Pizza Delivery Adventures: The Trailer Park

When I delivered pizza, most of the deliveries were in beautiful Alsip Illinois or the surrounding suburbs.  As you can imagine, one of the main challenges when delivering pizza was finding the place you’re supposed to be delivering to.  Fortunately, I grew up in Alsip and knew the area like I know the top of my penis, er…the back of my hand, with some minor exceptions, most notably the trailer park. 

An excuse to post Daisy Duke

I knew exactly where the trailer park was, but since I don’t smoke meth I’d never had reason to venture down its labyrinthine streets.  Now I’ve watched my share of The Dukes of Hazzard, and the first time I delivered to the trailer park I surprise by the lack of conveniently placed ramps, jumps and bales of hay.  I also got really fucking lost.  There were no streetlights and every street was “one way only” with a 10mph speed limit.  How was the General Lee (my 1998 Mercury Mystique) supposed to get around in that sort of shit?  It didn’t help matters any that the trailers’ addresses were seemingly passed out at random, like some sort of hillbilly Sudoku.  Remember how Indiana Jones had to use a model city and a staff to find the Ark of the Covenant?  Well it was pretty much like that every time I went there.

I spent hours playing this simulation and still got lost

"Git off my land!"

Most of the people that lived in the trailer park were very nice people.  As for the rest, well there’s a reason you always see trailer parks on Cops.  One of our more frequent customers always reeked of pot.  That in and of itself wasn’t that big a deal.  It may surprise you, but lots of people order pizza when they’re baked off their ass.  The problem is that this guy thought he had to hide it, like I give a shit.  He’d make me sit outside in the dark for fifteen minutes, so he could Febreeze the place.  All the while, a bunch of goddamn junkyard Rottweilers barked their asses off and growled at me.  (What’s with poor people and mean ugly dogs?)

With me so far?  OK, now imagine you’re watching the hottest porno you’ve ever seen, but when the camera finally shows the girls face; she looks exactly like your sister.  Well this article is that porno.  Ugh…What I’m trying to say is that it’s easy to laugh about hillbillies, but this kind of behavior wasn’t just restricted to trailer parks.  Lots of people, just like you, would leave me stranded on the porch while they hid their weed, collected money from their deadbeat friends, or kicked their mean dog in the balls.  If that sounds like you and you laughed at that pothead guy in the trailer park you probably feel exactly like Luke Skywalker did in that cave on Dagobah.  You cut off Darth Vader’s head and you saw your own face. (I guess that’s probably a better metaphor but I’m already committed to the weird porno joke.)

I assume you look exactly like Mark Hamil

Fear not, the problem is easily solved.  When you order a pizza stop masturbating for five minutes and get your shit together.  If you have a coupon or want to pay with a credit card, let them know over the phone when placing the order.   It’ll make the whole transaction go smoother and you can get right back to masturbating.   When you place your order it’s also a good idea to let them know any special directions that will make your house easier to find, and turn your goddamn porch light on.  If you’re Jewish, you might want to put some lamb’s blood over your door.  It might not make your house much easier to find, but it will prevent the Angel of Death from murdering your first born.

The Angel of Death is also the Angel of Slutty Halloween Costumes

I think those are some helpful hints and I covered everything I was going to say about the trailer park, with one major exception.  I was trying really hard this whole blog post to work in a reference to Leatherface and it just didn’t work.  I don’t know what the problem was; this article is already random as hell.  It’s not like it would have ruined my “artistic vision.” I guess saying his name in this conclusion kind of shoehorns him in, but it feels kinda forced to me.  Oh well, in the words of George W. Bush, “mission accomplished!”  Until next time, remember to tip your pizza guy.

Dance like no one is watching

Pizza Delivery Adventures: Porno Pizza

"I'm a HOT dish. Get it?!?!?!"

 *Ding Dong*

“Pizza delivery.”

“Hey, that was fast.  I didn’t even have time to put all my clothes on.”

