On to it:

Pitcher – Crunchy taco: The single most important quality in a rec-league softball pitcher, by far, is consistency, and no Taco Bell menu item delivers consistency like the classic crunchy taco. You know exactly what you’re getting every single time. Nothing’s more irritating than a slow-pitch softball craftsman telling you about his special spin pitches. Shut up. Shut up. You’re the Biscuit Breakfast Taco of rec softball players; your shtick sounded interesting for like 30 seconds until everyone figured out it wasn’t an upgrade over a plain old-fashioned crunchy taco. Put the ball over the freakin’ plate.

Catcher – Power Menu Veggie Bowl: It depends on the level, I guess, but a rec-league softball catcher is pretty useless. You’re not calling pitches, you’re not throwing out base-stealers, you’re probably not getting all that many plays at the plate, and in many cases, your job could be better performed by a particularly durable lawnchair. Nothing on the Taco Bell menu seems more useless than the Power Menu Veggie Bowl. Like “catcher,” it sounds strong and good. Like the rec-league softball catcher position, it probably only offers upside to the deeply hungover.

First base – Mexican Pizza: At the Major League level, first base tends to be where teams bury bad defenders. But the bar for defense is so much lower at the rec-league softball level that you really can’t stick your worst glove at first base, since the first baseman’s going to need good hands or you’re never going to get any outs. The Mexican Pizza is strong and generally great but lacks range. You can’t take a Mexican Pizza anywhere, really, as it’s tortilla discs are limp and useless by the time you get it home, and you wouldn’t even think about eating one in the car. But you want its bat in the lineup, for sure, and it’s skillful enough to .

Second base – Crunchwrap Supreme: The keystone in softball is a great position for someone who seems rangy but actually isn’t. The Crunchwrap Supreme was marketed for its portability when it first came out, but it’s quietly ungainly.

Third base – Burrito Supreme: Quietly a very important defensive position in slow-pitch softball, where hitters tend to pull the ball hard or top over slow pitches and squib weird rollers down the third-base line. With its combination of beef and beans, Burrito Supreme covers everything without carrying the excess bulk of Taco Bell rice, endemic to burritos. My one concern is that Burrito Supremes are not quite spicy enough for the “hot corner,” but one packet of Fire Sauce should clear that up. 

Shortstop – Cheesy Gordita Crunch: Shortstop plays home to practically every rec-softball team’s best player by reputation, if not by reality. Assuming that having good hands is akin to having multiple taco shells glued together by melted cheese, having good range is a lot like being covered with Spicy Ranch Sauce, and having a strong arm is the same as being filled with beef — all fair assumptions, I believe — then there’s no more obvious call than this one. There’s also an irrepressible showman ship to the Cheesy G that makes it a perfect fit for the position.

Outfield rover – Beefy Nacho Loaded Griller: If you’re playing with an outfield rover, you probably want it to be one of your best and most versatile players, if not your most heralded one. The Beefy Nacho Loaded Griller ranks with the best that Taco Bell has to offer, but never really gets credit for its excellence. I think Major League teams should use rovers, and just stand their best defender wherever the batter is most likely to hit the ball. My top dude is quietly the Beefy Nacho Loaded Griller, preferably with extra beef and additional Creamy Jalapeno sauce.

Left field – Doritos Locos Taco: A lot of New York City rec-league softball fields are squeezed into spaces so small that your left fielder will wind up standing more or less face-to-face with the right fielder from an adjacent game. For entertainment value, then, the left fielder should be the saltiest person on the team.

Center field – Beefy 5 Layer Burrito with added Crunchy Red Strips: I bet you’re sleeping on the Beefy 5 Layer Burrito, because I know I am. It’s basically a Quesarito but with refried beans instead of rice, meaning it is a handful of Crunchy Red Strips shy of having everything I want in a Taco Bell thing and nothing I don’t. Next time I go to Taco Bell, I’m getting a Beefy 5 Layer Burrito with added Crunchy Red Strips, and then I’ll come back here to tell you why it rules. Why is it playing center? Because it’s probably incredible, and you want an incredible center fielder out there. I don’t know. I didn’t sleep a lot last night and I’m actually nodding off as I type this.

Right field – Baja Blast Freeze: I could really use some caffeine and some brainfreeze to jolt myself awake, then maybe I could explain to you why Baja Blast Freeze plays right field for my Taco Bell rec softball team. It makes sense in my head, I promise.

