Ultimate Pizza Party

There's a certain genius of the spirit - in my lexicon, I call it "playfulness" - that turns things upside down, redefines the social order, transforms our fundamental understandings of the game.

Philip Workman performed one such act. It was his last. He was in death row at the time, convicted of killing a policeman. Before his execution, he was, as custom has it, asked what he wanted for his final meal. He said that he wanted a vegetarian pizza. And that he wanted that pizza delivered to any homeless person near the prison.

I hesitate to call it a "saintly act," because a man like Workman, a murderer, just isn't a likely candidate for canonization. It was the act of a condemned man, denying himself the one small solace of a last meal, so he could find perhaps greater comfort in one, final act of anonymous irreverence. A silly thing for him to do. So silly that it challenged the very nature of the institution, because prisons, you see, don't give to charity. And so, of course, his request was denied.

Pizza. Vegetarian pizza. Not even meat pizza. Nothing that required the death of anything. Something almost kosher, almost halal, if you know what I mean, something almost anybody would celebrate.

And the story goes on. Somehow, some people heard about Workman's final request. And decided to fulfill it themselves. And so 165 vegetarian pizzas were delivered to a rescue mission, and 17 vegetarian pizzas made their way to a teen center, and no one, except the donors, knew why. And a miracle was wrought that day. And it was a pizza party.




funspotting by Neatorama

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith