By Scott Sullivan
Editor
Pizza Paradigms
Papa John’s has premiered a pan pizza it proclaims will “change the paradigm in pizzas.”
To crack the code of what that meant, two newly- dubbed Pizza Performance Poobahs were peer-anointed a $20 budget (“Don’t go over $30) to procure and bring back to the newsroom samples of this new “paradigm-changing” pan with comparison s pies from competitors Pizza Hut and Domino’s. and Pizza Hut.
Back at the office, the deal was cut. It had been a hard week; we’d eat one slice of each and judge. Yukon Jack would be introduced and shared. It was sacrament.
Soon a brawl was brewing. Add beer to the Jack among front-page friends and rivals packed in a room for post-deadline frivoly and, predictably people began pitching pizza pieces at each other. Wedges of sauce, cheese and pepperoni were flying everywhere.
A Papa John’s piece hit an assistant associate editor whose ex-beat was trailing the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile as it rattled down dirt roads into a cornfield, got stuck in a swamp. She approached and instantly grilled thedriver.Trapped and at gunpoint, he was forced spill out amazing stories.
It turned into a series as she tracked down all six working Wienermobiles nationwide to capture in words and pictures each pilots’ dreams, culminating in last May’s historic first race between them on the historic brickyard before the 109th Indianapolis 500. I won’t spoil it by telling you who won. Taking her own pictures was a plus. The series won so many Pulitzers she was promoted to apprentice assistant prose janitor. Now this.
With a paper towel she wiped the pizza grease off her cheeks and re-flung the now-cold slice back into the fray. This we called recycling. After it made several more faceplants we dared the newbies to eat what was left and judge that too.
So that was the Papa John’s piece, RIP. Domino’s was different but I can’t say how as I’d passed on that one. Others found them bland and ineffectual. Piss on it, I had promised my diet I’d snarf just two.
By the time I reached my Pizza Hut slice, extras were available. Newbies’ roles were to pitch or refrigerate the leftovers in a single cardboard box but I intercepted them. I’d refrigerate them at home wedged in between beer cans and spilt sardines, then resurrect in the microwave for when the Purdue Boilermaker men’s basketball team paid a call on the Ohio State Buckeyes for a Big Ten donnybrook five days hence.
What a battle. One slice of reheated paradigm pie, then two … They were just this side of moldy. Yum. When I added Jack and beers to the mix, I became near comatose. On the court who was blitzing who? Since then it’s been different. But which pizza’s best?
“Boss,” I said when I returned to the newsroom, “I can’t say.”
“You’re not getting off with that,” he’d demand. “Too much detail.”
“Want less?”
“None.”
My hoped-for career was dead. What chances were left, thus dishonorably discharged? Thus chastened I chose next to seek revenge.
When I came back to Papa John’s, physique squared by a bulletproof vest and with pistols in both fists blazing, the terrified chef at my behest sliced the double-cheese circles into traditional wedges plus squares, circles, parallelograms, anything her blade, gleaming silver slashing lines and ochre carving curves, might render. I was smitten.
But by then I had had enough carbs. Plus plastic surgery had disfigured me until I was unrecognizable. What to do? I knew: finish off the pieces.
Phantom of the Opera-like I eschewed to the diva-in-the-waiting chef Christine, elevation to prima donna now inevitable, to feed me so many succors as she had left.
Once she submitted, our gold, silver and platinum albums became first a landmine, then a pantomime. Crowds booed, she fast spat me out.
O, tale of woe. Abandoned first by the paper, then the pie queen turned prima donna, I repaired to my den,
my obsessions spilt over and went nuclear. Nights turned days ad infinitum into what seemed eternity.
The result was this, in one last column spewing vomit, bile and enlightenment. Like with Maggie’s Page A6 cooking column, I append Enjoy!