Heck yeah, I had a Triplelupa yesterday.

Though in this post I will detail some of the ways in which the Triplelupa is wholly unlike anything I’ve ever encountered on the Taco Bell menu, it is, at its heart — and like all the best Taco Bell things — a newly configured collection of straightforward Taco Bell ingredients: Seasoned beef, nacho cheese, lettuce, tomato, chalupa dough. As such, TedQuarters.net is prepared to call the Triplelupa: F@#$ing fabulous. 

Here’s what it looked like in the wild. I got mine with no tomatoes:

Look at all those lupas!

If somehow something distracted you from the Triplelupa’s launch, and if you haven’t found a lot of time in recent weeks to think critically about the new options at your local Taco Bell, understand that the Triplelupa is built of three smaller sub-lupas, and Taco Bell intends for you to tear the individual lupas off the larger Triplelupa and eat them separately.

As far as I know, Taco Bell has never offered anything like that before. It feels like a page out of the Pizza Hut playbook, but thankfully, it’s a million times better than anything that has ever been served at Pizza Hut (except possibly the breadsticks, which are decent). And it begs the question: What the heck happened to the Doublelupa?

Once Taco Bell developed multi-lupa technology, wouldn’t it make sense — and be very much in keeping with how Taco Bell does things — to start by rolling out the Doublelupa with all the requisite pomp and circumstance, then, roughly six months to a year after it quietly left menus, unveiling the Triplelupa and blowing minds?

Call it a hunch, but I believe that the imprecise nature of Taco Bell ingredient distribution made the Doublelupa impossible. On the Triplelupa, the lupa on one side has nacho cheese, the lupa on the opposite side has chipotle sauce, and the middle lupa has both nacho cheese and chipotle sauce. It is basically a Venn diagram in chalupa form. One circle is the part of the chalupa that has nacho cheese, the other circle represents chipotle sauce, and the middle part is the center lupa.

This, to me, implies a couple of things: 1) It proved impossible to sauce two adjacent lupas without overlap, meaning the Doublelupa remains ony theoretical for now. 2) Taco Bell now asks for intentionally uneven sauce distribution from the heroes constructing our tacos, a paradigm shift. It’s hardly unheard of to get a Taco Bell thing with sour cream glopped on to only one half, but previously this was assumed to be the output of an inept hand with the sour cream gun.

Now that we know Taco Bell artisans have the capacity to sauce only half a taco, what wonders might come to the menu? The Quintuplelupa seems like a no brainer, but what about, like, a Heptadita, or a Partly Cheesy Fiesta Potatoes?

In an era in which we are tortured by uncertainty, in this one venue, the uncertainty is welcome. With one new thing, Taco Bell quietly changed everything. And without knowing what Taco Bell has in store for us, we can only strap in, hold on, and delight in the infinite possibilities for what could come next. It will probably have beef and cheese, and most likely some lettuce.

Yesterday, the Internet heralded the coming of the Cool Ranch Doritos Locos Taco as if it’s a newly verified thing even though this site and many others have been all over that news for nearly half a year. Longtime friend of the program Gina Pace at the New York Daily News took time off from her diligent work on the Tom Brady moat beat to report and clarify the Taco Bell news, citing the research of one well-coiffed “sports writer and Taco Bell aficionado.”

I hope to have a more thorough review of Taco Bell’s new line of Grillers upon my return from vacation later this month. But last night I had the opportunity to enjoy a Beefy Nacho Griller at the World’s Weirdest Taco Bell — in the back of Liberty Cafe on 3rd Ave. in Manhattan — and, in lieu of a qualified defense of Rex Ryan’s decision to flee prying questions about Tim Tebow’s future for Bahamian beaches, I figured I’d provide a quick write-up now.

The Beefy Nacho Griller contains nothing new or unfamiliar to longtime fans of Taco Bell. It’s a burrito shell, wrapped and grilled around seasoned beef, nacho cheese and — this is important — crunchy f-ing red strips.

Reconfiguring longstanding Taco Bell ingredients into new Taco Bell menu items is right in Taco Bell’s wheelhouse, and Taco Bell knocks this one out of the park. It’s not large — the Griller series is marketed to snackers, and the Beefy Nacho Griller contains roughly the meatlode of a MexiMelt or Crunchy Taco.

