Blunder, Eggs & Cheese

Caveat lector, I've set loose the Awkward Aardvark.



After watching this and finally overcoming the giggles, I replayed this moment in my mind using Dave Chappelle's white person accent..."(Gasp)Ro-Sanna!"

Five Pies for a Funeral

I come home and my parents see how dirtied I am. My mom literally gasps when she sees all that soot on my once tan crocs. A catastrophe, trully. And not one of them says a thing about my goatee, even though something has always been said about a spontaneous goatee.

Yesterday morning, while preparing the daily assortment of pizzas, Edwin mentions my developing beard and asks me if I've ever sported a goatee, and I tell him how my Mom (odio) Hates it, and he tells me I would look good with it. So I carve it out of my face the following morning.

According to Mary-Anne, two daily slices, garlic powder and oregano, I look 25 with the goat.

This morning, a woman on the phone actually tells me she needs five pies for a funeral by 11:45 AM and I find out from the man who picks them up at 11:50 AM that those pies are really for a party.



The Hunger hits hard today and I don't know it until it's too late, until after I drink a Yoo-Hoo with great abandon, triggering a nice stomach ache. The Hunger is the effect of being in front of food for long periods of time that you don't really want to consume--making you feel hungry when you're not, pitting logic against instinct.

Mama-Bird surprises me when I see she's brought a geriatric friend along, whose name I only need to hear once between their deliberating--Edna, and even though I've got the concentration of a hawk while taking down their orders, I still find them more complicated than probability. My scribblings, arrows pointing to meals and turning back on themselves thanks to indecision, all sloppy and doubly-so thanks to the carbon copy. I can't help but feel like I'm drawing a Sensosketch, to put it in Cranium terms. There's my endorsement, Hasbro, buncha bitches.

Lentil soups before the salads and sausage slices cut down the middle and fucking metal utensils. After watching Mama-Bird regurgitate an eggplant parm hero and tossed salad, it reaches a surreal climax when I pass her her second sausage slice, and I turn away and she calls for my attention using her quick accent

"Uh, yah gonna hate me, but there's a hair on my slice."

And I do hate her, but mostly I hate this moment, and I find myself upset because either the wind graced us with its serendipity or Mama-Bird/Edna planted it there.

I pick the hair off the slice and examine it closely, holding it up a few inches from my face and there's no oil on it, it's just a thin and short black hair, no longer than five inches. And nobody nearby has this type of hair.

And then the haggards depart, like Titans taking their leave of a battlefield, and Neris described in very vivid detail how he would strangle her to death, allowing her to have one good last breath in between the horror of it all, and then finishing it.

There's a calm that settles in after the dinner Rush, and we take our time cleaning up, serving a random slice here and there, but ultimately preparing to close shop, and even though nobody jinxes our divine break, the day ends violently, with such a torrential shit-storm of orders that it seems personal, a vendetta against the tired and miserable.

Moods are worsened by each ring of the telephone and each customer walking through the door, triggering the motion sensor
beep
someone's here
beep
turn around

"Give me an ice, pal"

Sure, what flavor.

* phone *

"Hey bud, two buffalo chicken slices"

Sure.

* phone *

"One pie, regular, to go, please"

Let me get a ticket.

"Don't burn those pies, Anthony."

Chande's eyes widen, more alert under his black baseball cap, a segue to his thick wavy hair.

I race between the kitchen and the counter and I watch Edwin seethe at the new orders and tap at his leg with the sharpest knife I've ever used.

But it's all over eventually, and then you just shut the radio off, then the lights. And it's another night.


Foreground: Alex, or "Chande," for the sound at the end of Alexander, and in the background baking, Neris.

Buffalo Grandma

The smell coming off the paddle in the morning, dry wood, burning slowly. The moist heat of hand-sweat and Sicilian weight. Edwin shares a piece of excess crust from the white pie, a thin and hot strip of pizza, garlicky and oily and there's even a bit of ricotta and my god does it not feel like a breakfast food. I fill the machine with money. Two kids come in and I tell them to go eat breakfast and then come back. KTU has been playing non-stop Doors and I'm loving every minute of it.

We talk and blah blah. We drink at the end of the night...let it soak in like we have it the worst, but there's always worse, although I'm in no real position to say so.

The other night I was on chat roulette wearing nothing but a bathrobe.


"You look how I feel"

Bagels in the Morning

I write tonight, not because I want to, but because it makes me "tick". It gives meaning to these days...blur after blur. When no day is better than the next, when you're still feeding the regulars, nothing seems to change.

