Sleeping’s not gonna be easy tonight, searching for distractions.

#1 – NBC is milking the season finale of 30 Rock for all its worth. Last week Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) finally found his father (Alan Alda) only to find out that he’s in need of a kidney. Rather than give up one of this own, he stages a benefit concert that’s a wonderful parody of We Are the World. Elvis Costello refuses to play along until Jack unveils his trump card – “Aren’t you really Declan McManus, international art thief?” Also along for Kidney Now! are … get this combination …. Steve Earle, Clay Aiken, Sheryl Crow, Beastie Boys, Michael McDonald, Moby, Mary J Blige, Norah Jones, Talib Kweli, Cyndi Lauper, Rhett Miller, Wyclef Jean and a whole bunch more.

Elvis: Listen, when someone starts talking in the middle of a song you know it’s serious.
Mary J: So give Milton a kidney. We all believe in this cause so much we’re doing it for free. Except for Sheryl.
Sheryl: That’s right. I’m the only one getting paid.
Norah: And only three of us are drunk.
McDonald: Milton Greene needs a kidney. Just like I need this beard. You don’t want to know what’s under here.
(Don’t recognize this guy): And while you don’t have two beards you do have two kidneys. Think of it this way: if I had two dollars, I’d give you one, wouldn’t I?
Cyndi: I’m one of the drunk ones!

#2 – This was a fascinating article, big excerpt from an upcoming book. My Personal Credit Crisis by Edmund L. Andrews. Andrews was one of those people who should have known better – an economics reporter for the New York Times. Who took a mortgage he couldn’t afford because he could get it and he was sure that things would work out.

The panic attack hit me around 2 a.m. on Patty’s birthday. It was Oct. 17, 2007, and I was lying in bed obsessing over bills that couldn’t be postponed and the money we didn’t have to pay them. Like many of my predawn fear cascades, this one had its start with a specific unpaid bill: $240 in traffic tickets — $140 for speeding, $50 each for expired tags and inspection. The fines would double if we didn’t pay them in less than a week. The tickets had uncorked the bottle on all the other “must pays”: the $400 electric bill with the cutoff date printed in red; the $220 cable/telephone/Internet bill for the past two months; the MasterCard and American Express bills — at least one of which had to be brought current or I wouldn’t even be able to travel for work. And of course, there was the $3,271 mortgage payment.

Oh yes, his monthly pay after taxes, alimony and child support was about $2,700 and his wife was out of work.

Returned to the doctor today. He says he’s surprised at how fast I’m recovering but took more blood for more tests to be sure. (Yes Phil, Hep A.)

I made a last minute decision not to drive there, and I think that was a good idea. While I’m feeling stronger, I’m still quite weak and I’m sure my reaction time isn’t what it should be.

Nevertheless, I may have pushed things a bit far and I’ve been feeling like shit again tonight. Was it that I decided to walk through the “Marketplace by Jason” “supermarket” at Dairy Farm (verdict: not worth going out of your way for) after finishing with the doctor, and then stopping off in Sai Kung town to hit the bank before coming home? Or was it because I thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea for me to have the two leftover pieces of Pizza Hut pizza sitting in the freezer for lunch? Or that the 7-11 in town now stocks Mountain Dew and I couldn’t resist? Whichever, lying in bed tonight watching the season end episode of Lost (with not one but two huge cliffhangers), my temp crept back up to 37.8.

My girlfriend, bless her heart, hasn’t gone out for two weeks, except to hit the grocery store in town. Her friends come up to visit her during the day time. She says she’s not bored sitting at home for so long …. except that sitting at home, all she’s doing now is eating and sleeping and so she’s gaining weight. Actually I noticed this but hadn’t said a word about it – I do value my life.
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Anyway, I was thinking about pizza today.

There are two US cities that pride themselves on their pizza, New York and Chicago. Each has its own unique style. Growing up in New York, NY pizza is a comfort food for me. Every day after regular school and before Hebrew school, I’d stop at the same place (corner of Fordham Road and Valentine Avenue in the Bronx) and get a slice with pepperoni and a coke for 25 cents. (Yeah, I’m old, get over it, okay?) It was covered with pepperoni – at least a dozen tiny slices. You’d pick it up, fold it in half lengthwise, and try not to drip oil all over yourself as you slurp it down. I mean, seriously, at 10 years old, this was so good I literally ate it every day.

By the time I got to high school, a funny thing happened on the New York pizza scene.

