Category Archives: Words

“The next time I see him, I’m going to step on his foot. You print that. I think he’s ridiculous.”

Posted on by
Reply

Outside of Miles Davis playing music, Miles Davis talking about music is one of the best things you’ll ever hear. In 1964, Downbeat magazine asked him to share his thoughts on some new music after a blind listening test. It was predictably hilarious. Anyone with any interest in jazz history, American history or creative uses of the word “motherf—er” should definitely, definitely read Davis’ autobiography.

Taco Bell Tuesday

Posted on by
Reply

It’s Taco Bell Tuesday and I haven’t tried anything off the new Cantina Bell menu yet. My bad. I meant to, but I wound up eating way, way, way too much Mexican food twice this week at Mole, which is new to my neighborhood but not to the city. It’s a bit pricey, but it’s so good. They have Tortas there, so look out for that in a forthcoming Sandwich of the Week post, once I can pull myself away from the bacon, cheese and pork tacos.

For what it’s worth, and germane to this post, Mole also features “Tacos Americanos” — hard-shell tacos with ground beef, lettuce and cheese (and cilantro and onions, but ignore those for now because they don’t fit with this next point). Mexican food inspires Taco Bell, Taco Bell in turn inspires Mexican food. So we beat on.

Now for the latest in Mexican-inspired fast food news.

Reviewers prefer Cantina Menu to Chipotle: For my money, there’s no better fast-food writer in the country than Nancy Luna of the OC Register, whom I’ve mentioned here before. That’s partly because I don’t know of many other fast-food writers and mostly because she can review fast food without any of the smirking judgment that seems to riddle fast food reviews pretty much everywhere else. In her take on the new Cantina Menu, she compares the new Taco Bell burrito with Chipotle’s and writes: “If I had to choose between two white rice-stuffed burritos, I’d pick Taco Bell. For me, the key ingredient is the cilantro dressing, which adds a layer of creamy flavor that is lacking in a Chipotle burrito.”

So that’s promising. More inevitably to follow.

WSJ writer laments the misstatements of kids these days: For the Wall Street Journal, retired professor James Courtier claims that “so few [contemporary] students are readers” and as such their emails and papers are riddled with spelling errors. He provides a series of amusing examples, but notes that one student was not “astute enough to follow the lecture on ‘Taco Bell’s Canon’ in music-appreciation class.

I’m not sure how well-read James Courtier can claim to be if he’s not familiar with the Taco Bell Wiki that my friend Jake and I started a few years ago. If he were, he’d know that Taco Bell’s Canon in D is a real thing with a Taco Bell Wiki page. It’s great to hear they’re finally covering it in college music-appreciation classes*.

Delaware man commits the Taco Belliest crime: Charles Henry Crawford III passed out at the wheel in the drive-thru lane of the Taco Bell in Wilmington, Del. and veered into a curb. When the cops came to check it out, they found — shockingly — a mason jar full of marijuana in the passenger’s side floor and “other drug paraphernalia.”

Do not drive to Taco Bell in that condition. You endanger the lives of the sober Fourthmealers around you, plus then you have to go to jail with no tacos.

Video evidence of Taco Bell’s trip to Bethel, Alaska: If you read this feature, you certainly know about the Great Bethel Taco Bell Hoax and Taco Bell’s subsequent effort to rectify it with a truckload of tacos. And if you watched last night’s Home Run Derby, you probably saw the commercial featuring video of the Bethel Airlift. Here’s a short film Taco Bell produced about the episode:

*- It would be silly of me to get in the habit of bragging about my grades as an undergraduate because for the most part they were not outstanding. But I took a history of rock and roll class in which I scored a perfect 100 on every test and earned an A on every paper. I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t take that class. There was a listening component on the final, and one of the songs was “Stairway to Heaven” and another was “All You Need is Love.” And there were actually students in the class groaning about how hard it was. Surreal. Maybe not everyone there was an aspiring rock god at the time, but c’mon. You just finished a history of rock and roll class and you can’t identify Stairway?

Serious lookers

Posted on by
Reply

We’re serious lookers right now.

– Sandy Alderson

Seriously, look: The Mets are six games over .500 at the All-Star Break and in the thick of the playoff hunt. The small-sample fever broke but the fever dream persists. “Hey, maybe they won’t suck” segued to “hey, maybe they won’t finish dead last,” then to “hey, maybe they’ll hang in contention for a while,” and now to “hey, maybe they can actually do this.”

The Mets look serious. Their performance to date has been bolstered by unexpected (and in one case unprecedented) levels of excellence from their three biggest stars, David Wright, Johan Santana and R.A. Dickey. You know that. They’ve benefited from some timely hitting and, outside of the injury to Mike Pelfrey, health in their starting rotation.

