The worst piece of pizza of all time

I’m writing my first blog in ages. I know, it’s been a while and you were probably checking back every few weeks, anxiously awaiting a new post, and utterly disappointed to find nothing new. So for all those who this entails (probably no one since my mom doesn’t know how to use the internet) here is a new posting! Something major happened that warranted my commentary.

I ATE THE WORST SLICE OF PIZZA EVER CREATED IN THE WORLD!!!!!

I know that might be strong words there, you might have had some crappy pizza once at Tony’s or Cousin’s, but trust me…nothing can compare to this slice of pizza I force-fed myself on the way home from Sofia recently.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves though, first let’s start from the beginning. Without a proper understanding of the history of pizza making you can’t fully understand how such an inedible piece of pizza could have been constructed. So, seeing as how I am not a pizza expert, let’s quickly go over to Google.com and google the world pizza. Don’t you just love to google by yourself in a hot mid-afternoon?

When googling “history of pizza” the first page that shows up is: http://www.inmamaskitchen.com/FOOD_IS_ART/pizzahistory.html . This site claims that;
“The foundations for Pizza were originally laid by the early Greeks who first baked large, round and flat breads which they ‘annointed with oil, herbs, spices and Dates.’
Tomatoes were not discovered at that time or, very likely, they would have used them as we do today.
Eventually the idea of flat bread found its way to Italy where, in the 18th century, the flat breads called "Pizzas", were sold on the streets and in the markets. They were not topped with anything but were enjoyed au naturel. Since they were relatively cheap to make, were tasty and filling, they were sold to the poor all over Naples by street vendors.The acceptance of the tomato by the Neapolitans and the visit of a queen contributed to the Pizza as we know and enjoy it today.
In about 1889, Queen Margherita, accompanied by her husband, Umberto I, took an inspection tour of her Italian Kingdom. During her travels around Italy she saw many people, especially the peasants, eating this large, flat bread. Curious, the queen ordered her guards to bring her one of these Pizza breads. The Queen loved the bread and would eat it every time she was out amongst the people, which caused some consternation in Court circles. It was not seemly for a Queen to dine on peasant's food.
Never the less, the queen loved the bread and decided to take matters into her own hands. Summoning Chef Rafaelle Esposito from his pizzeria to the royal palace, the queen ordered him to bake a selection of pizzas for her pleasure.
To honor the queen who was so beloved by her subjects, Rafaelle decided to make a very special pizza just for her. He baked a Pizza topped with tomatoes, Mozarella Cheese, and fresh Basil (to represent the colors of the Italian flag: Red, white, and green).
This became Queen Margherita's favorite pizza and when word got out that this was one of the queen's favorite foods, she became even more popular with the Italian people. She also started a culinary tradition, the Pizza Margherita, which lasts to this very day in Naples and has now spread throughout the world.”
That being said, I think it is interesting to note that in Bulgaria, the plain cheese pizza is also called the margarita. I learned something new today thanks to Google! Bravo Google, Bravo! I originally just thought it was a cool name due to its similarity to a tasty Mexican drink, but now it has a whole ‘nother meaning.
Okay, so this piece of pizza that I ate was NOT a slice of margarita pizza. Let me briefly describe it for you. The crust was like taking a piece of cardboard (it had roughly the same thickness) and putting it under a heat lamp for approximately 3 to 40 hours. After this step is finished, you haphazardly throw some old ketchup on top of the cardboard (but not enough ketchup to make the piece of cardboard moist enough to swallow). Replace under the heat lamp for another round of 3 to 40 hours. Following this step comes the addition of pickles and corn, yeah you heard right, CORN. Who eats corn on pizza? Let me answer that one…ME…unhappily. I hate corn and it’s even worse when they finish the next step, which is putting the cardboard/ketchup/corn/pickle mess back under the heat lamp for another 3 to 40 hours. Okay, here is the fun part. They next put on pieces of what I assume is ham and cheese…sounds like a lovely sandwich right? Wrong! They put this whole diabolical concoction under the heat lamp for a final 5 day dry-fest making the pizza less palatable than communion crackers minus the wine.
You might think I’m just a pizza snob, but trust me, my University days saw many nights of bad free pizza from the college cafeteria (a friend worked there). Okay, so to make things look more pleasant, let me tell you something about good pizza.