Neris tells me he's watched the tree outside of Gino's grow from a sapling into a twenty-five foot giant. I like to think about the fourth dimension as mentioned in: http://www.tenthdimension.com/medialinks.php Where we would appear a long, undulating snake of human experience, where everyday would add to the length of our physical appearance. According to Rob Bryanton, the absurdist behind this conjecture, we would be able to see our infantile self alongside ourselves at death. My point in all this, is that I like to imagine people as huge snakes, slithering around Carle Place, trying their hardest to get by each other, to cross Cherry Lane and feed at Gino's since they need it so badly.

We keep Nat Geo Wild on the television throughout most of the day--there's something liberating in the restlessness of nature, since nothing is ever lazy. We marvel at the stalking lioness, so patient and perfect waiting in the tall dead grass.

Regulars. There's Mary-Ann with her two slices and oregano, Bobby, pedophile, general public nuisance, the guy who complains about Sicilian slices no matter What, the lady, I'll call her Barbara because she looks like one, large Pepsi, lots of ice, Mama-bird, anything she can regurgitate, usually cooked well-done.

I'm trying to get a job here: http://www.mediaglobal.org/page/internship-opportunities but I have no journalistic experience besides college since nobody hires writers anymore.

I downloaded Jeff Beck's album, Emotion & Commotion recently, and the first two songs blow my MIND!

I've been rereading Fear & Loathing and I've been enjoying it. "White Rabbit" played on the radio today and I thought about Duke's attorney biting it, or at least wanting to. I like how he lets the climax of the song go by once and then requests the song be rewound for his suicide attempt.

Teaching Old Dogs to Bark

or old men to clean up after themselves, is like any other unnecessary task--tiring and ultimately self-defeating. Neris tells me this today, the old dogs saying, and I might have heard it before but it sounds new to me, and very fitting.

84 hour work-weeks...not for the weak, or the prideful. It's nice to hide in the kitchen, work a few pots and pans clean, away from the dizzying commotion of ignorant customers. The most annoying part of my day had to be the man who insisted on having the slightly larger napkins as opposed to the napkins already on his table. Boneless BBQ wings and two slices. A real splurger. I daydream about the annoying customers, because they are memorable, and they are creatures of incredible habit. I daydream about putting them all on a plane and flying them into a secluded patch of woods, somewhere in Canada, I guess...and letting them fend for themselves. Letting them get by without the extra side of sauce, or S.O.S., letting them get by without the slightly larger napkins, or that extra slice, not too hot, because they just can't wait.

Are these posts getting more and more gripey? I'm sorry if they are. These are things on my mind...you don't have to read them, even though I know many will. I would like for somebody to google "Pizzeria Experiences" and have this pop up. I think it's important to disseminate these ideas.

I splurge with Erin at Bigelow's on Sunday. We take the drive down to the Long Beach area and eat at our favorite seafood joint and I converse with a man named Anthony. And he tells me he's been working the place for twenty years and he tells me not to get caught up in my new job.

I wonder about this, and how I suppose being paid weekly, off the books, seems alright, except for the fact that there's no real progress in this. It's just hour after hour, never really improving as a person because you don't function as one. You're just a talking pit-stop in the alimentary canal of every average Joe's day.

Bigelow's Anthony has the "jitter" or that incessant habit one develops over time working at such an establishment, where you continuously wipe down, rearrange, prepare, greet and serve. There's no standing still...there's always something or someone. It's no way to live, unless you're nomadic, and even then, you still have some time to enjoy your meal, grunt about something, and maybe adjust your beautiful baby-maker.

One last thing I have to get off my chest because it makes me giggle everyday. There's one customer who looks Exfuckingactly like Jack Kehler...the guy who plays the obscure character of the Dude's landlord in The Big Lebowski.


This fucking weasel--and he always orders an entire loaf of bread with whatever he orders, lightly toasted. I never watch him consume the thing, but I assume he eats it all.

$14.12

Is a number I almost forgot while trying to remember just now--but it's also a number I thought I'd never forget, and I haven't for the past few days. It's the cost of a regular pie, taxed. And it's easy because it's nice and compartmentalized within this brain. Anything memorized in customer service is a great advantage.

Today a woman finds out she has to pay for the extra side of sauce (50 cents), and then tells me she's never coming back again.

Later, a 12 year old boy makes gesticulations of handjobs, violent ejaculations, facials, and the smearing of spunk on very circular, imaginary boobs towards a couple of perhaps 13 years each, sitting on each other. And they laughed and the shitty little kid laughed while I watched them surreptitiously and nearly died inside from terror and bitch-smacking disillusionment.

