
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, December 29, 1993                   TAG: 9402250342
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

COMFORT FOOD

IT IS not with coffee spoons that Americans measure out their lives, but with pizza. This might be gathered, at least, from the 4th annual Pizza Meter, a much-unawaited compilation of statistics about pizza deliveries that reveals, among other things, that orders from the White House go up every time Hillary goes out of town. When Mom's away, the kids will play.

Aside from that bit of Clinton trivia, however, there are things to be learned - patterns of modern life to be discerned - from the rounds of the pizza man. (Or woman. Whatever.) What do pizza orders reveal about life in the waning days of the 20th century? How does life today measure up against life as lived by Eliot's J. Alfred Prufrock, who measured out his waning days with coffee spoons when the century was young, simple and, apparently, boring?

Surely it's spicier - the exploits of Amy Fisher and the Buttafuocos create a craving among pizza lovers, deliveries rising with each television appearance - though, you have to admit, progress in taste is less apparent.

And more harried. Prufrock, being the coffee fiend he was, must have been wired all the time. Those White House all-nighters when national policies are formulated would have had him bouncing off the walls. Pizza has a comfortingly high carbohydrate content, clearly called for in these stressful times.

And it can provide you with nourishment from all the major food groups: vegetables and grains, meat, dairy products, and grease.

OK, so it's not a pretty picture: couch potatoes arranged in front of the TV screen, pulling off another piece of pizza, pigging out on dough and Buttafuocos. But it beats the picture that Prufrock presents, starting each day measuring out his coffee, growing old, growing old.

That is still our fate, of course. But some of these newfangled blends - chocolate raspberry Jamaican mocha, and such - have smells as strong as their wakeful effects. Just brewing the stuff should be enough to get some life pumping through the old veins if we take the time to stop and smell the coffee.

by CNB