I joined Andrew and Greg of the Rockies blog Purple Row on the Purple Row Radio this week to talk about baseball and Taco Bell and stuff. Hear me ramble!
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Category Archives: Taco Bell
Twitter Q&A-type thing
Believe how? Believe they’re a playoff contender or believe they’re better than a 5-13 team?
I figured the Mets for 84 wins before the season and I’m sticking with that now. If anything, the awful start should serve as a reminder to everyone about the trappings of small sample sizes. Yes, they looked terrible. But teams playing terribly always look terrible, and plenty of teams better than this one have endured 5-13 stretches.
It got really frustrating when people started pulling out the 1962 Mets talk, suggesting — seriously — that this club could challenge that one for the all-time loss record. It’s like everyone forgot the Mets have David Wright and Jose Reyes, among others. And yeah, a handful of good players does not a great team make — we learned that under Omar Minaya — but look at how awful the 1962 Mets were. Every guy in the Mets’ current rotation would have been the ace of that team’s staff. They combined for an Omir Santosian 82 OPS+.
The Mets are not going to win every game for the rest of the season. There will be more bumps along the way. But they don’t have a bad club and they never did. It’s easy to be blinded by all the negativity coming from large portions of the media and fanbase, but the Mets have a deep and pretty good lineup that should score a lot of runs. I’m not optimistic about Johan Santana’s return, so unless Jenrry Mejia is ready to become a good big-league starter by the end of the season the pitching should be shaky all year. But again, not nearly as awful as it looked in the first couple of weeks.
Here’s the link, since you can’t click through from that image.
What does “Designated Kisser” even mean? Actually, wow, I have so many questions.
For example: A) Is this supposed to be, I don’t know, sexy? Does anyone think this is sexy? B) Do they make underwear with Mets logos and quasi-racy nonsensical slogans for dudes? Because if not, that’s just sexism brother.
Also, I struggle to figure out which is the front and which is the back of women’s underwear. You’d think the bigger side would be the ass side but it doesn’t always work that way. I don’t really want to write about women’s underwear anymore. This is all making me very uncomfortable.
I’m going to vote for Jermaine Copeland, receiver for the L.A. Xtreme.
The week before the XFL started, I saw a headline on ESPN.com that said, “Jermaine Copeland excited for the XFL season.” So, wondering who Jermaine Copeland was and why I should care about his feelings on the XFL season, I clicked through. This is how the article started:
“Jermaine Copeland is excited for the XFL season,” said Los Angeles Xtreme reciever Jermaine Copeland.
Still funny to me. I don’t know if that makes him hardcore, and there’s no way to guarantee that talking in the third person wasn’t written in to XFL contracts, but he’s basically the only XFL player I can remember besides He Hate Me and He Hate Me seemed too obvious an answer.
That one’s easy. Taco Bell is not Latino food. Taco Bell is Taco Bell.
I love Mexican food, but I never go get Taco Bell when I’m in the mood for Mexican food, just like I never get Wendy’s because I’m in the mood for a cheeseburger. I’ve never had actual Mexican food that tastes anything like Taco Bell, and most Mexican places I know don’t even have seasoned ground beef as an option.
And I know people lash out at fast food on principle because it’s corporate and it’s bad for us and all that. But Taco Bell is delicious, convenient and cheap. I don’t owe anybody anything; the burden is on every restaurateur who’s not Glen Bell to come up with something that’s a better value if they want to tear me away from my Cheesy Gordita Crunch.
Yum foods branching out?
Yum Brands Inc. has made a preliminary offer to buy the remaining stake of Chinese restaurant chain Little Sheep Group Ltd. (0968.HK) that it does not already own as part of its ongoing international expansion.
Yum, the owner of KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell fast-food brands, already holds a 27.2% stake in Little Sheep, which it purchased in 2009.
Little Sheep operates about 480 “Mongolian Hot Pot” restaurants in China, as well as several others in Japan and a dozen in North America. The Hot Pot concept involves consumers ordering raw meat, and then cooking it themselves in a boiling pot of soup at the table, similar to a fondu process.
– Anne Gasparro, Market Watch.
There are a ton of KFCs and Pizza Huts in China, but I didn’t spot a single Taco Bell the entire month I was there (it was 2007, though, so hopefully things have changed since).
