Lone Locust Productions

Author: Eugene Glover

  • Venezia’s Pizzeria (Rainy Day Edition)


    Nothing beats pizza for good old fashioned rainy day food. When Phoenix broke its dry spell, the skies really opened up, and we found ourselves driving in a torrential rain on the wrong side of town. We took the opportunity to stop a Venezia’s Pizza, which I semi-reviewed previously. This time I was here to do the job right.

    I’ve purposely not re-read my earlier partial review, so as to not bias this review, but I also might be covering somethings I’ve mentioned before.

    Venezia’s is a family restaurant transplanted from their original location in New Mexico, now being run by the second generation of the family.

    They have three locations in Tempe, Chandler and East Mesa. We ate at the Chandler location.

    This was a good pizza.

    I particularly liked the sauce, which is a bit more tart than most pizza sauces and has an unusual flavor to it. I spent most of my time trying to identify the flavor. Although I cannot be sure, if I had to guess, I’d say the flavor was green pepper.

    While I’m not a fan of green pepper as a topping, as a seasoning, it adds a nice, fresh green flavor that is very similar to the unique flavor of their sauce.

    Since the sauce was a touch on the tart side (my wife likened it to green tea, which is why she doesn’t write pizza reviews) it compensated nicely for the slightly smoky flavor of the pepperoni.

    The cheese was a solid entry. Good quality but playing second-fiddle to the sauce.

    The crust was interesting. We were shocked at how fast they brought our pizza to the table. We didn’t time it, but it was well under 10 minutes.

    Despite that, the outer edge was well done – it fact, it was almost too done. It was well-flavored, but beginning to dry up.

    Meanwhile the center was softer that I usually associate with even the floppiest of New York style large pizzas.

    I’m not sure what cooking technique was used – I wish I’d watched them prepare it – but it was an unusual combination of over and under done on the same crust.

    All around, I’d still rate it a good, solid pizza with a distinct taste.

    Another point in their favor, they tried to talk me our of buying a whole pizza. Their individual slices are enormous, being made from a 24″ pie and they do offer a much better cost per square inch than the 12″ whole pizza.

    (12″ pizza = 113 sq.”, 1 slice= 56.5 sq.”, so 2 slices is the same as a 12″ pizza. 12″ pizza =$8.75, 2 slices = $4.70: all prices pepperoni)

    Of course, I couldn’t tell them I was reviewing the pizza and that I have to review a whole pizza, so I couldn’t be dissuaded. When I went ahead and ordered the whole pizza, they knocked a dollar off the price of the pizza.

    Pricing:
    12″ Pepperoni = $8.75 or $0.08 (0.077)

    Venezia’s New York Style Pizzeria
    1080 E Pecos Road Ste 23
    Chandler, AZ

    Conclusion; Recommended


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  • Rain At Last!


    It hasn’t rained in Phoenix since October 18th. It’s been the longest dry streak ever.

    143 days without rain, but this morning I awoke to the most glorious sound. Water dripping outside my bedroom window. (Or, if it had turned out to be not raining, a most distressing sound.)

    I decided I’d better sneak out and get a picture before it stopped.

    We were in Taiwan on October 18th, so I don’t know how long its been since I saw rain here in Phoenix.

    It sure is nice to see the rain today… and, they had to cancel the Taiwanese moms picnic today!

    Additional note, 4/2/2006My mistake, it wasn’t the longest ever. I don’t know what all the weathermen were all worked up about.


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  • The Mitsubishi Jet Towel

    One of the cool things you occasionally see in Taiwan, is the Mitsubishi Jet Towel.

    It’s a air hand dryer that actually works. You shove your hands into a trough and high pressure air jets push the water right off them. It’s rather like the way they simulate high-G acceleration in movies, where they air jet the actors’ cheeks.

    Anyway, at last they’re available in the USA. My I recommend to any company that has those worthless air blowers to replace them with these jet towels.

    I’ve never understood how anyone could think that the air blowers are viable. They take 30-40 seconds, if you’re lucky, to dry your hands. There’s usually one, maybe two in a restroom, which may have 5 or 6 sinks. Do the math, there’s going to be people who skip washing because they know they can’t dry their hands.

