tellhimfred.com

So we’ve all got browsers, and if you’re like me, your “Bookmarks” or “Favorites” tab is crowded with sites and pages that we visit often or seldom, or whatever. But I say it’s time to clean that Favorites tab out, and make sure it’s just the real gems that make it into what should be our own “Greatest Hits of the Interweb” page. To that end, we at THF would like to announce the Bookmark Awards: the “Bookies”!

Each week we’ll be revealing a website that you may or may not have heard of, and lay on you some humorous palaver about why we feel it should be in your Favorites page.

Our first Bookie: As many of you know, the THF crew is pretty food-oriented, and if you spend enough time reading this blog, you’ll see talk of high-falutin’ recipes flyin’ back and forth like DNA at a redneck family reunion.

But today - let’s talk Pizza!

My favorite weird uncle-looking guy, Albert Grande, whose archaic-yet-oddly-informative website, pizzatherapy has inspired a renaissance of basic creationism when it comes to our national dish, (and he even has a blog now! It’s in its infancy now, but look for it to be pretty informative going forward.)

One of the things I love about this guy is how he looks like your funky Deadhead uncle who wears horrid Cosby sweaters at Christmas, and is singularly focused on pizza - its construction, its deconstruction, sauces, crusts, toppings, varieties, histories and origins, everything you can imagine. I know what you’re thinking: “Dude, this thing looks like it was made by my mom’s Pomeranian fan club on Microsoft HomePage 1.0! You sure this isn’t hosted on AngelFire?” But just drill down a few layers! Recipes for pizza dough, pizza sauces, toppings, videos on making pizza, videos on rolling dough, videos on making sauce, basically any aspect of the homemade pizza experience you can think of, Uncle Al has spooged out a YouTube vid for!

The internet can be a weird place. Use your imagination, and make up the most bizarre, arbitrary, nonsensical fetish you can think of. Chances are there’s a website, a webring, more than one forum, and a fanfiction site devoted to it.

But fortunately for us, the same holds true for knowledge. Any subject, no matter how specialized, how focused, probably has a cadre of gurus out there who are dorkily happy to share their painstakingly gathered knowledge with us newbs.

To that end: I thank you, Albert Grande - you win this weeks’ Bookie!