Rather than write out a long description of the relatively mundane things that led up to my buying a slice at Ben's of Soho (177 Spring St., right on the corner of Spring & Thompson) this evening, I thought that I'd condense it to a short list for you, impatient reader.

1. Went to see Cremaster IV & V with Jo Ann (an old friend) & Rachel (a friend from work) at Film Forum.

2. Afterwards we went to XR, a bar on Houston St. a few blocks from Sixth Ave. There, we had a couple rounds. Midway through this I realized that there had been a couple seated on a couch behind me who had been making out for about the past twenty minutes. Rachel, who could see them clearly over my shoulder managed to remain focused, holding up her third of the conversation. Points for Rachel.

3. There were a cat and a dog in the bar, neither of whom seemed particularly keen about the fact that there was a zydeco band playing there tonight (I'm projecting). Later, when we left, the dog was sitting on a chair in front of the open window looking forlorn. I tried to get a picture of Jo Ann & the forlorn dog but then these broads appeared out of nowhere to coo and fuss over the dog and wouldn't get out of my way.

4. Here's the picture I took of Jo Ann & the forlorn dog. The worst part of it is that the photo's crap. Jo Ann is gorgeous like Misses Hart and believe you me that dog looked forlorn. Okay, he just looked kind of blasé and tired, but I'll bet if that zydeco band went on for another set he started becoming forlorn.

I walked down to Ben's from XR, having not eaten dinner other than a small bag Film Forum's excellent popcorn and feeling a little peckish after my two Absolut gimlets. Ben's was open, but one of the employees was ushering an old woman out the door and saying have a good night. The street window was open though, and I could see that there was still about six or seven slices left on one of the trays there and they all looked relatively fresh.

If you've been following the Pizza Diaries from the beginning, then you may recollect that my last experience with Ben's of SoHo was somewhat below par. This time around was far better. I have to say that in spite of the fact that this was the last pizza they were serving of the day it was a very good slice. In fact, walking over to the Prince St. subway station, I found myself wishing I'd gotten two slices. The cheese was good and thick on the slice, which is usually the case with Ben's. The sauce wasn't in short supply either, but not so much that it made for a soggy slice, or one overpowered by the tangy sauce. Precisely as salty as it should have been, the sauce had good flavors of garlic and oregano setting off the thick cheese. The crust was cooked well, not too crispy and not doughy and undercooked. The thick edge of the slice, the outer edge of the pie, was crunchy, but not burned or falling apart. It crunched, but it tore as well.

There wasn't as much attitude this time as I'd gotten last time. The guy serving me kept it brief, but wasn't rude. However, not once did the words "Thank you" come out of his mouth, and neither did I hear "You're welcome," even though I thanked him a few times. But it was the end of the day and the man was probably pretty tired. They've still got that bad looking, no-sign-holding pizza guy out front though, and tonight, standing beside him I could see that there was a sizable crack in his left side. Could it be time for this unattractive pizza man to finally be sent to the Fresh Kills retirement home? In the opinion of this reporter, definately yes.

5. Rather than take the train one stop from Prince St. I decided just to walk the way down to Canal so I could catch the Q there. It was a nice night, and on the way down Broadway I took this photo which doesn't do the moon justice, especially since it ends up looking like a tiny, unformed blob of light, and not like a big pizza pie. So much for amore.

I thought about stopping off at Katz's for a hot dog on the walk over to the Chucker's, but I really didn't feel like it was such a good idea. I'd passed a hot dog cart before that and even thought of stopping at Ray's on Prince St., but I just wasn't feeling up to it. For whatever reason, that seems to be my general state of being of late. I'm either somewhat hungry and deciding against eating or not eating and not hungry. Plus I'm sleeping a lot. I went to bed last night at only about one thirty, but I still didn't get up when my alarm went off at nine. Instead I lay there and hit the snooze button until about eleven. Then I got up and sat on the edge of the bed until I finally decided that if I was going to be pondering all day whether or not to follow through on my long ago decided plans to hit this woman in the face with a pie I could at least do it in the shower.

So I got up and showered. Nothing extraordinary there, especially considering that I do like to bathe regularly, but the fact of the matter is that my bathroom floor had been ripped out about two weeks ago and I'd been going through the hell that had accompanied getting the floor and the rest of the bathroom put back in. So showering with all the amenities—like a floor without any holes looking into the abandoned store below—was something that I was only just getting used to again. But after the shower all I could manage to do was call a bunch of people, play a card game on-line with some people in Poland and wander from room to room not really cleaning up the debris that's been left over from the work that'd been done. There's still more to do. And while it'll probably take my landlord forever and a day to get the work started, it's certainly going to bring another wave of dust, plaster and crap with it.

So you can see. I'm all about the doom and the gloom.