I did, however, enjoy hot pot at a place I believe may have been a Little Sheep. It was delicious. I know there are a bunch of hot pot places in Flushing and elsewhere around the boroughs and I’ve been meaning to go for a while, but if anyone has a strong recommendation I’m all ears.
Border patrol
Taking a victory lap around the tactical retreat by the lawyers who had sued it for its beef not being beefy enough, Taco Bell took out a full-page ad asking the firm to say “sorry.”
The ads ran this week in the Wall Street Journal, LA Times, and the New York Times and were done in the same style of the “thank you” ads they took out when the suit first surfaced.
Sweet. Besides the fact that it makes sense for Taco Bell to be broken up about a frivolous lawsuit besmirching its delicious name, I’m happy to know that Taco Bell is about as petty as I am when it comes to defending itself. Cheesy, melty and petty.
You can click through for the full text of the ad. Turns out Taco Bell was right from the beginning, never misled anyone about what they’re serving, and wants an apology. And you know, why not? If one of our inalienable rights in this country is to sue anybody we want whenever we damn please, another should be calling out the litigious when they are clearly wrong.
Anyway, if Taco Bell is looking for a way to draw attention away from the lawsuit and start generating positive taco press again, I have a solid suggestion: Pay me a ton of money to create new Taco Bell concepts.
Think about it: “Taco Bell hires sports and sandwich blogger of minor repute as Chief Futurist!” That’s the type of headline that sells Gorditas, amigo.
My first move? My web-based create-a-Taco-Bell-thing initiative. For those unfamiliar: Taco Bell should use a flash-driven interface to allow Internet users to suggest and name new Taco Bell products by combining the ingredients already used in Taco Bell items.
That’s — and I’m letting you in on a dirty little secret here — pretty much how Taco Bell already creates new products, so why not make it interactive? The person who comes up with the best idea gets a bunch of free Taco Bell, and Taco Bell sells that person’s creation in stores for a limited time.
And you know what else? Guess who’s going to win that contest? Me, baby! Me. Step to the Magma Gordita Crunch, the TexiMelt, the Bacon Cheeseburger Burrito, the Chalupacabra. You can’t.
Get this done Taco Bell. Then the only apology you’ll be demanding will be from me, for not offering my awesome services to you earlier. We can work together, Taco Bell.
Oh, and if by some chance I now have your attention: The Taco Bell on Route 9A in Elmsford, N.Y. sucks. They don’t even have red taco shells for their Volcano tacos and everything always takes forever. And we can work on maximizing that store’s efficiency just as soon as you start sporking over the cash.
Chalupacabra
Excellent work from reader Glenn:
Twitter Q&A-style product, part 3
Last one:
There were a few questions about the Doritos Loco Taco, which is, of course, the Taco Bell taco made with a Nacho-Cheese Doritos shell. I haven’t had one yet. I have heard rumors that they’re available at the Taco Bell on 14th and 5th here in Manhattan, but no one has confirmed this for me. Can anyone? Anyone live down there want to walk over and check it out? I don’t want to waste a subway ride if they don’t have ’em. Can you, like, call a Taco Bell and ask for the menu? Do Taco Bells even have phones?
As for the @TacoBell Twitter account’s staunch refusal to acknowledge me, I’m at a loss. I mean, I get that they’re not likely to say anything when I call out the Worst Taco Bell in the World — on Route 9A in Elmsford, N.Y. — for being the worst Taco Bell in the world. But you can’t hook a brother up with knowledge of test markets? I guess they like to keep that stuff under wraps so I don’t, I don’t know, impact their market research or something. But still!
According to the website-about-a-website WeFollow.com, I am the second most influential Taco Bell Twitterer on the Twitter, behind the @TacoBellCanada account. You’ll note that the official @TacoBell account, despite over 120K followers, does not even make the list. Now it could simply be that the team of marketing interns at Taco Bell running the account never thought to submit it to the relatively useless WeFollow.com, or — or! — it could be that by WeFollow.com’s complicated system it has determined that I am just a significantly more influential Taco Bell-themed Twitter user than Taco Bell’s corporate account.
So maybe they’re jealous, is what I’m saying.
