Parental Advisory: Graphic Pizza Content

Pizza is like sex. When it's good, it's effin' good (pun may or may not have been intended -- I'm not telling)! When it's bad, hey, it's still pizza. It can never be too cheap, too fancy, to fast or last too long. It's great at night and just as good in the morning.

Such describes my love affair with the perfect food. Pizza is number one on my list of foods I will always eat and never be able to turn down (followed closely by barbecue, sushi and my Mom's salmon patties or her meat loaf). If I were to be a character in one of those goofy 70s live-action Saturday morning shows, I would be the good guy who is always thrown off the trail of the bad guy buy a strategically placed pizza.

My pizza fetish goes back to my youth when the only pizza you could get in the tiny (and I do mean tiny) town we grew up in was from Gino's. Fortunately, my dad was always willing to throw together a Chef Boyardee pizza in a box for us. Unfortunately, he would top it with whatever was in the fridge. Thus, I am one of the few people in America, I am certain, who has an affinity for hot dog slices and green olives on their pizza.

But it was when I was in middle school that my pizza horizons truly expanded. A pizza Hut opened next to the post office. It was there that my pizza proclivities took their first walk on the wild side: Thick and chewy crusts! Then deep dish and personal pan pizzas swayed me easily to become a practitioner of their ways. That is until I reached the pizzaic nirvana of my youth. The pizza perfection, the pizza resistance. The meat lover's pizza.

Sure, I still frequented Gino's for the pizza equivalent of a quickie, pizza bread. But to fulfill my deepest, most primal pizza desires, I looked no further than the darkened, red accented room and the red roadside light of Pizza Hut. Life could get no better. Until I was in high school, that is, and Domino's opened across from my friend's dad's barber shop.

It wasn't better and it wasn't cheaper. But they brought it to you. A simple phone call, conveying of coded words and the object of my desire was delivered to the door of my house, church, school or work. A late night urge that could not be satiated before was now fixed in the privacy of my own home. No longer did I need to worry about who might see, what may be said. The doorbell would ring, money would be exchanged, blinds pulled, curtains drawn and, well, you know the rest.

After high school, my family moved to South Carolina and a much larger town. They only had one Pizza Hut and one Domino's, but there were also other choices. And it was these choices that proved to be the next life changing pizza event for me. For the first time, I fulfilled every adolescent and young man's fantasy: I had twins. My new home town had a Little Ceasar's pizza establishment where, for the price of a single pizza at other locations, you got two.

While Little Ceasars opened my eyes to a more exotic pizza lifestyle, it did not stop there. A couple years later I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and experienced pizza like I had never before, like I never even knew was possible. In my wildest pizza dreams, I would never have thought that such experiences were even possible. I had the most mind blowing pizza ever and found a new favorite that even today is my preferred pizza of choice: Hawaiian Style.

In Ankara, Turkey, in the Calais district (inside the walls of a 2,000 plus year-old Roman fortress), is a restaurant inside of a three story former house. From the top floor, you have a magnificent view of the city to be enjoyed while you dine upon a three-foot long pizza. The most exotic pizza I have had the pleasure of knowing, this pizza is eight inches wide and covered with beef sausage on one third, lamb on the other end and just cheese in the middle third. Before they cook it, they make a drepression exacly in the middle where, when the pizza is pulled from the oven, an egg is broken and it's contents poured in. By the time you reach the middle, the egg is completely cooked.

Papa John's, Godfather's, Pizza Inn, Cici's, and countless locally owned pizza establishments all have catered to my pizza needs throughout my life. But the singular greatest pizza experience I have ever had, the pizza experience by which it us unfair to measure any other pizza experiences against as they will never measure up, happened in Aurora, Illinois.

It was a one-night pizza that I knew would never go beyond that. But it was a magical, almost mystical experience as only a one-night pizza can be. Nearly two feet in diameter and two full inches thick with an extra layer of crust on top and filled solid with meats, onions, peppers and more, this true Chicago Style pizza, not the pizza poseurs some establishments try to pull off, it changed my life. My pizza eating will never quite be the same. Sure, I still enjoy pizza and will do so at any opportunity. But I have experienced the ultimate and am a changed man because of it. More often that not any more, I am content to stay at home and make pizza myself, every one a tribute to, but never as good as, that magical night outside of Chicago.

What brought this recounting of my pizza awakening and history? Lately, there has been a twist in my pizza life. It is as though the pizza gods have smiled upon me for my pizza perseverance, passion and prostheletizing. The last three times I have ordered the business-man's special from a local pizza establishment, either my order has been screwed up or they have been so late (an hour and a half to deliver a pizza three blocks!) that I swear, if this keeps up I will order my pizzas from them for the rest of my life! Why would I do this if their service is so bad? 'Cause they gave me my pizzas for free! Did you hear me? Free! Free pizza! Do you understand what I'm saying? It's only two of the greatest words in the English language that could be uttered side by side in the same sentence! Free Pizza! Free!

So, was it good for you?