Overheard recently at the Eureka branch of Pete’s New York Style Pizza, while waiting three hungry kids for the waitress who was speaking to a customer on the telephone.
Customer: Wah wah wah (think adult voices in the Peanuts cartoon)
Waitress: Sorry sir. None of our menu pesto pizzas has artichokes. However, you can add a topping.
Customer: Wah wah wah wah.
Waitress: That one has tomato sauce, not pesto. We have only two pizzas with artichoke hearts, and they are both tomato sauce not pesto.
Customer: Wah wah wah.
Waitress: Well sir, you can order one of the pesto pizzas and add artichoke hearts as an additional topping.
Customer: Wah wah wah wah wah.
Waitress: The only special pizzas we have with artichokes are the tomato sauce pizzas. You can also substitute pesto for tomato sauce, but that will be a little extra.
Customer: Wah wah.
Waitress: No, we would have to charge extra.
Customer: Wah wah wah wah.
Waitress: Sir, you can order any of our pesto pizzas and just add artichoke hearts.
Customer: Wah wah wah.
Waitress: Yes sir. You don’t have to have all of the toppings. But if it’s not one of the specials then we have to charge for additional toppings.
And it went on. With her on-the-job training I should invite the waitress to join the Community Park Board.
….
Great deal in Eureka at Flips for Kids, the children’s gymnasium in Myrtletown. For a reasonable price you can leave your kids there on Friday and Saturday nights from 6 to 9. Lots of kids show and they play while you have some adult time. Some friends treated my wife and me to a splurge dinner – our first visit to Restaurant 301. Pricey, but I loved everything I tried. I’d never tasted anything like their carrot lime soup! I also recommend the duck, though I wonder why we can eat that fowl medium rare but not chicken. They have a huge wine list, including bottles priced as high as…. $25,000.00. Our waiter said that he has yet to sell one of those bottles, and mentioned that they were sweating hard during that last earthquake.
And the kids, they didn’t even miss us.
….
I guess I’m in the minority, but I’m actually enjoying the Battlestar Galactica spin-off prequel Caprica, which takes place 50 years before the afore-mentioned series and apparently leads up to the first war with robots. It explores the question of whether artificial intelligence can become sentient to the point where it is entitled to ethical considerations – a theme dating back to Azimov’s I Robot (forget the movie) and further explored in science fiction series ever since.
Well written and brilliantly acted by accomplished stars and new faces. But what is fascinating about the series aesthetically is the retro-30s combo of decor and garb – both series being reminiscent of the old French sci fi film Alphaville in which very little appeared to be futuristic. You hear about the advanced technology, but much of it – guns, telephones, even computers – looks pretty 20th century. Battlestar Galactica looked very much our time, so the throwback series looks like the 30s, complete with fedoras and hair nets. The idea is to remind us of certain basic human traits which, ostensibly, will hang with us no matter how advanced the technology. It’s effective.
There’s also a very amusing theme. The general society is polytheistic. They are opposed by a terrorist group which is monotheistic, deemed dangerous by the prevailing culture because monotheism adopts moral absolutes which generate destructive results. The robots in the first series were monotheistic, but this series drives it home so that we don’t confuse the cause as something alien.
The storyline is complex. There’s very little action. By all accounts, the audience just doesn’t have the attention span. I hope it survives to see another season, but given the fate of Firefly and other brilliant but canceled series, my hopes aren’t up.
….
Ed Gale, the cult-following actor famous for George Lucas’ bomb of a movie Howard the Duck is coming to the Bay Area. I’d completely forgotten the film. I’d read the comic book as a kid. Among many criticisms of the movie was what I’d thought to be Lucas’ insistence on providing some sort of quasi-rational explanation for the presence of a human child-sized duck wandering the neighborhoods of Cleveland. My interpretation had always been that Howard was a hard working guy living in Cleveland who was normal in every way except that he just happened to be a duck. Being a duck presents certain problems in society. Think Kafka’s Metamorphosis and mellow it out a bit – that’s what I’d thought the storyline to be.
But apparently Lucas was loyal to the actual plot. Alas, Howard came from a planet of talking ducks. He was skilled in something called “quack fu.” (Sigh). Dumbed down from the outset.
….
And just for fun, Bobo Fett (am I spelling that right?) does King Crimson.
15 comments
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March 31, 2010 at 5:40 am
Fred Mangels
Just to point out another point of disagreement with you: I had a pizza delivered from Big Pete’s last week (or was it the week before?) for the first time. I wasn’t impressed. I’ll go Big Louie’s next time.
March 31, 2010 at 7:18 am
Eric Kirk
I haven’t been to Big Louie’s since I first moved here. It was okay, but I’m very much a thin crust kind of person.
March 31, 2010 at 7:33 am
Anonymous
Big Louis tastes to me like Murphy’s Pizza already cooked for you.
Unlike all the places which claim to be New York style Pete’s is authentic.
And The Metamorphosis was Kafka’s best novel.
March 31, 2010 at 7:35 am
Eric Kirk
And The Metamorphosis was Kafka’s best novel.
Really? Better than The Trial?
March 31, 2010 at 7:44 am
Lefty
What I really want to know Eric, is, If I go over to Big Pete’s in Eureka can I get a pie with pesto sauce and artichoke hearts at the special price? It seems pretty obvious to me that someone is hiding the pesto. Could you please post the purchase order history of Big Pete’s? I have a petition with 300 signatures on it and we all want pesto with our artichoke hearts and we don’t want to pay extra for it. You So. Hum folks may be ok with paying extra, but this is Eureka, and those of us who don’t like fat crust pizza, are pretty sure that there is a conspiracy somewhere in all of this and all we really want to do is eat our pizza with pesto and artichoke hearts at a resonable price. Also, could you please get Big Pete to turn up the sound on all of those T.V.s at the same time? All I hear when I visit this place is the sound of people crunching that skinny crust pizza.