“It’s okay ma’am.  I’ve got a large sausage pizza for you.”
“I don’t remember ordering large sausage on my pizza.”

“It’s not on the pizza, it’s in my pants!”

Sumthin' for the ladies

Then the guy opens the box, and he cut a hole in both the box and the pizza, and then poked his penis through, like some sort of perverted jack-in-the-box.  Her roommate shows up and they all go at it for a while.  I’ve seen lots of porno movies that start like that, and as someone that delivered pizza for about two years, I can tell you that my customer interactions usually had little in common with that of Harry Reems playing a pizza guy.

I emphasize the word “usually” because one time things worked out a little different (if you know what I mean.)  On this particular occasion, I had a delivery on the ass end of Blue Island, which sucked balls.  You could end up spending over a half hour making a single delivery to Blue Island due to the train tracks, distance, and poorly laid out streets.  To top it off, Blue Island wasn’t exactly known for the huge tips.  You’d be lucky to get $2, and not stiffed outright.

Blue Island, IL

Actual photo before his mushroom cut

I’d been to this customer’s house before, and every time I delivered there the guy didn’t tip very well and gave me a creepy vibe.  Picture a dude with a red mushroom cut, in a stained Cubs shirt opening the door to Cheech and Chong’s van, and you have a pretty good idea what it looked like when the dude opened his front door.  But as I said before, this time was a little different.  It still looked like there was a private Bob Marley concert in the house, but this time the serial killer’s wife answered the door.  She said I was cute, her girlfriend agreed and they invited me inside to hang out.

Fucking finally.

"Hey little man, you wanna come inside?"

Earlier, I said it usually sucked balls to deliver in Blue Island, and this time was…no different.  Remember that red headed kid that was in Son In Law and Big Green?  Well the chick that answered the door looked like that kid with long hair and fat girl boobies.  I was a little flattered when she told her friend that she “had to see me.”  Her friend was better looking, the same way most women are better looking than Godzilla.  She still had kind of a hatchet face, and really weird teeth.  They weren’t traditionally bad, like the hillbilly teeth at Spencer’s Gifts. Her teeth were creepy, like the teeth Dracula would have if he smoked meth.  Monster Teeth said she liked my leather jacket and hair and that I should come in.  I said, “Sorry, I gotta get back to work,” which was a convenient truth (suck my balls Al Gore.)

 The moral of the story: porno movies happen in real life, just not with anyone you would want them to happen with.  This should come as no shock to anyone that grew up in the 90’s.  Back before Al Gore invented the internet, if you were under 18 you had to watch your dad’s full bush porn, or settle for HBO’s Real Sex.  Real Sex was a documentary style show that set out to destroy your preconceived notions about sex, and it did, for the worse.  It turns out: key swapping parties happen; they’re just full of people that look like the PTA.  By the same token, in real life, girls invite the pizza guy in for threeway sex; they just happen to look like proof that grizzly bears and humans can produce viable offspring.    

"Nice hair"

It could have been worse.  One of the guys I worked with was tricked into delivering a pizza by some perverts fucking on the couch.  In comparison, I guess getting propositioned by lamprey-face and a wildebeest wasn't so bad.  But thats the kind of thing pizza guys put up with every day, so tip the pizza guy.

A little sumthin' for the ladies (assuming all women are bi)

Pizza Delivery Adventures: Shitty Apartments

Today has been dubbed “Blizzard 2011,” “Snowpocalypse,” and even “the Snowlocaust.”  I wouldn’t go far as that, but man this weather is nuts.  It’s funny how your perspective can change over time.  When I was a pizza delivery driver shitty weather meant I was gonna make some serious money.  Granted, I never worked in weather like last night, but a good blizzard meant we’d get swamped with orders and that people would be a little more generous with their tips than usual.  It was a little more hazardous working in the snow; you could hit some black ice and wipe out, or more likely slip on some assholes front porch and crank your noggin wide open.  That wasn’t much of a concern for me.  The biggest danger in delivering pizza is getting mugged.     

