day drunk: the return of the three martini lunch.

it’s been a while since i’ve obsessed over the pointlessness of the pizza hut p’zone.

why do i obsess over the pizza hut p’zone?

because it is a steaming, processed-cheesy example of all that i find wrong with america’s lackadaisical attitude toward product development, and soft-minded surrender to marketing gimmicks.

because there are a lot of things that need improving in this world, but we seem to have put paramount importance on the advancement of the three things mankind perfected centuries ago: face shaving, beer drinking, and discovering new permutations of meat, cheese, sauce, bread.

because, the p’zone is supposed to fill the void that exists somewhere between pizza and calzone, and there is no void between pizza and calzone.

once you fold a pizza in half, it’s a calzone.

halfway between pizza and calzone is a pizza with one half folded up at a right angle, and all the toppings shuffled down into the crease.

that’s what a p’zone should be, and that’s not cuisine. that’s garbage (not to suggest that the actual p’zone isn’t garbage).

in the words of dennis hopper’s character in apocalypse now, “one through nine, no maybes, no supposes, no fractions. you can’t travel in space, you can’t go out into space, you know, without, like, you know, uh, with fractions, okay? what are you going to land on – one-quarter, three-eighths? what are you going to do when you go from here to venus or something?”

you have to deal in the realities of things, people.

enter birrz.

birrz is the “non-alcoholic” version of t’ej.

today thomas invited me over to his house for that international holiday tradition: leftovers.

this of course was served with leftover birrz, as it was lunchtime… on a monday, and nobody should be getting drunk at lunchtime… on a monday.

the thing is this:

t’ej starts off as honey, spices, and water.

that’s not birrz.

it isn’t birrz until it’s begun to ferment, and it gets that fizzy, tingly taste.

fermenting sugar = alcohol, every time.

once fermentation begins, it’s about three days to birrz, and from there you have three days of t’ej before it becomes paint thinner.

well, the birrz needed to be ready by sunday morning for the breaking of the fast, and it was now monday afternoon, which meant we were right in the heart of t’ej territory. which probably explains why, after sharing a pitcher of it with thomas over lunch, i walked outside and immediately thought “oh, wow. it’s bright out here. whoops! slippery sand. hehe.”

jesus christ, i’m drunk.

at lunchtime.

on a monday.

* * * *

is it birrz? is it t'ej?... is it a calzone? is it a p'zone? ... it's all the same!

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stay tuned for our next episode:

speaking of fermented.

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easy listening: the kooks : matchbox

i have a glossary!

i think that title is self explainatory.

i’ve included a glossary of terms i use, amharic words and phrases, and acronyms and abbreviations. the link is at the top navigation bar titled the glossary so you can figure out just what the hell it is i’m talking about half the time.

it’s ongoing, and extensive, but not yet exhaustive (what? i said half the time).

check it out if you need to, or if you don’t, there’s comedy to be found there, too.

pride (in the name of irony).

so i’m out on my run today, and absolutely kicking myself, as usual, for not owning a camera phone, because i ran past another amazing shirt slogan.

i’m huffing and puffing down the gore road, trying to get in shape to run a half marathon in a month, and get my calves into shape for some shoe modelling (that’s another story), when i ran past a habesha guy in a sweatshirt that said across the chest as well as down one sleeve in big bold letters topped by rainbow asterisks “LGBT PRIDE”, and on the back “it’s in to be out”.

i could have died of disappointment in myself for yet again being unprepared to document this.

in the land of abibas, and anti-gay legislation, this is the ultimate irony.

from some western country that has moved so far toward LGBT rights and acceptance as to no longer have a market for the kind blatant billboarding that this sweatshirt offered, came a cargo ship loaded with clothing donations all the way across oceans to a puritanical country that would lock you in the clink for coming out of the closet if it even believed that gay was a real thing, a country that can’t wait to try on anything that remotely whiffs of western culture.

it was a perfect storm of “you just can’t make this shit up”.

on this brisk spring morning, along the cobbled dirt roads, from somewhere between “i need a cheap sweatshirt to keep warm”, and “i’ll bury you up to your neck and throw rocks at you if you check out my ass”, came this specter decked out in contradiction so thick i choked on laughter and three miles of hills at elevation as i jogged past and nodded hello.

i wonder if he’ll ever know.

* * * *

where i come from we have a more subtle form of blatant billboarding.

 * * * *

stay tuned for our next episode:

the p’zone… it’s no mcRib.

****

watch it, buster: no reservations : anthony bourdain

no shortage of self-deprecating skinny jokes, constant, and occasionally painfully bad pop culture references, food, tattoos, beer, travel, adventure… why wouldn’t i love this show? you should, too.

hella weird.

kid's got pride. whoever he is.

i woke up the other day and realized i had forgotten all about this little epiphany i had on st patty’s day.

probably it’s because of all the supermint and george’s, and maybe because i spent most of my mental energy the next day trying not to vom.

i was sitting at the beer garden with chels and bailey, and i said something in passing like “dude, that’s hella ridiculous.”

three out of four of those words could, at one point in my life, be described as the most overused words in my vocabulary.

as the word hella came out of my throat and headed for the opening in my face, i choked on it a little. i thought, don’t… don’t say that. is that even a word? listen to yourself.

what’s the big deal?

what’s the big deal?!

i’m from the bay area. that’s the big deal.

the use of the word hella has been a distinction and a point of pride for bay locs since the word was born there in the early ninties. it causes a devious little smile every time we meet someone from LA or sanDiego, and they hit us with a condescending, “ugh… you say hella?”

the south has ya’ll, hawaii has dakine, newEngland has wicked, snoop has –izzle, and the bay has hella.

i realized that i probably hadn’t said the word in ten months, and suddenly i had heard what i sounded like to every soCali that’s ever been lumped in with us hella norCalis by the uninformed masses across the rest of the US, and i wasn’t loving what i heard.

what happened?

have i grown up?

am i a real person now?

do i have to act all sophisticated and junk?

doubt it.

i doubt that i’ll ever grow up. who would want to?

and i will likely never grow tired of northern california. who could?

but i think it’s entirely possible that i’ve outgrown hella.

it’s hella over.

who’da thunk it?

* * * *

stay tuned for our next episode:

jesus is my homeboy, but he just ain’t my messiah.

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reading assignment: third world america : arianna huffington

a eulogy for america’s middle class by everyone’s favorite self loathing one percenter. written in an authorial style that can best be described as “english as a second language” and “reads too much huffington post”, she answers a lot of questions plaguing america these last many years, but fails to answer a few big ones like, who the fuck is arianna huffington anyway? why does she get to reprimand the economic elite from her gold plated ivory tower? and where does get off chastising modern media for sensationalism, and overhyping when she runs the g-d huffpo (cough, ahem-kim kardashian’s new bikini body is not headline news-cough. what? nothing.), which was bad enough before it was purchased by aol (cough cough-abc disney time warner cnn!!-cough, ahem. oh, excuse me. must be all this smoke inhalation from roasting coffee). but if you can forget all those things, it’s a brilliant and optimistic book. read it, man.