Author Archives: Rob G.

Dear Taco Bell:

Last night my wife and I planned a taco night for dinner. It wasn’t Tuesday, but honestly, I’m feeling a little over the whole Taco Tuesday thing. Why should tacos be limited to just one day of the week? Is it really that important that taco and Tuesday both start with a T? And Tuesday kind of sucks anyway, as a day, it’s probably the worst day out of the whole week. The previous weekend and all the fun that came along with it is by now a distant memory, and the only thing you really have to look forward to is Wednesday, itself only celebrated for marking the halfway point of another miserable workweek.

I’m off topic already. I went to the grocery store for some taco supplies: ground beef, lettuce, tomatoes, I haven’t made tacos in a while, but I didn’t want anything too Mexican. American tacos were my goal here, crunchy yellow shells, shredded yellow cheese, you know, Taco Bell style tacos.

And wouldn’t you know it, I made a turn right down the “ethnic” aisle at the grocery store and right there, right next to the giant bags of Tostitos chips and jars of Del Monte salsa, I found a box, a Taco Bell box. It said, “Taco Dinner Kit.” Bingo. That’s what I thought at least, bingo, here’s a one-stop Taco Bell taco shopping experience.

I looked at the instructions: “Just add ground beef and toppings.” And I kind of felt a little deflated. Because what is a taco without meat and toppings? It’s apparently the contents of your “Taco Dinner Kit” box, it’s some shells, a couple of packets of Taco Bell sauce, and a spice packet. It’s nothing.

And to make matters worse, I looked at the instructions printed on the side of the box, you’re telling me I need eight ounces of Kraft shredded cheddar cheese, one container of Breakstone’s sour cream. I’m sorry, Taco Bell, but if you’re not going to provide me with the tools I need to get the job done, you’ve ceded any position in which you’re going to tell me what brands I should buy to make my own tacos.

Look, I’m not suggesting you try to make your product something it’s not. I’m trying to imagine the logistical hurdles of including shredded lettuce, chopped tomatoes, grated cheese and sour cream to your box. You’d have to keep some of the ingredients refrigerated, and would the corn tortillas lose their crunch in the fridge? Like I said, it sounds like a lot of work.

But to call what you sold me a kit, it just comes across as disingenuous. How about just calling it, “Taco Shells.” The sauce? Don’t bother. You give that stuff away for free by the fistful every time I visit a Taco Bell location, and so there are always some spare Milds or Hots floating around my kitchen somewhere. The taco seasoning, what is it really, salt? Cumin? Just throw it in for free and don’t mention it.

And I get it, you put everything in a big box, you make it look really official. I just feel a little duped, is all. I can’t see inside, and so how can I tell if my crunchy hard taco shells are intact inside of that box? These particular shells actually made it to my house OK, but that’s not the point. How was I to know? I had to take a leap of faith, just kind of taking your word for it that the shells had made it in one piece from production to my kitchen, and I really don’t need that type of low-level stress when all I’m trying to do is prepare a really casual Taco Thursday.

In closing, I hope you don’t take this the wrong way. I’m a Taco Bell guy through and through, I stand by your products and, in the future, if I’m ever thinking about making tacos again, I want to let you know that Taco Bell brand taco products are still on my short list of preferred purchases. Having said that, I see plenty of opportunities for improvement. Get rid of the whole misleading “Taco Kit” verbiage. Maybe make the shells a little bigger. Maybe offer me some Doritos Locos taco shells. That would be awesome.

Taco Bell, I love you, your restaurants stand as a model for what American fast food strives to be. Your grocery store offering, however, well … just think about it, this is just something to consider, is all.

Sincerely,

Rob G.

Tricks

My computer does this trick where the monitor goes dead. You can hear everything still running, like if you press the volume button up or down, you’ll hear various intonations of that beep it makes to tell you just how loud it’s going to be. But when I brought it to get fixed, the computer people taught me this trick, you just have to hold down the power button and reset the machine, right, you do this like eight or nine times, and then you hold down these four random buttons, and boom, the screen comes back on. Only, it takes like half a day to boot up again, and when it does, everything’s erased.