Give us the pizza, and no one gets hurt.

5 survivors of fetal alcohol syndrome

The closest I ever came to getting mugged was this one time when I had to deliver to the shitty apartment buildings on the street that dead-ends on the highway.  I don’t know if you’ve ever looked at the houses on a dead-end street, particularly one that dead-ends on a highway, but they tend to be full of the most vile base degenerates and scum you’ll ever meet.  Consider this: what kind of person would rather put up with highway noise and diesel fumes than live on a street the cops can drive down easily?  Crackheads, perverts and ICP fans come to mind.  If you go on the Illinois sex offender registry and do a quick search in your neighborhood I guarantee you will find little cul-de-sacs of unspeakable horror nuzzled right up next to the highway.  The dead-end street is the wrong-side-of-the-tracks of the 21^st century.

A documentary on the subject

"Let's huff some roach spray!"

When my wife and I were house hunting we looked at a house next to the highway in an otherwise nice suburb.  It was all fat chicks with neck tattoos and skinny dudes with no shirts wearing jean shorts and drinking malt liquor.  I half expected that retarded kid from Deliverance to show up with his banjo and a paper bag full of spray paint fumes.  Some dude practically started a fight with me for parking in front of his house.  The rest of the neighborhood looked like the neighborhood Beaver Cleaver would grow up in if the show was set in the early 21^st century instead of the 1950’s.

Anyway, there weren’t a lot of places in our delivery territory I hated going, but the apartment buildings by the highway definitely made the list.  Being on a dead-end street by the highway wasn’t just a sign of possible moral depravity; it also made it a pain in the ass to get to.  To top it off, a lot of those apartments were section 8 housing, which increases your odds of getting robbed and decreases your odds of getting tipped to an almost infinitesimal percentage.  I’d be lucky if the person didn’t demand their change down to the penny, which I didn’t carry.  I mean, if someone wants 13 cents change they can go fuck themselves.

Actual photo of the door buzzer

Now, like I said, I never got robbed while delivering pizza, but I knew enough to take precautions.  I left all but about $20 in mixed bills at the restaurant so that if someone stuck me up they wouldn’t get much.  I also cased the building and verified that it was a real address before I got out of the car.  So I walk into the vestibule and rang the buzzer.  The thing was busted.  Typical slumlord bullshit.  So I tried the door, and wouldn’t you know it, it was busted too.  Apparently, at an earlier date, some psycho had kicked the fucking door in. So the door swung right open and revealed six black dudes sitting in the hallway in the dark.

It was like walking in on this.

I hear the political correctness warning buzzers going off in your head.  “Why does it matter that they were black?”  I guess it doesn’t, but it actually would have been a whole helluva lot scarier if they were white, because what the fuck would six white dudes be doing in the dark in the black apartment building?  In any case, I went immediately went into fight or flight mode, or more accurately flight mode.  There was no way in hell I was gonna take on six dudes over an Italian beef sandwich and an order of deep-fried broccoli.

I was about to drop the food and run, when one of the guys asked who the food was for.  I answered and he calmly knocked on the woman’s door. She came out, paid for the food and I got the hell out of there.  I guess it was simply a matter of the hallway light burning out and some guys deciding it wasn’t creepy or weird to sit in the dark.  I mean, who does that?  The only answer I can think of is vampires, but the only black guy that’s a vampire is Blade and he kills other vampires.  I guess there’s Blackula too, but he died with the blaxploitation movement.  

Best film movement ever.

I guess I wasn’t in any real danger, but geez for a second or two I was sure I was gonna get my ass kicked.  I guess I should count myself lucky that this was the closest I ever came to really getting the shit kicked out of me.  Some drivers aren’t so lucky, so don’t be a cheapskate and throw ‘em a few dollars.  Especially in weather like this, I mean, if their job was easy you’d just go get your pizza yourself. 

Note:  This post doesn't even mention beer.  How bout that?