Pizza. It's so commonplace now that you can't envision pizza as not being a flat-ass bread with sauce and cheese and various toppings. Except for you Chicago deep dish folks, wherein it is more of a sort of...casserole than a grab-a-slice-and-go affair.

I am eating pizza right now from Hometown Pizza in Portland. Good stuff. But pizza right now is not how it used to be. The modern incarnation of what we call pizza today is nothing like in the past. Let's deep dive and see where pizza started and how we've come to know our favorite dish...

June is presumably the beginning of the unbearable season of hellish warmth bordering on killing heat...summer. I don't end up having many hobbies during this season, which can make me a rather dull person at times. Ask me to go to the river, go on, do it. Chances are, if it's anywhere about 85 degrees outside, I won't do it and will prefer the comfort of my hardworking AC unit. That isn't to say I hate being outside. I really love adventuring outdoors, but that blasted heat causes me to wilt, not unlike a delicate flower...

If you're reading this and you're a musician, you're probably well aware that this is indeed the most difficult thing to hack when it comes to being a performing artist. Oftentimes, money is the barrier to entry with things like touring and recording, and time is the barrier to being good (gotta practice so you don't suck).

But how do you get warm bodies in the venue to watch you do your performance therapy?

Gurus, influencers, consultants, music veterans, and con artists will all sell you some horseshit about ways to increase your draw...

Alright, bouncers...everyone take your seats—class is back in session. This time, I'll be discussing Stoicism. The Stoics were a group of philosophers in ancient Greece and Rome who emphasized the importance of virtue, namely the four cardinal virtues of wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. They taught that one should live life in alignment with nature and recognize the difference between the things that can and cannot be controlled—kind of like an early version of the serenity prayer taught in twelve-step programs: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” So, what can bouncers learn from the Stoics? Let’s take a look at what three of them had to say...