My car does this trick where when you turn the steering wheel too far to the left, there’s this clicking sound – click! – and then it’s stuck, like you can’t turn it right again. The first time I found out about this trick, I was trying to pull off this illegal U-turn, it was one of those three-lane city streets, just a busy as a highway, but it’s not officially a highway, and so there are all these cross streets and opportunities to turn around, but you can’t because there are all of these, “No U-turn” signs. Through trial and error, I figured out that if you gun the gas, and then after the car spins around like five or six times, you pop the emergency brake, and the steering wheel unclicks again. But the check engine light goes on. I have no idea.

My air conditioner does this trick where when you try to change the filter at the beginning of the year, the old filter crumbles when you touch it, turning into a cloud of black dust. And the more you aggravate it, the worse it gets, dark little fibers getting everywhere, floating up into the air. And even after you get everything to where you think it’s clean, to where it should run relatively problem free, you turn it on and it just spews out this dark haze for like two days straight, and you’re sneezing and you wake up with this terrible taste in your mouth.

My bicycle pump does this trick where, after you’re done adding air to the tires, when you try to disengage the pump from the tube, it won’t let go, it rips the top of the tube right off, giving you an instant flat. The first time it happened I was like, well, I must have pulled it off too quickly. The second time I tried it slowly, and the third time, really, really slowly. But here I am, four tubes later, my bike pump is still up to its old tricks.

My blender does this trick where you put everything into the pitcher, your yogurt, fresh fruit, ice, everything, but instead of making a delicious smoothie, it just kind of spins everything around and around. You check it out to see if maybe the blades are accidentally rotating with the blender, but after you pour everything into a bowl, splashing all over the kitchen, you feel around and you don’t even know what you’re feeling around for. How are these things supposed to work? I mean, aside from just pushing the button, you have no idea. So you kind of just play around with everything and pour all of that smoothie stuff back in and you press blend again and, again, nothing, and you just hold it and hold it until the machine is obviously overheating, you’ve got this burnt electric smell in the kitchen, and then your wife comes downstairs later and she’s like, what the hell Rob? And you’re like, well, how do I get rid of this, it’s liquidy but really chunky and not blended, should I throw it in the garbage? Down the drain?

My bowling ball does this trick where you bowl it down the lane, and it disappears. You ask the bowling alley worker, can you go check in the back? I think the machine ate my ball. And he gets on some phone and makes a grocery-store style announcement for some bowling alley technician to go check out a problem on lane eleven. And you wait like twenty-five minutes, and then you finally ask the bowling alley guy, hey man, I hate to bug you, but do you think you could see what’s going on with my ball? With lane eleven? And he just picks up that phone again and he’s like, Derrick! Lane eleven! Jesus! And everybody hears it. And then ten minutes after that, Derrick shows up and he’s like, nope, nothing. And you’re like, are you sure? It had my name inscribed on it, Rob G. I just bought it. Can I check? And he’s like, sorry man, only authorized personnel behind the lanes.

Andean handicrafts

I lived in Ecuador for two years, and right before heading back to the States, I stopped by this giant artisanal market, a tiny town called Otavalo dedicated mostly to selling Andean handicrafts to tourists from all over the world. I’m looking around my house now and, I don’t know where any of those purchases are. I remember I bought all of these brightly colored woven tapestries, I definitely had a clear picture in my head at the time, I’d hang them in my living room, I bought a really narrow and long one that would have been great for the stairway.

But, I’m still looking and, OK, there it is, there’s something. I have this piece of furniture from IKEA, it has a bunch of wooden cubbies, and down at the bottom I’m seeing this giant mortar and pestle. You know, like when you go to a Mexican restaurant and they make tableside guacamole, it’s just like that, a huge stone bowl that’s as heavy as it looks.

When I took the hour-long bus ride from the capital to Otavalo, I actually had this particular item in mind. A lot of the Ecuadorean women would use these tools as a way to grind spices, and I thought it would have been such a cool addition to my American kitchen. How much would one of these things have cost in the States? Probably a lot. I got one from some vendor for thirty-five bucks.

I mentioned it was heavy, right? Really heavy. Like I had to carry it around everywhere I went, all the way back to New York. And now here it is, I see it, but in the three years since I’ve been back, I can clearly remember the one time I used it. I was cooking something, I wanted to use cumin, so I bought whole cumin seeds. After toasting them in a frying pan over low heat, I transferred everything to the bowl, where I used the oval shaped stone to crush it into a powder. Now that I’m writing everything out, I actually don’t know which one is the mortar and which one is the pestle.

