Favorite Drinks

In order of refreshing(ness):

1. Water

2. Milk

3. Arizona Iced Tea

Deliveries for the Liveries and General Contempt for Pedophiliacs

My readers should understand that this blog was started because before I began working at a pizzeria, I literally googled "Pizzeria Experiences" because I'm a wuss and I wanted to know what I was getting myself into. It seems like a generic-enough job, but what about the intricacies of each day? The idiosyncratic annoyances each customer poses?

I delve into this for you, and for my sanity, otherwise it would all go unnoticed and I would be suffering and laughing and sweating alone and as Mephistophilis gracefully put it: Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris--misery loves company.

For the past two days, I worked the counter and I made deliveries. Working the counter means: tending the register, spinning pies, wiping down the counter, arranging the slices behind the display case, actual congenial for the customers and occasionally microwaving rice-balls.

Nothing special with counter-work, but the deliveries, oh the deliveries.

The deluge on Saturday flooded Old Country Road and stranded everyone, but more importantly, me and my deliveries. And when I got to one of the houses, I was greeted by an amiable creature, a calm golden retriever. Out of the thirty or so houses with a dog inside, this was the only one that didn't bark like an idiot when I arrived. The owners let me pet the dog, with very little reserve. They introduced me.

"This is Max."

And I fell in love.

I remember there was some other dog, some mutt somewhere that whined quite a bit, really anxiously, ahh yes, I remember now. The mutt belonged to a family packing for a surprise disney trip--what happy little children they would soon have--the delivery boy, being made aware of such things, such privilege.

At another house, a man answers his door buck-naked, barely shielding his johnson with a towel when I show my disgusted surprise.

"Woah! You alright over there?"

"Yeah, yeah I'm sorry about this, just got out of the shower."

"Alright, $22.50, sir"

I don't remember at what point he says it, but he says "...still hot out there, ain't it?" and it was...And when he gets back, he's still cupping his crotch with the goddamned towel, and I can't believe his audacity, leaving me feeling anxious/harassed, but he tips me well, the hairy bastard.

An old lady living on some obscure cul de sac made me very aware of her fragility, just watching her live for our little shared moment, the quick and ungainly pitter-patter of geriatric feet.

There was a delivery to the Hampton Inn's front desk, a 10-15 minute pain-in-the-ass drive from the pizzeria, and when I tell the manager the price, he looks at me and tells me, very calmly, as if he's practiced this very monologue, "Full-price, huh? I can't believe you would disrespect us in such a way, such a slap in the face to my employees. "

Instinctively, I want to laugh, because he used the phrase, "...a slap in the face," but I try to understand before jumping on the defensive--bringing up how we normally do give discounts to our partners and how whoever handled the order just didn't realize at the time the egregious error they had made in forgetting to deduce three or so dollars from our standard price.

I tell him a simple phone call could rectify the situation, but he outright refuses to negotiate; the price, in his mind, is finalized. It has become personal.

"After all the business we've given you, after every reference we've given our customers. You can tell your boss we're no longer interested in doing business with you." And he hands me the little stack of menus from behind the desk, and I open up his pizza box and throw this dog poop I keep in my pocket for emergencies right in the middle of it--the steam from the pizza liquifying the whole mess surprisingly fast.

The poop part isn't real, but the manager leaves and I ask his quiet minion, who was standing next to the manager the entire charade, "Am I crazy?" And he tells me something obsequious to the effect of "Whatever the boss says..."

And you know, fuck it.

Later, I deliver a pie to someone's backyard, where there's a pool with three children jumping in and out of it, screaming ebullience, and three adults, lounging along the perimeter with mixed drinks, a happy calm between them all, and now exuding outwardly: "...Want to jump in?"

And short story short, I do, and it's more amazing than I imagined and the kids jump in right after me, screaming, "I can't believe it! I can't believe he jumped in! Yay! YAY!"

It was basically like this, but in a pool, and I got paid for it. And when I reluctantly hoisted myself out of the pool, the two little girls pushed me back in, proving that happiness can love company as well.

My car's thermometer, while sitting in the sun for a few hours reached 136 today, I remember it reached 148 at Bonnaroo.

...Sitting in the traffic between these destinations, these strange people, often wonderful, and entirely intriguing...

