post #365
we’re not at the beach. this is a photo from last time we were. i don’t talk here about when i go out of town because there is a neighbor who might use the opportunity to vandalize. now we have someone stay at the house when we leave, but last time i mentioned going out of town in my blog, i came back to find my umbrella slashed and my patio furniture in the lake. it sucks to have a bad neighbor, and i try to get along with everyone, but the world is full of all kinds of folks ya know…
if i could write about my family, i’d have a million things to say and blogs could roll out like marbles being let loose atop the stadium stairs… but i have been through this all before and decided not to expose my private life online for anyone to follow. my friends were in town and showed me a blog they follow called dooce, and i noticed how this woman blogs about personal details of her family life, show pics of the kids, and lets it all hang out. this is what makes it interesting. and isn’t the point to write something interesting enough for other people to follow? well, there could be lots of purposes for blogging but for me i want to write something worth reading, to make a story that comes to life. and if and when i leave out most all of the family side of life, it’s bound to be a lot more boring… which is why i nearly stopped writing the blog in 2007, but then felt like i could still write occasionally about work, and even though it wouldn’t live up to my expectations as something dynamic, it can still serve as a place to unload my weary mind.
which brings me to the subject of reviews.
anyone who puts themselves out there is susceptible to a review of some kind. the more you put yourself out there, the more reviews you will get. the more reviews you will get, the more bad reviews that will happen. what am i talking about? well, people who write books or paint or do whatever, other people will come along to review those efforts. if you’re a writer and you spend many years writing a book, and then you get bad reviews, it’s bound to be unsettling. i’m talking of course about restaurant reviews. i could avoid them, i could act like they don’t exist, but they do… i love to read folks talk about how good our place is because i work so hard day and night to make it an excellent place. i pour every bit of my being into this restaurant because i am an obsessive person. i realize that some people just won’t like the place, and some people won’t like it simply because so many people DO like it. and others will just have a bad time or a bad pizza, all of that is bound to happen and i understand. but the other day i read a review i just don’t understand. i read a review that caused me to write this blog that i’m writing. i want to bring this review into the light. this is the review by sarah r.
sarah doesn’t think our pizza is all that great. she says the dough is just your average water flour mixture and the sauce is ragu. hmmmm.
i’ll try to get to the point because this could turn into my longest blog ever… not only is our dough anything BUT your basic recipe, and our sauce so far from ragu, but our pizza is amazingly good. i’ve been to the south of france, i lived there one summer. i’ve traveled the world. i’ve eaten pizza all over the US. i’m a pizza freak! it’s my life. when i go on vacation i eat pizza every day. i live pizza. i may find a pizza that i think is better than ours and when i do i’ll write about it for sure, but what i hear from folks every day, people who are from new york, from all over, is that our pizza is great. the dough is tasty and flaky, the sauce is spicy and perfect. if she said she got a burnt pie, an undercooked pie, a soggy pie, i would understand… but this is hard for me to comprehend. was her group having a bad night? did they wait too long? is my place too hyped? too cool? i just don’t understand how one could say the sauce is bland and the dough is nothing special. our dough and sauce recipes are guarded secrets. anyway, that one really threw me for a loop. another woman said something about the “nauseating self important dreck” i write on the menu backs. that hurt my feelings of course, but i can also se how one might think that. they are mostly meant to be funny and decorate and give the customer something to help kill the time, but i can see how they wouldn’t appeal to everyone. in fact, it’s easier for me to understand the critique of my writing than the insult on my pie. i know everyone won’t care for it, but it seems any palette would discern the better than most sauce and crust. ragu?? oh well. i should just close the place down and see if they’d hire me at papa john’s.
bad-o-mime rules!
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