March 31, 2010 at 8:03 am
blacklisted2
Sounds like the waitress has to much intelligence to be on the corporate community park board.
March 31, 2010 at 9:43 am
dheimstadt
Comments:
Best post yet, by far.
Even better that it spurred nothing but pizza talk and a modest mention of Kafka.
I don’t have TV but Caprica sounds awesome. A sci-fi period piece prequel for Battlestar Galactica?!?!
Its *Boba Fett
It is imperative that you watch this http://video.adultswim.com/robot-chicken/going-out-like-a-punk.html
And this http://video.adultswim.com/robot-chicken/boba-fett-wins.html
March 31, 2010 at 11:38 am
moviedad
Is it “Kafka-esque” to be in a pizza place and be told over and over that you have to modify your order? I have this vision of a David Lynch film black and white scene…Bill Pullman is asking for artichokes, the waitress, staring off into the distance, keeps repeating the same line….”you must modify, you must modify..” till Pullman pulls out a pistol and kills everybody in the place. Outside a little girl is selling Artichokes…”you must modify, you must modify.”
It is “Kafka” right?
March 31, 2010 at 2:28 pm
Not A Native
Do you remember the scene of Jack Nickholson ordering toast in “Five Easy Pieces”? It was a iconic hoot, for awhile. At the time(it was the 60′s) the waitress, unable to go beyond slavish adherance to a set menu, was considered symbolic of totalitarianism, meriting ridicule and defiance of “progressives”. Oh those 60′s !!
Funny, how time has obliterated that message for some. Now the waitress is heroic upholder of reasonableness. Maybe its got something to do with hippies who move to a rural area and….(you know the rest).
March 31, 2010 at 3:04 pm
Eric Kirk
NAN – it was a great scene, but if you remember, Nicholson’s character offered to pay extra for the variation and still she refused.
April 1, 2010 at 2:12 pm
Not A Native
The principle that “the cutomer is (almost) always right should apply, especially in a locale that claims to be dedicated to increasing tourism. You know, even burger king’s motto is “have it your way”. I got a papa murphy’s pizza the other day and they completely supported substituting ingredients, even suggesting common substitutions.
The whole idea of getting a price deal on some certain combinations that someone has preselected is arbitrary and assumes the “menu maker knows best”. If the substitution is a “similar” topping, it should be accepted. No questions asked.
Pete’s has a “my way or the highway” attitude that works to increase margins only when easily cowed college students are the customers. They’re trying to levy a premium just for assembling a pizza to order. Well, IMHO, all pizza should be made to order, so Pete’s is ripping off customers who just like different combination than what Pete’s “pizza God” selected. Yeah, their thin crust pizza has loyal followers but they’re squandering that appeal by being “pizza Nazis”. Now maybe thats appropriate in a haute cusine establishment where a Wolfgang Puck type in the kitchen is creating art and educating palates. But not in a pizza joint like Pete’s.
April 1, 2010 at 3:25 pm
Eric Kirk
NAN – that’s one way of looking at it I suppose, however, Burger King operates on a completely different scale and Murphy’s Pizza doesn’t taste very good.
For the small guy, supply purchases are oriented to their menus. Too many substitutions can have a serious financial impact. The customer being always right does not mean that the customer gets to dictate the price.
In any case, I couldn’t hear the customer, but it doesn’t sound like he was asking for a special price. He just apparently couldn’t wrap his brain around the concept that they didn’t have a designated special pizza with both artichoke hearts and pesto and so kept asking the same questions over and over again. It was annoying to someone with hungry kids having to wait through it.
April 1, 2010 at 5:24 pm
Not A Native
OK, I get it. You weren’t concerned with the waitress feeling abused, your actual tort is YOU had to wait longer than you felt you should for the person before you to finish their business. Did you think to offer to pay the asked difference in price and thereby resolve the matter instantly? Would it have been OK if he was ordering 20 pizzas and took up the same amount of time? You’ve got a lot in common with Fred who complained similarly about waiting for people who write checks in checkout lines.
I’m just surprised how intolerant you are of fiercely independent folks, the way you describe the caller, who challenge any authority’s decisions(even a Pete’s waitress). They do constitute the bulk of local self styled progressives(and others). But then again, impatience and feeling put upon by others is another common characteristic shared with Libertarians.
Thought you would be into “slow food” and a progressive parent who would welcome demonstating patience to his children to build their moral character to show respect for others, even if they’re disabled or in a drug induced euphoria. Sounds like you’ve got spoiled kids as well as having tastes too rarified for papa murphy’s. My advice: Don’t go back to Pete’s, they clearly don’t know who you are or give you the service you expect. In fact, best to stay in SoHum where you’ll get the honor and deference a person of your stature merits.
April 1, 2010 at 6:53 pm
Eric Kirk
Well NAN, you’re really giving this more thought than I, but yeah, “fierce independence” which wastes my time annoys me. “Fierce independence” in this context is pretty much “the world revolves around meeeee.”
I also try to have my check mostly written out before it’s my turn. I also try to do the bagging on my own to speed things up, and am annoyed by the “fiercely independent” who sit staring at their navels as the checker scans everything in and then bags everything herself. If I’m lucky, he doesn’t have to think for 20 minutes before deciding between paper and plastic.
April 2, 2010 at 11:17 am
Anonymous
Give the man the artichoke hearts with pesto!