dedleg.com

I’m still here, fam, just been distracted by pizza and pizza-like products, as usual.

You know how it is.

Salutations, ghouls and gals. Today, I’d like to introduce a new feature that I’ll be dredging up from time to time. Half Baked Highdeas was actually a highdea itself (go figure) that I came up with a few days ago, realizing my years of experience with marijuana has left me more of a legacy than just resin-coated lungs and a steadily deteriorating short term memory.

Indeed, somewhere amidst the verbatim logs of Wet Hot American Summer and the endless boxes of Cheez-Its, it seems I’ve actually remembered a few worthwhile tips and tricks. Accordingly, I’ve decided to pass on these little nuggets of wisdom and quick edible pot preparations that can help you out if you’re in a pinch or simply spice up your smoking. And with any luck, this will eventually segue into a career hosting deranged pothead cooking shows on the Food Network. Think Good Eats, only with more gummy bears and less actual science.

Stoners of the world, I think we can all agree on one thing: the only bad thing about weed is that, eventually, it runs out. Burnouts on a budget have sought ways to stretch their stash for probably as long as people have been smoking the stuff. Inevitably, the highest order of these intrepid tokers have turned to vaporizers after a combination of health and financial concerns made the decision a no-brainer, an especially easy decision for those whose brains resemble a frying pan full of scrambled eggs. If you’re familiar with vaporizers, you already know that they’re far and away the most economical mode of cannabis consumption. But aside from just using far less bud than bong, bowl or blunt, the vaporized leftovers are great for reheating, just like, well, real leftovers!

The thing is, already vaped bud (AVB) might smell like burned popcorn, but it’s far from burned. That’s the whole point of vaporizing in the first place — you never heat the pot to the point of combustion, which means there’s all kinds of fun stuff leftover that would normally be dust at the bottom of your bowl. The brown, desiccated remains of your vaporizer sessions long forgot might not look as tasty as they used to, but they’re still chock full of psychoactive compounds. It’s just up to you, master chef, to coax those “flavors” out.

AVB and a few rogue stems

Today’s Half Baked Highdea combines two of my favorite things: weed and pizza. These two paragons of greatness go well together as it is, but it was time to make the dynamic duo that much more dynamic. What could be better than pizza that not only cures the munchies, but also causes them? Here, I’ll just answer that for you - nothing. Nothing is better. Nothing ever will be better.

If that wasn’t enough of a recommendation though, here are a few more benefits:

• “Cooking” it is virtually odorless — outside of the delicious aroma of microwaved pizza, there’s none of that familiar, overwhelming scent of weed wafting through your apartment that typically comes with cooking cannabis products / outrages neighbors.
• It takes, like, a minute to prepare. That doesn’t include eating time, but it could, if you’re a real animal.
• And, finally, it’s an easy and effective way to use all your AVB - which you should be saving in the first place - so you’ll get that much more mileage out of your stash.

You will need:

• Somewhere between 3/4 and a whole tablespoon of AVB - the less “roasted” the better
• A slice of already baked pizza (ABP, as opposed to AVP, which is a pretty good movie to watch after you eat this shit)
• A microwave oven

The trick here is microwaving AVB on the leftover pizza so it gets just hot enough for those remaining cannabinoids to bond with the fat in the cheese and oil. Take somewhere around a whole teaspoon of AVB and sprinkle it on a slice of delicious, day-old pizza. It looks just like oregano (bonus stealth points), and while it won’t taste quite as nice, it does so by not really tasting like much at all. “Vapor Poo Pizza” might not be the most appetizing of names, but it’s really not bad. Granted, I didn’t pour heaps of the stuff on my slices, but the taste of a quality slice of pie pretty much overwhelms any weediness.

Heat your slice for about 20 seconds to start. You want the cheese to just start melting around the AVB and getting all greasy. Grease, good. No more mopping up slices with paper towels for you, sissy! If the cheese isn’t melted enough, keep heating it in bursts of 10 seconds until it’s looking something like these bad boys…

Of course, now comes the most important part of the process. Eatin’ time! Keep in mind it’ll take at least an hour for you to start feeling effects, and you may get increasingly stoned for another hour after that. So, it’s probably a good idea to hold off on chomping down another slice until at least a couple hours have passed. If, however, a couple hours pass and you feel uncontrollably compelled to eat more pizza, along with everything else in the fridge, do not be concerned. Chances are, you’re already feeling the effects.

What to expect? A long-lasting, contented, body-heavy high. It won’t be super heady since you’ve already vaped out much of the THC, but it’s a pretty good recipe for a relaxing night on the couch in front of space documentaries or something. If you’re into that. Thinking about how looking up at the stars is actually looking back in time can be stressful for some, I understand. Space is some crazy fucking shit, man. Hey, come to think of it, I think my pizza must be kicking in!

