(SpoCOOL) A Spokane Blog

The 90s died on April 5th, 1994, when Kurt Cobain took the backdoor out. Any self-respecting teenager would follow grunge and its "whatever" attitude which died on the same day.

During Cobain's later days, grunge was transforming into something else, something awful. No longer just "whatever," post-grunge was filled with self-pity, over the top angst, and bad poetry. This era was ushered in by My So-Called Life, which I maintain is still the template for today's hipster.

And really, if any television show has ever lent itself to a drinking game, My So-Called Life is it!

• Drink every time Angela utters some variation of "You just don't understand me!" Take another drink if it's to her parents.
• Drink every time Rayanne drinks. Take another if it's a chaser to pills. Empty the bottle if she ODs.
• Drink every time somebody says "like."
• Drink every time Krakow clumsily hits on Angela just to inevitebly get his heart broken.
• Drink every time Angela treats Krakow like dirt.
• Drink every time Angela's mom does something that makes you say "What a bitch." (Will leave you plastered.)
• Drink every time Jordan leans on his locker, staring empty into space. Take another drink when this reminds you of how awful 30 Seconds to Mars is. Take yet another drink if this again reminds you of how strangely at peace you felt when Jared Leto got his ass kicked in Fight Club.
• Drink every time you're reminded mid-90s TV show synth cues leave a lot to be desired.
• Drink every time you see an actor which makes you think "Gee, I wonder what happend to him/her?"

Make tonight a My So-Called Life night!

Ferrante's is one of those places easily forgotten about with all the Flying Goats and South Perries taking over the world. This is too bad, as the spot really does hold its own, and should be considered one of the better pizza places in town, at least if you like to venture over to the "old world" varities.

With a host of radio commercials and media attention to their new deep dish pizzas, Ferrante's seems like it's ready to fight for its position. The new pies definitely are interesting and different from most anything else in town, though if they're up your alley or not might be up for questioning. If anything I'd compare them to pizza al taglio -- Italian street pizza. They're square and deep, and the "Classico" is served with a minimal dusting of cheese and a nice pesto sauce drizzled over the tomatoes. This is definitely a fresh tasting pie.

I'm not sure if we loved the crust; it's thick and light, almost porous, which I suppose is exactly what it's supposed to be. Personally I'm just not sure if it was something for us to fawn over, but you might love it. You should at least try it.

We're more about their thin crust pizzas which really are quite excellent. The crust has a nice bite to it, crisp on the outside and more soft on the inside. It's a bit different from Flying Goat and South Perry, and I suspect Ferrante's uses a different type of oven, not to mention dough-recipe.

There's just the right amount of cheese on the pie, meaning not too much. Toppings always have a nice flavor to them, be it meats or vegetables. A great pie, in other words.

There's also a fairly generous gelato bar there, and who's to argue with that?

Ferrante's is pretty awesome, a spot that should be highly prioritized in your pizza rotation. We highly recommend it.

First, go to restaurant.com and use the 70%-off code "PLATE" to get an already discounted gift certificant to a local restaurant of your liking. Tweet us where you end up going!

Then go read "Eat Lou Kohl" at Seattle Weekly. It's a pretty funny take on the current locavore/pop-up restaurant craze, and even includes a reference to former local singer, Kaylee Cole.

You see them all over the place, those square barcode looking things you're supposed to scan with your phone and magic will happen. They're called QR codes, and they're actually pretty useful when used right. Real estate agents, for example, have started putting them on "for sale" signs. Take a picture of one with your phone, and it'll send you to the listing on the web, a great way to reduce the amount of paper flyers.

The restaurant business has also taken note of the technology, but haven't quite wrapped their heads around how to use it. Too many menus now come with a QR code which, when scanned, takes you to something completely useless.

There is probably more than one way to use the codes properly, but as a baseline, this is what we expect:

Have the code send us to a web site displaying your menus. That way we can bookmark the page with our iAndroid webPhoneOS 7 phones and keep quick on-the-go access to your ever-changing menus.

It's those little things that matter; many of us like to check menues before going anywhere. Scanning a QR code with a phone is easy; typing in a 70 character long URL is not. 

It's one of those things that just kind of makes sense. (To us at least.)

Also, there's no magic to generating QR codes -- there are plenty of options on the web.