Ugly looking thing

traffic at a dead halt

beneath a bright beacon of green

trying so hard to signal the opposite

And no refreshing air to be had

just the muggy throwback

swimming in an ocean you could sweat in

--

That was an impromptu poem. Redundant? Maybe.

And as to the pedophiles mentioned in the title of this post, I just had to ask Bobby, that old veteran who comes in just to watch the phone girls work, what he was looking at today, since he was very obviously scrutinizing the movements of one of my co-workers. And he told me some bullshit about trying to "figure out [the girl's] dowry because women are the most expensive beings to maintain," or something, and then I had to make sure he was talking about "...women, right, Bobby? Not girls, women."

And even though he defended my freedom at one point or another, I still hate the bastard, and I wrote so on my drinking cup today, to distinguish mine from the rest.

"I HATE BOBBY"

The weekend fades to darkness and I drive home, my car still emitting the pungent scent of seafood fra diavolo. I arrive at the intersection of Glen Cove Road and Westbury and the light is yellow and I know I can make it. I drive through it and before I reach the beginning of the next street, I'm cut off by another driver making a quick turn in front of me, and I notice a flash of light behind me. A ticket. A $50 traffic violation as automatic as my ensuing anger. I scream one obscenity, bang the wheel of my car once, and allow the give-and-take of life to settle in like smoke.

"...but you will blow me first"

If you missed the Mel Gibson scandal, you can learn about it anywhere on the internet. Basically, he's a mean guy and he punches his wife and after a long, threatening, and racist diatribe, he told said this to her "(see above)".

William Wallace, the actual historic character Gibson portrayed in Braveheart, made belts with the skin of his enemies...and was also bat-shit insane.

Update: To be fair, Oksana Grigorieva, Gibson's spouse, attempted to extort $10,000,000 from Gibson in order to keep the recordings of his unmitigated rage private.

Money, money. I used to evaluate large sums of money by figuring how many slices of my favorite pizza (which no longer exists) I could buy with it: 4,000,000 slices, that's 500,000 pizza pies.

In the latest recording, Oksana placidly tells Gibson that she never asked for his money, or something to that effect, and through Gibson's seething rebukes, I can't help but feel a bit of the gold-digger sting myself...not to legitimize anything that Gibson said.



I mean hey, it's Mel Gibson! Come on!

A Very Hetero Manhunk List

For a somewhat recent job application to an online media site, they asked me for ideas I'd pitch, to fill up the space, I suppose, and I suggested a few I had thought out beforehand.

One of them being: A Very Hetero Manhunk List. But I've grown impatient and gone ahead with it on me own.

If something seems inserted, it's because it was, thanks to Wiki wiki and Imdb. Here it is, in no particular order:

1. Daniel Day Lewis



A great website I often visit is The Art of Manliness. It sounds cheesy because it often is, but there are a plethora of good articles in there. One of them makes a distinction between two similar words:

"manliness"; virtues and values men should strive for such as bravery, honor, and loyalty.

Then there's my idea of "manly"; medium-rare steaks, drinking brews with the buds, punching bears, and The Last of the Mohicans (1992)

Everyone who's seen this film understands that no other film has a better ending fight scene so I don't really have to go into depth there.

During the production of The Last of the Mohicans he built a canoe, learned to track and skin animals, and perfected the use of a 12-pound flintlock gun, which he took everywhere he went, even to a Christmas dinner.

Then we have his remarkable portrayal as the nefarious nationalist, Bill the Butcher in Gangs of New York (2002).

While on set for the production of Gangs of New York, he would talk with a New York accent and sharpen his knives at lunch.

I could laud his performance all day but there's no thesis here, just very declaratory sagacity.

Haha, English can't help but make me sound like a pompous pedant--a real hoity-toity.

I feel compelled to mention Lewis' role in There Will Be Blood (2007) not only because of this very hetero and comprehensive manhunk list, but because of that current exponential problem laying waste to the gulf and ensuing coast line.

[Daniel Day Lewis on researching his role as PLAINVIEW in There Will Be Blood]: "I read a lot of correspondence dating from that period. Decent middle-class lives with wives and children were abandoned to pursue this elusive possibility. They were bank clerks and shipping agents and teachers. They all fled West for a sniff of cheap money. And they made it up as they went along. No one knew how to drill for oil. Initially, they scooped it out of the ground in saucepans. It was man at his most animalistic, sifting through filth to find bright, sparkly things."

