"A pizza divided against itself cannot be purchased at coupon price."
It’s impossible to deny the impact pizza has on the modern world. But few realize the immense role the pizza pie played throughout history. Doctors of Za tirelessly sifted through books, unearthed and analysed hidden documents, and even did that thing from movies where you look at old newspaper headlines on microfiche really late at night when everyone else has left the library and you’re totally exhausted. Here is just one of our findings.
The year was 1861. Kansas was just admitted as the 34th, and most boring, state. The Pony Express announced its closure… via telegraph. A new joke with the punch line, “That’s what she said!” — popular among child laborers — was sweeping through America’s textile factories. And our nation was at a crossroads.
The Civil War was tearing our young nation asunder. Brother was pitted against brother; fathers shot at their sons; neighbors who previously exchanged only pleasantries and jars of toxic, lead-based top hat polish now traded cannonball volleys and charged at one another with badass gun knives (aka bayonets). Even Kentucky didn’t want to be part of America anymore. It was totally fucked up, and Abraham Lincoln knew it.
In effort to combat the… uh, combat that risked the utter collapse of America — birthplace of the monster truck — the 9-foot-tall prez drafted a letter to the generals of both the Union and Confederacy. The slightly ripped and partially burned on the edges (for effect) scroll each leader received held the calligraphy words (also for effect) along the lines of…
“Generals –
I implore you to lay down your muskets. Rest your cannons. Allow your crimson blades to, again, shine pure and pristine. Let’s crush this conflict along with some slices. It’s time for a motherfuckin’ pizza party!!!
Where: White House (if it exists yet?)
When: Saturday – 5 p.m. to ???
RSVP at: AbePr3sident16@aol.comBe there or be angular.
So obviously both General Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee made the trip to the pizza party, figuring even if this whole territorial/slave solution thing wouldn’t work out, at least they’d get to scarf down some free ‘za and hang out with a dude who would later have a city in Nebraska named after him.
There, the differences of the North and South did not subside, rather worsened. Grant requested Domino’s and even referenced the 5-5-5 special in effort to sway the others. Lee insisted on Papa John’s, saying that Domino’s crust was “as gross as the North’s view on octoroon voting privileges,” which pissed Grant right off. Someone said Little Ceasers, but everyone acted like they didn’t hear him.
The two generals fought in the White House arcade with more ferocity than every Civil War battle combined. It appeared the President’s gesture towards peace had only made things worse. That was, until Lincoln (the great unifier) got between the bickering, heavily-sideburned soldiers and offered a solution — The Eman-Za-pation Proclamation. The terms of the agreement he’d drafted on a paper plate were as follows:
• 10 Pizza Hut Pizzas. Take it or GTFO and eat cornmeal biscuits or whatever people eat nowadays.
• Lee and Grant each get to choose toppings and crust variety on 5 pizzas.
• No Hawaiian. Hawaii doesn’t exist yet and Hawaiian pizzas are fucking gross anyway.
• Only Abe gets stuffed crust.
• Cheesy bread and (one) fruit pizza (apple strudel) will be shared.
• No double dipping cheesey bread in maranara sauce.
Even then, the generals remained uncertain to whether they could adhere to this treaty. But then, Lincoln offered to share a 24-pack of Surge, the recently-discontinued citrus soda, with his guests. Both men accepted and shook hands on the deal. As the hours passed and the pizza dwindled to but a few cold, hard slices (that William Howard Taft would later eat out of the White House ice chest in 1908) the duelling soldiers were even said to have shared a few laughs and imbibed in games of hoop and stick, old-timey bike races (the one with the big wheel in front) and a few levels of Super Mario 2.
It was pretty awesome… and one can only speculate on the significance that night had in the war’s conclusion four years later. But the evening certainly wasn’t lost on Lincoln. The following year he drafted The Emancipation Proclamation, a document that gave men of all colors and creeds the right shed their unjust chains and, instead, live freely to bitch about national pizza chains.
Proven fact.
June 3rd, 2010 at 5:21 pm
You had me at Super Mario Bros 2. Good article.