The title kind of says it all.
“I want pizza,” My Darling B said to me when we ran into each other in the hall yesterday. I didn’t have any on me at the time, so she had to wait until I took her to Roman Candle after work, where we ordered a large pie with four kinds of meat, including some of the tastiest pepperoni ever.
And now we have leftover pizza for lunch. What’s better than that, I ask you?
It’s our custom every year to retire to a booth at The Roman Candle pizza parlor and choose the films that we want to see at the annual Wisconsin Film Festival. In years past, the festival’s schedule has been published a week before tickets went on sale but this year, along with all the other changes to the festival that I don’t like, the schedule was published on Thursday and tickets were set to go on sale the following Saturday, giving us less than 48 hours to make our selections. Just in case anybody from the WFF is reading this: That’s really bogus, guys.
We took our usual booth, ordered a 14-inch Supreme and a couple beers, and set to work. A little more than an hour later, we had our first choices.
There were surprisingly few movies that reached out and grabbed me, but then I feel I didn’t have enough time to think about my choices. B, on the other hand, came up with a long list of movies she wanted to see. Reconciling our two lists was a quick and relatively painless process.
Somehow, B ate all but one slice of her half of the pizza and regretted it almost right away. “Ate. Too. Much. Pizza,” she moaned over and over, wondering how she was going to get through the night. I stopped a slice and a half short of finishing my half and somehow escaped the indigestion that plagued her until I ate the rest for lunch the next day, when I was stricken with the Oh My God Trots almost immediately. TMI? Sorry about that.
We both worked late last night, so we both liked the idea of quick and easy dinner, which lead us to Roman Candle for pizza. That’s it. Ate out again. Roman Candle. Pizza. That’s all I got. Not much else to tell. Oh, I was working late so I could move a bunch of files to a different office, and B was working late because she’s got a project she’s trying to finish before a looming deadline. We were both pretty damned glad to get out of our respective office buildings and into Roman Candle, quaff a cold, delicious beer and wolf down a couple slices of their amazing Supreme pizza pie (half with mushrooms) (my half). Would’ve been nicer if the waiter had remembered to bring an order of garlic bread like we asked, instead of leaving it on the warming table all night, but at least he didn’t charge us for it.
Tickets went on sale for the Wisconsin Film Fest at noon today. We had the films we wanted to see picked out the night before and sat waiting with the web browser of the most dependable computer in the house parked on the film fest web site, mouse-clicking finger poised ready to hit the “buy now” icon.
Yesterday after work we went to the Roman Candle on Willy Street to eat pizza and drink beer while we pored over the latest issue of The Isthmus, which included a special insert with all the films at the festival and a schedule. Anna, our waitress, brought us a couple of beers just minutes after we sat down, and while we were waiting for her to deliver our 16-inch Supreme we read through the descriptions of all the films and struggled to fit our favorites into the scheduled showings.
Then the bargaining started. On the plus side, we seem to like the same kind of movies, so we each picked out a lineup of favorites that was very similar to the other’s. On the negative side, I was a lot more cavalier about how I chose my movies based on the scheduled showings. When there was a conflict, I made my decision pretty quickly, then tried not to look back. In contrast, B agonized over choices all night.
But B’s technique was nothing compared to the one Anna’s mother used. When Anna saw us wrangling over choices, she told us that her mother ranked each movie by assigning points to them. That’s way too meticulous for me, and is probably even too meticulous for My Darling B, who tends to rank almost any list of things with smiley faces versus frowney faces.
Taking our programs home with us, we finished making our choices shortly before lights out, then retired to bed, exhausted. But we were up bright an early this morning to get our weekly trip to the farmer’s market out of the way in time to be home to buy tickets the minute they went on sale.
Picking me up after work this evening, My Darling B advised me that for dinner we could go have pizza at Roman Candle or go have pizza at Mickey’s. Hobson’s Choice, in other words. We ended up at Mickey’s, largely because we didn’t have to double back through traffic to get there.
Both of us were ravenously hungry and each ate half a sixteen-inch pizza without stopping. B paid for it later with a bloated tummy and begged me to hold her hand while she walked around the block. I agreed, because I’ll agree to practically anything so long as I can hold on to some part of her for even a little while.
Eating half a pizza didn’t bother me much because … well, I don’t know why. I didn’t skip breakfast or lunch, but by supper time I was hungry enough to eat the asshole out of a dead rhinoceros. And thank you, Ron Howard, for giving us the best simile ever uttered by a major movie star. Is that a simile or a metaphor? Does it even matter? Not in this case.
My Darling B must have been receiving the same signals from the mothership I was getting.
She was walking from the car to the ATM as I came out of the office building to meet her this evening. “I’m getting some cash,” she explained, “I’ve been thinking about pizza all day.”
“That’s funny, I’ve got lots of cash on me,” I told her, “I was going to offer to treat you to dinner tonight.”
She wanted to go to The Roman Candle, a pizza place on Willy Street. “Harmony’s got great pizza, but I like Roman Candle’s pizza crust better.” There you go, Harmony. You’re still our favorite tavern, but you need to work on the crust.
This Is Drivel 