The Washington Post published its much-anticipated piece on Dave’s pizza festival today.
Or maybe I thought they wouldn’t?
I guess you sorta have to when 40 million people know it’s in the works.
However, the first sentence was such an absolute disaster that I had to take a drink of water.
-Washington Post
- Carman, Tim and Heil, Emily.
“Pizzerias navigate buzz, backlash around Dave Portnoys pizza festival.
“The Washington Post, 22 September 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2023/09/22/dave-portnoy-one-bite-pizza-festival-critics/.
Accessed 22 September 2023.
(When you quote from THE Washington Post, you break out the dress blues of citations.
Went full MLA here.
Hope I got it right.
Been a long, long time.)
What are we doing here.
How on earth did that sentenceand I use that wordgenerouslypass undetected beneath the exacting microscope of the editing team?
But let’s throw on some surgical gloves and scrub in for what proves to be a messy procedure.
I have two main complaints:
- Subject Choice
“The main thing” is your subject?
Let’s give Maggie the ball to run point!
Look how far we have to jog just to figure out what that main thing is!
Turns out, that “main thing” is Dave’s glowing review of Di Fara.
But we have to wade through a bog of exposition before our brains can finally connect those dots.
By which point, I’m already tired.
Christ, are newspaper people trying to seppuku their own industry?
Give us, the readers, a chance!
Don’t shut our brains down in the FIRST SENTENCE OF THE ARTICLE.
Let’s start there.
I’d read more about Maggie.
I’d read more about Dave!
Hell, you’re free to smell the pizza inviting you in to finish the article.
Warm, welcoming, clean, simple.
Who can possibly digest information this dense?
What’s the rush!
The article is LONG!
You guys took your time through four paragraphs of old Dave jokes you didn’t like.
Why the torrential downpour of names, dates, titles, and family trees off the first whistle?
You tried to cram five George R.R.
Martin books of lineage into a single sentence.
All this does make me sad about print media and journalism in general.
Isn’t there a good deal happening in the world?
Maybe there isn’t.
Maybe they’re scraping the barrel right now.
The Ukraine war has been beaten to death, nobody wants to read about Biden on either side…
I guess Dave’s Pizzafest is worth devoting 1000 words to.
PS- Bezos, if you’re reading this, I have no beef with you.
Team Beez over Elon all day (I don’t really mean that.
I drive a Tesla.)
But I do prefer your rockets.
(I don’t mean that either.
SpaceX makes your rocket look like a minivan.)
PPS- The only reason I wrote this blog was to curry favor with Dave.