I started my love affair with pizza back in the day when I had a great association with pizza and reading books. Sounds like an odd combination? Well then, you’ve obviously never taken part in Pizza Hut’s “Book It” program. I have pretty much them to thank for making reading cool back in school and actually making me want to read such lovely books as “Where the Wild Things Are” and “The Sign of the Seahorse.” There was nothing better than a free pan pizza after slaving hours over a book that I really didn’t want to read, the whole time just thinking “finish this or you won’t get the pizza!”

Mmmm. Delicious. I can just taste the pizza right now. Aww, I’m so far away from any pizza hut. I guess I can take a bus to go to Sofia but it isn’t quite the same. But anyways, that was probably my first memory of eating pizza, and it’s a fond memory.

Wait a second, lets go even further back…I just have a memory of pizza that predates the book it era. I remember my family and I would go to Showbiz Pizza (a chucky cheese type place) when I was young. I remember I loved the pizza (much better than chucky’s) and the games were great. I’d always come home with cheap plastic spider rings, stickers and a tummy ache from too much soda and pizza. Those were the simple days.

Okay, now let’s fast forward to late elementary school. I played right guard for the Hempfield school district C midget football team. I wasn’t very good but it didn’t matter. After every win we’d go out to eat pizza. Sometimes at Two Cousins, sometimes Brothers, but every time it was well worth getting thrown around and bruises on my ass for the free pizza and cokes. Man, I am definitely a lover of pizza. Can you tell yet? I’ve already written 1,197 words about nothing but pizza…well, that and the “book it” program…make that 1,210 now…thank god for the word count feature (1,219).

Okay, back to pizza memories. I can distinctly remember my firsts; sausage and mushroom pizza, Hawaiian pizza and BBQ chicken pizza.

I remember being at a boy scouts outing at an old army barracks in Carlisle where we slept over and I ate my first pizza with sausage and mushrooms. Before this pizza, I was either plain cheese or pepperoni. This was new territory for me, and it was exciting and scary at the same time. I’m glad I decided to try this new concoction because it has gone on to become one of my favorite ways to make a pizza.

Years later, I heard about some newfangled Hawaiian pizza. The Hawaiian pizza sounded much more risky and very gross to me, and took some coaxing for me to put it in my mouth, but once I had a bite wedged between my incisors, canines, bicuspids and molars (I didn’t have wisdom teeth in at the time and have recently had them removed) I was in culinary heaven. Who would have thought that pineapple and ham would just totally explode the gastronomic boundaries of an otherwise ordinary cheese pizza? Probably the same person who thought that pickles and corn would be great. Unfortunately lightning never strikes twice.

BBQ chicken pizza from Papa John’s was a staple of poker night with the guys from regal cinemas in 2005. Not only would I kick ass and win money while having fun and drinking, but Andy would bring in free pizzas when he got off of work and I would sit and lovingly devour slice after slice of Papa John’s best pizza ever. Oh, and if you bought this pizza before, it was nothing like the pizza we ate there. Andy would put extra everything and make it twice as delicious. Mmmm. I kind of want to leave right now to eat a slice of this delicious pizza. I think this was the highest peak in pizza making, I have yet to taste a tastier slice of pizza than the one I’d eat at the poker table. It gave me the fuel I need to come home about 40 bucks over what I came to the table with. Thanks Dave and Andy.

I don’t mean to go off on a diatribe but I’m going to do just that. Well, I guess that makes me a liar then, because I did mean to go off on a diatribe all along. I guess I just wanted to sound like I wanted to stay on task even though I had every intention of going off on a diatribe. If you are still reading this, I think either you are very bored and lonely, or have a great attention span. So, I should probably be rewarding you, the reader, with something on the point of topic and interesting, but rather I’m going to go on a diatribe.

I just looked up the word “diatribe” on dictionary.com to make sure that I am using the word correctly. It sounds right, but I want to make sure. Here is what they have to say: “a bitter, sharply abusive denunciation, attack, or criticism: repeated diatribes against the senator.” Okay, I was wrong, that isn’t the word I wanted to use. I am too lazy to change what I typed, so now I’m just going to write a simple phrase like “off-topic.”

