Pizza Party

A couple of weeks ago I became a serious contender for the title of 'oldest living human'. To celebrate my entrance onto the world stage of professional not-dying I had a few buddies over. True to one-trick pony form I asked everyone to bring pizza toppings so we could all build, cook and then eat some pizza. Preferably in that order. This is what went down.

Being an arty-farty bunch, people seemed pretty keen on out-pizzaing one another. I'm all for innovation and originality and everything, but this here is a pizza with dough balls on. Call me a cynic but when you have bread below a topping and above a topping, that's not a pizza, that's a sandwich.

I sort of asked people to choose toppings that they felt represented themselves. If you had to describe yourself to someone but couldn't use words, only pizza, how would you do it? People came up with some pretty good ones. Jason, for example, is a little bit Caribbean, so his pizza had a little bit of Reggae Reggae sauce on, which is a little bit Caribbean, like him. What a clever chap, here is a photo of the proudest moment in Jason's life. 

Most people, due to, I imagine, chronically stunted imaginations, were boring and just chose toppings because they liked them. I suppose it could be argued that this may suggest my friends have pretty healthy self-esteems, but I doubt it, or if they do they shouldn't. Generally they're pretty rubbish. Here are some examples of people thrilled by their own mediocrity:

I'm joking of course, my friends are all beautiful people and I am head-over-heels in love with all of them. Look, here's Nick rabbiting on about who-gives-a-shit:

Putting Brian Sewell on a pizza is pretty inspired. I think Nick should enter it into the Turner prize next year. I'm sure Brian would love that. He should call it 'The Art Critizza'. However Brian Sewell-pizza was only one half of a two-part pizza exhibit. This is Pete; he made a Jackson Pollock-pizza that Brian Sewell-pizza was going to be critiquing. Pretty high brow stuff eh? I guess it raises that age old question of "Does pizza imitate art or does art imitate pizza?" Here's Pete being adorably downhearted about it all:

I managed to annoy even more of my guests with inane pizza-questions.This is Shiri being asked pointless questions about ricotta, after you watch it I'm going to tell you another cheese joke.

Q: What cheese do furry, heavy-metal listening, fresh-water mammals enjoy?

A: Rock-otter!

Here are some more people being polite and humouring me by pretending to enjoy my party. Thanks guys, you're all the best.

How wonderful for everyone. 

I call this photo "A Proud Father".

Bye.

Chicago Town 'Knork'

If you buy four packs of Chicago Town Deep Dish pizzas, cut out the tokens on each one and send them off to Chicago Town (the company, not the city) a few days later a Knork will arrive. Too much hassle? You can always take the more practical route of starting a god-awful pizza blog in the vain hope that a nice lady at Chicago Town will read it, pray for your swift death by heart failure and send you something to make the shovelling of pizza into your mouth all the more efficient.

At least that's what happened to me. I have four tokens sitting on my desk that I was going to send off but the big CT beat me to it. A 'Knork', for those that don't know, or more likely, don't care, is half KNife, half fORK. I suspect what they've done, and I can't be sure, is combine the two halves of both words. I guess they didn't go for 'Fife' because sex sells and men (and lesbians, it is 2010) might send off for a Knork hoping to get a parcel containing a single, solitary boob.

I'd say it's more fork than knife. That is to say, were I to try and mug Crocodile Dundee with my Knork and have him disparage the knife-ness of my Knork by demonstrating how much more knife-y his knife was I'd have a hard time disagreeing with him.

They sent me a three page press release with my Knork, detailing how revolutionary my new Knork will be to my life. Obviously they are right, because it is. I now think of my life as having two separate eras: pre-Knork and post-Knork, and in my head, everything pre-Knork is grey. They also go on about how great Chicago Town Deep Dish pizzas are but my favourite bit is at the end where they say "available in all major supermarkets... and Iceland."* 

*I added the ellipsis for comic effect, they didn't put that in but they should have. I don't think I've ever been in an Iceland, but then I am very middle-class. 

Primavera Sound 2010: The Definitive Review

Primavera Sound is in Barcelona which is in Spain. I can't decide which is worse, Spanish music videos or Spanish haircuts. I guess I'd say Spanish music videos probably have the edge because usually more money has been invested in a music video than a haircut so it's more of a failure that they're so awful. That said, the amount of dudes sporting dreadlocked mullets (dreadlet? mullock?) was terrifying. It's just the grossest haircut ever.

See? It looks like his head is taking a massive shit down his back. Ew.

I think that's why people go to Primavera, a chance to escape these hippy wankers. Either that or the bands. I mean either that, or the bands OR THE PIZZA!

Anyway, enough mild racism, on with the reviews...

Margherita with Oregano

I had this guy on my first day in Barcelona and he cost two Euros. 'Euros' are what they use in Spain instead of Pounds. They're like the Pound except worse, but at least they're better than the Dollar. Here's a handy algebra equation explaining what I just said:

$<€<£.

