It's a leap year, which means vapid electoral speculation takes on its quadrennial presidential proportion. While the full-blown vituperation that marks most campaigns is still in the on-deck circle, the insipid image-shaping is well under way. Perhaps this was inevitable, but John Tierney's column in Sunday's New York Times pondered, among other things, food superlatives for President George W. Bush and the presumptive Democratic nominee, John F. Kerry. Under the headline "Shopping For A President," Mr. Tierney opens with a scintillating interrogative: "If George W. Bush were a food, what would he be, and what kind of shoppers would be... More

"On the whole, the pizza must be soft, elastic, and easily foldable in half to form a 'libretto.'" —from an Italian draft law that would define pizza Italian lawmakers are considering a piece of legislation that would limit what could be called "pizza" in that country. According to CNNmoney: The draft law to separate pure pizza from the putative kind -- all three pages, eight articles and six sub-clauses of it -- was published under the state seal in the Official Gazzette on Tuesday. It decrees that a Nepolitan pizza must be round and no more than 35 centimetres in... More

On the way back from theMets-Cardinals game Tuesday night, Slice correspondent and photographer E-Rock noticed the advertisement pictured at right. When it's not busy shocking people and pets, Consolidated Edison is apparently championing small businesses throughout the city, including pizzerias. To clarify the ad copy in this blurry mobile-phone photo, it reads: "The 24-hour deli. A cut and color. 10 loads of laundry. A slice of pizza.In New York City, small business is big business. The power behind everything you do. Con Edison. On it."... More

You can tell it's a slow news day at Slice when we post about something as inconsequential as this*, but it appears that the son of the owner of Seltzerboy's boyhood pizza hangout is getting married. Helen Cantwell, Mark Racanelli: Mr. Racanelli, 35, received bachelor's and law degrees magna cum laude from Georgetown. His mother, Arlene F. Racanelli, runs an online antiques business from her home. His father is an owner of Spiga, an Italian restaurant in Scarsdale, N.Y., and of Pizza and Brew, a chain based there. Yup. Slow news day, indeed. However, I promise you some BIG NEWS... More

Reader Tien e-mailed me this morning: "I dont know what any of that means, but thought you might find it interesting (since it's pizza)." I couldn't have said it better. That's because I have no idea what the gobbledygook at right means, either. Apparently it's all part of Pizza Party, an open-source command-line program for ordering Domino's pizza. Pizza Party's features, from the developer's website: * Can order pizza with only a few keystrokes. * Can save pizza preferences. * Can use batch files for ordering many pizzas. * Has easy to use flags for ordering different toppings. * Runs... More

Looks like there's some pizza-related "high" jinks going on in Burnbank, Scotland. A family over there ordered a chicken-and-pepperoni pizza recently but got a topping they didn't ask for: a scattering of hash. From the ic Lanarkshire: The McArdle family last week ordered the pizza from the Bombay Tandoori at 255 Glasgow Road, Burnbank, and became suspicious of a black substance that had been scattered on top. The takeaway, however, denied that the suspected presence of the drug had anything to do with them ...The pizza was delivered to the McArdles' home at 68 Comely Bank, Hillhouse, last Tuesday evening.... More

Someone shooting a commercial apparently needs a hefty pizza man who's able to toss dough. From a Craig's List posting: Looking for a real Italian Pizza Man 35-55 y.o. Someone that can throw a pie. A Vinny Pastore type, a man with some weight on him. The audition will be held tomorrow, Thursday May 6th, with a callback to follow. The commercial shoot will be held on May 20th. We need a current picture emailed. date of birth. which pizza parlor you are working at and contact information. If we are interested we will call you with an audition. Please... More

Remember when former Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev did a commercial for Pizza Hut? That was pretty funny stuff, huh? Heh heh heh. Let's all take a moment to reminisce and laugh. Gorby commercial, U.S. ver. (2.7MB Quicktime MOV) Gorby commercial, European ver. (1.9MB Quicktime MOV)... More

Above, you have Raven Patrick De'Sean Dennis III, a.k.a. "Cakeman Raven." From his website: This period throughout college Raven worked with the NY Hilton Hotel as a room service waiter and later became night captain. During the dayshift, he worked at Georgeson’s on Wall Street in a stockbrokerage firm. After finding that numbers were not his game, he returned to making wedding and special occasion cakes. Though it was his cheesecake that drew praise from some sources, we're more interested in his "special occasion cakes," specifically his pizza birthday cake (above right). Now we know where to buy cakes when... More

We never knew Billy Joel was such a big fan of pizza. Indeed, the Piano Man is such a devotee of the dish that he crashed his car yesterday during a groggy post-nap drive to procure a piece of pie. We know what you're thinking, what with Mr. Joel's past battles with the bottle, but according to police, "there was no criminality involved" and no sign of alcohol at the crash scene. The rain-slicked road was apparently too much for his 1967 Citroen to handle. Mr. Joel was not injured in this, his third car crash in two years.Geez Louise,... More