Dimitri Syrkin-Nikolau - Revolutionary Pizza: Bold Pies that Will Change Your Life...and Dinner

I have never won a Pulitzer, nor the National Book Award, not even the booby prize for Best Book About Pro Wrestling and Pot. But it no longer matters because I have been humbled with the greatest literary accolade of them allDimos Pizza named a pizza after me in honor of one of my books. In the hierarchy of great literary huzzahs, there aint nothin better. The problem, of course, is that I now have little left to live for.

I am from New York and know a few things about pizza. And beginning with my first primitive salvos as a teenaged miscreant, I have personally innovated over 14,000 variations of the toaster oven pizza bagel. But I cannot touch the ingenuity and painterly imagination of Dimitri, the colossal superbrain behind this book and Dimos Pizza. He is like the Jasper Johns of pizza chefs. Or, if you prefer, the Willy Wonka.

Dimitris vision of pizza knows no limits: from his sweet pies (Celias Sweet Peach Cobbler!) to any of his deconstructed dinner pies, because pizza really is a blank canvas upon which to write our dreams in mashed potatoes and gravy.

Did I mention they named a pizza after me? The greatest day of my life! Not even if the Carnegie Deli suddenly got hip and started offering a sandwich of sardines and red onions on pumpernickel rye as The Edison could I possibly be prouder. That the last guy who had a pizza named for him was former WWE Champion CM Punk made it that much sweeter. He sold attitude. The guys who had sammies named after them at the Carnegie sold neuroses.

I was on the road promoting my book Dirty! Dirty! Dirty!a history of sex on the newsstandwhen I got the call from Dimitri telling me that the Dimos brain trust had convened (a powwow that boggles the imagination) and decided that they were going to bestow the honorific totem of a proprietary pizza on me and my book just as soon as I got to Chicago, and that the Dirty Pie would most likely involve sausage of some kind.

Pizza is the food of the people and Dimitri is their Spartacus. Pizza knows no class or race or social status. It is enjoyed by all the citizens of the earth, from presidents and kings to lowly stoners, metalheads, hip-hoppers, punk rockers, Michelin-starred restaurateurs, rule-breaking professional wrestlers and perennially award-winning authors. But who needs literary kudos from a bunch of eggheads when you can have a pizza with your name on it?

In the end, the Mike Edison Dirty Pie evolved from a simple sausage fest to an orgy of Roman proportions, if the Romans had lived in New Orleans. It was a fully realized gumbo pizza with okra, shrimp and andouille sausage, and I am not kidding when I say that seeing my name attached to such genius and putting the thing in my mouth was the greatest thrill of my lifewhat I imagine being the first man on the moon must have been like.

Screw the Pulitzer. Gimme gimme some pizza! God bless Dimos! Gabba gabba hey!

Mike Edison

New York City

Writer and musician Mike Edison is the former publisher of High Times magazine. His books include I Have Fun Everywhere I Go: Savage Tales of Pot, Porn, Punk Rock, Pro Wrestling, Talking Apes, Evil Bosses, Dirty Blues, American Heroes, and the Most Notorious Magazines in the World and Dirty! Dirty! Dirty!: Of Playboys, Pigs, and Penthouse PaupersAn American Tale of Sex and Wonder.