the yoga of pizza

this is charlie :: photo by the ever-talented paige green

charles hallowell is my soul-brother.

over the past eleven or so years, i have alternately wanted to strangle, kiss, punch, and lavish him with love. to know charlie is to redefine what it means to be in a love-hate relationship with someone. charlie is foul-mouthed, brilliant, sensitive, outspoken, offensive, infantile, generous, petty, arrogant, humble, mean and really effing stupid all at the same. he also has a bigger heart than practically anyone i've ever met.

what i love about him more than anything else is this: he can find the beauty in absolutely anything. above all, charlie is a lover. i find him to be exquisitely focused on beauty, in a way that few others are.

this is a gutsy, fantastic review that came out today about his new place, and i love it. i also love that he was shocked that she dared to print what he said! are you kidding me, dude?

here's my favorite part:

"It's a fucking pizza — a circle of dough with shit on top of it. But there's something beautiful about doing something over and over again," he says of the process of slinging pies day in and day out...Hallowell says it's about building a special relationship with the oven and the fire.

"If you've had a fight with your girlfriend, or you haven't been laid in awhile, or your mom's dying from cancer and you try to throw in a log — the log will roll off the fire, maybe it won't catch, or it lands on a pizza," he says. "When you're not there and you're not present, the pizza burns."

Hallowell has dedicated his life to pizza — and sometimes that freaks him out. Making pizzas may feel mundane at times, but he believes that the three most important things in life — fucking, eating, and sleeping — can all have a tendency to feel that way. So he kneads in a little extra love and hopes it comes through.

"I feed people. I fuel people. I cook with love so people can keep living. They can go home after dinner and make love to their wife and look after their children. They can wake up a happy human being."