In fact, even my review of Joe's Pizza(233 Bleeker St., on the corner of Carmine, and this is important because there's also that place on Carmine between Bleeker and 6th Ave. and that's not the place that I'm talking about) is going to reflect this, it can't be helped. While I was standing outside of Joe's eating my slice I couldn't help but wonder if the two slices I'd had were less than what I'd come to expect because of the fact that Mercury is in retrograde. I don't know what Joe's' star sign would be if a pizzeria could have a star sign, but mine's Sagittarius, and it was only about a week ago, shortly before everything really started to go to hell in a hand basket that my horoscope in Time Out NY said something about how I should tuck my head between my knees and pray cos Mercury in retrograde for the next three weeks, etc. Does that apply to all star signs, this Mercury thing? How could such a little planet fuck up so much for so many people?

I asked for one slice at first because that was all I thought I was going to want. I'd eaten a bowl of granola with yogurt, bananas and berries at the Grey Dog Coffee Co. (33 Carmine St.) earlier and I thought that that was pretty much going to hold me. Of late, as I explained above, that has. But the first slice came and I couldn't help but think as I stood there eating it that this was not going to make the great review that I'd always thought I'd write when it came to Joe's. Frankly, it was somewhat lackluster. Warm, but not quite enough so and the flavors weren't popping the way they usually do. The sauce wasn't tangy, the cheese not cheesy, the crust phoning it in. Now mind you, that's no collect call. If the crust at Joe's is phoning it in you can count on it being a heartfelt call, dialed by hand to inquire all about how you're doing because it really is sorry that it couldn't be there in person. But unfortunately, sorry's not cutting it, not even for Joe's. I thought that perhaps I'd gotten a slice from an off-pie, so I decided to order up another one. This time with a small Coke because I'm getting thirsty eating all this pizza. But it was more of the same. And too hot. I can't really blame Joe's though for the small burn on my forward palate. I knew that it was too hot and didn't want to wait. Let this serve as a lesson to me.

I saw a couple of things that caught my attention while standing outside of Joe's eating my second slice and shortly thereafter. Firstly, a couple came up and began to tie their dog's leash around one of the legs of a nearby mailbox. Then the husband(?) went ahead and walked into Joe's while the wife(?) stayed behind to instruct the dog to sit. The dog clearly didn't want to sit. It wanted to keep standing. Maybe it wanted some pizza. "Sit," the woman commanded, but it just wouldn't. She tried to push the dog's rear flanks down, but it wouldn't go. She took the dog's jaw in hand and lifted its face to look directly at her and said "Sit," but it had no effect. She pushed down harder on the dog's bum and it's legs finally flexed and the dog sat. Then she walked into Joe's. Finally, the dog lay down completely on the sidewalk, looking completely dejected. The owners even ate their slices inside Joe's, but maybe that's less cruel than having the dog longing still more for pizza that it wasn't going to get.

Then I started walking towards Sixth Avenue and saw something that really made me reflect on what has happened to our culture since the adoption of the cell phone. There was a man walking down the street talking to two blind people, giving them directions, but gesturing and pointing all the while! Which is stranger? Making gestures while talking on the phone with someone who can't see you while those who can see you can't relate your gestures to your conversation, or making gestures while talking to people who are right in front of you but can't see or make sense of your gestures while everyone else on the street easily can?

I was leaving Joe's and heading towards Sixth Ave., as I wrote just before, but really I was heading to that strip of St. Mark's Place in between Bowery & 2nd Ave. where there are all the record stores. And to Gristede's just West of Broadway before that. I wanted to see if they had some things that I was going to need later that evening. I stopped at Gristede's, headed to St. Mark's, bought two CD's at Sounds, Stereolab ABC Music, and Yo La Tengo's latest, Summer Sun. I asked the guy behind the counter if they had Radiohead's newest album and he said that I was about a month and a half early, which was something of a surprise considering that someone at work already gave me a copy of it. The copy seemed to be several generations old though or something, or at least the quality wasn't the greatest and I wanted to have a better recording of it since I liked it. But then I headed back to Gristede's. And I'm getting slightly ahead of myself.

When I finally managed to leave my apartment today it was so I could head into the city to see Matthew Barney's Cremaster I & Cremaster II. I'd see Cremaster III yesterday and I'll almost certainly go and see Cremaster IV & V tomorrow after work. They're playing the Cremaster Cycle at Film Forum for a few more days and I'd like to be able to have seen the whole thing. So far, so good. I'm not entirely sure what to make of it all, but that's okay with me for the time being. I tried taking several photos during the movie of some of the interesting bits, but I was only able to get this one shot. In the darkness I think I was holding down the power on button too long and turning the camera on and then off. Oh well.

