Rank Reviews – Page 2 – HappyStinkingJoy

Eugene’s Pizza vs. Imo’s Pizza

Growing up in Glasgow, Montana, I had the privilege of regularly consuming some of the best pizza on the entire planet. This pizza is served by a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant (located in the “Big G Shopping Center”) called Eugene’s Pizza. Eugene’s Pizza does not take reservations, and on certain nights you may have to wait for an extended amount of time to seat yourself at a recently departed table.

You almost never sit at a clean table at Eugene’s; you sit at a dirty table and wait for a waitress to come clean the table for you. The waitress then takes your order and you wait… and you wait… and you wait for your order. The cool thing is, as a kid (or a kid at heart), you can watch the entire pizza-making process if you can muster the courage to go stand in front of the counter. You can watch the dough go through this cool flattening machine, and then you can watch a highly-trained pizza-tossing professional twirl the thinning disc of gluten higher and higher into the air. If the dough doesn’t actually hit the vaulted (probably 15 foot) ceiling, the dough isn’t thin enough. There are usually cobwebs encrusted in flour near the point on the ceiling where the dough makes contact, but this never seems like a big deal.

Crap, if there was a spider in my Eugene’s Pizza, I probably wouldn’t care, because the pizza is that good.

After the dough is tossed, they bring the paper-thin masterpiece to the counter and slather it with a tomato-based sauce. The other toppings follow… and what most clings to my memory are the sheets of mozzarella cheese. This isn’t a handful of shredded cheese sprinkled on top of the pizza; rather, a solid foundation of sheeted mozzarella is laid under the building blocks of flavor that will soon be exploding in your mouth. Honestly, I didn’t know pizza was made any other way until some point beyond my youth where I came to the conclusion that some pizza-makers cheated with faster-melting shredded cheese. There is no “faster” with a Eugene’s Pizza. From the counter, the pizza makes it’s way into a true pizza oven, where it spends what seems like an eternity. This ain’t fast food, and you can tell by the taste of the finished product! Cracker-like crust that bursts upon impact with the teeth, stringy mozzarella in every bite, a world class sauce that is reproduced by no imitator, and enough toppings to satisfy the largest hunger. I always figured that Eugene’s was one of the best thin crust pizzas in the world.

After leaving Glasgow (’cause pizza alone cannot retain a soul yearning for satisfaction… there has to be jobs), I discovered that the style of pizza that Eugene’s served was unique. I couldn’t find anything like it anywhere I went. So, I did a little Internet research at some point that led me to believe that Eugene’s served St. Louis style pizza. Yeah, I know, St. Louis style pizza in Glasgow, MT… seems like a stretch. So I did a little research on St. Louis style pizza. What I found out is: there isn’t a lot of information on St. Louis style pizza.

Although the info on St. Louis style pizza is limited, I did find some. St. Louis style pizza is made on a cracker-thin crust, is cut into 3″ or 4″ squares (instead of the traditional pie-type cutting), often uses (but does not require) Provel cheese, and is either loved or detested by most people who try it.

Eugene’s cuts its pizzas into the squares found in a traditional St. Louis pizza, and the cracker-thin crust of Eugene’s Pizza is one of it’s greatest features. The major difference I could find between traditional St. Louis style pizza and Eugene’s Pizza is the cheese.

Provel cheese is a blend of cheddar, swiss and provolone cheese. But Provel isn’t just a blend… Provel is a processed cheese food (think Velveeta). Provel cheese originated in St. Louis in around 1947 (Wikipedia) for use in the St. Louis pizza market. If you have never heard of Provel cheese, well, that’s because you probably aren’t from around the St. Louis area. The world outside of St. Louis knows little about Provel cheese. Why? Well, if a pizza place started using Velveeta on it’s pizza, the average pizza connoisseur who most likely run the opposite direction. In St. Louie, they run for it?!?

Mozzarella is real cheese. In fact, mozzarella is the traditional cheese used in modern-era pizza-making. And, when a pizza joint forgoes the now-common shredded cheese in favor of large slices on cheese; well, said joint is going to serve a superior pizza! At least these were my thoughts having never tried Imo’s Pizza.