The huge gas ovens used by almost every pizza place were made by a company called Ray Bari. So one pizza place in Manhattan got very popular and it was called Ray’s. I don’t really think their pizza was that different from any other place – sauce from an industrial sized can, shredded cheese from a bag, dough probably delivered from a central bakery. But this place was deemed the best by those in the know.

And in the wake of their popularity, every other pizza place in town copied their name. There was Ray’s, Famous Ray’s, Original Ray’s, Famous Original Ray’s, Original Famous Ray’s, Ray Bari’s, Original Ray Bari’s and so on. Soon it seemed like every street corner in Manhattan had a pizza place that had “Ray” in its name. And people would get into heated arguments over which one had the best.

(The only exception that I knew of was one spot in Greenwich Village, John’s, which had a brick oven and didn’t serve slices, only whole pies. But it was beyond my meager budget.)

As I got older, I became aware of another style, a more handcrafted style using fresh ingredients, possibly more authentic Italian. Eventually I found this spot in Brooklyn, literally underneath the Brooklyn Bridge, where people lined up out the door to get their amazing ‘za. Fresh dough, fresh sauce, big globs of cheese instead of stringy stuff from a bag. Also no slices, but the first time I went there, the flavor was so new to me and so amazing, I think I finished an entire pie by myself. Can’t recall the name of the place – brick walls, Frank Sinatra on the stereo, kind of like the place in Do the Right Thing.

This concept has spread throughout NYC now. There are dozens of places with wood burning or coal burning ovens making artisanal pizzas. There’s an incredible range of toppings, every kind of meat or fish, even white pizzas with cheese but no sauce loaded up with fresh veg on top.

Pizza in Hong Kong is a different story. People here go nuts for Pizza Hut, which only qualifies as “pizza” under the broadest possible definition – there’s dough and sauce and a cheese-like substance. And as they do all around the world, Pizza Hut has localized their offerings. Pizza with corn? Pizza with Russian dressing? I mean, come on, who eats this shit? Answer – people who’ve never had any better and so don’t know there’s something better out there; people on a budget; my helper and my girlfriend …..

Look, I understand how these fast food chains have to work. Their “recipes” are devised in laboratories, not kitchens. They use ingredients that are as cheap as possible. And their recipes are done to ensure that any idiot with 1 day’s training can make it and with global consistency of taste. Think about it – a Big Mac in Iowa looks and tastes exactly the same as one in Beijing, and at a similar price. This requires incredibly precise control with what comes from your suppliers as well as cooking machines and techniques that ensure uniformity of results even with 50,000 different line cooks in the kitchen. Regardless of how you feel about the food they turn out, this is very tough to do. This is how they have to do it. Makes it reliable and dependable – doesn’t make it good though.

Anyway, while I’m sure Pizza Hut is number one in Hong Kong, there are other places for pizza. Some are chains (like the local Pepperoni’s chain – they use the wrong kind of dough and their sauce is almost sickly sweet) and the UK chain Pizza Express, which is kind of a step up, and Wildfire (which I’ve never gotten around to trying). Cru in Sai Kung does pizza – it’s kind of interesting – the ingredients are not bad but the dough is thinner than a Ritz cracker, which makes the whole thing just plain weird to me.

So my question for tonight is this …. is there any place in Hong Kong that employs an honest to goodness trained pizzaiola, someone who is turning out pies that look like these?

The above photos come from Pizza Mezzaluna on Houston Street in New York, grabbed from Serious Eats New York. I read this review when it first appeared two months ago, the images have stayed with me.

A wood burning oven. A properly charred crust. Obviously fresh cheese. I can only imagine what the sauce tastes like. (The first photo is a mini margherita, number two is sausage and mushroom using Salumeria Biellese sausage, number 3 is Sicilian tuna with red onions and capers.)

I mean, come on, look at those pies! Don’t they make you hungry for one right now? Now that I’m older, I know that those are what pizza is supposed to be.

And just look at that calzone in the two photos above! Holy christ!

So is there any place in Hong Kong that does pies that even remotely approach this? Inquiring minds want to know!

Anyone can now publish their blog to Amazon’s Kindle. Well, you have to set up an account with them and looks like they are looking for either a US bank account or a US address for mailing a check.

Amazon charges US$2 per month to subscribe to a blog. They keep 70% of that, you get 30%. So that’s 60 cents US per month for each subscription. Do I really think anyone is gonna pay $24 a year to read my blog, especially when there are a zillion ways to get it for free?

Then again, don’t cost nothing to set this up and optimism does reign supreme, or so I’m told.

And now, via Pajiba, a woman who fucked herself to death with a jackhammer.

(Wasn’t that worth $24?)