I'm damn near mortified to have a child, but more specifically a girl, but it helps to reaffirm my immaturity. I imagine when I become a Man, I'll be able to tackle these issues while feigning complete control and exhibiting my hostility through the tactful presence of an able firearm.

What else happened today?

I played WQXR on the radio while we prepared all the pies for the first hour and a half. Mahler rang through our morning routines and changed something within the men. I could tell. These three Honduran men, with as stout a work ethic as you could possibly envisage, worked quieter and somehow more efficient. It wasn't a Whitney Houston song, or a Phil Collins tune, which it usually is at that time of the morning--and it certainly wasn't anything overplayed, (Ahem, clears the throatGaga). I'm sorry to all my huge blog fans because I know a great deal of you are die-hard Gaga fans but it's not my fault Long Island radio stations cannot comprehend moderation.

Neris asked me for a classical mix-tape, and I'll make a good one because you know, Neris <3.

I would write more but there's

Explaining Myself

I'm not sure what to write about at the moment, but it has been a few days and I can tell my blog fans are starting to grow mad with anticipation.

I feel it's high time to exploit the banner phrase of this blog: "Literacy is Key".

I saw that written once on a pamphlet I found at school, and I realized, being the sensitive Nancy I am about such things, that I had very mixed emotions about it. The pamphlet went on to talk about the importance of improving one's literacy through dedication and those other "Succeed" words. And this all lead to an idea I had acquired from browsing a Nietzsche work--something about how dangerous literacy was; how when everybody's given a chance at literacy, the world becomes more and more bogged down by a perennial "fungus". This "fungus" being bullshit, fluff, immaterial writing, does more to screen or hide away the important literature, the words meant to change human perspective and foment progression than those Nazi book burning bashes.

Now we can thank blogs for this accrual of fungus and continue writing fractals of insignificance...so is it key? Supposedly, according to the Summer Institute of Linguistics, Inc., 1 billion adults in this world are illiterate. That's 26 % percent of the world's population. Something's wrong.

In regards to my previous entry, Good Friday, as it turned out, is the busiest day of the year for Gino's and I had very little rest that day. I remember cutting four pies, boxing them, taking a minute break and cutting four more pies. No rest for the right wrist. We had all ovens going that day. We prepared bag upon bag of garlic knots. I treated myself to a zeppole and I asked a lady if I had any sugar on my face as she was handing me cash, and she looked at me, bug-eyed and asked if I was playing a joke on her.

Bobby was there on Friday.

I took this picture while Bobby was talking to me. I even had the timer on the camera so there was a little orange light flashing all the while. Here he is, hovering over the grandmas and grandpas, probably emphasizing a point about war or the god-damned bible.

And here's a woman every employee at the pizzeria loathes:



It has nothing to do with her corpulence but it seemingly has everything to do with
it as well. I positioned my camera right on top of the cash register for this shot. I've nicknamed her 'Mama-bird' for her strange eating habit and I also would've taken a video of her picking at her cheese calzone and regurgitating bits of ricotta onto her aluminum sheet, but I might have been caught.

The pizzeria employees don't like her because she continually accuses Gino's of over-charging her when she eats more than she can presumably account for. If I can remember correctly: one roni slice, one calzone, one chicken hero, and one pepsi, all cooked to a crisp, except for the pepsi.

Making Dough

Another day. I can feel my spine, compressed, pissed, wondering why I'm not lying down, and I keep telling my spine that if adult men can do the work that I've been doing, then it can handle it.

Yesterday, I get to Gino’s at 10 in the morning and a man calls at 10 10 to ask for one pie to be delivered but we don’t start delivering until 12 so we speak more and I simply can’t understand the bastard's words. They sound groggy, some slow incomprehensible mush pouring out of the receiver and I tell the man “to try and annunciate” and I hear him snicker. 12:15 rolls around and the man's dead when the delivery guy, Ben, gets to the Edgewood motel. And I can't help but feel bitter towards this man for having framed a vodka bottle and perhaps leaving this world with my voice ringing last through his head. It leaves me feeling cursed but the pies must cook on?

I have to hide my dirty clothes now. I can't leave them in an open hamper anymore because the smell of sweat and pizza works its way into my dreams like a charm. And I can hear oven's opening and people walking into the joint and Joe's directions and orders and phone calls. There are a few things that keep me sane, besides my natural calm, and those things include downtime, free drinks, and Bobby. The eternal Gino's figure/loiterer. A Vietnam veteran with an armory of nonsensical stories that hangs out at Gino's for an average of probably three hours a day. Slow-moving and benign, adding to the rhythm of it all.

Supposedly Fridays are the worst.