More discoveries in the unexpected parts of Centennial. I’m still shaking my head about this. How did I not know? How?

I sent this to Astrid, noting I had found a maze I like. We had gone through a maze at an old English estate last summer and gotten stuck and I hadn’t been happy. She had noted that I was distinctly not happy. I had noted a spot in the hedge where someone had clawed through the brush and the chicken wire, and thought: same.

There is a small golf course. And there are . . . these.

That was Friday. I’d done the podcast, which was fun; an hour talking in the morning with an old friend. One of the things we do is “guess that album,” where Charles puts an album on the shelf and I try to identify it. I was two for four. Not bad.

Then the gym, then a long walk in Centennial. Birch had a capital time. Off to CUfB for food bargains, which I found: Drastic sale on frozen chicken breasts, which I can use in pasta and my signature Hot Chicken Sandwich, a five-dollar log of pork that will make two meals, but not a jalapeño. There’s been an outbreak of hectic squirts tied to jalapeños, and I know, I know - how can you tell it’s a pathogen, and not just nature operating as designed? But I get my produce at Lundsnbyerlys, because I trust nothing at CUfB. In fact I hate the store and loathe my visits there. I hate the pretense that this is some local favorite for which we all have some pride and connection. I want to stand in front of the store and shout YOU USED TO BE A RED OWL. WHY CAN’T YOU BE A RED OWL AGAIN? But that bird has flown.

To be honest, the Red Owl incarnation was bad, partly because of the design of the exterior, and partly because Red Owl had decided to go full Hee-Haw in the 70s and rebrand itself as the Country Market, complete with letters made out of broken boards that looked like they were salvaged from an outhouse.

This was supposed to make us think “oh, country fresh.” Red Owl had been downright jet- and space-age in their design for two decades, and then they just bang the hound with this.

I have more to say on the subject, and in fact I have a substantial website coming up about it. But you will have to wait exactly one month.

After CUfB, Lundsn, for the pizza. On Fridays, while thumping on the treadmill, I hit the grocery store apps and websites to see who’s selling what for what. A wise man never pays full price for frozen pizza. You have your favorites, of course, each with its own particular virtue. You rotate, according to the sale. Some brands are absolutely off limits. Jack’s: do I look like someone who has given up his will to live and punishes himself with pallid simulacra of real food? No. Totino’s? I am not a college student and the pepperoni is just hot red tiny meat cubes strewn like cluster munitions. Heggie’s: everyone says it’s the absolute best, but I find it overhyped. It is strenuously adequate and I’m not paying $13.99 for it.

Anyway. The Lundsnbyerlys deal was the house pizza, firmly within the medium of the acceptable price parameters, so that’s where I went. BUT I JUST REALIZED SOMETHING.

Did CUfB have any Pizza Corner?

Did that well-hyped new entry just quietly die?

Pizza Corner was one of those small-town faves that went big, hoping to scale up its neighborhood loyalty. Started in Valley City in 1977. I'm not here to say that late-70s North Dakota pizza isn't the ne plus ultra, but my experience was grease-salt-cracker crust, which is fine, but you'd better bring something else if you want to complete these day. When I heard it would be the Midwest’s New Frozen Pizza, I was eager to try it. Then it showed up in the freezers.

That’s just awful. Even better, the company that bought the operation moved the production, throwing 150 Valley City workers out of their job.

I tried it. Meh. I think a lot of people were confused by its hype. This . . . it’s just okay. The company redesigned. They created a new look intended to stand out, abjuring all the imagery that referenced its roots.

And now it’s faded away. Other grocery stores sell it, but I think the brand was done in by bad packaging and a lackluster product. It will recede. It will be one of those pizzas that had a moment, but couldn’t find its way into the general public consciousness. It won American Idol and got a record deal but the first single tanked.

UPDATE: On a recent visit, I saw it was still there. But let's say its prominence has diminished.

Anyway. Napped, another hard hour of extraordinary density, ending in a wild dream you’ll probably read about some Friday hence. I think I’ve said this before: I wear AirPods while napping for white noise. It’s not the alarm that wakes me. It’s the quarter-second before the alarm when the white-noise program stops because the alarm is about to sound. That’s when my brain shifts and all the characters in my dream freeze as if they’re in a board room in a modern office building and suddenly all the omnipresent ambient sounds vanish, and people realize that something has happened.

The pizza was . . . okay. I constantly overestimate the Lundsnbyerly house brand.

Off on the after-dinner power walk. On the last leg I met the Happy Couple from down the hall, and we walked along chatting, then ran into what magazine articles in the 70s might call an attractive divorcee who they knew, and we all had a merry time walking back to the Fred. The Happy Couple knew the Attractive Divorcee, even though she lived a floor above. I had run into her before, and thought "Two more chance meetings and I’m asking her out for coffee over at the Finch." Because why the hell not?

GREEK CHORUS: BECAUSE YOU'RE OLD

Rrright. Forgot about that part.

It’s funny that I am pretty sure I’m in a bad place with The Ex because, as she sees it, I’m not having biweekly chit-chats to normalize the current situation and build towards the Ongoing Future Relationship. I honestly think she half-believes I’m being petty over here. Pitching a little hissy fit. In my mind you can’t saw someone’s legs off then get irritated when they decline your offer of a walk around the park. It’s not that I have nothing to say; I have everything to say, and there’s no point in saying it.

In keeping with our Monday tradition, which became a "tradition" for reasons I can't recall and probably don't matter, we continue with our Monday trademark. For this year we'll do 1936.

Apparently this was a difficult act requiring a helpful implement:

		I haven't the faintest idea. Perhaps it's what the wire goes around, a trademarked shape. Or it fits over a crimped wire.

Damned odd title card.

That's the OCR translation, of course. The actual title:

Oh great, a Worker & Parasite In Space Movie. It's known as Cosmic Journey.

Actually, Soviet sci-fi can be quite interesting.

Says the first card:

I guess that’s all it took.

Moscow in 1946, ten years into the future. Nice model work:

Don’t know what it is, though.

A kid comes to the Hedgehog Institute, and presents a telegraph. We get a look at what Russian telegraphs probably looked like:

I’m thinking “t4k” was stop. But I find no evidence for this. I have looked. I will look no more.

Oh I forgot, I have a subtitle srt. Okay. It says “Staggered at Sedych’s decision to fly to the moon. Lost his mind. Detain him. Will bring proof. KARIN.”

I love how we’re a minute into a USSR movie and someone’s being detained.

Otherwise, all the early sci-fibasics are there. Even the loving fly-by. Earthbound, but still a fine example of the genre.

You can watch it all right here.

That will do. Substack column up between 11 and 12. Matchbooks, of course. See you around!