Taco Friday: Earworm special!
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I was heading for the drive-thru line at Taco Bell on Thursday afternoon, steeling myself for a first encounter with the Loco Taco Supreme, the one with the shell made from a giant Nacho Cheese Doritos® chip. They’ve sold like a trillion of them, and the Nacho Cheese flavor was originally developed by the father of Voice restaurant critic Robert Sietsema, so it was clearly something to think about. Also, reports have it that the Loco Taco Supreme shell is coated with a special version of the spray-on cheese that doesn’t dye your fingertips orange, which meant that I’d be witnessing the miracle of molecular cuisine at work. My local Taco Bell might as well be a drive-thru version of El Bulli.
As I was getting ready to make a Run for the Border, I was listening to the ‘Petros and Money Show,’ a sports talk radio program hosted by guys who seem to care as much about Flannery O’Connor and Nine Inch Nails as they do about the Lakers. Petros started to talk about ‘It’s Raining Tacos,’’ a new song by Santa Barbara musician -- and orchid farmer! -- Parry Gripp, who used to be in the band Nerf Herder, but now mostly sings gentle songs about burritos, waffles, space unicorns and baby hamsters eating carrots. That last one got more than 18 million views on YouTube.
But there is no question: ‘It’s Raining Tacos,’’ flavored like an early-’80s Eurodisco song, is the salted macadamia nut of Parry Gripp songs, impossible to stop consuming until you have gorged yourself sick ... even if the tacos pouring from the sky, orthodox constructions of shell, meat, lettuce and cheese, are more the stuff of Tito’s Tacos -– or of Taco Bell –- than they are of your dream midnight taco table. What I’m saying, I guess, is that I had earworm for lunch.
-- Jonathan Gold
