"The world's smallest painting ... Our Beautiful Canada was painted
with a single hair and the aid of a microscope. The artist considers
his price of seven million dollars not too high."
The Globe and Mail, January 25, 1979.
Now, it came to pass that a seasoned young diner by the name of Simon
decided to revolutionize the restaurant trade. It was his firm desire
to bring some chutzpah into the all too predictable and dreary cuisine
on this part of the continent. From the first, Simon maintained that
food and pleasure were inseparable. Moreover, since food could be a
vehicle for fantasy, even more tellingly it could provide an outlet for
self-expression.
The lily pad pizza was typical of his new approach and was a twofold
operation: a parent might buy an inflatable plastic "pizza," the size
and shape of a small wading pool. It had an edible spout and dehydrated
"sister," pizzas attached to the parent ship that allowed a child to
fantasize while sailing and enjoying his favourite food. If that
sounded too decadent or illusion inspiring, a sleeker model existed
minus the extras--in other words the green wading pool size pizza
unruffled by further wizardry.
Simon always maintained not everyone could handle too much
soft-pedalled reality. Out of the dense formations of endless fast food
chains, Simon's novelties were to titillate the jaded restaurant goer.
Interpretive signs and amenities guided the erstwhile onlooker to the
"ultimate," in fantasy dining. Rhinocerous pizza was served flanked on
an inflatable horn. For the less adventuresome, a lobster pizza with
drawn butter could be had either with tangy dough balanced along its
claws or imprints of lobster cut into the succulent crust. Children
loved the lily pad pizzas and mothers discovered how delightful baby
tears were when presented in tastefully done little cups. Terrariums
soon arrived and were pedalled shamelessly. Some outlets claimed
"billions and billions," were sold.
Simon also cornered the potent swamp water drink market and was having
his empire go "wet." The familiar Chartreuse would now be available at
request and a grown up might indulge primal fantasies along with a
taste to be a gardener, rake and glutton all at once. Special suites
were rumoured to exist patterned after the Poconos in Pennsylvania
where a couple could bathe in a pizza-shaped tub embroidered with baby
tears, fountains, tropical lianas and all the air plants one could
stand pressed against your steamy shower. Pizza machines for a quarter
lined the tubs and one operation had dispensed with coins altogether
issuing instead rubber baby tears that substituted for money. They
could be strung around the neck like shark's teeth. Swamp water in
little jars added a further touch to this risque scene.
But, of course, for the really discriminating the boar's head feast was
the sign of a truly adventuresome palate. A Black Forest effect could
be conjured up complete with moveable props. A pig's head stuffed with
not the familiar apple but instead each tusk hollowed bulging with
pizza. Another version saw rhinocerous shaped pizzas rolled in the
style of Yap Island discs, that land being noted for its odd wheel like
currency. A boar's head contoured in the recognizable shape but with
tusks only made of pizza was a favourite alternative. After all,
gourmands bought escargots in order to fill their shells then, after
washing, repeated the process on future occasions. And, most certainly,
no one could deny that Simon's ideas were anymore outlandish than the
epicurean Romish feasts of peacock tongues and assorted other naughty
delicacies. His was but an updated version appealing to the mobile
North American lifestyle. Frisbees even began to resemble pizza and
trampolines approached that air. It was all the rage to be Italian and
boast of one's prowess in demolishing mounds of pizza.
Yet trouble was afoot for Simon and his proteges. The very real
puritanical element in society saw Simon's chain of exotic pizza
emporiums in the same league as exotic dancers and sought to banish
them, seeing that gluttony was akin to lust. Therefore, pizza pie body
parlour rubs began to vanish.
Moreover, peevishly spiteful children insisted on spreading rumours
that Simon's operations used day-glow worms as substitutes for
pepperoni and unwashed algae as a base for pasta crusts. People began
to question the wisdom of letting children act out their fantasies with
food as that commodity was a very emotional subject and a testing
ground for good parenting. Psychologists soon began to join the
harangue and claim the pizza emperor was a poorly toilet trained
debauchee acting out repressed impulses in the form of a greedy diner.
Some, in fact, claimed he was in the anal stage of his development and
that his taste was all in his mouth. Food faddists and health nuts
wondered aloud about the wisdom of combining so much dough with gelatin
plant fibre. It seemed most everyone was rushing to deflate the pizza
bubble and end our love affair with the anchovy.
Unemployed pizza cooks and pizza rub girls were soon at the end of the
dough line. In fact, so great was the influx of misplaced persons that
the term "on the dough," for a time replaced "dole," as an euphemism
for hard times. Extortionists began to muscle in asking for their share
of the pizza pie. Newspapers began gloating over the imminent bust of
the "infantile," pizza passion.
Still, Simon confided his trust in the same observation that must have
motivated Lord Sandwich when he launched his invention. People will
always search out the delicious and the readily available. What could
be more elementary than meat between bread, frogs on lily pads, protein
over raw vegetables, food amidst food?
Simon set his heart to selling automobile soft legs to hosts of touchy
epicures who really wondered at this juncture if anything that unusual
could really taste like chicken.