Dear Mr. DiGiorno

Have you ever read one of those terrible literary novels that are, like, set at a small midwestern college, maybe somewhere in Ohio, and the plot is all about a professor whose marriage is falling apart, and then he has a tragically doomed affair with a, like, sophomore or something, who makes him feel young again, because he’s starting to go bald and worrying about encroaching middle age, and it’s just a pile of overblown adjectives and pretentious prose that more-or-less works on a sentence by sentence level, but when you put them all together and bind them between bookplates, you wind up with something that fails as a book but succeeds at explaining why people don’t like to read anymore? And then you look at the author’s bio and it’s always something like “Dr. Geoffrey Whiteperson-Thompson is a creative writing instructor at Oberlin and has two children with his second wife” and you realize that you didn’t read a novel, you read a barely-fictionalized account of this jerk’s life and that he wasn’t trying to write a story, he was trying to Work Through Something, and instead of going to a ding-dang therapist like a normal person, he instead inflicted his inane, annoying, self-centered, embarrassing, privileged mid-life crisis on all of us with a terrible book that won about thirty literary awards you’ve never heard of because all the reviewers for those contests are the same person he is, but any normal human reading the book screws their eyes up, raises their lip in a sneer, and flips off the book, saying something along the lines of “fuck’s wrong with this guy? Did he really have to put his personal foibles on display in a national arena instead of just chugging a PBR in the back row of a punk show like a normal guy having a mid-life crisis? Geez dude, just buy a boat next time.”

I ask these questions, sir, because I recently acquired one of your “DiGiorno roasted turkey with green beans, crispy onions, dried cranberries, & a gravy drizzle on Detroit style crust Limited Edition Thanksgiving Pizzas” and I feel like you’re committing the same class of sin as our notional Dr. Whiteperson-Thompson, albeit in the arena of pizza, not the literary arts.

This wasn’t exactly what I expected! When I first heard of this product of yours, I honestly assumed the reason it existed was “bong rips.” After the first bite, it was abundantly clear that no self-respecting stoner would ever create such an awful monstrosity as this, for which I appreciate you, sir – I like a challenge, and this pizza is both a challenge to eat, and a challenge to figure out why it exists.

The obvious answer – and I do truly think this is part of it, though not the whole thing – is that you, sir, are trying to hop on the meme food bandwagon. I haven’t seen any advertising for this product but I would eat a Dorito hat if ads pitched around the DiGiorno Enterprises factory didn’t include:


“So I’m gonna put turkey, green beans, dried cranberries, and gravy on a pizza and– “ “Sir, this is a Wendys”


Or


Nobody:
Nobody:
Nobody:
Enzo DiGiorno: “THANKSGIVING PIZZA”

What’s that, sir? Oh, you want to know what a Dorito hat is. Just… roll with it. It’ll be okay.

So, yeah, you’re doing it for the memes, sure. Fine. Good for you. Have a couple pats on your edgelord head. But that’s definitely not all of it.

Mr. DiGiorno, when you were in elementary school, were you always picked last for the kickball team in gym class? When your teachers asked questions, did you shoot your hand straight up in the air, near-yelling “Ooo! Ooo! Ms. McCarthy! Ooo!” only to have her call upon that teacher’s pet Suzie instead? When you put your quarter on the Galaga console to challenge the champ at the local mall’s arcade to the next game, did he invariably decide he was done just as it was your turn?

I thought so, Mr. DiGiorno.

Here’s why I think you made this pizza, sir. I think you looked around at the retail landscape, and you saw your peers, your cohort, making things like Baja Blast Doritos, and Starlight Coca-Cola, and Tailgate Party flavored candy corn, and you got jealous. You remembered the humiliation of the kickball lineup. You remembered that little bitch Suzie. You got jealous, and you got angry, and you decided you wanted to get into the game. You wanted to Work Through Something on a national stage. And since I guess you don’t have a buddy at a small academic press in Iowa, you decided to make the abomination that is Thanksgiving Pizza.

Normally, I’d have empathy for you, sir. Even as an adult I still get picked last for pickup informal team sports. I get it. I mean, at least I kinda get it. I’m not very good at sports and I’m comfortable with that. What I have zero empathy for is you going out and trauma-bombing the damn frozen foods aisle at the grocery store with your misguided attempt to get closure on what I’m sure you thought was a painful period of your life, but that those of us on the receiving end can only consider an inane, annoying, self-centered, embarrassing, privileged mid-life crisis.

Look man, you make frozen pizza. We all know that there’s an upper bound to how good frozen pizza can be. Normally, your pizzas are about as good as frozen pizzas come. Heck, they’ve even gotten better as the years have gone by, which is kind of surprising, since everything else in the world has gotten worse (except triscuits, those things are bomb) as the years have gone by. You have a lot to be proud of. You know how pizzas work.

And that’s what makes this particular Working Through It so insulting. Thanksgiving food is good because they’re all good separately, and they work well enough together in sequential bites, not because you stack them all on your plate like you’re a Manhattan real estate developer trying to get maximum population density on a minimum footprint. Cranberry sauce and gravy mixing isn’t optimal or desired, it’s something that if it happens, well, you get that bite down as quick as you can. And if someone suggested that the way to make my turkey dinner better was to cover the whole affair in a layer of melted cheese, I’d question their sanity.

Sir, this pizza is terrible. The low quality fried onions. The dry-ass turkey. The oleaginous layer of gravy over everything. The existence of the cranberries. The only part of this pizza that’s any good is the string beans, and that’s honestly shocking, because who in their right mind puts string beans on pizza? Truly, the combination of cranberries and faux-allic gravy that tastes more of MSG than anything else I’ve ever had whose ingredient list doesn’t contain MSG is gag-inducing. And covering the whole sordid affair with shredded mozzarella and, for some ungodly reason, cheddar, is basically a human rights violation.

After eating this pizza, Mr. DiGiorno, I’m actually kind of worried about you. Yes, this pizza is you Working Through Something, but it’s coming off more as a cry for help. Does Mr. Dorito still not invite you to his parties? Does Mr. Pepsi make excuses to walk away from you at the meet and greet when one of your fellow brands sponsors a football stadium? Does fucking Suzie still get called on before you at shareholders’ meetings? The fact that you would go to these lengths, which, if the world was kind, would be a self-inflicted killing blow to your reputation, to try so hard to become one of the cool kids, is just pathetic, sir. This attempt at a pick-me stunt is just… sad.

Seriously, Mr. DiGiorno, seek help. Consider therapy. It isn’t healthy to be acting like this at your age. And if you refuse, well, at least just stick to what you’re good at. No pizza purveyor has ever gone broke slinging pepperoni.

Sincerely,

Alex Parise