I wasn't going to include that excerpt but I enjoyed his voice throughout it--very measured and articulate, almost, I dare venture to say, enrapturing with its honest simplicity.

2. Pierce Brosnan (Exclusively in GoldenEye)

I say exclusively because, there was simply something to it--some methodology to his attractiveness, his ulterior role in awakening the secret agent in all pre-pubescent boys, or at least he did for me, since Sean and Roger's portrayals were never very salient...I know Pierce was in Mars Attacks! but how can we really look at this man the same after Mama Mia! both exclamatory for reasons unknown...

But here, we can admire his poofy hair and fitted tuxedo and Walther PPK--not to mention the opening sequence of the film where he bitch slaps the great majority of the Russian army in their own facility and escapes via helicopter via riding off a cliff on a motorcycle.

And then there was this to solidify it all for years to come...Slappers Only!:

3. Hugh Jackman

I call him Hugh Jackedman.

There are plenty of shots of him as Wolverine but I figured this French movie poster did proper justice, considering the way it captures his roar amidst an oncoming storm, and his augmented crotchal-region...I mean I could be wrong, but my jeans don't necessarily do that when I'm angry.

Some facts from the film X-Men (2000), since it's my favorite of the three.

Gary Sinise was the studio's preferred option for the role of Wolverine. --That's right, Lieutenant Dan.

Despite being nearly 6 feet tall, James Marsden (Cyclops) had to wear platform shoes so that he would appear taller than Hugh Jackman (6'2")

Jackman got his testicles caught in his harness after a 6 foot jump off the set's Statue of Liberty--but rest easy friends, those Adamantium jewels withstood the ordeal and would play a crucial role in the next year when Jackman would portray Stanley Jobson, the world's greatest hacker in the film Swordfish (2001).

4. Jimmy Kimmel

Now, "manhunk," although vague in its etymology, can translate a number of ways. I for one, am lazy, and do not wish to delineate the multitudinous definitions one can ascribe to the word "manhunk," but will instead allow for the subsequent video to voice my sentiment.

Although I felt conflicted as to who would fill the fifth spot on this contrived list, I've decided upon

5. Vigo Mortenssen (Exclusively in The Lord of the Rings Trilogy)

I just want to say I feel privileged to have grown up with this trilogy. This is my Star Wars.

There's one particular scene that tickles my knurl, which was so excellently defined by Deez Nuts on Joe Mama's face--the scene near the end of The Fellowship where Aragorn decides he can handle infinite orcs while the others get a head start.

It starts with this singular shot of Aragorn, measuring up his off-screen foes, and suddenly leads to...

a mirthful massacre of orcs and plenty more to dish.

I love how you can find pretty much any screen shot from this entire trilogy on the internet thanks to prudent fans.

6. Keith Carradine (Exclusively in Dexter--FBI Special Agent Frank Lundy)

I believe every fan of the Dexter series remembers when Frank Lundy first walked into Miami Metro Police Department, exuding professionalism, confidence, and raw sex.

That's right, sex. Looks like lucky Deb's got some hot boobs resting under her boobs.

Before I delve into any other salacious aspect of Lundy's being, such as his surprisingly toned old-man buttocks, I should say I found his teeth distracting...I don't remember why in retrospect, maybe they were yellowish, perhaps too many FBI coffees, but I still found him an incredible addition to the ensemble that is the Dexter masterpiece.

Dexter is such a powerful character on his own, letting the mask of his sanity slip only when necessary, that I couldn't help but giggle like an Irish school-girl at the following exchange between him and Lundy, pitting Dexter as the inexperienced one, hiding in the mouth of the lion.

Dexter Morgan: Hi, you wanted to...

Special Agent Frank Lundy: Morgan, come in. Can I offer you some tea?

Dexter Morgan: Uh, no, thank you. I'm...

Dexter Morgan: [thinking] And he pours it anyway. He's trying to throw me off balance, show that I don't have the power to say no to him.

Special Agent Frank Lundy: How about some sesame crackers to go with that?

Dexter Morgan: [thinking] So I'll say yes to everything.

Dexter Morgan: I'd love some.

Special Agent Frank Lundy: Oh. Sorry. Guess I ate them all.

Dexter Morgan: [thinking] Asshole.

--

Although I basically just picked out amazing actors from amazing scenes/films, I still feel strongly towards my choices, and I plan on expanding upon this list, whenever my boredom's piqued.

