by ....© 2000, Kimit A. Muston
I am here to raise an alarm. There has recently been released upon our defenseless nation a Godless technology, created by greed and driven by its own dangerous logic. It seeks to disenfranchise us, to separate us from the values of our forefathers and foremothers. If allowed to continue to feed upon itself unchecked, it will be the end us. I speak of course, of the evils of techno-pizzas.
Once upon a time pizza was just a tomato pie with cheese. Bovine and pork by products might be sprinkled on top and the occasional sliced onion or green pepper, or mushroom fungus, or little salty fish - but nothing more than that! This was a pure fundamental food rock upon which a corner stone of American culture would sprout and grow.
It is the pizza pie that has provided the average American male with the only tomatoes in his entire diet. It is the pizza pie that was the first "fast food." It was the pizza pie that brought families together on Friday nights. And it was the development of the "half-and-half" pizza pie that saved countless marriages. And just what else could the moon hit your eye as, if not as a big pizza pie?
Ahhh, the pizza; a cushioned culinary cacophony of carbohydrates; culture in a 12" circle, love in a mere ten million calories; binding and yet filling. Cartoon cats may sing the praises of Lasagna as the perfect food, but pizza will always be first in its own food group to me.
I grew up in Indiana, where pizza is sliced into squares. As a young man I moved to New York City where pouring the grease off the top of each slice into the gutter is a time honored lunch time ritual.
At thirty I moved to California, where I saw pizza cheerfully support such innovations as Chinese spiced chicken, Thai spiced chicken and Polynesian spiced chicken, apple and orange and pineapple slices and even that final insult; low fat cheese.
But the essence of pizza survived because a pizza never lies. No matter the frills and additions on a pizza, if you don't see it, you don't taste it - that's the point of pizza. And this simple honesty has allowed it to suffer even a burden as unidentifiable as tofu, and still be a pizza. It is truly the food of the ages, a digestible morality play. A functional symbol of the best of western civilization.
But what the mind of man created technology now threatens to destroy. The very essence of what is a pizza is now at issue. What the heck is cheese doing inside my pizza?!
What madman first conceived the machine to insert, yes, that's the unpleasant word, INSERT, cheese into the dough around the rim of a pizza? Did no one file an environmental impact statement on this dastardly creation? Did no one ask how the cheese was going to cool if it was on the inside? And how are you supposed to hold a slice if the edge is as hot as the center?
The cheese is supposed to be on top, where it can be seen, where it can be sprinkled with oregano and garlic, where it can cool, where it can congeal. The cheese is not supposed to be inside the dough, hidden, disguised, lurking. Concealment misses the point of the pizza. Pizza's are not supposed to lie.
But this was technology for technologies' sake. We could do it, so we did it. How arrogant. How foolish. Did we learn nothing from Mary Shelly's masterpiece, "Frankenstein"? Did we learn nothing from the "Godfather" movies? (In which no one eats pizza, I point out.) Obviously we did not.
The insert machinery, once invented, began to invent on its own. The product became the message. And I saw doomsday approaching on my television last night with a new commercial from Pizza Hut. Now they putting the cheese inside the body of the pizza. My whole spirit cries out, "This is wrong! This is not the way pizza was meant to be eaten! Pizza is not a cheese pie with tomato sauce! It is a tomato pie, with cheese."
Shall we surrender our entire heritage for some slick techno-trick? Has the food industry gone mad?! Can no one stop the insanity?! There are some things that technology should leave alone. The paper clip. The wooden baseball bat. The taste of Kentucky Fried Chicken. And the nature of the Pizza Pie.
We can save the future. We can. We just have to say no to internal cheese. I beg you. Just say no.
Kimit Muston is a writer sweating in North Hollywood. If you have comments about his columns, you can reach him at editor@inditer.com , or kmuston@inditer.com