pizza psychic

Being attuned to the secret world of pizza is a weighty thing. It is a burden I do not carry lightly.

My story of the genesis of this strange and awful power is like a post-modern version of the post-modernist tale of angst and responsibility and the corrupting influence of power splayed across the technicolor-crisp pages of Stan Lee's Spiderman.

Here's the rough outline, and then onto a tale of pizza wizardry the likes of which you've never heard:

I was maybe twelve years old and my life consisted of going to school and every day in sweatpants and rubber boots and working at a book store after class making $4 an hour mailing brick-loads of rare books and endlessly organizing and dust-jacketing them all to make it to Friday, the day when I got my meager wage paid out in cash. Each Friday, I would take that hard-earned wad of maybe twenty dollars and go hang out at a local comic book store. Life was pretty wild in the fast lane.

The real highlight of my evening, however, was the mini-deep dish pizzas right next door at Domino's. They were so good and so cheap that you just knew that it was too sweet to last. They were like the CBGB of mini-pizzas in that once people started to catch on, the ride was over. Alas.

I remember they were five dollars and you could get any toppings you wanted. This led to the inevitable mini-pies loaded down with a back hoe full of extra-extra cheese and bacon and sausage and insane amalgams of ingredient combinations of endless complexity.

So, like a scientist plucked from the void and placed into a lab full of instruments, my pizza-loving nerd brethren and I set forth upon the outer limits. It was a long, strange ride; in fact it seems less than real, to be honest. Foodland was open 24 hours a day back then, too - the supermarket across the parking lot from the comic store and Domino's. Now-a-days, it closes at 9 sharp and the place has fallen off in general, as well. Everything in Juneau is trending that way, to be honest. Even the glacier that surrounds this semi-frozen waste is receding.

Now, some dozen years later, the lessons I learned as a pizza psychic prodigy have taken root in the way a golfer internalizes his swing or a violin player has feel for strings.

Tonight, par examplé, I rang my local Domino's branch and spoke with el hombre José about getting a pizza heat-waved on up to me. Mind you, I am fully aware of the current Domino's marketing firestorm. Sure, some asshole in New Jersey or wherever is right now squeezing a hot load of jizz into the marinara at a Domino's somewhere in the world, but much like the manner in which STDs travel, my rationalization goes something like this: It couldn't happen to me! It couldn't be José and Consuela and the local pizza professionals, no! I thought we were friends! You said that you are the only driver who brings little packets of parm and hot peppers and you wouldn't do that for just fucking anyone...

Or would they?

Anyway, Domino's can chalk one up in the win column on my account during what has got to be tough times for the low rent pizza pushers over there at the big 'D'. Most people read a story about the employees of a restaurant hocking loogs in a food item, and they avoid it like in-laws or the plague. Me, I'm wired a little differently. I knew that all would be well - I sensed it.

After placing my order, however, there was a nagging sensation like there had been a lack of closure. I got back in bed and was just about to stretch out and relax when my phone rang. The pizza couldn't be done yet, could it?

"Howdy." I said.

"Hello sir. This is Jose from Domino's. I'm sorry but the computer lost your order, sir. Can I have your information again?" The caller on the line said.

"Ha! Jose! I had a feeling you might be calling back, my friend." I said. I sat perched in the cool air of an open window in my apartment, cradling the cell phone in my neck. From the distance, in a marsh glade in the gradually warming, Alaskan spring, I could hear a whistle pig sing his eerie bird song.