After I got out of the film I had three messages, I don't remember the first, the second was a message from my friend David asking if I wanted to meet at Chucker's at about 8 o'clock to play cards and the second was from my landlord who I really didn't feel like fucking up an otherwise somewhat pleasant day by talking with. I called David back and spoke with him about the game. It was about 5, a little after. I realized that if I was going to be staying in the city until 8 then I was probably going to have to go ahead with my plan to hit this woman in the face with a pie. Hence my trip to Gristede's.

On my way back from Sounds I stopped in at Gristede's and went straight to the section where I now knew I would find the whipped cream. I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to fill a pie crust sufficiently with only one can, so I chose two. I ended up getting the non-dairy variety of Reddi Wip because Jo Ann had suggested I do so since this woman might have a dairy allergy and if so and she broke out in horrible hives then I'd be the villain instead of the hero. I also thought that she might be vegan for some reason and so thought this might be a prudent choice. Then I went back to the frozen foods section and picked up a couple of ready-made pie crusts. On my way from there to the counter I passed a not-unattractive woman examining some saran-wrapped pastries in a basket and almost fondling one of them with an expression on her face as though she were at once both amused by it and considering it in some way. I think it was an apple turnover of the triangular sort that you'll see without that white frosting on top. I thought of striking up a conversation with her or at least asking her why she appeared so amused by this danish but wasn't quite feeling bold enough and wasn't really sure how one enters into such a conversation. Do you know, pleasant reader? I hope that you will pass this information on to me as I am, as you may know, recently single again and might like to meet a woman who can find humor in supermarket pastries.

I found myself not long after sitting in the empty back room of the Zinc Bar.

It occurs to me that I should explain some relevant facts that I have not brought to the fore, probably since they were already so present in my own thoughts. I was at the Zinc Bar because this woman was scheduled to give a reading there within the hour and I wanted to settle a long overdue score with her by hitting her with a pie in the face. I had said on more than one occasion"If she ever gives a reading in New York I'm going to hit her in the face with a pie," or words to that effect. There is a reading series held at the Zinc Bar every Sunday night, and when I'd gotten an e-mail announcing the month's readers and saw her name there inscribed, I knew that the fateful day had arrived when I would be called into action.

Okay, so there I was, sitting with my glass of red wine in the empty back room of the Zinc Bar, where the reading would be held in less than an hour. I had at my feet two plastic bags from Gristede's containing two cans of non-dairy Reddi Wip and two generic ready-made pie crusts. I had planned it all out. How I would go into one of the bathrooms when Douglas was introducing her and fill one of the pie crusts with whipped cream, cover it gently with one of the Gristede's bags and then walk to the entranceway to the room. Then, once she went up and stood underneath the bright lights in the dark room, and in those first few moments while her eyes were still re-adjusting to the lighting and couldn't see any further than the music stand holding up her papers directly in front of her I would walk into the room, making to cross in front of her to the other side of the room and then, just before her, I would pull back the plastic Gristede's bag and shove the pie straight into her face. I had even walked the paces from the entranceway of the room to where she had been standing and figured how I would manage to wield the pie plate properly, being right-handed, with my left hand. Then, I imagined, I would turn and quickly head for the exit, giving anyone who managed to summon their wits quickly enough to try and stop me the Heisman, pushing them deftly back into their seats.

But it didn't go that way. I didn't even wait for her to show up. As I sat in the Zinc Bar drinking my wine and reading The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski, that sad, sad novel with its countless accounts of humans behaving with unimaginable cruelty towards one another began to work on whatever part of me that there was that had been doubts about this whole enterprise. I received the letter that sparked this whole affair almost three years ago and while I thought that it would certainly be fun to laugh maniacally to myself as I walked away from the Zinc, I wasn't entirely certain that it would really resolve anything for me. What would I do? shout "How's that for a polyglot Summer?!" as I shouldered my way to the door? Did I really want to carry this any further? Would acting on such bitter bile rid me of it or only cause the production of even more? Might not my doing this really injure or hurt (I don't mean physically here) this woman? Even a year after I'd received that letter I was somewhat vexed by it, but I hadn't given it much thought in the recent past. The wine started to taste too sweet or too sour and I realized that I didn't want to carry this thing around any longer and that I didn't have the heart to wait around in the Zinc Bar any longer.

I don't even know if she'd arrived by that point. A few people, only one of them a woman, had arrived in the back room by the time I was leaving, and there was a group of people in the front but I didn't stop to ask if any of them was her. Her letter was condescending and presumptuous (I think that pompous would even work as an acceptable modifier) and I'd thought about going up to her and telling her all these things and that her letter had really hurt me as well, but I still couldn't see the point. Should you ever come across this entry I would like you to know all these things, but I don't want to expend any further energy on seeking you out to do so.

The people at Gristede's were very gracious and being that I had for some reason not thrown out the receipt were willing to take back my groceries without hesitation. I returned the penny change I had received in the first place to the cashier and after she gave me eight single dollar bills I was off on my way to the Chucker's, a clear head and looking forward to playing cards.