Arithmeterrific!

I think he tasted pretty good although I'm not sure how much attention I paid because I was too busy keeping passing dreadlocks from dropping into the cheese. Seriously it was like juggling except with filthy clumps of dead tissue instead of juggling balls.

I remember he was pretty herby. Like, if this pizza was a robot he'd be R-Doob-D-Doob. That's cool though, I like herbs. At least I don't mind them. If they keep themselves to themselves, don't go flaunting their herbiness in my face or nuthin' we ain't got a problem. I am herb-tolerant.

SIETE out of DIEZ

Pepperoni Pizza-Cone

There'd been a lot of hype surrounding these guys, and I'd heard stories about them before I even bought my Primavera ticket. You probably don't have to be Jonathan Creek to work out what a Pizza-Cone is, but just in case you're his idiot sidekick that used to be in Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps I shall tell you. A Pizza-Cone is a cone filled with pizza. Yum, right? Wrong, not yum.

Whether you like Pizza-Cones depends entirely on how much you like things that taste gross. If you love things that taste gross, you'll love Pizza-cones. You know how Cornettos have a lump of chocolate at the bottom, well the same could be said of Pizza-Cones if you substituted the word 'chocolate' for 'bitter-uncooked-yet-somehow-burnt-stale-death-bread'.

DOS out of DIEZ

Telepizza BBQ

I think Telepizza is the Spanish equivalent of Dominos. If I owned a company who a customer would ring up on a TELEphone to order PIZZA, it makes about a thousand times more sense calling it Telepizza than naming it after a game grandmothers play in nursing homes while quietly awaiting death. Nice work Telepizza.

Gripe time: Have you ever been to a barbecue and been served minced beef or ham? If you have, shut up, because you'll invalidate my argument. I think that for a pizza that is working the 'BBQ' angle, the meat has to be representative of that. I guess the sauce was a little barbecue-y, but barely. In my head I'm shrugging my shoulders. Less nice work Telepizza.

CUATRO out of DIEZ

Catalunyan Bread

Okay, I know this isn't really pizza, but I felt three posts was a bit pathetic for a whole week in Spain. It's sort of pizza, it's bread with tomato on. No cheese though, does that still count? Actually, cheese is probably essential when it comes to constructing a pizza. If this isn't pizza and I review it then I'm basically just reviewing food, and if I decided to review all the food I ate, rather than just the pizza, I'd be writing (at least) three posts a day. I can honestly say, I could not be arsed to do that.

That would probably be quite a good weight-loss scheme. If you had to write about everything you ate, you'd barely eat (assuming you're operating on similar lazy levels as me). I can see Kerry Katona or someone endorsing that diet. Although it might be a bit implausible if she did it because I'm not sure whether she can read, let alone write anything. Girl can eat though.

Babe.

N/A out of DIEZ.

Simply Chicken and Pizza: Ham and Green Pepper

On the street I live on there's about a million takeaway places that do pizza. People, I can't remember who specifically, have asked why I don't review those pizzas, and I've said, in my snootiest voice, that I don't review them because I'd only eat them when I was drunk. Well right now, I am drunk so it seems fair to review the pizza I just bought and then ate. Deal? Deal.

In Simply Chicken and Pizza you can get a medium pizza, (2 toppings), chips and a drink for £5. "Alright!" I said in my head, and possibly out loud. Not out loud, just in my head. for realz. I got ham and green pepper, because it seemed like a pretty safe option and the list of potential toppings was quite small so i couldn't really see it so i thought i better choose something they'd definitely have.

For my drink I chose a passion fruit Rubicon because, and I think you'll agree, Rubicon is the best thing to ever come in can form. I don't know why big shops don't sell it, it's so good. I wish taps came in 'hot, 'cold' and Rubicon.  I'd wash in that stuff. I'm not even joking. I am joking, think how sticky you'd be. You'd die of wasps.

Chips were chips, pizza was gross, Rubicon was phenomenal.

Rubicon out of 10.

Co-op: Stonebaked Pastrami

I don't mind when supermarkets start branching out into non-supermarket things, like Tesco Mobile or whatever, but I think Co-op go too far. Co-op Funeralcare for example. Now call me paranoid, but I find the idea of eating food sold to me by people who will potentially make money if I die, slightly unnerving. That's like buying skis from a wheelchair salesman, or shampoo from a wigmaker.

Mind you, it seems I don't find it that unnerving as I happily wolfed this guy down. I like it when pizzas think outside the box almost as much as I like it when pizzas ARE outside the box, so I really enjoyed the whole New York vibe this guy was going for. Pastrami with a sachet horseradish mustardy stuff is something I haven't come across before.

Have you ever been to New York? It's great. If you haven't, it's pretty much exactly like how it looks in Ghostbusters 2, or in Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist or Crocodile Dundee. Basically any film set in New York is an accurate and reliable depiction of what it's like. Except for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze, that shit's ridiculous.

8 out of 10