Monday, November 8, 2010

Why I am not writing a pizza review right now.

After an already emotionally fraught morning, I was trying to distract myself before writing Slice Harvester and I went over to Jigsaw Underground to see if Tobi had written anything new since I last checked it out. I ended up spending the past hour watching footage and reading accounts from Friday's protests in Oakland over the unbelievably lax Mehserle verdict and crying uncontrollably. Sorry to get so real with y'all, but fuck the world, okay? I don't have to tell Slice Harvester readers who Mehserle and Grant are, right? You are informed enough to know that in the early morning hours of New Year's Day 2009, Johannes Mehserle, a BART cop, executed a 22-year-old man on the platform of the Fruitvale BART station. Well maybe you don't pay enough attention to know that on Friday Mehserle was sentenced to two years for shooting another human being point blank in the back of the head. Two years.

I mean, like, reviewing pizza places is fun, and I get the notion that like, even in this sick fucking society we have to just trudge on and find transcendent moments and happiness where we can, as long as it's not at the expense of anyone else, but what is the fucking point? We live in a horrifying world that is getting worse every day. Reading about this, watching these videos, I feel so powerless. And after the hour I've just spent sobbing, I feel like an empty husk. It is probably unseemly to talk about this stuff publicly, but fuck that! Everybody should be talking about it all the time. I don't have any answers, I don't know how to proceed, but I know that being silent isn't cutting it. I know that pretending like it doesn't affect me is not making my life any better, and it's not making your life any worse to know that I am affected by this stuff.

I just don't feel like I can sit here and be all, "Tony's House of Pizza kind of sucks, the pizza tastes horrible, but it has a cool awning." Or whatever I'm going to say when I finally write my next review later today or tomorrow. You can bet if I was writing this blog in 2008 when they sentenced the three pigs who shot Sean Bell to NOTHING, I wouldn't have written a pizza review that day.

Fuck this. Ugh.


  1. "It is probably unseemly to talk about this stuff publicly, but fuck that! Everybody should be talking about it all the time."

    Fuck yes. Thanks for the post. You're right, this sentencing is bullshit, as is the fact that most people think talking about police brutality and human decency is unseemly. My heart is with all the protestors taking their words to the streets and confronting the police head on. If only we could hope that their bravery would manifest itself as real change in police mentality.

  2. You just lost a reader asshole.

  3. It breaks my heart as well to hear verdicts like that. My heart goes out to his family as well as another minority that was executed by NYPD, Amadou Diallo, that was shot 41 x's. Nothing extreme happened either. I'm sure there are good, decent cops out there, at age 44, I still havent met one yet... To the last anonymous commenter, if you don't like what you read, then move on, why show your ignorance by name calling? Big man... that's why you hide who you are..

  4. Thanks, Vincent.

    I think there is a typo in the comment above yours and the guy meant to say "You just lost an asshole reader."

    Ce la vie.

  5. Keep the faith bro... readers appreciate you and your reviews. Sometimes life just isn't fair. But it's good of you to publicize how unfair this situation was.

    Now get back to eating and find me a GREAT SLICE... too many bad ones lately.

  6. I couldn't figure out what to think about this case until I read your post. Now I know it was an injustice. Thanks bro!