I'm No Different From the Morning Birds

I woke up this morning at 3 because I took a long nap after dinner and because I had a nightmare about my shadow incarnate. And it's just me now, in the middle of my messy room, listening to the fan and romanticizing cross-country adventures. I actually googled walk across America, and I found a journal titled "I'm Just Walkin'". I like the sign on his cart and the way he labels things, but I find he doesn't write enough and that he takes too many pictures of plain expanses of land, local bags of chips, and mailboxes. To each his own, but I still admire him, and the apparent congeniality of the North American states.

I've been thinking about it more and more so. How Jules in Pulp Fiction talks about wanting to just "...walk the Earth," and how Forrest Gump did it a little quicker, and how the father and son in McCarthy's The Road never let the fire die, and how adventures never come home. An Australian girl named Jessica Watson circumnavigated the globe in a sailboat, but she was too young to be considered for a world record.

A man asked me for change today on Mineola Blvd. and I asked him a few questions since I didn't initially hear him. What had happened to his income? Why he was there...and so forth. And he rolled up his pant legs and showed me the turgid socks, brown filth speckling through. He seemed to be suffering from gout, and the hospital could only do so much about it, he told me. And I remembered volunteering at the hospital and seeing this type of thing much worse, cancerous growths blowing up legs to incredible proportions.

And I thought and thought about it, his immobility, hopelessness, and is it recklessness to envisage such a journey when others cannot, will not, will never be able to? All my life, I've been keen on documenting my experiences through the idiosyncratic lens that is my written voice, and I wonder about the travel, and is there something else that can be done to make it more, reverential...How can one bring about change through something big and small at the same time?

The Effects of One Rugrats Episode

Almost refreshing isn't it?

Call me childish, but life is one big regression as far as my new boss tells me,

and why not venture back to Rugrats? A lot of conversations naturally veer in this direction, the Nickelodeon direction, and I'm not crazy because I've seen it happen.

I like to think that the first person to actually use the terms "rug rat(s)," instinctively, was this fantastic guy:

The purpose of this entry though, is not just for idle reminiscing, but because of one particular episode you might be able to recall, unless you're like me and it permanently affected your psyche, in which case you would not have forgotten.

The episode where Chuckie swallows a watermelon seed and the rugrats thought if he didn't get it out, it would grow into a real watermelon.

There's really no more plot to explain besides how they all shrink and traipse around Chuckie's insides without ever suffering a casualty.

But this affected the way I viewed fruit, and eating seeds, especially in watermelons, and I recently realized how fucking silly it's all been...but I'm almost positive this episode was the cause of it all.

Here's an actually creepy picture of a watermelon, to get all your cravings going. Haha.

Unrelated, a video of a man that looks like he's continuously being mauled, but actually just giving really big cats, really big hugs.

Creep Killer

Surprise, I worked the pizzeria today, and as I walked through the door, I was told, "Hurry up, Anthony, we're backed up," and I see the most experienced pizza men, frantic, rushing between the entropy of deliveries and orders and slices in the oven...there's no clock really, it's just the few seconds you have before everything burns.

And so I work. No big deal. Just Friday. And by the end of the day, my callouses are back from the hundred pies I cut. I could have cut more...I used to joke that I kept count.

One old man walks out on me because I kept him waiting too long for four regulars, and it really must have been ten minutes, tops. But I watched him in the corner, standing, brooding...letting his pride take over his patience, letting it all swell into something personal, and I wondered about him after apologizing, somewhat profusely, "Really, sir, it's really my fault, just a few more minutes." Is this moment really happening? Am I the cause of this man's utter discontent?

What happened, exactly, you ask? Well, three people came in, one after the other, and ordered four slices each, and while attending to these ridiculous orders, the old man caught my attention for a moment and ordered another four...and pizzas only grow on trees in Mali...

Later, the men drink. They offer me tequila shots and I accept them. And it's just another Friday, except this time I'm limping around with a hematoma discoloring my right toe, and I'm thinking about the previous night, having slept over an apartment in the lower east-side with the two fantastic girls I'll be driving to Bonnaroo with. I woke up in the middle of the night confused, for only a second, disorientated by the lemonades and vodka, the homemade pizza with sauteed yellow peppers and onions...the night still, with a general calmness you can only find on a semi-rigid pullout.