Some complementary players have overperformed, and plenty of regulars have underperformed. It’s a half season of baseball, and that’s how half seasons of baseball go. Probably Jordany Valdespin won’t maintain an .826 OPS and Ike Davis won’t hit .201 all year.

The bullpen stinks and the lineup is extremely susceptible to good left-handed pitching. Since a massive overhaul is unlikely, the Mets will remain in contention or fall out of it on the performances of guys already on the club. But since — as we know — pennant and Wild Card races often come down to one game, Sandy Alderson and the SABRos should be seriously looking for some relief help and an offensive upgrade against lefties.

The next three weeks will bring the typical tsunami of trade-deadline nonsense, with sources spewing substance and silliness, and trades proposed, executed, celebrated and lamented on Twitter without ever actually happening in real life. It’s how it is, and, when your team is in contention and its GM appears competent, it’s pretty damn fun. Hell yeah the Mets should get Ramon Hernandez if all it takes is money. And bring on K-Rod, while they’re at it.

Here’s the thing, though: The Mets’ biggest additions might be guys they already have. As Alderson points out in the interview above, Jason Bay’s return gives the team a right-handed bat that can hit lefties. Bay shouldn’t be playing every day at this point because he can’t hit righties, but lord knows they’ve got lefty-hitting outfielders to play against righties. Bay’s return gives Terry Collins more flexibility with his outfield rotation, and, if and when an opponent calls on a LOOGY for a stretch of lefty hitters in the lineup, a righty bat to counteract.

And in the bullpen, the Mets’ best help might be the mean. Neither Ramon Ramirez nor Frank Francisco has ever been nearly as bad as they have been in the first half of this season, and both have suffered from atypically high batting averages on balls in play. It’s understandable to want a shakeup for the sake of it, just to not watch the usual suspects pitch out of the bullpen anymore. But given the amount of fluctuation inherent in small-sample relief performances, it seems about as likely that Ramirez and Francisco will pitch like they did last year as someone brought in from outside will continue pitching like he is this year. There’s room for seven in the bullpen, though, and the Mets could certainly use a second lefty and some improvement around the fringes. I’m just not sure it’s worth giving up prospects for, especially when some of those prospects might make the difference themselves.

I’ve lost the point. Here it is: If the Mets’ best players keep producing like they have, their rotation stays healthy and some of their struggling regulars start playing like they have in the past, the team should be competitive no matter how it manages its margins. If David Wright slumps for the whole second half, Ike Davis doesn’t improve and a starting pitcher or two fall to injury, it won’t really matter if they’ve added a better-hitting righty backup catcher or not.

But they have way too many middle infielders on the roster and a couple of areas where they could improve, so it does seem like there should be some action.

Cool

Posted on by
Reply

I really want to see what I can do. I have an idea. I think it would maybe take some creativity for a team to accept it. But if it worked, it might create an entirely new position in baseball … a position that would give a team an extra player.

– Micah Owings.

Owings, who has been out since April with a strained forearm and is unlikely to pitch again this season, is heading to the Padres’ Triple-A team in Tuscon to focus on becoming a first baseman and left fielder.

If you gave me reasonable odds, I’d bet on Owings re-emerging as a valuable platoon bat at the very least. As a pitcher and pinch-hitter, he owns a career .283/.310/.503 line in 219 Major League plate appearances. The guy has an .813 OPS and he’s never had 70 plate appearances in a season at any level. With more reps and more emphasis on hitting, who knows what he can do?

Oddly, the righty-hitting Owings has done almost all his damage in the Majors against right-handed pitchers. Still, if he can prove a useful bat and a vaguely capable defender at first and left with the ability to mop up some innings in the bullpen, he’s a massively efficient use of a roster spot.

And the possibilities are thrilling. Owings has been effective against right-handed hitters as a pitcher. Maybe an enterprising team can regularly pull the Davey Johnson move, going lefty-righty in late innings with some LOOGY that could handle left field? Is that too outrageous?

Thanks to Stevie for the link. And thanks to all y’all who provided feedback on Friday and over the weekend. I appreciate it. I’ve got a doctor’s appointment this morning, but I hope to have something a little longer about the Mets this afternoon.

Sandwich of the Week

Posted on by
Reply

I eat a lot of sandwiches. You probably know this, or at least suspect it. For a variety of reasons, I do not write about nearly as many sandwiches as I eat.

Sometimes I forget to take a photo. That’s one thing. I’m in a pretty good habit now of photographing most sandwiches placed in front of me, but plenty of times someone serves me something and either my phone is inaccessible, it doesn’t seem appropriate to pull it out, it’s too dark, or I’m hungry enough that I just want to eat the damn thing.

