round table 10/9/09

when i was little, i loved pizza chains. my parents never let me play video games with action, blood or anything really fun, so the pizza restaurants, equipped with arcades, became a place not only to stuff my face, but to play the video games that i was always refused access to.

as an adult, i've eaten at chain pizza places maybe twice. tonight, i wanted to relive my childhood and decided to go to round table pizza.

i ordered a pizza with mushrooms, olives and onions, not because i love them but because i needed some obvious way to distinguish between the pizza i was eating and the cardboard box that it came in.

mocking pizza is everyone's favorite pastime. people will tell you that new york has the best pizza on the planet, "better than in italy," they say, and that everything else falls completely flat in comparison. but considering that 8 million people live in new york and 6+ billion live outside of it, i have to assume that there's some quality pizza for the rest of us somwhere. that said, the 14" dreck pie i had tonight was not it.

i'm okay with having crap pizza from chain restaurants and i'm even okay with paying way more for it here than in new york. what i'm not okay with is biting through three slices, never tasting a difference between the "crust" and the slop on top of it.

i felt betrayed. scorned by my dinner, i made plans to effectively sleep with someone else. as soon as i was done, i sped to an ice cream shop and ordered a two-scoop ice cream cup with cookie dough and chocolate-with-more-chocolatey-shit-in-it.

i can't say that it erased the pain of my crap pizza, but it did stifle my hurt. in a time when the economy is in the tank, when all seems lost and pizza isn't even comfort food, it's good to know that ice cream is still there to distract me from reality.