You won't hear me say a bad word about salads.

But after a long week fighting anemic greens that play dead at the sight of your fork, resisting capture until you enlist the fingertips of your free hand, a lettuce with some backbone is a welcome sight.

TGIF, party people, it's pizza-movie night up in here.

I'm sorry. Moving on.

Because we get a little help from a certain late actor with cerulean eyes who, believe it or not, lends his name to a mighty fine frozen pizza, we channel our efforts into the accompanying salad.

Willful romaine creates the salad's base while a panoply of toppings raise it to a level well worthy of sharing a plate with a food as perfect as pizza.

Choose an avocado that's ripe enough and it will, after a brisk flip of the tongs, canoodle with the feta, creating their own creamy dressing to round out the curves of the more angular vinaigrette.

Talk about character development.

Pizza-Movie Night Salad

Serves 4

1-1/2 heads of romaine lettuce, chopped
1/2 of a small red onion, thinly sliced into half moons
1/3 of an English cucumber, quartered lengthwise and thinly sliced crosswise
1/2 of a sweet bell pepper, 1/2-inch dice
2 small carrots, peeled and grated
a dozen pitted kalamata olives, sliced
a large handful of grape tomatoes, quartered
1 small avocado, diced
2-3 oz. feta cheese, crumbled
chef's measure of salt and freshly-ground pepper
2 parts olive oil
2 parts red wine vinegar

After rinsing and spinning your lettuce dry, add it to a big bowl.

To the lettuce, add all of the ingredients through the salt and pepper, seasoning with a heavy hand. (The feta and olives add some salt, but not as much as you might think. And you can't have too much pepper on this salad.)

Once your pizza(s) are out of the oven, dress your salad with equal parts of oil and vinegar and toss with vim (and vigor) until the feta and avocado have united to coat the lettuce. Taste a piece and adjust for seasoning and/or dressing.

Grab a beer, assume a pig-in-sh*t position in front of a movie, and thank goodness it's Friday.