Here is an off-topic paragraph in which I will tell you about something that I find to be very entertaining. If you are still reading this, and want something more interesting to do, check out www.tomgreen.com now, but then come back and read the rest of this post. I promise you that it won’t be a complete waste of time when you get to the ending of this post. Okay, so more on tomgreen.com. Definitely check it out. He does a very cutting edge, mixing of all media style talk show that has b-list guests that are normally very hilarious. I highly recommending checking out any episode with (in my opinion) one of the funniest guys in the world, Harland Williams. I often tell people I’m related to Harland Williams but really I have no proof. Look at me going all off-topic on an off-topic paragraph. Does that make it an off-off-topic paragraph? Well I guess not the entire paragraph, just the section which was off-topic. So it would be called an off-topic section in an off-topic paragraph. But anyways, check out the show and I think you will be happy to waste an hour watching. (1,977)

Okay, you’ve probably come to the realization that I have been writing this as a bet that I can’t write 3,000 words on just the worst piece of pizza I have ever tasted. That currently pust me at about 1,000 more words to go until I can finish this useless blog and get back to watching Myth Busters. How am I going to fill out another 1,000 words? Probably with the same crap stream of consciousness style I have been employing this whole post to stretch out the word count, using ideas that normally wouldn’t be put in a post. For example, the whole section with the history of pizza verbatim from the website. I would normally just give a short recap of that information, but knowing that I have 3,000 words to write, I decided to leave it in, in its entirety. Another example is the previous 2 sentences. The fact that I would include this paragraph into my blog either shows that I’m a bad writer, or employing self-deprecating paragraphs in an attempt to sound hip and cool…like I don’t care what you think.

But I guess it depends on who you are. If you’re a hot chick, then yeah, I do want to come off as a witty, and humble guy who just so happened to fall victim to the worst slice of pizza known to man. If you are not the previously mention variety of person, then I guess I aim to at least be interesting.

Okay, now it’s time to get back to the meat and potatoes of the blog. There’s about 800 more words and I can probably bang them out without straying too far from the topic of the worst piece of pizza I’ve ever eaten. I mean, I wrote papers in college the night before the deadline while hopped up on Redbulls, totally not sure what I was writing, and eeked out an A or B. So this shouldn’t be too hard.

Well there I was, about to get on the train with only a few minutes before the departure and an empty stomach, screaming for some food. I think the poor woman heard my stomach complaining with a gargling noise, because I saw her speed up in her preparation (putting the pizza in a microwave and heating it). I should at least be thankful she did this, because a cold piece of cardboard/ketchup/corn and pickles/ham and cheese pizza would have been even more disgusting.

I got into the train car, sat down and took a bite of the pizza. I knew right then I was in for a demon-hell ride. My stomach and my taste buds were taking action in a civil war, one wanted to be fed, the other wanted to avoid the horrible flavor. Eventually, with lots of willpower from my brain, I forced my taste buds to back down so I could give my body some sustenance in which I could manage to stay alive at least long enough until the end of the train ride, where I would hopefully hit up a pancake stand or buy some orange juice to wash my mouth of the hideous flavor.

As I sat there on my train seat it donned on me, this is the worst piece of pizza ever created. You might argue that all the slices from that particular pizza are probably equally as crappy, and that would make sense, but I forgot to tell you that mine had a big spot where the crust bubbled up, pushing away the cheese/ham/pickles/corn/ketchup, leaving a dry and crusty spot in the center of my slice. Therefore, this in fact was the worst slice of pizza off the worst pizza ever created in the history of mankind. If we could keep a small sample of every pizza ever cooked all the way back from the Greeks to the present date, we would see that nothing came close to the utter revolting qualities that were present in this pizza. If Rodney Dangerfield had eaten this pizza he would have expected a free hat.

So, like I said, I was there and the light bulb with on in my head that there could not have possibly been a worse slice of pizza baked anywhere at anytime when I turned to Jim and told him this. I’m not sure, but at first he seemed skeptical. He gave me a shifty glance, raised one eyebrow and asked “not cutting the butter eh?” I obviously was a little upset that he didn’t take my proclamation with the seriousness that it deserved. I think it deserved a little more fanfare…not exactly a parade with whistles and streamers and the mayor of Sofia presenting me with a key to the city to apologize for the crappy pizza…but some sympathy would have been nice.

Why, of all people, would I be the one who would have to eat such a horrible slice of pizza? I have always been a good person. I mean, I’m not perfect, I have done bad things like not tipping the waitress at Eat-N-Park and drinking a floater at a bar, but I’m still a pretty good person. And there I was, staring face to face with the half-eaten equivalent to Blues Brothers 2000 in my hand. For me, as such a connoisseur of pizza, things couldn’t get worse.

