Pizza Pro of Lonoke, Arkansas

I've always believed that looking for treasure would increase my odds of finding it. However, most of my favorite pizzas were happened upon by accident in the first half of my life. But I love pizza more than most people do, I believe, and I'm willing to try a lot of lackluster pies in order to find the best.

Lonoke Arkansas is a nothing town, safer for boon docking than Little Rock. It's also the home of Pizza Pro. As if by accident, small town pizzas can be really special. Pizza Pro was not so special, but at least the chef knows what a pizza is supposed to be.

They had a hot box for their lunch special, and their slices looked like they were from a gas station. Either way, I only order fresh pies unless I'm in da big apple. For crusts, Pizza Pro offers Thin, Medium, and Stuffed. Since there is more than one form of "stuffed" pizza, I asked the lady at the counter what the stuffed was. She said it was really good, so as a show of faith, I got the stuffed. It was a stuffed crust pizza, like Pizza Hut's stuffed crust, with more cheese than one should probably consume.

Let's talk about that pizza. There are ratios, which score in at 3cr2ce3ch. I'll give their crust a rating of 3/5, it had a little chew, a little crunch, and a little goo. The stuffed handles were coated in parmesan and garlic, like a less yeasty crazy bread. Without the coating, their crust was generally tasteless. I'll rate their sauce a 3, adequately thick but unremarkable.

For style, they also get a 3. They had a nice little shop, and the decor was very relatable, the kind of stuff I'd hang up in my kitchen at home. For overall quality, they also get a 3/5. I might go back if I find myself returning to Lonoke Arkansas for another reason... but probably not. They get a 60% overall. Sometimes, I think about food as a movement and less of something that is merely consumed. To food, Pizza Pros fails to make much of a contribution, bringing nothing new to the table. Still I'm glad they are doing their part to fill the world with pizza.

Next (feat. Nicolas Cage)

This 2007 film is a mix of many things: scifi , romance, and political thriller. It's loosely based on an old short story by Philip K. Dick. Many of its sci-fi tropes were exhausted by the film industry long before 2007.

Cage plays Cris Johnson, an intentionally bad stage magician with clairvoyant abilities. The FBI figures him out, and they need him to save Los Angeles. Cris can tell everything about his (current) future, except for the parts that involve a certain love interest, played by Jessica Biel. She does a reasonable job acting, considering the blankness of her character.

Character three is a one-note, hard balling FBI agent, played by Julianne Moore. I'm preconditioned to like her despite my natural aversion to law enforcement. The Dangerous Milf always wins, tearfully gripping her nine millimeter. To further prove her competence, she uses her phone's speed dial. Aside from these traits, we don't know anything about this one dimensional character who actually drives the story.

Since this dive into Nicolas Cage's filmography keeps pulling me deeper, I need to thus get deeper in these critiques. Cris Johnson is our protagonist, and we are supposed to like him and think he's cool. However, Hollywood often fails to sell us on the winning traits and personalities of their heros. In fact I'm often annoyed by the values they expect me to buy into. But maybe our real hero is the vanilla love interest... Yeah right.

Why should I expect anyone to use effective communication to solve their problems when they could engage in disastrous action sequences? Cris's clairvoyant powers really make a difference in his capacity to kick butt and escape death. If there is any aspect of quality in this film, it lies with the action scenes.

I hate to be a spoiler, but the story of Next never resolves itself. Despite its teasing flavor of hard scifi with good practical effects, Next is a bad, incomplete film. It shouldn't have been made.

1. Raising Arizona
2. Leaving Las Vegas
3. Adaptation
4. Birdy
5. Wild at Heart
6. Color Out of Space
7. Peggy Sue Got Married
8. City of Angels
9. Gone in 60 Seconds
10. Matchstick Men
11. Vampire's Kiss
12. Face/Off
13. Honeymoon in Vegas
14. The Family Man
15. It Could Happen to You
16. 8mm
17. Ghost Rider
18. Next
19. The Weather Man
20. The Croods

Virtual Mode by Piers Anthony

I started with the audio book, but the audio book went bad. That's what I get for using Soulseek, you might say. Anyway, the hook for Virtual Mode was so good I had to finish it, for better or for worse.

It starts out as the story of a suicidal teenager Colene, who finds a man (Darius) from another dimension, passed out in the ditch by her house. Darius is from another dimension, out of infinite dimensions (called Modes). Darius is the Cyng of Hlahtar (all the names are ridiculous) and came to Colene's Mode to find a wife; one he can keep instead of divorcing once he depleted her joy. People in Hlahtar can't produce their own joy, so the Cyng has to do it for them.

In Colene's Mode people can produce their own joy, which is great for Darius. Or is it? I don't want to spoil too much for you, but Darius and Colene go to a bunch of different Modes. Don't let the beginning give you an idea of what this story will be like. Virtual Mode changes trajectory several times and ends eventually. It's part of a series, so it doesn't really end, and I'm gonna take my time before reading the other four books in this series.

Casino Royale by Ian Fleming

The is is the first in the long series of James Bond novels, written by ex-spy Ian Fleming. It was a pretty fun time. While Fleming had some insight into how things were done in the spy game, you can tell he was also turning the coolness up to ten, like he should. He was a spy. Spies are cool. Let's get it on.

