I'd like a Zelda Fitzgerald with extra olives, please

A national pizza chain has started airing commercials promising to bring to my home the thrill of NASCAR with every pie I order from them. Sorry, but I'm not into the Southern-fried collective sports experience of a bunch of stock cars zipping around an oval in a perpetual left turn. Yes, I've heard there's some sort of skill involved in the whole matter...something about strategy and handling turns and wind resistance, but it just comes down to going faster than the other guys and not spinning out, causing the fatal collisions that the audience primally wants to have happen.

That said, I could care less about eating a pizza that's promising me the by-proxy connection to exhaust fumes, fast cars and roaring death. Frankly, auto racing doesn't equal culinary superiority to me, so I think the pizza chain is shooting itself in the foot. If it really wanted to reach me, it would tempt me with other promises. I'd love to see a pizza chain offering the thrill of, say, the Jazz Age with every order. Imagine: A piping-hot pizza concealed in a box covered with poetry by Gwendolyn Brooks or the wit of Dorothy Parker. You open the box and an mp3 of Billie Holiday's "God Bless the Child" greets you, akin to opening those greeting cards with a chip yodeling "Happy Birthday" in an accidentally tinny death knell.

Not a fan of the Jazz Age? How about getting a pizza with a box done up in Jackson Pollock murals? Stills from classic Bogart movies? Quotes by Walt Whitman or excerpts from the Lincoln-Douglas debates? How cool would it be to get a fresh double-cheese with extra sauce in the shape of the Louisiana Purchase?

Would it be too much to ask?

A note to all Girl Scouts

Between my wife and I, we've bought 12 boxes of your cookies. Please stop bothering us. Thank you.

Today's Word: Medium

From One Word


It's just about impossible to divine someone's fate. You can't read their past or their future. You merely tell them what they want to hear, trying to cold read their expectations and play them like a con artist. No, sorry. That's what "mediums" and "fortune tellers" are. They are frauds, trying to sell the notion of being able to stay one step ahead of six billion people looking to survive another day. False hope. Poor taste.