But yeah, I used it once, and that was it. I remember trying to clean it out afterwards, I didn’t know how. The sponge was getting ripped up as I wiped the surface of the rock, and even though I ran it under hot water, I could never get out the cumin trapped in between the tiny crevasses of the surface.

I told myself, yeah, I’ll use this again, maybe I’ll make guacamole. But that was it, that’s the last memory I have of the mortar and pestle. I must have left it out for my wife to put away, and here it is, in this little cubby hole, right next to my hand-cranked pasta maker. That piece of equipment has a similar history, a big bulky purchase, a single use, and then banished to the cubby, to a lifetime of obscurity, unnoticed in the background of my everyday.

But where is everything else? I bought so many other artisanal goods. There were these two hand painted ceramic plates that … oh wait, that’s coming back to me. These things were beautiful, large round dishes that I had hoped to hang on the wall of my kitchen. But they were only wrapped in newspaper, and when I opened up my suitcase in New York, I could see that the mortar and pestle had smashed everything that it was packed against. So it was just this wrapped collection of ceramic shards.

Even that, even the trash, I had a vision of laying them out, as if I could glue them back together, like maybe I could hang up the broken pieces, so it would have this preserved-despite-being-destroyed museum like quality. I set the fragments to the side and, I’m positive that they were thrown out. Looking back, there’s no way I would have known how to even begin thinking about how I’d accomplish such a project.

I just thought it would have been nice, to be able to decorate my house will all of these cool souvenirs. But it’s all just taking up space, either in this kitchen, or more likely buried in some box in the basement somewhere. If I ever get access to a time machine, I’m going to travel back to that market, I’m going to confront myself and say, “Listen, Rob, this stuff is all really cool, but I want to let you know that it’s not going to work out, you’re just wasting your money. Go and have a nice lunch instead. Or just give me the money, and I’ll take it back to the future for the both of us.”

And I’m ready for that, I always have been. If a future version of me ever just pops up and tells me what to do, I’m not going to hesitate, or think that I know better. I’ll just do whatever he tells me. And my house will have so much less clutter and I’ll have all that money in my pocket.

Five dollars, gone

I was getting a cup of coffee at Starbucks a few weeks ago, I rarely go to Starbucks, I’m way too self-conscious about how much it costs, about how it’s so much cheaper to make my coffee at home. But I was out, and I needed some, and so Starbucks it was. And going to Starbucks, even though it’s not a regular thing for me, I get in there, I get on line, I know exactly what to do. It’s like somehow the etiquette of getting coffee at Starbucks is hardwired into our social DNA.

Of course there was a long line, but they usually move pretty fast. Usually, but this one, maybe it was just one of those days where all of the baristas were each having a simultaneous day where everything was slightly off, it wasn’t moving fast at all. Standing on a long line, it’s always the same problem, by the time you realize that the line is moving way too slowly, you’ve already invested too much time standing in line to back out, even though it’s crazy to wait around that long, for what, for iced coffee?

And I had no way of judging, not really, but it felt like I was about halfway through the line when this lady came in and started hawking bootleg DVDs. “DVDs, five dollars,” she opened up a plain Jansport backpack, showing off her stash like an oversized deck of cards. They all look the same, bootleg DVDs, the way-too-slim jewel case, the obviously printed-at-home cover, an image probably downloaded straight from Google Images.

This happens all the time, whenever there’s a long enough line, the bootleg DVD people, it’s like they have a radar. And yet paradoxically, I’ve never once witnessed an actual sale, not even anybody remotely expressing interest. I looked around, none of the baristas or anybody behind the counter made any sort of sign that even registered this lady’s presence.

I’d made the mistake of buying a bootleg DVD once, when I was eighteen, the first time I ran into somebody actually selling illegal movies I thought, no way, people actually do this? I think I bought The Ring. But that was the last time. The quality was awful, the sound unlistenable. Why would anybody do this to themselves?

I ordered my drink and had to stand off to the side, the after-order waiting space where the baristas call out your name when your drink is ready. Any semblance of what once was an orderly line of people was gone, we were now just a loose collection of bodies, people getting their drinks and then zigging and zagging by everyone else, trying to add a little cream, hoping to make it to the exit.

And this lady was still trying to get people to buy DVDs. “DVDs, five dollars,” she kept saying, holding out her offering, showing the inside of her backpack as if to say, there’s even more inside, I can mix up the selection here, just give me the slightest inkling that you’re interested in purchasing something, come on.

