The Pioneer Newsletter #11

Wednesday, Dec 6th

There was just one item left behind by the previous tenants of my apartment. A Hong Kong Disneyland 香港迪士尼樂園 magnet stuck to the old white refrigerator. I decided to leave it right where I found it. The first piece of art that would make this house a home. A few days later, a takeout menu slid under the front door. It seemed to be fate. What could be a better pair for a Chinese refrigerator magnet than an Italian takeout menu? My roommate believed it to be pointless. Who the hell needs a takeout menu anymore? I didn’t disagree. They are, such as refrigerator magnets themselves, an artifact from a bygone era. We can all remember when refrigerators were the epicenter of information in a household - covered in to-do lists, 1-hour photos, and the aforementioned take-out menus. They’re now far more bare and merely used to keep our food cold. But I didn’t stick that takeout menu on my fridge for food delivery convenience. I just thought it looked cool. There’s a certain nostalgic charm to having takeout menus on the fridge. For those of you who carry around a point-and-shoot camera along with your iPhone 14, I see you. I may not own a Coolpix or run a corresponding Instagram account for the b-sides taken on it, but I do have takeout menus on my fridge and wired earbuds currently in my ears if only for nostalgic purposes. There was a time when each of these items was popular due to their convenience. Now we just think they’re…cute.

But last Sunday my relationship with the Ciccero’s takeout menu changed forever.

It began with football. For the first Sunday in a while, all I wanted to do was watch it. So I sunk into my couch and grabbed the remote. Now, if your Roku remote is anything like mine, it barely works. After about 17 clicks, the TV finally came to life. And if your TV is anything like mine, it doesn’t have cable. So after about 17 more clicks and a mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, I launched the Paramount+ app for the CBS broadcast. But further inconvenience then struck. The Colts/Titans matchup, heading into overtime, wasn’t included in my local market. All I had was Chargers v Patriots - an XFL-level atrocity. So I turned to the seas of piracy and loaded up buffstreams.io on my laptop. After the standard fare of pop-up ads, I was finally granted permission to toggle into fullscreen. A few minutes of screen share hell with the TV and I was back in business. It was now time for football-related food. “Huh” I audibly said and definitely did not add in for dramatic effect. “Why not get pizza from the takeout menu?”Maybe it was my uphill battle with streaming that had me feeling a little more traditional. Maybe it was just curiosity. But regardless, I took down that takeout menu and dialed the phone number displayed. As the phone rang, I wondered if this line was still in service. I wondered what the hell I was even supposed to say. We rarely order anything over the phone these days. I couldn’t even remember the last pizza call I had made. Would they have change if I paid in cash? Then I heard a voice. The type of voice you only hear from family-owned pizza parlors. Loud, using minimal words, and accompanied by clanging metal. About 45 seconds later, against all odds, I had a pizza en route to my apartment. I then returned to battle with my television - in a constant cycle of crashing and refreshing as I quickly exited the barrage of pop-up windows displaying animated pornography up on the big screen.

The pizza arrived and just like all pizza in Los Angeles, it was aggressively mediocre. That’s not an opinion but a fact. And if you’d like to argue otherwise, stop using your slice as a serving spoon for ranch. But alas, pizza is pizza. And before I forget to mention - when the delivery man arrived, I gave him cash, he gave me a pizza, and then he left. There were no minute-by-minute text updates. No exact amounts for suggested tips. No awkward eye contact as he ran away from the door (as now all food delivery has turned into a game of ding dong ditch). It was all far more civilized. I also got hot wings.

Delicious.

By this point, Deebo Samuel had made a mockery of the Eagles’ defense and the game was all but over. I shut my laptop and reintroduced myself to the half-broken Roku remote. 27 clicks and a minor thumb injury later, I found my way to the HBO Max app. I was not sure what I would watch but I did know for certain that I was not getting off this couch. It was then that my remote gave up altogether. Suddenly I remembered the Roku iPhone app and its remote capabilities. It connected and I was now eating pizza and in streaming bliss. I naturally jumped into a rewatch of Harrison Ford’s 1994 Jack Ryan classic Clear and Present Danger.

I wish I could say the rest was history.

But the remote app disconnected from the television soon after. CAPD became a 2 and half hour runaway train I was unable to pause, rewind, or turn up. I spent too much of the time I meant to watch Mr. Ryan expose deep corruption within the Oval Office, instead attempting to reconnect my phone with the television. It was a router issue altogether so I unplugged that and reset everything. This seemed to work for about 30 minutes then failed me continually. Fatigued by my tech complications and deep in the digestion of the wings and pizza, the film became all but background noise to a mindless scroll of online shopping. The credits rolled and my roommate and I discussed what we should attempt to watch next. A nature documentary seemed fitting, possibly Chimp Empire or Our Universe on Netflix. I discovered the original remote would still work if I stood inches from the television. But Netflix decided to lock me out. I’m logged onto an account currently being paid for in Albany, New York by my father. On occasion, Netflix realizes this. So we instead went over to Disney Plus for some nature shit. This is until we realize all of their National Geographic content had been removed from the service and instead put on NatGeo+.

C’mon.

My final attempt at Netflix's nature variety was a mode of viewing that served me quite inconsistently earlier that day. I screen-shared Our Universe from my computer as Netflix has yet to lock me out of this device. But Netflix once again splashed cold water in my face. The service now understands when it’s being shared to another screen and promptly goes black as the audio keeps playing. What sort of sick joke is this Netflix? Shame on you. I finally gave up, retired to my bedroom, and watched Band of Brothers on my laptop.

Damn.

The easiest task I completed on Sunday was the one most antiquated and forgotten. Six hours, two remotes, 4 streaming services, and three devices all to half-watch football and a few movies. But just one phone call and $22 (plus $5 in tip) to have a pizza and wings arrive at my doorstep. Maybe it’s time to just get cable. More broadly, maybe it’s time to start taking action and paying closer attention to what exactly was perfectly fine before we ran off and tried to make it better. This is not to say I’m not thankful for Doordash’s ability to have Sweetgreen at my door in sub-30. But trust me, pizza delivery is meant for the refrigerator and takeout menus don’t just look…cool. They’re one part of a well-oiled and finely-tuned business that operated perfectly fine long before mobile computing. Such as the mouse trap, I now know pizza delivery will never be out-innovated. So let’s start paying attention to more timeless methods and machines and appreciate them in all of their convenient glory. While often hard to come by, they could just be hiding in plain sight. Possibly under a Hong Kong Disneyland 香港迪士尼樂園 magnet stuck on your refrigerator.

Recs

Clear and Present Danger (FILM) - Here’s a little taste of this all-time “BUT I’M JUST AN ANALYST” thriller. If you like character actors yelling at each other in 90s Armani suits, you might wanna get this in the que.

The Endless Quest For A Better Mouse Trap (Article) - If you thought that mousetrap reference was random, it’s not. Read this and learn how we simply can’t do better.

Band of Brothers (Miniseries) - GODDAMN I GUESS I’M JUST RECKIN EVERYTHANG FROM THAT PIECE…

But on a serious note…incredibly thorough and brutally realistic - there are very few World War II films and miniseries that stand next to this.

Also, this rec is from Bon and Cornwall. I hope they now know I finally finished it.

Damien Louie, Ronnie Livingston…David Schwimmgoat. C’MON!

Sparkling Water (Carbonated) - Just a really big fan

Sorry for the tardiness on this folks. I’ve been quite sick all week. This is my Jordan flu game if you will. Till next time!