I agree wholeheartedly. If Bloomberg doesn’t ride the new roller coasters, it says: “I am a resident of the five boroughs that is not interested in checking out all my local roller-coaster options, so I am sort of lame.” And, without delving too deeply into politics, that’s just not a message I think I’d want to send if I were ever mayor.
Coney Island is sweet. One of the many things I miss about living in Brooklyn is the ability to ride my bike down to the Coney Island boardwalk to check out its weird mix of awesome things to do and macabre urban-carnival decay, much of which, I understand, isn’t there anymore. But I suppose now there’s new stuff to do there that will itself in time become forlorn and creepy. So that’s exciting.
Over.
The Cheesy Double Decker Taco tastes pretty much exactly how you’d expect it to taste
Amazing, for what it’s worth.
But not really original, even for a Taco Bell item. It tastes exactly like the OG Double Decker Taco, except with nacho cheese in there. If you’re not familiar with the tastes of all the ingredients inside the Double Decker Taco and the Taco Bell nacho cheese, then you probably don’t care enough about Taco Bell to want to read a review of a new menu item. I guess what I’m saying is anyone who has ever eaten at Taco Bell can figure out what the Cheesy Double Decker Taco tastes like without my help.
The cheese is with the refried beans between the two decks of taco, and at the Worst Taco Bell in the World it wasn’t all that evenly spread, so I got a bite with beans then a bite with cheese then a bite with beans again.
I forgot to take a picture so I grabbed the one from the Taco Bell website. That one clearly depicts an even distribution of beans and nacho cheese and so seemingly indicates that the problem in Elmsford is local and not systematic.
Anyway, the important thing to know is that unless you’re somehow really into Taco Bell refried beans, there’s nothing the Cheesy Double Decker Taco can offer that can’t be found smothered in pepper jack sauce on a Cheesy Gordita Crunch. And even if you are really into Taco Bell refried beans you can probably just order some Pintos and Cheese and spread them between the flatbread and taco on the Cheesy Gordita Crunch to create a significant upgrade over the Cheesy Double Decker Taco.
Also: You can always order a Cheesy Gordita Crunch. Secret of the pros. Even if it’s not on the menu, just ask for one and they’ll give it to you.
UPDATE, 3:41 p.m.: I can’t believe I forgot to mention the Doritos Loco Taco that is supposedly testing in certain markets. It features a taco shell made from a giant Nacho Cheese Dorito. Now that’s an inspired new concept for a Taco Bell menu item. Look at this thing. I actually looked up prices for flights to Toledo this weekend. Does anyone live in a test market? Has anyone seen one of these in the wild?
Elk visits Taco Bell
This video has almost everything I’m looking for in the Internet: Giant animals terrorizing people, Segways and Taco Bell.
That elk has the right idea.
Taco Bell pants
Authorities in Florida said they arrested a man who allegedly cut off a 50-inch alligator tail using a knife he kept in his “Taco Bell pants.”
OK, first of all: Great lede or the greatest lede?
Obviously the big question here is: What in hell are “Taco Bell pants”?
I can think of three possible explanations: 1) This man works at Taco Bell, and those are the pants he wears to work; 2) They are pants that celebrate Taco Bell, like maybe with a bunch of tacos and bells all over them. Or maybe like Zubaz in the Taco Bell colors; 3) He has a specific pair of pants set aside for wearing when he goes to Taco Bell.
I know the third explanation sounds ridiculous, but seasoned Taco Bell enthusiasts know that the beef produces an electric orange grease that inevitably gets on your clothes somewhere. Maybe this guy just wants to concentrate all the grease on one pair of pants, either because he doesn’t want to sacrifice multiple pairs to Taco Bell or because he’s trying to slowly saturate the pants with Taco Bell grease so he can produce his own seasoned beef at home.
Man, Florida’s underbelly is gloriously seedy. I’m considering blowing off the game tonight and driving up to Orlando to cover this developing story.
Huge hat tip to Joe for the link.
The Beefy Crunch Burrito incident
A Texas man became so upset at a price hike on Beefy Crunchy Burritos that he opened fire on police. No one was hurt, but the guy never got his burritos. My question: How is “the Original Jalapeno Fried Chicken”? Sounds pretty awesome. Hat tip to Catsmeat for the scoop, and then about six more people after that.
Tedquarters 