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  • I Want To Be A Plumber When I Grow Up


    …and people wonder why I don’t like for my daughter to just play with any kids you see on the playground.


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  • The Nut With The Chain


    We were returning home this evening around 10:00PM, driving down Thomas, near 3rd Avenue, when I spied a person in the middle of the road.

    He crouching down along the center line, about 10 feet from the intersection, facing our direction. He was an older man, wearing a levi jacket and baseball cap.

    He was hoping around the road in a squatty, dance-like way, a little like that gremlin in the classic Twilight Zone episode with William Shatner. He was also making aggressive moves towards the cars passing him and swinging a chain.

    He didn’t hit anybody and as we passed, I could see in the rearview mirror that he decided to leave the road.

    There’s something you don’t see everyday.


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  • The New King Tyrant

    The Biggest Carnivore: Dinosaur History Rewritten

    This is an interesting little report from livescience.com on the Spinosaurus.

    The history of the paleontology of the Spinosaurus is s fascinating story. Spinosaurus, a large theropod dinosaur was discovered in Egypt around the turn of the 20th century by the German paleontologist, Ernst Stromer.

    Stromer’s collection went to a museum in Munich (if I recall correctly) which was bombed out of existence by allied attacks in the 1944. The specimen were completely destroyed. The was a documentary on one of the Discovery channels recently about a group who recently went back to Stomer’s dig sites and brought back more Spinosaurus fossils.

    This new report is now estimating that Spinosaurus was the largest yet discovered meat-eating dinosaur, at 55′ long from head to tail.

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  • A Friend On A Wedding Cake


    My friend John is doing the second-wedding ceremony thing in Thailand.

    Don’t you think these figurines on his wedding cake are an amazing likeness?

    Incidentally, you can look at more of his Thailand photos on his flickr page.


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  • Walking!


    This has been a big week for James!

    He said “beep” the other day (but not repeated the feat) and today he decided he wanted to walk.

    Grandpa was over and he just started walking. he’s been trying for weeks, but he’s only managed 2 “steps” before collapsing.

    Today he just started with 3 steps at a time and worked his way up to crossing the living room.


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  • Jurassic beaver swims into view - Large early mammal was first to get furry.

    Jurassic beaver swims into view - Large early mammal was first to get furry. From nature.com

    Ever see the cliché ending to virtually every program on the extinction of the dinosaurs where the Tyrannosaurus Rex skull lies in the sand with the mouse-like mammal crawling out its eye socket?

    Until now, the fossil record has only yielded small, shrew-like mammals living during the Mesozoic Era (Triassic, Jurassic & Cretaceous periods). The assumption has been that dinosaurs so completely dominated that era mammals were unable to thrive until the following Cenozoic era.

    This new find out of China is an amazingly advanced beaver from Jurassic period China.

    While this certainly means a re-think of when mammals began their advance towards world-dominance this doesn’t seem as surprising to me. Prior to the Mesozoic, during the Paleozoic, the earth was dominated by creatures known as the Mammal-like reptiles (Therapsids). These were displaced during the Triassic by dinosaurs and apparently gone by the Jurassic, but they are the direct ancestors of mammals. It doesn’t seem that impossible that mammals had more of a head start than previously thought.

    The process of fossilization requires being at the right place at the right time, and some places (rivers, seas, oceans) are more conducive than others. Further, those places now have to be exposed. There are certainly far more creatures that did exist than we could ever possibly expect to find.

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  • Many Dino Fossils Could Have Soft Tissue Inside

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    Many Dino Fossils Could Have Soft Tissue Inside from the National Geographic Society

    This is a fascinating report concerning the “fossilized” soft tissue discovered last year.

    The traditional view of the fossilization process should result in no soft tissue remaining.

    In a nutshell, when a creature dies, it’s soft tissue rots (or is eaten) away, leaving the bones and hard parts, which then get covered and slowly mineral-laden water erodes them replacing them with rock in, essentially, and exact replica so exact that you can see the original growth rings, etc.

    Only on the rarest of occasions does soft tissue or skin imprints get fossilized, but they, too, are converted to mineral in the process.

    The discovery last year yielded what appears to be un-mineralized soft tissue. After a year’s research, the team has discovered this may not be as rare as previously thought, and if so, the whole process of fossilization may have to be re-thought.

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