Well, recently, I had the opportunity to visit St. Louis. I didn’t see the Arch, I didn’t hear any live Blues, I didn’t catch a Cardinals game… but I made sure I tried an Imo’s Pizza. It had been so long since I had good thin crust pizza of the Eugene’s caliber that I was extremely excited! I had grown up eating a copy of Imo’s, right? Now I was going to get to try the original! After all, Imo’s claims to be “The Original St. Louis Style Pizza!”

I ordered the pizza from my hotel room and anxiously awaited the call announcing the delivery dude had arrived. When the call came in, I sprinted to the lobby and grabbed the wonderful-smelling treat.

I rushed back to my room, mouth watering, and threw the box open! The pizza that rested before me looked quite similar to the Eugene’s that I missed so dearly; square cut pieces, cracker-thin crust, loaded with toppings…

As I slid a piece between my lips and snapped into the crust, a wave of nostalgia swept over me. That was some good pizza. In fact… believe it or not… Imo’s is… is… almost as good as Eugene’s Pizza! Imo’s just didn’t have the zing of Eugene’s. Although I liked the smoky flavor of the Provel cheese, the stringy-chewy-deliciousness of Eugene’s mozzarella just can’t be touched by a processed cheese food. Eugene’s is KING!

You know what I really found interesting? If you notice on the box from Imo’s, the “Original St Louis Style Pizza” has been around since 1964. If you check out Eugene’s website (from which you can order these pieces of art to your own home anywhere is the continental USA), you will notice that Eugene’s was established in Glasgow, MT in 1962?!? My research had led me to believe that Eugene’s copied Imo’s… but it looks like Eugene’s was in business before Imo’s! Maybe Imo’s isn’t the original St Louis style pizza… maybe Eugene’s is the original Glasgow, MT style pizza… and maybe, just maybe, Imo’s copied Eugene’s 🙂 YEAH… Glasgow, MT may be famous for a pizza style… it just has the wrong name!!!

High School Graduation

I spent a weekend about a month ago going to a couple of high school graduation receptions. Man, I can remember back to my high school graduation. Remember those days… when you still partially believed that life was fair and you could accomplish any goal? You were going places and had a lot of success in front of you? Then, life smacked you upside the head and — POW— life not only is not even close to being fair… it spends a large portion of time stinking.

Once we realize that success seems to only be for someone else, and then we start justifying crap to ourselves to make it seem like we found some measure of success… you know… “I have a great family, therefore I am successful”… “I get to go to work every day, and there isn’t much more to success than that”… “I don’t live in a trailer house, so I must be successful”… “I can put food on the table for my family and my kids love me; success, success, success!” I’m not saying that these things are bad; I’m just saying that these things are not a measure of success. These things are a measure of not being complete and utter trailer trash… which is the antithesis of success.

Success is a measure of worth. Worth is a value that you place on yourself and that others place on you. For example, people living in trailers (or low-income housing, or where ever) who feed their family exclusively with food stamps and don’t have job because, well, they can make more living off of the tax money paid in by people who actually work for a living, and a job may interfere with their addictions to medicaid-funded painkillers and Budweiser… I see these people as having very little worth. These people, however, may see themselves as having a lot of worth. Therefore, they are delusional. No… they have a feeling of self-worth but no actual worth, because they do nothing of value to society. When your feeling of self-worth and society’s value of your worth are both in the positive… Ta-Da… SUCCESS! It really isn’t hard to find something to do that society values. Society values a good Big Mac… and somebody has to flip it. Society values having trash collected and removed from houses once a week… and someone has to remove it. The problem is, as individuals, can we find a measure of self-worth in doing these “lowly” jobs? Maybe if these “lowly” paid paid more…

Our society is so majorly screwed up. I know this is going off on a tangent, but why aren’t the jobs that create the most value to society the ones that generate the largest income? Alex Rodriguez is a great baseball player. In other words, he is really good at playing a game. He makes millions of dollars a year. If A-Rod died tomorrow (and I am not wishing this on him by any stretch of the imagination), how would our society really be any worse off then it is today? In fact, if baseball completely disappeared off the face of the earth, other than lost marketing revenue and maybe a few people who make a living manufacturing baseball bats and stuff losing their jobs, society really wouldn’t be too severely hurt.