The line was no more and I was trying my best to zone out, to stop automatically trying to keep track of who ordered first, and whether or not the drinks were being handed out accordingly. This lady wasn’t going anywhere, it was crowded enough that, I guess she probably lost track of who declined to humor her, which was everybody really, nobody paying her any attention. I wondered how long they’d keep a movie in circulation, if after a certain amount of time, they maybe erased the discs and uploaded a more current bootleg.

“Rob!” the barista called my name, and by this point I just wanted out, I said a thank you and made a beeline to the door. “Hey!” someone called my way as I stepped out onto the street, it was a cop. I turned around, and the bootleg lady was right behind me. She took off, running down the block, I thought about how the cop recognized her so easily, she must have been a repeat offender. He chased after her for half a block or so but gave up, she was gone, lost in the crowd, and he didn’t really look like he was that into the idea of giving a serious chase.

My iced coffee was gone in what felt three or four sips. In no time I was left with a giant cup filled all the way with ice. Five bucks gone, I thought, and as I looked for a trashcan to throw it out, I wondered if the DVD might not have been a smarter purchase. No, just equally bad, the exact same amount of waste.

Everything was different

I walked through the door and everything was different. “Hi honey,” it sounded like my wife, but it it’s my wife. Everything is different, including her. Her hair is falling in a way not like it usually does, like, maybe more to the left? I don’t know, I can’t really articulate it, but this is all just slightly off, I’m looking at her, and it’s not right.

And her shirt, I’ve definitely seen that t-shirt before, it’s one of mine, or a pretty close facsimile of a shirt that I’d received like ten years ago at college, at some club, or one of the club fairs, one of the student groups was giving out free t-shirts to people that signed up for their email list. I’d never worn it, I think it was an XL, but my wife always wears these old oversized t-shirts around the house. Not this one though, it was … was the lettering off? I couldn’t tell if my shirt, like my real shirt, if there wasn’t maybe a hole under the left arm.

But it was definitely different. “What’s wrong?” this lady asks me, and I didn’t want to act not natural, in case whoever set this whole thing up was maybe looking for me to act all convinced. But I didn’t know what to say, it was like trying to smile a natural smile for a photograph, but you can’t fake it, you’re really trying but it looks crooked, I felt like any words that would have come out of my mouth right now would have been the same, it would have been a crooked giveaway. And this dog came up to me, again, it couldn’t have been my dog. They’re about the same size, yes, but the way my dog moves his feet when he comes over to say hi to me when I get home, it’s just, it’s not the same way, the pitter-patter pattern is … could this be like a robot?

No, just different. Is that clock on the wall, wasn’t it like five minutes behind? It’s also … it had to be. I knew that I could only look at it like a guide to the time, not as an actual indicator the current minute, but I’m looking at my watch, could this lady have fixed the clock? Or is this a completely different house? Should I walk back outside?

Or would that be too much? “I’m doing great,” I tell her, I think that sounded close enough, “You’re hungry?” I ask, hoping to draw something out of her, anything, maybe if she talks a little more I’ll be able to put my finger on exactly what’s different here. I mean, she obviously knows me. And I’m supposed to know her, right? What am I missing?

“Are you OK? You’re acting different,” she tells me. I’m acting different? Maybe that’s part of her trap. Is it too late to get out of here? “Listen, I think I dropped my wallet back at the corner, I’m going to go to check real quick,” I finish the sentence as I’m already out the door, she says something to my back but I’m gone, walking down the block, not running, I don’t want to give myself away, but definitely out.

I take out my phone to call, I don’t know who, maybe there’s an email, maybe a text message or something, some clue. But this looks different too, my phone, like the operating system got one of those really minor updates, sometimes when you wake up in the morning, you’re phone tells you that it enhanced this or tweaked that and, you can kind of tell but not really, and that’s what this was like, only I couldn’t for certain be sure as to what changes were made.

Was this my phone? Could whoever have switched around my house and my wife and my dog somehow have gotten into my pocket while I was at work? I didn’t leave this thing on my desk, had I? I don’t think so, but was I positive, was I absolutely sure? I wasn’t really sure about anything, like this block, or where I was, everything should have been the same, but nothing looked like it was supposed to look, the stores, the cars on the street, the money in my pocket, everything looked kind of off, just a little not right, everything was just different.