Pizza pizza pizza!

Though the exuberant floral pattern could be mistaken for a Lilly Pulitzer design (as Mrs. Veneer did this morning), today's tie is a Liberty of London Archival Design.

On Saturday I took the kids to a professional eating competition. Our favorite* local pizza joint, Three Brothers (which has spawned a chain of 15 restaurants), on the occasion of its thirtieth anniversary, hosted the International Federation of Competitive Eating's Pizza Eating Championship. Eighteen "gurgitators" sat at a long table in the center court of Beltway Plaza to see who could eat the most pizza (16" Neapolitan cheese pizzas, eight slices per pie) in ten minutes. The winner of the $2,500 first prize (presented as a giant check by the Three Brothers themselves, Mario, Peter, and Michael Repole) was 150-pound, mohawk-coiffed Pat "Deep Dish" Bertoletti of Chicago, who ate nineteen slices. Like most of the contestants, he ate standing up, but unlike most of them he did an amusing wiggle dance throughout the contest, presumably to help settle the pizza in his stomach and make room for more. While it was fun to watch, there is something vaguely disturbing about the growing popularity of these spectacles of gluttony and waste. Maybe there's a metaphor there for American society in general (says the man who wears a different tie every day, though in his defense, nearly all of the ties are acquired secondhand and recycled after wearing).

In other news, the countdown has begun: just ten more work days at my current job!

* The original Ledo Pizza restaurant, founded in 1955 just a few miles away, is also the progenitor of a large regional pizza chain and is generally considered just as favorite as Three Brothers (or moreso, in the case of Mrs. Veneer). Our favorite fictional pizza joint is Marilyn Mozzarella Pizzarella Pie Parlours.