Recently in Pizza-related stuff Category

So this might mean more to some of you than it does to others, but it’s pizza-relevant nonetheless…

Back in the ’80s there was a pizza chain called Showbiz Pizza Place. If you’re not familiar with it, you might have heard of a similar place called Chuck E Cheese’s. The basic idea of both restaurants was that they served pizza, had a bunch of arcade games, and provided entertainment for kids via large anthropomorphic animals.

Showbiz, which is now defunct, featured a live music act (if you can call it that) called the Rock-afire Explosion, manned by animatronic animals.

Since the Showbiz chain has gone down, there has been a group of obsessive Rock-afire Explosion fanatics that collect and maintain the musical robots. As is the case with so many quirky hobbies nowadays, there is a documentary about the phenomenon coming out (scheduled to be released in Fall 2008, according to the documentary’s MySpace page).

Here’s the trailer:

Keep your eye out for the film’s full site here.

Comics2Film reports that Domino’s is running some “viral” promos for the new Batman film. There’s a website for a Gotham City Pizzeria, which mentions a mysterious “Special Promotion: June 16”.

The idea of marketing that attempts to hook people by not giving them any information always seemed cheesy to me for the most part. I guess it works though, because I’m posting this here, aren’t I?

It also looks like they’ve made some special all-black pizza boxes:

Tomorrow, 11 June, we celebrate the 119th birthday of modern pizza by honoring an historic event in 1889.

The following is from a recent newsletter I got from Scott’s Pizza Tours.

In 1889, King Umberto and his wife Queen Margherita of Savoy embarked upon a goodwill tour of a newly unified Italy. The queen requested a special pizza tasting as part of the royal couple’s visit to Naples in order to join in the growing popularity of what was generally a street food for the poor. She hired a pizzaiolo (pizza maker, pie man) by the name of Rafaele Esposito to prepare a variety of pizzas. Legend has it that Esposito’s wife Brandi placed a handful of basil leaves atop a pie that already boasted fresh mozzarella and tomato, giving it all three colors of the Italian flag. Margherita enjoyed this pie so much that she had a letter sent to Esposito declaring the pizza “buonissime.” The wise businessman he was, Rafaele named the pizza in Margherita’s honor.

The royal thank you note is dated June 11, 1889 and still hangs in Pizzeria Brandi to this day. Therefore, it is on this day that we celebrate the birth of the modern pizza.

So tomorrow, grab a delicious slice of the good stuff and chow in celebration.

…

PS: My apologies for the cliché graphic above; I couldn’t help myself. See the original idea by Experimental Jetset here.

Now that summer is almost officially here, I’ve been BBQing with my roommates much more. We’ve even seriously discussed making June “BBQ Month”, in the same vein as Pizza Month; I don’t think that will really happen, but I’m sure we’ll ’Q at least 2 or 3 times a week.

Anyhow, I’ve had innumerable people ask me lately if I’ve ever tried BBQing a pizza. I can’t say I ever have, but I’ve come across a few related things lately that seemed to warrant a post on the topic.

First of all, the most obvious and inexpensive thing that comes to mind when thinking BBQ + pizza is some kind of apparatus to enable you to cook a pie on your existing grill. I haven’t done any extensive research on the topic, but have come across 2 such items in the past couple weeks by chance. The first is a circular pizza stone that sits on the grill, and the second is basically the same idea, but in rectangular form. Both cost about $100.

The next option is a huge price jump, and I’m somewhat skeptical of it, considering. If you’ve got $2,000 to blow, you might go for a Beehive pizza oven. Maybe it’s just me, but in the little demo video on their product page, it looks like the pizza and the ashes are a bit cramped in there. The fact that the pizza is obviously photoshopped in to the promo photo doesn’t help too much either.

Finally, I came across an unfortunate news story about a guy in Orlando who obviously wasn’t feeling these novelty backyard pizza-cooking accessories, and said “Fuck it! I’ll just build my own backyard setup”. The sad news is that his neighborhood association is suing him for doing so. Classic case of old Floridians with nothing better to do than complain about their neighbors. Honestly — why would you not want a real pizza oven next door? You know the dude’s gonna have sick parties.

From my friend Robin:

I went to see the new Iron Man movie last night. It was about what I expected; nothing special, but a good movie to see in the theatres (lots of explosions, etc). Anyway, there was one scene where Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) predicts that his business partner Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges) is about to break some bad news because he brings a pizza to his home in Malibu all the way from New York.

The pizza box has a big “Ray’s” logo on it, but I wasn’t sitting close enough to see which Ray’s it was from. Given the fact that there are at least 30 places in Manhattan that use “Ray’s” in their name (Famous Original Rays, World Famous Ray’s, etc), I wouldn’t even be surprised if the pizza box was fake and meant to represent New York pizza in general.

If anyone else goes to see Iron Man, let me know if you can read the details on the box.

I’m hoping this is the beginning of a string of pizza related script devices in movie-izations of the Marvel superhero comic books… Peter Parker uses his spider powers to deliver pizza in Spiderman 2, and Famous Joe’s Pizza mentions its cameo on some of their signage.

This is amazing: the Washington Post is hosting a pizza-themed haiku contest…

In the tradition of Japanese haiku, that’s three unrhymed lines — five syllables, then seven, then five — in honor of the almighty pizza, whichever way you slice it.

I’ve got to put some serious thought into this.

Coincidentally, the submission deadline is on April 30th (the last day of my Pizza Month challenge).

For those of you who aren't familiar with it, fecalface.com is a contemporary arts/culture site that revolves mostly around stuff in San Fran. It's one of the few spots (online or elsewhere) which seems to have stayed legit over the years as far as being a place to see interesting contemporary art.

Every week they do this thing called Free Fridayz, where they pick a theme and have people submit related artwork for prizes.

A couple weeks ago, the theme was "Pizza Party", and the results we amazing -- some submissions were skillfully crafted, and others were just plain retarded; most of them a mixture of both. All around fun.

You can see all of them here.

Other than the shape, this doesn't really have anything to do with pizza, but it's interesting nonetheless:

It's a five-inch chocolate disk covered with four different toppings such as freeze-dried strawberries, pistachios, and candied orange… It comes in its own cardboard box like a pizza, which has been specially designed, and you can even take your leftovers away with you at the end of the night… The idea is that a table will share one to have with after-dinner coffee.

Full article here.

There's a new tour service in New York that is based around pizza. They have bus tours scheduled with walking tours coming soon.

This sounds amazing.

More info: Scott's NYC Pizza Tours