Now, let’s consider a garbage collector. These noble steeds who drive the big trucks around and take away all the stinky stuff you no longer want probably make around $30,000 to $40,ooo per year. Imagine if these people suddenly disappeared off the face of the earth. How much more would society suck without these guys collecting your crap. There would be a dramatic increase in the suck-o-tude of society without garbage collectors… yet they make only a small fraction of what a baseball player makes.

“Supply and demand” you may scream. “Anyone can be trained to collect garbage, but not everyone can hit like A-Rod!”

Right… not everyone can be trained to play a little kids game and be really good at it. If baseball never were, A-Rod would most likely be a lumberjack (one of the few “real world” places where the ability to “swing” has a payout). Anyway, it is hard to find the self-worth in your job when society deems you be paid only a small, small fraction of what someone who plays games for a living (or, in the case of an actor, pretends to be someone else and looks pretty while doing it) makes.

Okay, tangent over, back to high school graduation. High school graduates are people to be emulated. They are cocky and full of life. They are ready to succeed. They are, for the most part, full of delusions and will be bitterly disappointed with what life actually offers them, but they see the glass as half-full as opposed to half-empty. Me, I see the glass as not full. I don’t give a rat’s patootie if the stinking glass is half-empty or half-full… the glass is less than full and that sucks. I want a full glass, but a full glass is reserved for those who either were blessed with the ability to play games with an extreme amount of athleticism, people who are unnaturally pretty, people who are so full of self-confidence that they make the rest of us sick to our stomachs, and politicians. Working hard doesn’t cut it. Working smart doesn’t cut it. You have to work both hard and smart (and being pretty or tall doesn’t hurt) to succeed… and doing both at the same time gives me a headache. I don’t like headaches, therefore, I am not successful.

To all of the recent high school graduates out there who are reading this blog (seriously, there might be one!), keep your head high and keep dreaming of success. If you give up now, you are utterly screwed. If you remain positive… well… there is a chance you won’t be disappointed.

For the rest of us who are not recent high school graduates: if you haven’t found success yet, you probably never will. If success isn’t important to you, I’m sure you have a special spot in heaven with your name on it. If success is relatively important to you and you haven’t found it in your many years following high school… welcome to the happy stinking joy that is your life 🙂 It could be worse; you could be living in a trailer. If you are living in a trailer and have no future hope of getting out of that trailer as you improve your circumstances, QUIT USURPING MY TAX MONEY!!!

Man, I miss high school…

Rocking the Podunk; Deaf Pedestrians and Egypt Central!

A couple of weeks ago, I went to a really good concert. This is very surprising considering the fact that I live, literally, in the middle of nowhere. Most concerts that come to this area are country performers. For example, this past summer for a couple of the big fair-type events, the performers that were brought in to entertain the masses were LoCash Cowboys, Terri Clark, and Jaime Fox. I know, I know, if you are anything like me, you’re thinking to yourself, “Who?” No clue, can’t help you with that one. All I know about the previously listed performers is that they perform country and I have never heard of them. You will notice that I refer to them as “performers” as opposed to “musicians” and that I refer to the style of performance as “country” and not “country music”. I think of country much the same way I think of the Barney theme-song; technically, it may be considered “music”, but no one with the intellect above that of a 4-year-old really enjoys it much. Just my opinion.

Oh, they have tried to bring some good old rock and roll to our area, but they seem to usually fail miserably. They either bring in acts so washed-up that it’s not even funny (think Pat Benetar) or they bring in those sudo-classic bands. You know the kind of bands I’m referring to: Credence Clearwater Revisited where the only original CCR musician is, like, the drummer, and the drummer did not CCR make. Or, one year they brought in someone with a name like Classic Rock Greats, which was like the guitarist from Air Supply, the drummer from 38 Special, a bassist from The Alan Parson’s Project, and a lead singer named Bob who they picked up from a cover band in Des Moine… or something like that. Anyway, they are bands that do not interest me.