So there you have it! You’re on your way to making both your leftover pizza and your leftover vaporized bud all that they can be. That said, I think it’ll still be a while before we see AVB as a mystery ingredient on Iron Chef or anything, but that doesn’t mean that cooking with it isn’t a damn good highdea.

Now, I’m not one to brag about new tattoos, but blood on the other hand? Well that’s a whole other story.

To clear things up a bit: the tattoo is covered in a clear, water-proof bandage that almost acts as a layer of skin, and in a very short amount of time a rather impressive amount of blood started pooling in there. Basically, you’re supposed to leave it on for just long enough that you don’t get sepsis. Eventually, it started leaking, but that’s also a whole other story.

Two plates. It should become the new benchmark for regulation pizza slice length.

If Heaven was a real place, the pizza there would look a little something like this.

However, Heaven, just like Candy Land, or the Lost City of Atlantis, is not a real place. Just kidding, Atlantis is totes real. Sorry to break it to you about those other two, though. Fortunately, however, this pizza is very much the real deal. It’s kind of like how Belinda Carlisle said, “heaven is a place on earth.” And it just so happens to be a divy pizza parlor buried in a quaint New England college town. You can find these cheesy behemoths at Mimmo’s in Northampton, Massachusetts, a town which can probably only be considered heaven if you’re a yuppie, a vegan-of-the-week, or, failing that, aren’t necessarily rich or temporarily-vegan but really like fair-trade coffee.

Luckily for us, this pizza is a welcoming, generous god, and everyone from yuppies to dreadlocked future yuppies - even normal people - are welcome to fatten their calves at its altar. If you don’t get that last part - don’t worry - that’s a good thing; you must not have been raised religious. But if you feel like having a religious experience anyway, or if you just happen to be starving to death in western Mass, be sure to check the place out.

The All Seeing Eye in the Pie knows my deepest, darkest secret: I’m hungry.

Surely, whatever foodstuff you eat for lunch today can only hope to be reincarnated as a pizza in its next stage of existence. And if you happen to actually eat pizza for lunch, then that pizza can only hope to one day be reincarnated as better pizza. In my optimistic view of the universe, pizza’s potential to be good extends on toward infinity — I pray to god every night that I never meet the best pizza ever created, as from then on my life will amount to little more than a series of disappointments. There will be nothing left to see, nothing left to achieve. My purpose for living will have at once been realized and destroyed.

It’s safe to say that were it not for pizza, I would not be the man I am today… which is to say, an overgrown teenager with a gut.

So let’s hear it for pizza! The tastiest vegetable that isn’t actually a vegetable, but kind of is anyway, because our culture has become a parody of itself.

It seems like every year that goes by, I love pizza a little bit more. Especially after living in Chicago for a couple of years, a city that has a very different understanding of what pizza — even so-called “New York pizza” — is than I do, I’ve come to appreciate a fine slice of greasy carbs originating in the borough of Brooklyn all the more. What can I say? Pizza is like my family.

And indeed I have tried… after receiving my summons on Saturday night, the only viable option was to bury my anger in a grotesque, slopping pile of cheese and alcohol. It kind of worked, until I woke up on the couch the next morning smelling like toxic waste.

So yeah… methinks I’ve been hitting the zah a little too hard lately.

Now that I’ve resumed a sensible life of smiling slavery tethered to a desk and stopped my two-year experiment in man-childishness, compiling a list of conveniently-located lunch spots that are both affordable and yet not so affordable that they give you insane diarrhea 20 minutes later has become a high priority on my action item list.

Thankfully, somebody with considerably more free time than me has already done the legwork. Here it is, at long last, a resource more essential for both the one-time traveler and time-tested New Yorker than a subway map on your iPhone or the ability to suddenly transform into a selfish, soulless cur the second anybody mumbles anything even vaguely resembling, “spare some change” — an interactive Google map of every single pizza spot in Manhattan.

Okay, actually, before any eagle-eyed a-pizza aficionados call this out, it might not be a map of every spot to secure ‘za in the city. They left out John’s Pizza on 64^th between 1^st and York, Uncle Mario’s at 50^th & 9^th, and Pranzo across from 55 Water. However, they did include a one “Multi Tastes Diner,” which may be a diner featuring multiple tastes, unfortunately, pizza is not one of them.

