Michael Tolliver Lives, and I’m sure he’d love Vogglio d’Pizza

About that pizza

Last things first: After prodding from various ‘net sources, including what I’ve imagined to be the young crowd at beyond car forums (here’s their dining thread) and then some ecstatic reviews on chowhound as well, I succumbed and tried a local pizza place called Vogglio d’Pizza, which means something like “you like-a da pizza.” This place is mere steps from home, just a half block, maybe less, from Oishii Village that I’ve been pimping on here. It looks like shit. Hand-painted sign (for now?) on the awning and the interior is no better, some sad looking dining chairs for waiting for your order.

Looks can be deceiving. So can my prejudicial notion that 20-something, piss-and-vinegar stuffed male car enthusiasts probably know nothing about good food. I picked up a “Mexicana” yesterday, chatted up the very pleasant owner, an immigrant from Colombia named Luis, and carried it the block+ home. The pizza was tremendous- it was a felicitous combination of the best order of nachos I’ve ever had (this was in Milwaukee at an East Side Mexican place whose name escapes me), tons of cheese, sliced jalapenos, shredded beef, crumbled corn chips, lettuce and tomato, refried beans artfully drizzled on top (you have to see it to understand what I mean) and sliced of fresh, ripe avocado. AND it was on an OUTSTANDING, crisp-chewy pizza crust like none I’ve had in Calgary. The whole experience was thrilling. And Luis, who trained in Naples, where my dad’s parents came from, is nothing is not creative. He has pizzas with fruit, atypical pizza veg like cauliflower, and, be still my heart, TUNA (not visible in the portion of the menu scanned below), one of my favourite pizza toppings but one very hard to find in NA. Not any more, of course. For me, I mean.

Vogglio is on 14 St SW just north of Phil’s, south of 15th Ave, between Shawarma King and a new porn shop (new owners I mean; I don’t keep up with porn shops enough to know the new name).

Michael Tolliver Lives

The reference to Michael Tolliver being alive and the fact that “lives” is capitalised in the post title should tell you that Michael Tolliver Lives is in fact a boook title. Does that name, Michael Tolliver, ring a bell? It does for me, since I was and remain a freak for Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City series. One my ex-boyfriends, Timm Elmer, introduced me to them right after we met, January 1987, and I was hooked from the first few pages of book one. I was sad when the series “ended” with book six, Sure of You in 1989, in part because, naturally, it was over, and only two years after I’d discovered it. But I was also sad, like many fans, because the major loose end that doomed to linger was how long Michael Tolliver, an HIV-positive gay man and one of the books’ central characters, would survive. I assumed that Maupin had ended the series because he didn’t want to have to “kill off” Michael.

Fast forward to two days ago, and for some reason- maybe it had something to do with the conclusion of Harry Potter, I don’t know- I mentioned to Brian that Armistead Maupin should really think about writing a new book for the series (he’s written two other novels since then, one of which, Maybe the Moon, takes place obliquely in the same universe as Tales, but neither of which are in any way part of it). I said with having NO IDEA that this new book has been out since June. I went to e-reader to buy some books to load onto my Palm for my trip to Europe next month, and thought how great it would be if Tales was available in that format. It’s beyond great to be able to carry, as I do, dozens of books on a memory card. Well, no Tales, but lo and behold, there is Michael Tolliver Lives. I bought it, loaded it, and read it in two days, the way I seem to be devouring all of my fiction lately.

It’s a superb book, a really emotional read for me, and Maupin’s decision to make this a first-person account from Michael’s narrative perspective really works. It’s more… serious than Tales, I’d say, but the opportunity to meet many of those characters again, all having aged in real time and representing so many “real” experiences, was like a reunion with old friends. It’s sweet and beautiful.