Apizzalypse

I stopped in after work the other day at Arinell Pizza, on Shattuck Avenue, in Berkeley. As I walked into the place, Black Sabbath's War Pigs was just starting to play over the restaurant's speakers. The song's long, slow guitar intro filled the whole room, echoing off of the high ceiling and exposed-brick walls. Warm pizza-oven air wrapped me tight with a yeasty hug just at the point where a plaintive air raid siren comes into the song. Imagine the Apocalypse with garlic and cheese instead of fire and brimstone. That's almost what it felt like. Dark but benign. It was pleasant, like a thirteen-year-old's birthday party.

Apizzalypse.

The tall, young hipster standing behind the counter, taking orders, looked like a slightly older version of Jimbo Jones, one of the bullies from The Simpsons. He wore black pants, a black t-shirt, and a black knit cap. Bushy mutton-chop sideburns crept like unruly ivy down the sides of his face, and his eyelids rested at about three-quarter staff. My guess is that he was probably in a stupor induced by not less than a toke on a joint, but not more than a long, deep bonghit. He was resting comfortably at "cool buzz" on the Stonerometer. I ordered two cheese slices from him and had the sudden impulse to ask him about the song playing over the speakers. "Hey, is this the radio, or are you guys playing this?"

"Man, we're rocking," he said. The corners of his mouth turned upwards just slightly.

"Oh cool," I said. "This song rocks."

"Right on," he said, "It's a song for our troubled times." He said this with such conviction, as though he were letting me in on some deeply thought-out secret.

"Hmmmm," I said, nodding my head in agreement. What was I going to do, tell the kid to lighten up a little?

I paid for the slices and left him my change as a tip. I grabbed the slices as he slid them onto the counter, and took them to the front of the restaurant where I started to eat them at a small standing-room shelf. I bobbed my head with the music, following along with its stops and starts and chord changes.

I like War Pigs. It's a good song, but the biggest problem I have with it is in its first two lines:

Generals gather in their masses
Just like witches at black masses.

Here's the thing. The word "masses" is used twice in consecutive lines. Sure, the definitions may be slightly different, but still, the same word is repeated as if it were a clever rhyme. And it's not. It's the same word. This has bothered me since my first listen. Over time, I've just come to accept it. I've decided to overlook this factoid, and appreciate the song for the pure, balls-to-the-wall, raucous, apocalyptic screed that it is. I can do no more than that.

Actually at that moment, all I could think was:

Pizzas gather in their ovens
Just like witches in their covens

I gave myself a little chuckle, and then another thought occurred to me. I had heard this song in this pizza place over twenty years ago. I stopped chewing my pizza and looked across the street, at the store offering passport photos. It had been a student travel agency at one time, and a camera store before that. Down the street, on the corner, Birdie's Toys had done what had seemed like a bustling business, until it just disappeared one day, about eighteen years ago. A Subway Sandwiches had taken its place. Even Arinell Pizza had recently remodeled and changed places. It used to be two doors down. Now it was in a space that had once been occupied by a store that sold Tibetan prayer flags, incense, Indian print curtains and hookahs. I had never been in that store, but I had checked its window display many times while devouring slice after slice of pizza. It had cool hookahs. I let out another audible chuckle as I actively took note of the changes that I had only glossed over before.