Chipotle Chicken and Apple Pizza

Pizza with apples is both surprisingly tasty and also a daring “rule breaker,” like when you were a kid and made a sandwich out of wheat bread and Fritos and it brought you closer to God.

I’m a crazy Christmas whore.  At least that’s what you might label me if you were a mean person.  And even if you did, I’d be okay with that.  I’m no stranger to being called names, you know.  In fact, regularly in elementary school, mean kids would scratch out the R’s in both my first and last name on my lunch bag, then turn the “N” into a “K,” transforming me from Gary Green into “Gay Geek.”  Once this happened the first time and scored riotous laughs all across the dodgeball circle, they continued with a frequency rivaled only by the amount of times they’d wipe their noses on their sleeves.   And they didn’t stop there.  They also called me “Gary Green Bean” “Gary Green Eggs and Ham,” “Gary Gary the Human Fairy,” and my personal favorite, “Faggot!”

Kids really can be cruel, but if I was pressed to admit it, I really don’t see much of a difference between “Faggot” and “Crazy Christmas Whore,” so in this particular case the kids I went to school with were less cruel than they were right on the money.  Even as a full grown man it would be hard for me to argue it, as just today I was sharing with friends at Pinkberry how I had been dieting for a week so I’d look good for the premiere of The Bachelor. Meanwhile in my head, I was silently booking thirty minutes later in the day to stand in front of the mirror and see what I’d look like with my hair parted on the left instead of the right.  Let’s be honest… a Crazy Christmas Whore is just a Faggot who’s out of season.

I’m almost positive I’m a giant grump outside the month of December. For the rest of the year if you took a shot at reading the sentiment I was presenting on my face, you’d come up with only three options: “I’m not interested in hearing more from you,” “Why the hell would we do that?” or, “Well well well, look who thinks she’s God’s gift to Starbucks.”

Of course, I’ve never gone so far as to ask anyone if I’m coming off as tyrannical and disagreeable as I think, though sometimes MG calls me out for being unpleasant when we’re somewhere in public.  If I’m pretty sure he’s going to pick up the check, I agree with him.  We Gay Geeks are always thinking ahead like that.

But I’m most definitely someone you want to know in December.  I might even say hello to you before you can do it to me.  And if I’ve managed to get in at least a good eight hours of sleep the night before, it’s possible I’ll allow you to tell me what you think is currently interesting about your life and the lives of those with whom you interact.  And If I managed to squeeze in a few episodes of Dallas on DVD on top of getting those eight hours of sleep, I could go so far as to advise you to have a “nice rest of your day” while I give you a bold “I’m not afraid to physically connect” graze across your shoulder.  Yep, in December I’m a real cuddle bug.
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Peach and Basil Pizza

This morning on my way to getting coffee, I passed a giant display for Marlboro’s “Dream Big” contest.  I immediately thought to myself, “They’ve discovered a way for me to achieve my biggest dreams WHILE nursing an unhealthy addiction?  F**K yeah!  Where’s the saw for my right arm?”

I would have pursued it further, but the Marlboro website requires you to sign up for entry. And ever since I’ve given up cigarettes, I find I don’t really have the energy to finish things I start.  But that didn’t stop me from looking back over my life and recalling the larger-than-life dreams I once held as a young person… back when anything was still possible, we learned all we needed about safety from a police parrot, and AYDS was just a diet candy!

Come on… let’s hold hands and take a walk down Memory Lane.  A rich, creamy, juicy peach and basil pizza awaits us, along with all kinds of “Gary Green’s dreams” that evaporated amidst more unpleasantness than NBC’s ill-conceived Emeril Lagasse sitcom.

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Salami with Fennel and Asiago Pizza

I’m giving this pizza four stars.  One for every slice of it MG polished off last night.  And they weren’t small slices, either.  They weren’t even reasonable slices.  These were some seriously wide and weighted down wedges!  You really have to respect MG’s tenacity.  He gets the job done!

Underneath that deceptively simple asiago/mozzarella cheese canopy are hiding chunks of shiitake mushroom, aromatic fennel, tangy tomato, onion, and thick cuts of spicy salami.  I had complete confidence in all of these ingredients with the exception of the fennel.  I’d never used it in a pizza before, and I was worried its flavor might overwhelm.  No need to fear.  This pizza was all sorts of savory, rich, and meaty, with just pings here and there of fennel sweetness.

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Pizza and a Movie #5: Honey, Brie and Onion Pizza with The Jungle Book (1942)

The 1942 live-action adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book offers up an entire menagerie of real-life jungle animals in its opening minutes. Before we meet any of the film’s main characters, we are treated to footage of predatory wolves, mischievous monkeys, lumbering elephants, leopards, bears, hyenas, jackals and a man-eating tiger.  It reminded me of the terrific Disney True Life Adventure documentary series I watched when I was a kid.

The footage is a masterful way to open the story.  Unfortunately, real-life bears, leopards and gazelle are notoriously temperamental when it comes to performing traditional movie duties like, say… delivering lines, hitting their marks and recounting their cocaine addictions to Mary Hart.  So, after these few fun first minutes, the live animals all but disappear, and we spend the next ninety minutes with stuffed tigers, rubber snakes on strings, and an alligator who’s head completely separates from the rest of his body whenever his jaw opens for the camera.  I choose to believe this particular alligator merely suffers from a herniated disc in its neck and just needs some good acupuncture.  I’m still working on an excuse for the fact that I could hear its motor.

