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Question of the Week: Is the Pizza Boomerang a Real Thing?

Caution: The video above is highly NSFW for reasons including but not limited to: a penis being cut off by a pizza boomerang in graphic detail. Watch at your own risk.

Pizza Boomerang is the latest viral video making the rounds on YouTube and Twitter. (And, if your mom happens to have seen it, then probably also on Facebook.) I can come up with no coherent sentences to describe the 150-second video that make any sense, so we'll start with some word association: He-Man, aviator sunglasses, suicidal old men in Christmas sweaters, snowglobes that predict the future, crying Asian men, park flashers, microwaves embedded in stalagmites, whole grilled octopus, severed penises and -- of course -- pizza shaped like a boomerang.

It's as if Stefon from Saturday Night Live was tasked with making a pizza commercial: "New York's hottest club is Push. This club has everything: ghosts, banjos, Carl Palideno, a stuck up kitten who won't sign autographs, furkles." Yes, furkels are fat Urkels.

In the midst of this whirlwind of crazy, it's best not to question the how or why of it all. The only important question here is this: Is Pizza Boomerang a real thing?

The short answer is no. Pizza Boomerang is only a real thing in the eyes of the man whose fake, rubber penis was severed by the flying pie. You can't buy a Pizza Boomerang anywhere, although I'm sure with enough pizza dough you can make one -- or several -- at home.

The Pizza Boomerang is nothing more than a viral video created by Sofa Experience Communications, an ad agency based in Barcelona, Spain (hence the Spanish in the video). At first, I thought the ad agency itself was a joke too, along the lines of the old chestnut in which you have some poor schmuck say the words "I'm Sofa King We Todd Did" aloud over and over until they realize what they're actually saying.

But Sofa Experience Communications is real. The firm makes all sorts of delightfully demented ads and videos, many more of which you can see at its website. Pizza Boomerang seems to have been deliberately crafted to be as bizarre as possible specifically for the purposes of going viral and bringing attention back to Sofa itself. It's an increasingly common tactic these days, which -- as you can see -- can work exceptionally well when done correctly.

And while the Pizza Boomerang itself is fake, weirder pizzas actually do exist in real life. Take for instance the $50 Domino's pie that includes Mangalitsa pork, snow crab and truffles among its toppings. Truth is always stranger than fiction.



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Katharine Shilcutt