Pizza

Well, it’s pizza day.
Because I’m only human.

Easily my biggest complaint about Big Data and the ever more invasive algorithms pushing privacy toward extinction is that it took less than an instant to math out my life’s equation, conclude that x=pizza, then feed that data to advertisers so they could populate every For Sale pixel of onscreen real estate with Domino’s Pizza ads. A man can only resist such an onslaught for so long. About exactly 3 weeks.

Now, the best pizza in the world exists in Fort Collins at a place called Krazy Karl’s. It’s a straightforward sauce/cheese base topped by a smattering of bacon and jalapenos with globs of cream cheese glooped systematically every two or three inches. Best practice is to prep the palate with four sturdy beers, dip each bite of za in spicy ranch, ascend to heaven. Problem is, I live 68 minutes away from Krazy Karl’s.

So, Domino’s. Targeted advertising wins.

And Domino’s is fine! Better than fine, even, once you subject yourself to three weeks of decidedly un-fine flavor depravity. The floor for pizza is a six, and I’ll dare to say that Domino’s occasionally hits an eight. The main problem with pizza day is one of logistics. To order anything less than a Large is to thumb your nose at the optimal middle-to-crust ratio – as egregious an act of self-sabotage as one can find on pizza day. Have fun chewing bread after two bites. And then to not order cheesy bread is to disrespect the accomplishments of a Domino’s R&D department that recognized the public’s apathy toward the “let’s sprinkle some cheese on some bread” formula agreed upon by seemingly every pizzeria, and started implanting half-pound blocks of mozzarella in overseasoned loaves of overgreasy bread. So that’s a guaranteed twenty dollar/twelve thousand calorie order, and I’m just one man. Friends would help, but somehow every split-a-pizza-level friend has a differing philosophy on topping selection, the majority of them corrupted by the pervasiveness of pepperoni.

Pepperoni is bullshit.

Well, that’s not true.

Pepperoni on pizza is bullshit, pepperoni on sandwiches is a revelation. Cold pepperoni on a sandwich adds a slight tang, elevating whatever other underperforming cold cuts were thrown on there – looking at you, moist ham – without ever becoming a solo act. Once baked on a pizza, though, each slice releases and then soaks in its own grease, transforming a pristine field of cheese into a minefield of salty meat pools. And those suckers pack so much grease that it breaks containment and coats the entire pizza, soaking through the cheese and dulling the vibrancy of the marinara, reducing a diverse array of flavors into one salty disappointment. Hard pass.

Other than pepperoni, though, I support all toppings. I mean, mushrooms add nothing, and tomatoes are redundant, and sausage is just wannabe pepperoni, and green peppers make the whole pie taste like a garden while adding negligible nutritional gain, and spinach is just there so you can pretend you’re eating healthy, and I once ate half a 40” pizza with banana peppers so now I can’t eat banana peppers, but basically I support all toppings.

All that being said, my go to order is six cheese, so go ahead and ignore me. But know that those six cheeses – listed on the website as provolone, cheddar, feta, parmesan, asiago, and…cheese – dunked (or doused) in ranch and sriracha, create a taste bud tickling cocktail that tastes like everything and nothing at once. And between that and the cheesy bread you can account for nearly 5000% of your recommended weekly value of dairy in one simple order, so that’s nice. I handle leftover pizza the same way I handle cheese that’s not connected to carbs, which is to say, poorly. All this pizza is going to end up inside this body eventually, so yeah I should probably just go ahead and have a third slice for breakfast.

And I’ll try to keep this thing about the food, but for the second day in a row, Neighbor Steve failed to live up to his duty as the blog’s unofficial sriracha sponsor. Now, obviously I can’t relieve him of his position until I stop not buying sriracha myself, and I really have no right to even be mad at him, the man’s just trying to live his life untethered to a needy neighbor itching for a heat fix. But I think I’ll still be a little mad at him. Mad enough that I might not tell him that he keeps forgetting to lock his door. The neighborhood is nice enough that I can morally absorb his added risk of property theft. Selfish? Yes. Somewhat rude? Eh. But the blog must go on, and Neighbor Steve understands that. I’m sure.