Last Friday night the three of us were having some family fun time watching “Avatar” in bed.Not the James Cameron “Avatar,” with the flying blue people, but the Nickelodeon “Avatar” with Aang, the last Air Bender. If you’ve never seen it, you are in for a treat. Aang must master the four elements (air, water, earth, and fire) before the comet returns and Firelord Ozai becomes so powerful he can never be stopped from taking over the world.

My favorite character is Toph, the Earth-bending master. She rocks. Literally. She can move rocks with her feet and throw them at people. I also like Uncle Hiro who has brought me to tears with his sage wisdom. Granted I get teary-eyed watching Folger’s commercials, but Uncle Hiro has been to the edge and looked over the other side.

We have Book One and Book Two on DVD so we were settling in for some serious vegging out. But, right before I got so far in that there was no coming out, I realized a big problem: no food.

Snuggled down in the blankets, I so wished there was a pizza place that delivered, or that I was an Air Bender and could fly there and back in mere minutes. One of us was going to have to go out. We drew straws. I lost. (Dang it!)

I know going out to pick up a pizza isn’t moving mountains, but still.

I took orders and headed in the direction of Cootie Brown’s. Now I should mention that Cootie’s has lots of other food besides pizza.

Their menu is huge and pretty varied. I’m not even sure how to describe it. Maybe Carribean-Mexican-American. With Key Lime pie.

Personally, I’m all for the specialty pizzas, but it’s too hard to get everyone to agree. There’s always some ingredient that someone doesn’t like. From there begins the endless compromises and negotiations until you’ve designed your own pizza anyway. The whole experience is like 16th century courtier diplomacy.

To save time we built our own. We were all in agreement about the veggies, (red onion, mushrooms and spinach) but a debate was under way about the Italian Sausage and roasted garlic.

Normally I can skip the meat on a pizza, especially sausage. When I was in middle school our class went on a tour of a sausage maker. I’ll leave the rest to your imagination, but needless to say it turned me off of sausage and processed meat products for a long time.

But on this pizza I agreed to the Italian sausage. That’s how good it is. The roasted garlic was a toss up.

It’s one of those things, like salsa lessons or changing your own oil, that sound like a good idea at the time but immediately begin to interfere with your life. For those of you who are fans of roasted garlic, I think you catch my drift.

The inside of Cootie Brown’s is bright and colorful and has a picture of Cootie himself painted on the wall. They have one of those merry-go-round glass dessert displays with cakes that are 6 inches high and covered in decadence.

In the summer it’s nice to sit on the patio. Although they keep the patio heated in the winter also.

I started eating the pizza in the car on the way home. It was hot and cheesy with a thin, crispy crust. Perfect combination of sauce-to-toppings ratio.

I arrived back home to a hero’s welcome. Saving our little Friday night world.

Cootie Brown’s is located on 2715 N. Roan St. For more information, call 423-283-4723 or visit their Web site at www.cootiebrowns.com.

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