The Pizza Bandit

There is a Pizza Bandit in South Philadelphia. So far, the Bandit has held up four pizzarias this month. According to this article (that I accessed through Philebrity.com), he orders food and then pulls a gun and demands money. He has been all over South Philly - even to my home delivery of choice, Two Street Pizza. Here's the description:

- 35-40-year-old male
- 6'2" – 6'3" tall
- Medium build
- Light completion with freckles
- Light brown eyes
- Sandy brown to reddish eyebrows
- Wearing a blue hoodie

I'm not saying we need to start a mob of people looking for this guy but stealing from pizza parlors is wrong. Pizza Bandit, you need to learn: pizza is beautiful and we do not hurt the people who make the pizza!

This is probably the only thing I have in common with Kim Jong-il

Apparently, Kim Jong-il is obsessed with pizza. North Korea just got its first pizza parlor!

For millions of undernourished North Koreans, the notion of eating at a restaurant belongs strictly to the world of fantasy. And so there is only the grimmest humour in the news that, for the country's ruling elite, Pyongyang's dining options just got a little more impressive: the country now has its first-ever pizzeria.

The Guardian story has so many wonderful quotes. Let me share a few favorites.

One of the officers [Italian chef] Furlanis was training asked him to specify the precise distance at which olives should be spaced on a pizza, he recalled.

According to Choson Sinbo, subsequent efforts to reproduce Italian pizza in North Korea were a process of "repeated trial and error", and last year the dictator sent chefs to Naples and Rome to learn more.

Quoting North Korean defectors, the South Korean news website Daily NK said Kim "does not eat much, but enjoys picking at various kinds of food, as if just to taste".

Well I guess, congratulations go to North Korea for getting pizza for their upper class. Maybe someday pizza will be for the people!