Needless to say, I was ecstatic when I learned that Egypt Central was going to be opening for Deaf Pedestrians… in Crap-pile, Nebraska. I was STOKED! I wanted to see this concert more than anything I have recently desired. Now, I’m not a major follower of either of these bands, but I have heard music from both of them, and they kick some serious booty.

I feel obliged to mention the local cover band that opened for Deaf Pedestrians and Egypt Central: Six Shot Lullaby. There… I mentioned them. Just kidding. They really weren’t bad for a cover band from the Podunk… plus the lead guitarist actually came out into the crowd to try to get people into the concert… and he was kind of big and scary… and I live in the same town as him… so Six Shot Lullaby kicked butt, Mr. Guitarist Dude.

Now on to the main acts. Neither of these bands have hit the “Big Time” or had a “major” hit… you know the kind: the song that keeps getting airplay on the adult contemporary station play after play because it was featured in a Super Bowl commercial for Geico where that stupid British lizard gets his heart broken by the sizzling supermodel who decides that “size” really is important as Rob Thomas sings his ever-loving heart out while a full orchestra accompanies the whaling guitar of a past metal-great-reduced-to-Super-Bowl-half-time-status-hero (no offense to Aerosmith, but doesn’t this define them:) Man… I hate that kind of music!

Both Egypt Central and Deaf Pedestrians, however, are amazing talents with tunes you may have heard (unless coloring pictures of Baby Bop has given way to music time and it’s time to sing along with Taylor Swift until teacher says it’s time to lay down on the blankie and take the nappie before recess).
The Deaf Pedestrians (or ‘Deaf Peds’ as they are lovingly referred to by their fans) were the headliner for the show. If you have never heard of this Texas-based band, please click the videos following to get a feel for their greatness. Seriously, both of the bands I’m talking about are from southern states where I would expect nothing more than country-crap could escape the borders… yet these two rock?!? And from Texas… the Deaf Peds may seriously be the best thing to come out of Texas since… uh, given the lack of anything great to have ever come out of Texas… the Deaf Peds may be it! Deaf Peds have a semi-hit with “Hail to the Geek.”

They actually had a real-life video with (my favorite song of theirs) “15 Beers.”

The Deaf Peds also have an almost-brand-new cd out entitled We’re All Gonna Die.
This CD rocks. My favorite tune on this disc is “”Doomed To You”, but “We’re All Gonna Die”, “Tick”, and “I Hate This Place” (plus more) are well worth gracing the presence of your ears’ time:) The Deaf Peds were near-perfect… ‘near’….

The only thing that could have made the Deaf Peds better than they were would have been if they would have picked a less AWESOME band than Egypt Central to open for them! The Deaf Peds played a flawless gig. Very entertaining. The problem was that their opening act, Egypt Central, was a high-energy, get-the-crowd-involved, in-your-face act that leaned more toward metal than the Deaf Peds quirky alternative hard rock. Egypt Central has spent a little time opening for acts such as Korn and Disturbed… so they know how to ROCK! The crowd was too pumped to calm down and enjoy the more intricate styling of Deaf Ped’s music. People actually started leaving during the main act, which is disappointing. It will be hard to get any bigger-named acts to come to Podunk, Nebraska when word gets around that crowds disappear during an acts performance.

Anyway, Egypt Central has a semi-hit with the awesome “Taking you Down.” Here is a video someone created for the song with some pretty cool fantasy CGI stuff.

Even better was the band’s final song, which is a little less intense than some of their other stuff but is the kind of song you would expect to get some serious radio airplay without turning into drivel! I was waiting for this song the entire show and was pretty stoked that this is how they wrapped things up. The song in “You Make Me Sick,” and it rocks way more live than it does recorded, but here you go:

I really hope that the rapid fan-disappearance doesn’t discourage the local radio station (and others) from bringing in more contemporary, non-country performances. I’m tired of all the country crap coming this way. However, I feel a little bad about the comparison I made of country fans to 4-year olds… so I’m throwing in some typical country to make country fans feel at home on my blog:

Ye-hah?