Its pizza is much better than its fugly logo.

I like to pay out-of-season visits to places like Lake Geneva.

For some reason, things like saltwater taffy, novelty T-shirts with something pissing on something else, and the presence of water manage to bring in tourists from around Wisconsin, and a plethora of self-important fuckheads from Illinois in summer.

But in winter, the place takes on a whole new persona — like a sleeping city of sorts. Or like Sheboygan with more stuff to do and fewer sexual assaults.

With the aforementioned FIB-influx, Chicago residents — who would probably melt if ever forced to eat a thin crust pizza — have used their loud-mouth influence to bring a bunch of stuffed pizza joints to Lake Geneva. Down panderingly-named routes like “Wrigley Street”, “Curtis Enis Run” and “Honk your Horn Because the Guy Ahead of you Didn’t Run a Red Light, and You’re in a Hurry to Watch the Cubs NOT Win the World Series Again Boulevard”, you’ll see Chicago-based chains like Geno’s East, and various other purveyors of the stuffed pizza shamelessly using the word “Chicago” in their names.

When my pal Vince invited me to his hometown of Lake Geneva to meet him for some stuffed Za at Original Chicago Pizza Co., get drunk, talk about Sons of Anarchy and make fun of Corey Hart at length, I gladly accepted.
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You think you’re beginning to figure out life, until something comes along to totally change your opinion of it. You’re certain you know what true happiness is, until you find love and become a parent. You think you’ve reached the apex of carnal satisfaction, until your lady gives you the green light to take a run at her without a dong bag. You go through life thinking you’ve regularly been eating pizza… until you eat deep dish pizza in Chicago.

At the recommendation of DoZ reader Adam, I found myself pestering my friends to bring me to a downtown Giordano’s location when I was in Chicago last weekend. Like almost everything else in Chicago, the famous pizzeria chain had a line out the ass and the occasional self-important fuckface who threatened everyone’s enjoyment of the experience. But — also like Chicago — Giordano’s Pizza also had enough great and impressive things incorporated to make it well worth the time, excess money and inevitable frustration expended in the process.
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Abu’s has been treating Milwaukee to authentic Middle Eastern cuisine for more than 30 years. Since 1977, the microscopic restaurant’s delicious food has earned it countless local dining awards, and at one point mention among the country’s best Middle Eastern restaurants. As far as I can tell, Abu’s in Milwaukee is the third most notable Abu on Earth, behind that monkey from Aladdin and that prison where Americans took those creepy and disgusting pictures with prisoners.

Last summer, Abu’s ownership changed hands, and immediately updated its menu with everybody’s favorite Mid-East delicacy — weird pizza.
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Exists.

One of the benefits of owning this Web site — apart from remaining out of shape, and having the opportunity to write things that up to 30 people will see — is having the extra incentive to try places I’d never been before. Without this domain being in my possession, I’d probably just eat at Lisa’s a shitload… or drunkenly stumble over to Zayna’s to consume a greasy cheese Za I’d immediately forget eating until I noticed my tits jiggle when I walked to my car the following morning.

Fortunately, Doctors of Za allows me (well, all of us) an outlet to document travels to pizzerias in our new metropolitan homes, honor the provincial pies of our native townships, and even make note of some tucked away gems scattered around the state.

And sometimes I get to write about fledgling, out of the way semi-chains that specialize in BBQ, but still feature pizzas both tasty and fattening enough to kill customers 10 times over via explosions of both the ass and heart. Places like the department store-adjacent Charcoal Grill & Rotisserie in Grafton, WI — one of nine Badger State locations to offer reluctant patrons “your official backyard barbecue” in a log cabin meets sports bar meets Bennington’s abortion gone awry-type setting.
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Love. For many of us, the prospect of love is the reason we wake up in the morning. It’s something we strive for all our lives, and an ideal worth repeatedly running our fragile hearts through the gauntlet of pain and disappointment time and time again in hopes of finding. It’s why we bother trimming our pubes.

But once we’ve been fortunate enough to experience the special sentiments of both feeling love for, and being loved by another, how should it be shown? In all, there’s no single answer to that question. Be it: The occasional sweet note a passionate, work-bound young Turk leaves by the coffee pot as his lover sleeps; the way in which you each align your breaths to make the brisk autumn air billow before you while strolling on a romantic lakeside path; knowing full-well you’d volunteer your life to save hers without a second thought on the matter; simply telling the other “I love you” even half the time the thought comes to mind.

