40-20-40 type: She loathes an overabundance of cheese. The Solipsist, on the other hand, can't get enough cheese: Give him a 20-40-40 everytime! (But it's imperative that the cheese be properly melty so as not to slide off the crust in a gooey mess. That's just nasty.)
The article speaks of a renaissance in pizza craftsmanship that has been going on in New York since about 2004. Gourmet pizza is all well and good, but, when it comes right down to it, aren't we all basically in love with the pizza of our youth (whatever that may be)? Sure, we know that Romeo's on 37th Avenue was probably not the grandest or best pizza in the world. But it was OUR pizza. And this, by the way, is why it's rude to snicker at residents of, say, Arkansas, who SWEAR that Mrs. Wilson's Pizza and Cake Shop features the BEST PIZZA IN THE WORLD! Of course it doesn't, but these people don't know any better.
Why, we've recently heard from a friend who swears she's found delicious pizza in (wait for it) PITTSBURGH! Adorable. Then again, she's from Canada and can't be expected to understand. When first confronted with a pizza, she thought it was just a particularly pungent device for teaching fractions.
(Digression: The Solipsist will be getting his ass kicked shortly. EOD)
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Cultural Illiteracy Check
As of this moment, here are the "Top Ten Yahoo" searches:
10. G8 Summit: A meeting of the world's 8 largest economies. Must be happening soon.
9. Swine Flu: Well, we all know what that is. Must be a popular search because Rupert (Ronald Weasley) Grint has it.
8. Judith Hill: No idea who that is or why people are looking her up.
7. Strep Throat: Uh. . . . Maybe people who look up swine flu get hooked on disease? No idea.
6: Claude Lemieux: Hockey player? Related to Mario? No idea why he's being searched.
5. Battlefield 1943: ????
4. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince: Movie coming out soon.
3. Anna Paquin: Academy-Award winning actress ("The Piano"), also plays Rogue in the X-Men franchise. No idea why she's being searched.
2. LeBron James: Well, why WOULDN'T he be searched. We heard on "SportsCenter" that he's involved in some controversy. The rumor is that he contacted Trevor Ariza (who left the Lakers for the Cavs) and assured him that he was going to stay in Cleveland after 2010, when his contract expires.
1. Steve McNair: Obvious.
OK, so we're going to give ourself a cultural literacy score of 50% for today--that is, for 5 of these ten items, we know what they are and can at least speculate on why they are major search items. If you're keeping track, we're at 40% for the week.
(Image from Pizza Hut)
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