For another, sometimes I just don’t have anything to say about a sandwich. Many times that doesn’t stop me and I churn out uninteresting sandwich reviews anyway, but if I’m eating something very similar to something I’ve had before, it’s a good bet I’m not going to bother repeating all the same things. I repeat myself enough as it is without forcing it. #BlameBeltran.

There are also some guilt issues. This is among the reasons I can never be a proper food critic. I have no qualms about ripping a disappointing new menu item from Taco Bell or lamenting Subway’s quality of meat, but most of the sandwiches I eat come don’t come from massive corporations. And I don’t feel like it’s my place, without any real credentials beyond a few years behind a deli counter, to come online and criticize some guy’s sandwich-making skills to whatever audience I have based on my own tastes and a one-sandwich sample size. It takes so much effort to open and operate a deli or restaurant or food truck, and I’m not here to stomp all over someone’s life’s work because I’m disappointed with a single one of her sandwiches.

Which is all a long-winded way of reminding you that every sandwich reviewed here is, by my standards, remarkable — in that I have deemed it worthy of remarks. And for the most part, they come from the extreme right side of the bell-curve of sandwich-excellence.

I would say that sandwiches I rate in the 70s are worth eating if you have the opportunity. A sandwich with an 80 or above is delicious and worth going out of your way for. If many of the sandwiches reviewed here receive marks that high, it’s due to selection bias, not grade inflation.

I don’t know why anyone would want to hear about crappy sandwiches anyway. Sandwich of the Week is a celebration.

The sandwich: Pork sandwich from Rocket Pig, 24th St. and 10th Ave. in Manhattan.

The construction: Brined, spice-rubbed, smoked and roasted pork on a toasted ciabatta roll with red onion jam and mustard aioli. It comes with a small container of electric orange hot sauce.

Important background information: I am immediately suspicious of a pork-sandwich place called “Rocket Pig.” It seems aimed so perfectly and so directly at me that I worry it indicates either a) some sort of glitch in The Matrix or b) that there are enough people just like me that restaurants tailor their marketing efforts to us, and I’m just some drop in the ocean of my demographic. Both scenarios are concerning.

What it looks like:

How it tastes: Sweet. And gooey.

I mean this in the kindest possible way: The Pork sandwich from Rocket Pig tastes like what would happen if some talented chef armed with amazing ingredients were charged with creating a high-end sandwich interpretation of a Cinnabon. It’s so obviously and overwhelmingly indulgent that you’re immediately conscious of the toll it’s taking on your body. Other sandwiches, upon completion, might prompt you to think about the ingredients and ask, “Oh boy, what did I just do to myself?” From the first bite, this one makes you think, “Oh boy, what am I currently doing to myself, and why can’t I stop doing it?”

You can’t stop because it’s good. You love condiments, and this comes with three. All of them are sweet. On its own, the hot sauce has just a tiny bit of peppery heat, just as the mustard aioli has a hint of mustardy bite to it and the red onion jam some subtle earthy onion flavors. Together, though, those subtleties are lost in an astonishing tide of gooey sweetness.

The same goes for the pork, which is a shame. Separated from the sandwich, the pork tastes great. It’s appropriately fatty, just a little chewy, and smoky. On the sandwich — in that goo-tide — the pork flavors get sucked into the undertow.

The ciabatta roll is perfect. Its crisp outside provides the sandwich’s most pronounced texture, and it’s hearty enough to hold up under the considerable strain of the sandwich’s varied juices, greases and sauces.

What it’s worth: The pork sandwich from Rocket Pig costs $14.

It might be worth it. It might also seem emblematic of a doomed society drowning in its own excess if it weren’t for the lavender-glazed doughnuts available a block away. And you can try to fight the tide, waving your arms around and calling out in vain for help, decrying whatever series of events led us to sell and buy $14 one-note artisanal pork sandwiches, lavender doughnuts, and basically everything you can imagine stuffed with cheese. Or you can accept that regardless of the ramifications, this is a fascinating and — if you have the means to splurge on a $14 sandwich now and then — often enjoyable time to be alive, and surf this wave until it breaks. Subtlety and sensibility are for suckers, after all.

How it rates: 73 out of 100.

 

Programming note

Posted on by
Reply

Weekly Sandwich of the Week reviews return to weekends here starting tomorrow. I’ve got a few in the hopper, at the very least. I hope to keep it up this time. People seem to enjoy them and TedQuarters is for the people.

Speaking of: Given the skimpiness of content here this week this might not be the best time to ask, but I’m looking for some feedback on this site. I might ultimately post a poll or a survey for more accurate information, but for now, if you can, please use the anonymous form below to tell me what you like and don’t like about this site. Why do you read TedQuarters? What do you hope to see when you come here? What do you gloss over or ignore? What would you like to see more of? What could you do without?

[contact-form-7 id=”15381″ title=”Untitled”]