But it’s delicious. The seasoned beef and nacho cheese combine to create a comforting, salty, peppery Taco Bell flavor. It’s not unlike the MexiMelt, actually, only the distinction in cheese styles renders the Beefy Nacho Griller more creamy than melty, and it comes without the frustrating need to specify no tomatoes.

Also, the tightly wrapped and grilled tortilla aptly contains the Taco Bell on par with the most portable prior products, producing a great treat for the drive-thru set or, in urban settings like this one, those who prefer to eat their Taco Bell while walking. And those red strips, by far the most underrated Taco Bell ingredient, continue to defy the ubiquitous orange Taco Bell grease, maintaining their crunchiness and creating a pleasant diversity of textures.

My one small gripe with the Beefy Nacho Griller is its somewhat high ratio of tortilla to filling, which seems unavoidable fallout from repurposing the burrito shell for a snack-sized product.

The Beefy Nacho Griller hardly launched to the type of hype that came with the Doritos Locos Tacos or the Cantina Bell menu, but Taco Bell traditionalists will find it far better than all those things.

I’ve got a podcast to record in a minute and most of this week’s Taco Bell news involves murder and death, so I’m avoiding it. Here are some less-terrifying Taco Bell items of note:

Two from Nation’s Restaurant News: In an unveiling about as predictable as Justin Verlander’s 2011 Cy Young Award, multiple Taco Bell offerings were named to the Nation’s Restaurant News’ list of “top menu rollouts” for 2012. More than 200 million Doritos Locos Tacos have been served to date, and Cool Ranch and Flamas versions are on their way once Taco Bell gets Frito Lay to make enough taco shells to catch up with demand.

Also from NRN: Taco Bell’s First Meal commercial is the site’s top played video. Of course it is. This is restaurant news, people. Taco Bell is an unstoppable force.

Plot to steal tacos thwarted by tempting ATM: At least that’s how I assume it went down. Thieves in Dededo, Guam broke into a Taco Bell at 5 a.m. (Chamorro Standard Time)  and stole an ATM, probably once they realized the blaring alarm would distract them from the late-night taco artistry they hoped to endeavor. The big news here is that Guam has a Taco Bell, and apparently Taco Bells in Guam have ATMs in them. Or at least, they used to.

Also, did you know that Guam is in the midst of a movement to change its name to “Guahan,” its name in the native Chamorro language? It is. That’s one thing I didn’t know about Guam. Also: Most other things. I bet it’s beautiful. I can’t figure out from this site’s metrics if anyone in Guam ever visits TedQuarters, so if anyone from Guam is out there, do say hello. The Internet’s crazy like that. Yesterday I got a visit from Laos though. Hello, Laos! I will see you soon!

And a very important Taco Bell Tuesday indeed. First and foremost:

Free Doritos Locos Tacos on the East Coast: Perhaps the least-heralded and certainly the least-important impact of Superstorm Sandy was the way it thwarted so many plans to eat the free tacos Angel Pagan got for all of us by stealing a base in the World Series. Taco Bell, bastion of benevolence, will make that right today by offering free Doritos Locos Tacos at participating locations in areas affected by the storm. The full list is included in the link. All three of my hometown Taco Bells on Long Island will provide free tacos from 2-6 p.m. this afternoon. My dad’s day just got a bit brighter.

Heretofore unknown Taco Bell product detailed: Because Taco Bell consumers in India are apparently not familiar with the peculiarities of Mexican-inspired American fast food, Taco Bells in India serve something called a “kotito.” Per Niren Chaudhary of Yum Brands:

[I]t is a fusion product. It has a combination of the Indian bread on the outside called koti [ph] and on the inside, it has the good old international burrito fillings.

So koti and burrito is kotito, a very outstanding product and one for which I would highly recommend that you make a trip to Bangalore. And if you take kotito on the way to Bangalore, I think the flight won’t seem that long.

That sounds outstanding. Someone more familiar with Indian food should chime in here, but I’m assuming “koti” is another translation for kati, which you can find in New York at, among other places, the Biryani Cart in Midtown right near my office. It’s good: Thicker than a burrito but thinner than a pita, chewy and moist. Seems like a fine delivery method for burrito stuff.

