Guy at party makes bold claims, backs them up

I was talking about Taco Bell with a friend at a party last night, and another guy overheard us and pepped up.

“Are you guys talking about Taco Bell?” he asked. “I consider myself a Taco Bell aficionado.”

NOTE: This is a bad way to engage me at a social gathering if you hope to discuss anything besides Taco Bell within the next half hour. But while I was initially skeptical of this guy’s credentials as a Taco Bell aficionado, it turned out he had the resume to back it up: He soon produced a series of cell-phone photos from the time he ordered 200 tacos and 200 tostadas for some (presumably awesome) party he hosted.

His name is Neeraj and he’s legit. Here’s what his car’s trunk looked like when loaded with delicious, delicious Taco Bell:

What Taco Bell riches!

It turns out he purchased about $180 worth of Taco Bell stuff (there was way more of it in the backseat), disproving the longstanding urban legend that Taco Bell cash registers don’t even operate past the $20 mark. Neeraj said he called in advance to set up his order, which was a little disappointing to me because I like the idea of just rolling up to the drive-thru all like, “200 tacos, please!”

The other obvious issue here — and I’m sure a bunch of East Coast Taco Bell regulars have already raised their eyebrows — is the matter of Tostadas. Neeraj placed his epic Taco Bell order in Dallas, where Tostadas are regular menu items. Denver native Ted Burke reports that they are also on the menu in his hometown.

But as a New York-based Taco Bell enthusiast, I can’t say I’ve ever eaten a Tostada, nor am I even certain one has ever been made publicly available to me. The Tostada is not on Taco Bell’s online menu, but it’s listed on the nutrition facts page.

Is it delicious? Probably. Is it the type of thing they’d be willing to make me at my local Taco Bell even if it’s not on the menu? Maybe. I’ve got to assume it’s made up of all regular Taco Bell stuff, just in some other configuration, since, you know, so is everything at Taco Bell. Are they available at your Taco Bell? Can I have one?

You can’t text ‘flatulence’ in Pakistan

Pakistan’s telecoms regulator has released a list of over 1000 words and phrases to be banned from usage in text messaging, most of which are pretty hilarious. Not particularly hilarious but nonetheless banned: “Deposit.”

Of course, this will just lead to a bunch of creative new slang phrases. Expect Pakistan to be at the cutting edge of euphemism within the next few years.

My bitterness

It would be hard to recap the Jets’ loss to the Broncos last night in the manner in which I’d like while maintaining anything close to the totally reasonable standards of decency set forth by this network of websites.

Picture all of the worst and nastiest and most grotesque things you ever saw on the Internet in its earliest days — when you still had the capacity to be shocked by things on the Internet — put into words. That’s what I’d like to say about the Jets’ loss to the Broncos last night.

It sucked. A couple of things, though: First, let’s not all destroy Mark Sanchez for that one. He didn’t have a great game, for sure. He made a few awful passes — notably the bad decision that led to the pick-six, and the overthrow to the open Dustin Keller in the endzone. And Sanchez rarely has great games in the regular season, which is troubling.

But he also got crushed on nearly every single pass play. Wayne Hunter looked like roadkill under Von Miller’s tires, and the more heralded members of the Jets’ line did Sanchez few favors against the Broncos’ pass rush. And it didn’t help the pass game that the Jets, behind that line, didn’t muster much on the ground.

To the Jets’ credit, they were playing on three days’ rest at Mile High altitude — a fact that will get overlooked in discussions of the way the Gang Green defense folded up on the Broncos’ final drive after dominating most of the game, while pundits instead euphemize the various ways they’d like to shotgun Tim Tebow’s magical wishbone.

Many already seem to be writing requiems for the Jets’ playoff hopes, which seems premature. Certainly they appear somewhere between long and unlikely now, with the team sitting at 5-5 and playing an uninspiring brand of impotent football, but don’t forget that the team has been written off before. Like, you know, last year.

I’m certainly not going to bet on a playoff run now, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t spend time after last night’s game plugging Georgetown basketball games into my DVR and preparing a shift in mental focus. But I’ll write these Jets off for good when these Jets are officially written off for good.

The other thing — and the main thing I meant to write about this morning — is how frustrating it has become to watch NFL football in any sort of large group setting, be it at the stadium, at a bar, or even just following along on Twitter. Maybe these are the sad pleas of a pathetic former high-school player or just an embittered Jets fan lashing out, but I can’t help but think — as I’ve noted before — our nationwide fixation with fantasy football has oozed too far into our sport-fan consciousness, to the extent that you watch the game half-expecting the color commentators to start comparing the teams’ flex guys and RB2s.

Which is to say that no matter what Twitter or the guy at the bar or the dude in Row 23 in Section 336 has to say, I never find a close but low-scoring football game boring, no matter how sloppily the offenses appear to be playing. It’s football — there are 22 guys on the field all the time, nearly all of whom factor into the outcomes of every single play. Even if no one on the field is helping your fantasy team rack up points, it’s a safe bet a lot of them are playing damned well.

Whatever. Whatever, whatever. I write this also as the owner of a miserable fantasy team full of chumps and suckers and injured chump-suckers, and one that had a verbal agreement on a Darren McFadden for Aaron Rodgers deal at precisely the right moment before the other guy backed out and McFadden got hurt and left the Inevitable Victors in shambles.

Everything sucks right now, is all. The troll in me almost wants to like Tim Tebow just to be different. Reason wins out though.

How ’bout them Hoyas?

You play to win the game, etc.

These results jive with just about every study ever done on the effects of what drive attendance to Major League ballparks. Fans come to see winning teams, not individual players. If the Mariners want to get fans back in Safeco Field, the formula is easy – put a winning team on the field. Trying to buy yourself out of declining attendance by throwing money at one big name free agent just doesn’t work.

Dave Cameron, U.S.S. Mariner.

Cameron examines the impact of big-name free-agents on ticket sales and determines that it’s small, and that nothing bolsters ticket sales more than — surprise, surprise — winning baseball. I think I lose sight of that sometimes.

And for the Mets’ case, I can extrapolate: You know what’s going to stop Mets fans from whining about every uniform change, every team PR announcement, every promotion? Wins. What’ll end the LOLMets columns in the newspapers? Wins. Every piece of news from being spun negatively? Wins. Bedbugs? Wins.

It’s all that matters. And if you’re finding the rest of it difficult to stomach, I recommend a sense of confident detachment. The people in charge now seem committed to operating the team the right way, and that means the wins will come. Then, eventually, so much of the insufferable nonsense will subside.