Contingent on the life to which you’ve willingly attached yours, there are infinite methods to display one’s affection for another. However, an easily-sold and wildly uncreative contemporary American society has essentially ritualized the practice of showing love. “Thoughtful” displays of candy, flowers, jewelry, upscale dining and pre-written cards have streamlined this once beautiful and vital process, transforming modern “love” into a largely calloused and deeply impersonal industry.

Yet there is one present practice that conveys all the emotion of a Keats sonnet, all the glimmer of a rare opal, all the scarcity of a prized truffle, and the speciality of spice tirelessly transported direct from The Orient. The motherfucking heart-shaped pizza.
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Sometimes when I’m sitting around, once again bored in the lonely existence that my life’s decisions have brought about, I simply type the word “pizza” into a YouTube search and see what comes up. Now and again — amid the Coldplay fan covers, “epic fails” and clips of that “Snooki” girl getting laid out by some assclown that comprise about 94 percent of YouTube videos — I’ll stumble on to something kind of pizza-related that I feel is worth writing about. It’s one of my more attractive characteristics, I assure you.

In the past, I’ve deconstructed a Jonas Brothers video, and posted a list of decent pizza clips during times when the site’s activity was down … or when I didn’t foresee eating at a new pizza place in the near future. Today is no different. I happened upon this Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles tribute clip that uses the song “Pizza Power” as background music.
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I wonder if they're Italian.

As Ronnie, a DoZ reader named Brad and I came to know, the tucked away throwback that is MaMa DeMarinis’ is the kind of place you go when you initially  attempted to go to a different pizza place because it had a funny TV ad a few years back, you witness a drug deal outside of that (now closed) restaurant, and you drive around aimlessly until someone eventually remember it exists. That’s a story for another day… but that’s how we finally happened upon the elder most of the Bay View restaurants bearing the DeMarinis’ name last week.

Nearly dying on 27th Street after witnessing a felony aside, I’m glad for the night’s events, if only because they led us to one of the better and more unique pizzerias the Milwaukee area has to offer. Read on as I tell you why this run down neighborhood restaurant isn’t nearly as getting-AIDS-worthy as our own Sto Cazzo insists it is.
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To be honest, I never would have tried Nick-N-Willy’s Pizza if I didn’t have a friend who worked there. Prior to his employment there, I probably drove past the mini-mall pizza partition on Appleton’s Calumet Street some 50 times, never aware or caring enough to investigate who these “Nick” -N- (a cool way of writing and pronouncing the word “and”) “Willy” characters were.

“Some assholes, probably,” I’d speculate while en route to Kohl’s or some better pizza place. 

But while back in Appleton last week, I decided to pay a visit — my second in the past eight months — to both my buddy, and to Nick-N-Willy’s Pizza.
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Now 50 percent more similar.

So seldom is the world impacted by a truly great change — things like democracy, women’s suffrage, and the Slap Chop. 

More often, a minimal and altogether futile change is brought about, and no real impact is brought to our planet nor anyone residing on it. This is evidenced by an unattractive woman getting highlights put in her hair, a guy going to the gym once a month, and — most recently — Domino’s Pizza COMPLETELY RE-INVENTING ITSELF! 

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I could say Polito’s Pizza brings back memories of my college days, but I’d be lying. In fact, the UW-Oshkosh campus-adjacent pizzeria doesn’t bring back any recollections of my brash collegiate youth — the rampant public urination, the form tackling of classmates in church yards, first love, the shoddy promise of a slightly less dim future through sub-standard academia, headbutting a TouchTunes jukebox at Distillery Pub — because Polito’s didn’t open until nearly six months after I graduated.

Rather, the year-old by-the-slice hot spot brings back memories of what was probably the worst period of my life. I was working second shift (including weekends) in the one city I swore to myself I wouldn’t stay following graduation. My commute had me driving over an hour daily, and past my college dorm room and three apartments I inhabited while pursuing my Bachelor’s Degree — dreaming of more. I gained weight; I looked in the mirror every day a was embarrassed of the person I saw, which – in turn – found me inflicting irreparable damage to my (former) relationship, my friendships and my career path because I couldn’t even keep myself happy.

Still, the recent Stevens Point transplant that was Polito’s Pizza in Oshkosh was good enough to at least dull the pains of looking out at South Scott Hall through their window and thinking to myself “How did I get here?” on my lunch break. It was a palatable piece of an otherwise unsavoury experience… like Heather Graham getting naked in a movie in which she must also act.
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