Wednesday, May 25, 2011

PIzza Wars: Mazzaro's Italian Market

P1030036

The contender: Mazzaro's Italian Market

Style
: Pizzeria

In your mouth: The sauce tasted exactly like hot tomatoes, almost like tomato soup. The cheese is remarkably stringy and the crust is rather spongy. There's too much grease.

The next day: Nothing special.

Overall: Unsatisfying. Most pizzas have some grease, but this one had so much it seemed unwholesome. And the textures stood out more than the flavors.

P1030038

G rated: 1908


CONTEXT:
The Mayor turned so pale at this that the Constable had to thrust a banana into his mouth to restore his courage.
--From The Magic Pudding--

I can't tell if it's better that this sentence is illustrated or not. And what does it mean that these two characters (both portrayed as rather weak and/or effeminate) are stuffing themselves with bananas while everyone else in the book is eating pie and the occasional egg?

Are these bananas just bananas?

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Children's literature: 1918

Smoking:
Violence:
Murder!:

--From The Magic Pudding--

Civilization ended shortly after this book was published.

Pizza Wars: Walmart

Walmart Pizza before

The contender: Walmart's Marketside Pizza

Style
: Pizzeria

In your mouth: The crust is like cardboard on the bottom (yes, I removed the cardboard), and gooey on top. Unpleasant. The pepperoni is spicy, but you get the impression this is to cover an "off" taste in the meat.

The next day: The moisture has redistributed itself in the crust. It tastes a lot less distinctive, which in this case is a good thing.

Overall: Strangely flat. Fresh pizza that you'd swear was frozen (and expired).

Walmart Pizza after

Sunday, May 15, 2011

On your marks!


Marathon in Saint Petersburg

Team green

The streets are cleared

Saint Petersburg is always having some sort of walk, run, or cycling event to raise money for charity. This one was for police officers.

Pizza Wars: Gianni's NY PIZZA

Gianni's NY PIZZA

The contender: Gianni's NY PIZZA

Style
: New York

In your mouth: The sauce is slightly acidic. The pepperoni stands out and there's a slightly hot, peppery aftertaste.

The next day: The crust is stale, but I prefer everything else this way. It's sweeter, and more interesting.

Overall: There's nothing distinctive about it. It's good pizza and I can like it, but I can't love it.

Pizza Wars: Valentino's Little Italy

Valentino's Little Italy

The contender: Valentino's Little Italy

Style
: New York

In your mouth: The crust is thin but still chewy. Interesting texture underneath. There's a taste of oregano, and a saltiness that brings out the sweetness of the cheese.

The next day: The crust has held up but the flavor profile has shifted... spicy!

Overall: A light, fun pizza.

Friday, May 13, 2011

The saga of Ann Althouse

Ann Althouse's blog goes down. She goes to the blogger help forum to try and have it restored. The "helper" running the forum starts giving her attitude. Among other things, he posts a link (to his own blog) where he writes about dispensing justice to blogs. And when people start flagging his responses as "unhelpful" he taunts Althouse, asking why she can't even get a hundred people to say his responses aren't helpful:

omg

For whatever reason he starts deleting the comments he's making:

omg 2

(He seems to have even deleted the post at his own blog.)

But, he's not done yet! Now he taunts Althouse for not having 200 readers willing to say his comments aren't helpful:

omg 3

Which he also deletes:

omg 4

His strategy seems to be to say incendiary things, have the person he's supposed to be helping "loose it", then remove his own comments. That way if someone reviews his work it will look like he's dealing with a crazy person.

Eventually a real life Google employee steps in and the craziness ends:

omg 5

(And I had better not have to update this post with more bad Google behavior!)

UPDATE: Many of the helper's responses have been restored over on the help forum thread. (Glad I took the screen shots to prove there had been deletions!) Also, here's the post the helper had linked to.

Just in case he deletes it:

omg 6

He's responding to comments over there. So I asked him about the deletions of his own posts on the thread.

Oh, and the old posts on Althouse's blogs still can't be seen. Although the "helper" assures us on his own blog that her site has been "restored":
There's no lingering glitch affecting Althouse's blog - Brett reviewed it, and restored it. That is how we do "What can we do to solve this?".
That's how they do it over at Google!

UPDATE 2: The helper is responding to comments now, but not mine. He wont post my comment, afraid someone might see it.

He claimed he only deleted posts which weren't relevant, so I asked him why he had deleted his own posts. And I asked why he was taunting people asking for help and trying to make them look like idiots.