Still, considering it’s nearly seventy years old, The Jungle Book is a pretty ambitious film. The human actors, once they arrive, do a fairly good job at moving the story along.  And even though most of the animals may be constructed from fiberglass and paint, they still demonstrate more charisma than my actual living cat does any day of the week.

Oh Z, what would become of you in the wild?

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Pizza and a Movie #4 – Prosciutto Arugula Pizza with Fontina and Berserk! (1967)

The 1967 film Berserk! stars Joan Crawford in her penultimate film appearance as the iron-fisted ringmaster of a circus plagued by a serious of increasingly bizarre murders.

If you enjoy your pizza with movies that include garroted high-wire performers, dancing elephants, nails through the forehead, performing poodles, women accidentally sawed in two, underwhelming freaks, and an ending that feels it was decided upon when the producers ran out of money, Berserk! is the movie for you!

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Pizza and a Movie #3: Texas BBQ Chicken Pizza with Prosciutto and The Black Scorpion (1957)

The Black Scorpion centers on a misunderstood prehistoric creature who is accidentally freed from his underground cave by a volcanic eruption and proceeds to roam all of Mexico in search of friendship and understanding.

Unfortunately, he is unable to find it, so instead he decides to slash his way through thousands of locals, demolish infrastructure, and create economic chaos in an attempt to weaken the peso.

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Pizza and a Movie #2: Hula Heat Pizza and The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

It was 1979 when my parents first got cable television for the family… or what passed for cable television at the time.  The nation had yet to be introduced to even the seedlings of the multi-channel services movie fans have piped into their living rooms today.  Before everyone knew HBO, Z Channel, Showtime, Encore or Cinemax, they all knew ON-TV.

ON-TV was what was known as a “scrambled UHF” service, the height of broadcast sophistication at the time.  During the day, the UHF station (channel 52 where I grew up) aired its regular programming grid of Hercules cartoons and William Bendix in Life of Riley reruns.  But at 7 in the evening, ON-TV would begin transmitting recent motion pictures over the air to the station, and the image would immediately scramble on home televisions, the sound cutting out entirely.  In order to watch the movies, a converter box with a single “on-off” knob had to be rented for a whopping nineteen dollars a month.

Nineteen dollars a month.  I was ushered into puberty for the price of nineteen dollars a month.

ON-TV gave me the first opportunity to see movies which my yet-to-hit-double-digit age would have prevented me from seeing in an actual theatre.  And unlike the networks, ON-TV played the films totally uncut and unedited, finally allowing me to obtain a meager grasp of understanding on the subject of sex.  Smokey and the Bandit, Silver Streak, Animal House, The Deep… to this day I can’t watch any of them without still experiencing a faint twitch of pre-adolescent Catholic guilt.

It was one regular school night at home when my parents and sister came together in the living room to watch a movie called  The Spy Who Loved Me, and my mother allowed me to watch with them.  No one in my family was particularly fond of James Bond, so I had no idea what to expect.  But this was the only movie playing on the only movie channel the family had, so it was automatically an event.

By the time the opening sequence –  featuring not one, but two love-making scenes and a ski chase down the side of an Austrian mountain – gave way to Carly Simon’s “Nobody Does it Better” and the film’s titles, accompanied by a bevy of naked women, swollen in all the right places, trampolining through the air and doing cartwheels on the tops of semi-automatic pistols, I was pretty sure I was watching the greatest motion picture ever produced.

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Pizza and a Movie #1: Greek Pizza with Pancetta and Hitchcock’s Stage Fright (1950)

If you don’t start dramatically prancing around your living room before recklessly tossing your body onto the nearest piece of open furniture while crooning in the lustiest, huskiest voice you can muster after watching Marlene Dietrich perform “The Laziest Gal in Town,” smack dab in the middle of Alfred Hitchcock’s Stage Fright (video below), then switch the movie off immediately.

Stage Fright clearly has nothing to offer you.  Stick with Psycho.

For months now, MG and I have regularly observed a Friday night tradition of homemade pizza and movie-watching at Chez Tv Food and Drink.  It’s become such a ritual that I generally start mentally nominating film contenders and potential pizza toppings as early as the Wednesday before.  All the necessary ingredients are in-house by Thursday night, and if the selected film can’t be found via DVR search or on the living room shelves, an expedition to local DVD retailers is commissioned until the required title is smoked out and bagged.

And all of that happens before I even get to the cleaning of the house.  The living room must be in perfect order.  Throw pillows appropriately placed.  Stray books, sneakers, and electronic gear stowed away.  Aquarium cleaned and filled.  Glass tabletops free of all smudges and rings.  Curtains opened so the lights from the balcony candles are able to reflect their charm into the window panes.  Ipod turned on to the “Cocktail Hour” playlist featuring over 500 of my favorite lounge tunes, exotica, and Bond soundtracks.

And my OCD goes double for the kitchen.  Countertops must be scrubbed down and free of any unnecessary appliances. Dirty dishes are washed, dried and put away.  Cutting boards set out along with all appropriate knives and the rolling pin for the pizza dough.  By the time MG arrives from work, I have the entirety of that night’s pizza built and ready to hit the oven.  Then together we count three, hoist up the pie via the slice of parchment paper underneath, and transport it onto the pizza stone, which has been heating in the oven at 500°F for no less than thirty minutes.  Once the oven door is kicked closed, I make our drinks and we head to the living room to discuss the day for the next 12-18 minutes until it’s time to slice up our dinner, kill the lights, and start our movie.

Pizza and a Movie night – hardly a new concept, though I don’t know if anyone in the history of Pizza and Movie Nights has taken it as seriously as I do.

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