They also included all 500 Two Brothers locations in New York City, but don’t be fooled into believing those are actual locations to acquire pizza. While it may be true that you can buy something similar to pizza at Two Brothers, and for a mere dollar per slice at that, it is also true that you’re buying an intestinal tract full of napalm at the same time. Look, we all played The Oregon Trail as kids. I think we’ve seen enough dysentery in our time. If you’re going to get pizza, spend the extra $1.50 and get some pizza you actually enjoy.

Since we started the week off with some shots from New York’s underground, I thought I’d offer some contrast today with photos from the aboveground. They’re not necessarily any less gritty-looking, but that’s NYC for you. …At least for the time being anyway, and even that’s rapidly changing. So enjoy your grit while you can, because one day soon the only used syringes in this great city will be found in multi-million dollar condominiums.

But fear not, for as long as there are places to acquire a slice of pizza (that may or may not make you shit blood¹) for a dollar, New York is not entirely lost.

¹ Based on actual anecdotal evidence.

Throughout the city, you can find sections of the sidewalk with lights, often burned out, perforating the concrete — many such examples still exist in SoHo and the West Village. An older gent once told me that they were used to light the sidewalks before there were streetlights. After a frustrating several minutes worth of Google-scouring, it turns out the old man was full of shit. Dating from the late 1800s, these embedded lights are actually little portholes more than anything else, designed to let light into cellars below the street. So basically, the total opposite of what that guy told me.

Vault lights were marketed to building owners and architects as a safe, inexpensive daylighting system that allowed for the conversion of previously “unusable” basements into “rent-earning, productive work space.“

Vault lights were also widely employed in the early 1900s construction of New York City’s first subway system. Purposefully employed by the designers of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company’s subway, vault lights were constructed in the ceilings above the platforms to create an inviting underground space for a public unaccustomed to subterranean travel. [source]

Nonetheless, there are plenty of places above the street that aren’t light, safe or inviting — but they still can be productive, depending on how you spend your free time.

You know me, I just can’t say no to a creepy window.

You know, it occurred to me the other night that it might seem like I’m promoting all the bad behavior I post on this blog. But that couldn’t be farther from the truth. I’m just trying to educate you guys so you can make smart, independent decisions for yourselves. So with that in mind, I thought I’d share this little documentary on the harsh realities of drug use. For example, drugs make coins shoot out of your mouth, and that’s just the tip of this tweaked-out iceberg with white lips.

15 years later…

“What’s that? No mother fucking pizza?!”

In retrospect, moving to Drug Street was probably a bad idea. At the very least, the parents should have known something was up when young Eddie started listening to Iron Maiden. First comes the rock music, then the rocks themselves, and then finally a horrifying documentary on HBO.

Nonetheless, I thought the real Nightmare on Drug Street would be when they run out of the drugs. And I can’t tell if our protagonist is in juvenile detention or hell at the end of the video, but I guess they’re kind of the same thing anyway. Really, anywhere would be hell if there was no pizza no pizza no pizza no pizza.

Not that it matters to most of you, but goddamn is it hard to find a good slice of pizza in Chicago. At least it is if you’re coming from the East Coast and your version of pizza isn’t quite a six-inch-thick disc of flaky bread stuffed with sausage, mozzarella cheese, huge chunks of tomato, and enough marinara sauce to make your lips burn for days. Although, to be honest, Chicago’s signature deep dish isn’t even the problem — while vastly different from a slice of New York pizza, deep dish still does have its admirable qualities. It’s all of the pizza in between, your “normal” slices here in the Windy City, that are essentially useless for anything except illustrating just what exactly a mediocre-headed-towards-crappy slice of pizza tastes like.

Fortunately for me, and any of the other displaced New Yorkers living amongst Chicago’s millions of heart-attack-craving locals, Santullo’s in Wicker Park serves up some thin crust pizza so perfect you’d almost believe they’re importing water straight from the East River. However, that thought is less than appetizing, so let’s just imagine they were told the secret of the ‘za in a dream from an ill-mannered, overweight cupid with a Brooklyn accent and chest hair. Come to think of it, that’s not terribly appetizing either.

Regardless, it’s food so good it’ll make you shit your pants. Just one slice is enough to leave even a seasoned pizza fanatic in a near comatose state. And I know that doesn’t really sound like a recommendation but… it actually is.

Bonus points: they also sell water that comes in 100% plant-based, commercially compostable bottles! My inner smelly guy who wears slowly disintegrating plaid pants and knows how to play a handful of Grateful Dead songs on the acoustic guitar really appreciates that. It’s enough to make a jaded dude think the world might not actually be ending after all, and that’s worth way more than an incredible slice of pizza.

It’s kind of like the Dedleg Brady Bunch. This season we have a special guest, everybody’s favorite vigilante… ladies and gentlemen: Casey fuckin’ Jones! Thanks for watching.