On the drive home from work, after delivering slices to friends, I see a group of girls walking and I tap my horn a few times, as I normally do when passing a group of whoevers, and I hear one of them say, "can you give us a ride..." and their voices blend in with the wind, and I keep driving, thinking, if this was any other place, I would do it. And so I turn around, and I fit all three little girls in the car, after the serial killer test.

"I was just kidding before, you know, but if you really do need a ride, I'd be more than willing to help."

"No way, no way! You're not, like, some creepy guy that's gunna kidnap us, are you?"

"Haha, no, I assure you."
(I am, I am, you rotten little bags of skin. Hop in this car if you want to feel pain before death.)

And they hop in and I take them to where they NEED to go, so desperately in the night, the Mineola Pool, so they can dangle around little men, and I marvel at the idea of human trust, and murder, and general human kindness, if there is such a thing, since it's all obscured by societal conditioning and John Walsh's precautions.

Albert Fish used to write letters to the mothers of the children he had kidnapped, sodomized, tortured and eaten, and he would explain all of these things in horrific, mind-bending detail.

Lost

I drove upstate for the weekend to Accord, NY. There it is above, marked by the "A".

I drank beers with the guys. I climbed halfway up a waterfall. I caught bugs in a bug jar and shot a .22 rifle at bottles of Snapple.

It was the first time I had made the trip without referring to a map and I figured it would be just as easy to get back, except it was not. I took one turn that felt unfamiliar and kept going, thinking I could always turn around, that I could stop at some gas station and ask for directions--but the road wound up and down across nameless mountains, with the sun setting behind all those trees. And I was lost and cursing and shouting Avett Brother songs and I remembered something my new boss had told me, since he shares his favorite literary lines with me every time we converse; something about how we always come back, that growing up is a continual regression, that we seek what we had in childhood the further away we get from it.

Verbatim, that quote is not, but the sentiment rang through my head, and I thought about the weekend of freedom, away from the pizzeria, with good friends in a place where little changes--watching water splash over moss-covered rocks, spilling out from somewhere intangible, coming back all over again. So I turned back on my choice and eventually found the thruway, the wide moon resting on the night.

Still without my own computer, I get to experience moments like: Mom trying to change Sex and the City before a sex scene, making a funny face while Miranda gets her sultry on.

Having Never

Working a pizzeria has me all confused, confundido. I argue with faceless strangers over change and orders and misunderstandings. I argue with co-workers over different methods for different and equally unimportant things. I daydream about nothing and I feel hungry when I'm not. I think about all the different ways you can waste your life, and it really is amazing.

"Trapito". The Spanish word trapo, means rag or cloth, the kind we use at work to wipe down counters, tables, everything. There's some wacked-philosophy to the thing, which attempts to explain how there's always something to do, to wipe down, always something to replace, refill, clean, put away...to prepare for the Rush, instead of relaxing. When I'm too relaxed, I'll hear it from Neris, Trapito.

Look busy.
Wipe those tables.
They left cheese everywhere.
Hijue...

I've heard that insanity is doing something repeatedly and expecting a different outcome, and I really don't think the second part of that is always necessary. I believe it's insanity to work men out of fatherhood, a decent pay, and a respectable living, just because of their inability to secure another means of survival. And then what? No prognosis, no labels of insanity...just the cherubic boy at the counter, eye-level with the counter, repeating over and over

"excuse me...

"excuse me...

"excuse me...

for an ice after his ice cream.

There's an old man, an ancient, barely-living man, who comes in occasionally and orders a slice and he always has a scratch-off in his shirt's pocket...and he always make me think, but I'm not sure about what.

"What's the difference between the grandma and grandpa slices?"

I like to think about flesh, and the way it can burn, mostly within the job setting. I think about the brown oil in the fryer, the oil dripping off pies, the instantaneous brandings, heat rising out of an open oven, and how watching a miniature pizzeria run by curious children would be a terribly gruesome show.

"Can I have this corner slice, no, not that one, this one"

I don't plan on ever asking somebody how they're doing without actually having the mind to listen.

...I'm such a good person.

The Myth of Viruses

So viruses are real. They do exist. One's taken over my laptop and the way you can tell is if your computer only allows you to purchase anti-virus software, i.e. enter your billing information and sealing your own bleak fate.

If this happens to you, don't take it to the Geek Squad at Best Buy...use your money for Chick-fil-A instead.