Hello, everyone.

It is now the month of May, which according to many calendars is the fifth month of the year. Most of these same calendars measure a year in terms of twelve months. No one knows how accurate these calendars are (and even fewer care), but assuming they are correct, that means we are now 5/12ths of the way through the year 2021.

Humbling, if you think about it.

I hope you have been enjoying the new singles from my upcoming acoustic album Another Slice of Brian Thompson. I have directed two music videos for them, which you may view at my YouTube.com “channel”. The first single, “A Reporting Job”, which many are saying is an anthem for out-of-work journalists, is also available on several music streaming services.

The full album will be released soon. In the meantime, I am very excited about some major developments in my primary investigation (that being my investigation into why McDonald’s stopped serving pizza). I cannot share many details now for fear of “spoileys”, but I trust your continued listenership of my program throughout the coming month will prove quite fruitful vis-à-vis your education and/or entertainment.

I would now like to address a matter that has been “weighing” on me quite heavily for some time. As longtime listeners know, there is, in fact, a McDonald’s location in the city of Orlando, Florida, that still serves pizza. This location is not a normal McDonald’s. Rather, it is a novelty McDonald’s meant to attract the curious tourists who frequent the area’s many theme parks and brothels.

This McDonald’s not only serves pizza, but also pasta and salad from a salad bar. Actually, I do not know if the salad bar is still open post-pandemic. If so, I hope each lettuce leaf is treated with some kind of antibacterial spray before being set out. Regardless, I think I have made it clear that this McDonald’s is atypical in the extreme.

Their method of pizza preparation is similarly unusual. They bake their pizzas in a brick oven, following a recipe that no reasonable person could ever claim to be “original”. Thus, I consider this pizza to be non-canon and not worth any further investigation. However, it must be said that while visiting Orlando to tour the filming locations for one of my favorite blockbusters, “The Florida Project”, I visited this McDonald’s and tried the brick oven pizza myself. It was pretty good, though a tad pricey.

I restate all this to provide the appropriate context for the predicament in which I now find myself. As my program has grown in popularity (now being one of the top podcasts in the world), many enthusiastically correspond with me about this non-canonical pizza believing they have made a major discovery. It has become quite tiring to respond to all of these messages. Not only because I have grown weary of explaining the difference between canonical and non-canonical McDonald’s Pizza, but also because it brings me no pleasure to dash the enthusiasm of these innocent young ignorants.

So, I am asking a favor of you, the loyal subscribers of this newsletter. Please, whenever you meet a new person whether in a personal or professional setting, take the time to inform them that I already know about the McDonald’s pizza (note the lowercase “P”) in Orlando. Perhaps they will know what you are talking about, and perhaps they will not. Either way, think of this as an “ice breaker”.

With more and more people becoming fully vaccinated every day, opportunities to have this discussion will increase exponentially, hopefully resulting in a few minutes each day being “shaved” off my busy schedule.

Thank you very much for your attention to this matter and for your continued support.

Sincerely,

Brian Thompson, journalist