Leftover Shrimp Pizza

I imagine that, given the few hours and great many words I spent on the subject, I'm now officially on the record as regards Pizza Hut. Which would ordinarily be the place to leave it, since I am not running a pizza blog, here -- although, of course, if anyone knows anyone else who wants to fund a long-form pizza-based literary quarterly or something, obviously that person should get in touch. There is also the matter of the thousands of words of copy I have due to various people this week. That as well. But there is, astonishingly, one thing I missed about Pizza Hut in my novella-length exploration of its manifest and manifold objectionabilities. And that is the fact that these fuckers have lobbyists.

The fuckers in question, I should be clear, are Yum! Brands, the Louisville-based garbage-cuisine concern that owns Pizza Hut, KFC and, presumably, a lot of stock in whoever makes Lipitor, diabetes meds, and scooters for the obese. The world needs lobbyists, of course, if only to ensure that extra-formal steakhouses stay in business. But probably only for that. Yum! Brands, though, needs lobbyists to advocate for the cause of allowing the elitist communo-fascist Takers-coddling program formerly known as food stamps to be used at Yum! Branded fat-dispensaries. From the Louisville Courier-Journal:

Yum! Brands Inc. is lobbying the Beshear administration to make Kentucky one of only a handful of states that allow food stamps to be used at restaurants by certain groups of recipients. Under the federal food-stamp program, states may authorize that use by the elderly, disabled or homeless, who often have difficulty preparing meals. Only Michigan, Arizona and parts of California have done so.

...One of [Yum!'s] top executives has helped raise money for Gov. Steve Beshear's re-election campaign. And the company has presented the idea to officials of groups ranging from the Kentucky Restaurant Association and the Louisville Urban League, who have written letters of support to Beshear.

“We think it's a win-win,” said Paul Carothers, the company's vice president for government affairs. “It's obviously of interest from a business standpoint, and it provides access to the elderly homeless and disabled who are often underserved.”

It certainly does sound like a win-win, unless you actually eat the food in question! In which case it sounds like groaning-in-bathroom and feels like a clammy complexion, grease-coated tongue and an inert and un-fun sleepiness. Which are all, to be fair, all-natural organic feelings that your body delivers when you try to kill it with cheese.

Over the past day or so, some dear friends -- my sister, my good friend Matthew Abrams, the chums-I-have-never-met of Twitter -- have sent me pictures and links to some of Pizza Hut's legitimately insane and truly avant-garde pizzas from the rest of the world. And while I am obviously not looking for an abalone-and-hotdog pie with extra mayo -- or the similar Asian nightmare pies our corpo-pizza buddies have made available -- I at least get those. Different cultures have different ideas of what terrible and terrible-for-you food is like, and it's incumbent on Pizza Hut and other Yum! Brand arteriosclerosis distributorships to deliver that food-misery most effectively. That's their job, and I suppose they should do it. I would just prefer if, here in the United States -- where despite the best efforts of your president, Barack Hussein Obama, we are still FREE TO CHOOSE any shitty, life-shortening garbage-food we want -- we didn't have to subsidize it. You know that shrimp mousse pizza was not the product of any nanny-state food stamp BS. That exists because... oh wait, that actually exists. Huh. Okay, I'm going to need a minute.

People Helping People (Write About The Knicks)

Living in New York City is nice, because it affords relatively reliable mass transit, all-hours access to a wealth of tasty foods from many cultures and the opportunity to interact with observe some legitimate sociopaths on the aforementioned relatively reliable mass transit. What has served me best about living in New York for what will soon be 10 years, though, is having access to my friends. Many of them still live in New York City, and almost all of them have been here for at least a little while over the past decade. And while it is of course not me that brings them to New York City -- see above, add your own more sensible reasons as needed -- it is nice for me, as a lazy person, to know that they will come back. And it is a luxury, of course, to be this close to so much. I am not talking about the ethnic food, now.

The thing with encomiums to one's friends, though, is that they're invariably of more interest to the writer than the reader, unless that reader is a friend looking to see if he got mentioned -- yeah, you made it Alec, congratu-fucking-lations -- or to see if I said someone got fat or whatever. My remora-style ride on New York City's appeal has been good to me, insofar as it has afforded me access to the people I love most and many of the things that I love most. And that some of those people have left town... well, virtually anything can make me sad, and not having all of my friends around at all times (not in the bathroom) makes me sad, but this is one thing -- a rare thing, as regular readers know -- that I find I'm less torn up about as time goes by. There are plenty of other places to be and plenty of other places to be there. And anyway, even if everyone still lived in the city, I'd seldom see them because I don't have very much money or go out much, and because everyone else hates long subway rides, too -- it's only relatively effective mass transit, remember.

So do I wish that my friend Ben Polk still lived in New York City with his elegant beyonce Samantha Anders? Good question, the answer is yes I certainly do wish that. But I also know that they've both been happier in Minneapolis than they were here, and that their not being here probably has something to do with that happiness. Despite the proximity of inimitable me and open-late falafel and whatever, some people do just need to leave. I wouldn't wish them less happiness just so they could be around more often for me to have beers with.

The move has been especially good for Ben, I think, because it gave him an opportunity to grow a beard. But it also got him into writing about basketball, which is a good thing for everybody because Ben writes exceptionally well about basketball. He writes well about other things, too, but we'll stick to basketball for our purposes here, just as Ben does at his ESPN TrueHoop Network blog (tm) A Wolf Among Wolves. Ben writes about basketball the way that I hope I write about football -- with dense, serious sentences and a light, resolutely and healthily un-serious understanding of the game's importance, as well as with real empathy and perspective and intelligence. He's also not afraid to ask terrifying backup center Nikola Pekovic about his even more terrifying half-torso warriors-on-skullz tattoo, which is admirable.

Anyway, Ben got me a press credential for the Timberwolves/Knicks game at Madison Square Garden earlier this week, and while being there and working -- kind of working, really, but I didn't have any beers -- wasn't as fun as it would've been to be there with him and everyone else I love, it was fun to write about the game and the experience. I did just that for A Wolf Among Wolves, and I'm really happy with the way it came out, and really happy to have worked with/for a friend, and his very excellent website. So read that, if you want to read about the Knicks or Allen Houston's nephews or Amare Stoudemire's star power or what Michael Beasley whistles.