“You Should Write an Article about Bartlett Pizza,” Says My Friend Todd

MAX PALEVSKY, WEST–Sporting a childlike grin and lightly punching my shoulder, my friend Todd announced on Friday that I “should write an article about Bartlett pizza.”

The announcement came when he was sitting on my bed and descanting on the varying degrees of quality in the food served at each of UChicago’s four dining halls. Breaking off mid-sentence, Todd leapt off the bed and sped to my side, seemingly so as to imbue the monologue with a vivid sense of immediacy.

The second-year Business Economics major insisted that an article on the pizza of Bartlett Dining Commons would captivate the readership of The Shady Dealer. “Dude, people would love that shit,” he explained. “Have you ever had their pizza before? Right, of course, but I’m saying–it’s just so bad. It’s insane. There’re so many jokes you could write about. Like, about how it tastes. Maybe you could come up with, like, twenty jokes about it and then pick the best–four? Five? I could help.”

“I think it’d be good because, you know, it’d be a way of writing about something relatable. Not that the stuff you’re writing isn’t relatable but like–okay, what was up with the gout article? Didn’t really get that one.”

As Todd was ushered out of the room, he offered clues as to other things it would be “cool to do a thing on.” These included the ferocity of the automatic flush toilets at Woodlawn, a student in his SOSC class with an obnoxious voice, and “this one thing–okay, so for context, I was at Cobb the other day–I wasn’t really planning on getting anything there, you know, I was more just there to study and whatnot. I feel like that’s okay, right? I never know if they expect me to get something. It’s the same at Harper. Or anywhere, actually. But like, why should they care, right? Do you know what I mean?”