Bond is the iconic hero, the eternal champion of the spy game. His cigarettes are custom-made at the store, and he smokes seventy of them a day. Before dinner he allows himself one drink, and it must be strong or he will send it back. He eats caviar and he's really good at gambling. Have I told you yet how I feel about gambling as a plot device?

While Bond isn't a nice guy by today's standards, if you can deal with that, I think you'd could really enjoy Casino Royale. Sometime this year I'm gonna have a sequels month, so expect to hear from me again about Live and Let Die.

Fried Chicken on a Stick

Meanwhile in Arkansas, time is running ten years behind. Self-checkouts haven't taken off yet, which makes it an inticing place to move to. But what can you do? Grow middle-aged chasing the past? I'll try not to.

The sign at the gas station advertised Pizza Inn Express, in addition to Homestyle Fried Chicken. The pizzas were all out for the evening, for some reason. But instead of pizza, my eyes beheld the most excessive spread of deep-fried, hot-boxed glory. This gas station had (all deep fried) egg rolls, chimichangas, burritos, crispitos, biscuits, chicken fries, white meat, dark meat, chicken tenders, bosco sticks, joe joe potatoes, cat fish, taquitos, hush puppies, okra, onion rings, corn dogs, foot long corn dogs, gizzards, pizza puffs, and... fried chicken on a stick. It was so big, I thought it was an entire chicken's worth of meat. I was wrong. There were also fried onions, pickles, and potatoes.

There's a difference between french fry batter and chicken batter. If you know the difference, then you know chicken batter isn't that great with potatoes, which always turn out too soft and too tough at the same time, instead of gloriously cripsy on the outside and fluffy on the inside, like a fry should be. The chicken part of the fried chick on a stick was aweseome. However, next time I'll try the tenders.

Anthem by Ayn Rand

Since I read a socialist book, I thought it might be good for my perspective to read something different. There's a cool thing writers do when they don't like something, like communism. They write a dystopian story about it. What if everybody stopped having good ideas because the people who came up with good ideas were considered egotistical and selfish? That could be bad.

I was a real big fan of Rand's The Fountainhead, showing Howard Roark as her ideal man in response to the world how it is, instead of the sensationalized dystopia of Anthem. Since I'm no authority, I won't go into Rand's ideas on Objectivism and Individualism. For every non-scenester artist who gets roused by such ideas, there's also some violent alt-right guy getting his rocks off, presenting both sides of the individualist nut job's coin. Education is key, isn't it?

Kids used to read Anthem in school, but I didn't. I wonder what today's students read. Maybe they're on tik tok, learning best how to please the masses in its most volatile form, becoming their best selves, dictated by what is 'liked' for that portion of their day. Bring me the dystopia.

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

On the first thursday of every month, I try to catch up on my book reports which are posted twice every week. This year I'm trying to read a hundred books, so I have book posts scheduled for the next two months, and it's been like this for a while. Eventually I'll slow down and find something more depressing to write about.

My first book this year was The Jungle, and wow, what a bummer. I know things are better right now, for us, with American capitalism. But the patterns are still there. People are still wage slaves. We're still being sold shotty products for more than we can afford. People are still selling their votes, because politicians just don't make enough money. Nobody makes enough money, and nobody has enough of anything in return for what they give up. What if you wanted to buy a house, pay health insurance, car insurance, and dental, and you can't make more than minimum wage? Goodbye life, hello wage slave. I too often brood over what our taxes are being used for.

Even though the story is really dark and a bummer, it kept my interest until Jurgis got really into socialism, calling everyone 'comrade' and suddenly having so much hope for society, while constantly reading socialist zines. Maybe that's the problem. Not enough people are activists and we can't expect our votes to make a difference. We can't turn our war machine government into something more benevolent. Activism is boring. Sorry for getting political about this political book.

Here we have, yet another 80s time warp film. You should be able to guess early on because none of the actors (including a very young Jim Carrey) are the remotely the same age as their characters. It's cool to see young Nicolas Cage playing a much older man, just a week after seeing Old Nicolas Cage playing a much younger man (in Ghost Rider). With this film, he shows a lot of versatility as an actor, reason again why he's such a star. It's really a must-see for any of his fans.

Peggy Sue (Kathleen Turner) is separated from her cheating husband Charlie (Cage). At their high school reunion, Peggy Sue has a freak out and goes back in time, where she has a chance to prevent herself from ever marrying Charlie. But she loves her kids, which is an obvious deal breaker, but she mostly ignores this fact.

Still I think it was a pretty good film, more fun and more relatable than most of the ones on this list. While somewhat lacking in polish and execution, it still manages to hit home. Much like Face/Off, Peggy Sue has a titular scene where she screams "But Peggy Sue Got Married! Peggy Sue Got Married!" and you gotta love it.

1. Raising Arizona
2. Leaving Las Vegas
3. Adaptation
4. Birdy
5. Wild at Heart
6. Color Out of Space
7. Peggy Sue Got Married
8. City of Angels
9. Gone in 60 Seconds
10. Matchstick Men
11. Vampire's Kiss
12. Face/Off
13. Honeymoon in Vegas
14. The Family Man
15. It Could Happen to You
16. 8mm
17. Ghost Rider
18. The Weather Man
19. The Croods