Oh, and you have to understand that I have had an opened mind when it came to trying another culture’s variation of pizza. I have eaten it with ketchup and mayonnaise…I have eaten it, and grown a liking, with mustard. But, this pizza was so bad that I don’t think I can excuse the makers for making it. It was almost as bad as reading through this lame blog. Especially when considering the main attempt of this post is not to entertain, but to reach a pre-determined word count of 3,000 words just to prove a point. That I can write a steaming pile of crap blog about a steaming pile of crap pizza and just might get some people to read it in its entirety and comment on it. Okay, time for word count…oh I need more, its only 2,998…Screw Flanders!

Christmas package finally made its way to my tiny town...

So I got this Amazing Christmas package from home yesterday. I was so excited. In it there was so much candy and good stuff. Like the hand-held texas hold'em video game, which will make traveling on buses much more enjoyable. My parents are so smart, didnt even think to ask for something like that. I also got a 2 foot long pepperoni...mmmm...that will be delicous. Oh, and I got the new Sublime "everything under the sun" box set from my sister, which is full of rare sublime songs. So I'll be happy for atleast a few months with these new toys.

On a less happy note, I got another present. At first I was excited, the new Steven King book. I've never really read any Steven King, so I figured this is a good time to start. I got about 4 pages into the book until I realized it is about zombies. Uh oh, it's time for an embarrasing admission. I'm deathly and irrationally afraid of Zombies! For some people its spiders or snakes or clowns, but for me its something even sillier, something impossible (atleast I hope for my sake it's impossible). But yeah, I had so much trouble falling asleep last night because I kept thinking about some zombie breaking through my window and chowing on my skull as I lay there sleeping. Every sound I heard was an undead person on their way for my brains. Even the donkies sounded like zombies to me last night.

Yeah, I'm an idiot...

Texas Double Whopper

Okay, so I was having trouble falling asleep tonight, for the 3rd night and a row, so I figured I'd just write something to clear my mind..And what have I been thinking about? Fast food!

My last (and probably the tastiest) stop at a fast food joint when I was home for Christmas was at Burger King. They have a new burger there called the Texas Double Whopper. Now there is a decadent and completely depraved burger for a hunger that can only be cured by hot beef. Not only is it a whopper patty (which by the way is a pretty big burger) but they double it and put two whopper patties on this sandwich. But wait, there's more. They also put bacon and cheese and jalapenos and mayonnaise and other things that will turn your arteries into a sludge-sickle...

No wonder Americans are overweight. I'm probably just writing this out of jealousy though, because right now the Texas Double Whopper sounds banging. I had probably my 200th Shopska Salata today...

And another random thought..Why does MTV suck? It's one of the few channels I get that comes in English and has some viewable programming, but there is always "super sweet sixteen" on. Come on MTV, it's time you have a girl on that show with at least some redeeming qualities. I was fooled the last time I watched, there was an orphan girl who was just adopted and I thought, "finally, a girl with a soul on this show!" But alas, I was mistaken, she demanded a BMW and a bunch of other wildly spoiled and snobbish things for her 16th birthday. Way to pick programming to send overseas to represent our nation MTV...You suck!

Peanutbutter Terrorist

You know the world is messed up when peanut butter is seen as a potentially dangerous weapon of terror.

My four jars of delicious Skippy brand chunky peanut butter were confiscated by a polite and slightly embarrassed security woman at the JFK airport this past Thursday.

"Rules are rules"

"Peanut butter?"

"It's a liquid."

"Only when heated...I promise not to heat it during the flight. I just want to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in Bulgaria."

There is nothing more wholesome and American than a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And I am a Peace Corps volunteer. Shouldn't that speak for something? Well, I guess it's possible to go to great lengths, living in Bulgaria for 8 months, just as a front to cover my plans of utter terror involving 4 jars of chunky peanut butter.

So that was Thursday, when I arrived at Heathrow in London for my change-over I had to consolidate 2 overstuffed bags into one...for no apparent reason. So, goodbye Golden Grahms and Captain Crunch. Not to mention Rice-a-roni. Let's not talk about that.

Yesterday (saturday) was interesting. I went to the bus stop to go to Pleven and as we were leaving the bus was chased by a group of drunk men dressed as goats with sticks. I was later told that this is a Bulgarian tradition. They are called Kokeri (sp?) and they somehow drive away ghosts and give good luck for the coming year. I'm not going to make judgements about this tradition because where I live they think eating pork and sauerkraut will give you good luck for the year. At least this tradition seems to be fun.