Incidentally, this site’s traffic metrics show that it gets a few hits a day from India. So if anyone reading this now is in India or going to India soon, please visit your local Taco Bell to photograph and eat a kotito. It turns out the Google Image returns for “kotito” are mostly scantily clad photos of a Japanese woman. This may surprise you, but the Internet already has lots and lots of scantily clad photos of women. But it has none that I can find of Mexican-inspired Indian fast food. With your help, I’d like to change that.

Guy who peed on Nachos claims that’s not what happened: For whatever reason, a Fort Wayne, Ind. reporter caught up with Cameron Jankowski, the former Taco Bell employee fired for photographing himself urinating on Nachos BellGrande. Jankowski claims that what we all thought was urine was actually a watered-down solution of Mountain Dew and water squirted from a bottle, which seems like a lot of effort to defile some nachos when you could just, you know, pee on them or something. But Jankowski claims he passed a lie-detector test, which is amazing for so many reasons. I like to imagine the police pulling a good-cop bad-cop routine, with the bad cop all up in this kid’s face like, “You peed on those nachos, you disgusting bastard! ADMIT IT!”

The article also says that, “Jankowski is currently a student at IPFW and is ironically studying business management.” To his credit, business management is the perfect thing to study ironically, and no one will ever accuse Cameron Jankowski of half-assing his jokes.

So what’s up with the Cool Ranch Doritos Locos Taco?: It turns out that factories producing Doritos taco shells couldn’t catch up with demand, so plans to unveil Cool Ranch Doritos Locos Tacos were held up while Taco Bell commissioned PepsiCo to “build two new lines to increase its capacity for taco shell production.” So there’s that.

The article also notes that there are 123 different flavors of Doritos worldwide, which is stunning. The web site Taquitos.net lists nearly 100 of them, including Peking Duck Doritos Gold, Gourmet Sausage Doritos, Ketchup Doritos, Pepper Bacon Doritos, and Wasabi Doritos.

We act like the Winter Meetings are the only thing happening when meanwhile there are Taco Bell things happening.

New York City fast-food workers move to unionize: I’ll continue avoiding politics as best as I can, but I thought you should be aware of why some workers at local fast food restaurants — including Taco Bells — have been walking off the job. This site supports Taco Bell employees’ efforts to earn a living wage through whatever measures necessary, and would be willing to pay a bit more for tacos to know that the people making them were happier and healthier.

Journalist gets to drive $2.5 million car, takes it to Taco Bell drive-thru: Why wouldn’t he? If a blind man behind the wheel for the first time in years thanks to Google’s self-driving car would immediately go to Taco Bell, I don’t see why anyone driving a $2.5 million Bugati wouldn’t. It’s just the logical first place to go when you’re in any car.

Fast food dessert category heating up: Joe Satran of the Huffington Post investigates why and how fast food restaurants are adding desserts to their menus, highlighted by Taco Bell’s newly improved dessert selection. He quotes a Taco Bell senior director who describes market research suggesting customers are interested in “clockless eating.”

Clockless eating. I hope that phrase catches on. Stop pigeonholing me into your oppressive three-meal regime, society. I demand clockless eating!

The article suggests that Taco Bell will soon consider adding a larger dessert option, which brings me to an important point: Bring back the Choco Taco. Seriously, with the success of the cross-promotional Doritos Locos Taco, why not work something out with Klondike to ensure the sale of Choco Tacos in all Taco Bell stores? It’s a taco, but it’s choco — the perfect Taco Bell dessert. It’s f—ing Mexican, can’t you see?

Also of note: A Chipotle spokesman quoted in the article says Chipotle has no designs on dessert, which is odd to me because Chipotle makes me crave dessert 100-percent of the time I eat it. I think it’s partly due to the salt content, and mostly for Pavlovian reasons. When I was at NYU, one semester I had two evening classes with a 40-minute break in between. It was exactly the right amount of time to get myself to the Chipotle on 8th St., enjoy a burrito, then get a cookie across the street at Au Bon Pain. So I would heartily recommend Chipotle start carrying cookies.

Mountain Goats endorse Taco Bell: Unfortunately it’s not actual mountain goats, as that would be hilarious. It’s John Darnielle, lead singer and songwriter for the band The Mountain Goats, which I have heard of but never really pursued. Are they good? I’m open to the possibility, because Darnielle could be totally snarky and condescending about his affinity for Taco Bell — and is even baited to do so by the interviewer — but resists, calling Taco Bell “a lifesaver” for touring vegetarian musicians.