Posted by marshall
Mon, 14 Apr 2008 19:49:00 GMT
They discontinued the Grilled Fiesta Burrito. It was perhaps the best burrito ever made (at least from a fast-food place), and now it's gone. The rest of the burritos at El Pollo Loco are lousy...nowhere near the same league.
It just depresses me to go there now. I've started steering people toward other options when they suggest it. Even thinking about it makes me sad.
I suppose I should have seen it coming. It seems that if I'm a fan of something, it's doomed to be removed from the menu. The Queso Live at On The Border. The Monte Cocoa and Strawberry Limone at Olive Garden. The Chocolate Espresso Crème Brûlée at El Torito Grill. All gone.
It's perhaps worse with the Grilled Fiesta Burrito, because El Pollo Loco was one of the southern California establishments I missed greatly after we moved to Idaho, solely because of that item. To finally come back to SoCal and find it missing was heartbreaking, in a things-that-shouldn't-bother-you-because-they're-so-trivial-yet-they-do-anyway kind of way.
Goodbye, El Pollo Loco. You tossed aside the Grilled Fiesta Burrito as though it were a bag of moldy tangerines, and I'm not your best friend anymore. So there.
Now I'm just waiting for Carl's Jr. to discontinue the Western Bacon Cheeseburger. (Although on a happy note, it seems that Hardee's will finally be getting all of the Carl's Jr. menu items this summer, so I can finally respect its use of the happy star logo.)
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Posted by marshall
Tue, 27 Mar 2007 08:56:00 GMT
Lara and I walked to McDonald's tonight and got some Chicken McNuggets. As always, we requested honey to dip them in. The guy behind the counter just stared at us. "Honey mustard?" No, just honey. He went to go ask a supervisor. "We don't have honey."
What's that horrible noise? Oh, it's another piece of my childhood being ripped from me and shoved through the shredder.
How can McDonald's not have honey for Chicken McNuggets?! Honey has been one of the four cornerstones of the McNugget Dipping Sauce Family since the Great McNugget Emergence of 1983! (BBQ, Sweet and Sour, and Hot Mustard are the other three, in case you didn't minor in McNugget Lore.) And to make it even worse, the people at McDonald's stared at me like I was crazy, like honey at McDonald's had never existed.
It turns out I'm not alone. A McDonald's in Sunnyvale, CA has also suffered the loss of honey, and a story eerily similar to my own has been shared by a shocked visitor to a McDonald's in the UK.
First the fried apple pies, then the apple danishes, now this. What stable, comforting reminder of my youth will they crush next? I would think the Egg McMuffin would be safe, but the fear is beginning to gnaw at my mind...
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Posted by marshall
Mon, 26 Mar 2007 11:10:00 GMT
And yet I keep on playing Wii Tennis.
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Posted by marshall
Tue, 28 Feb 2006 13:50:00 GMT
There was an advertisement some years ago for Taco Bell with the tagline, "Make a run for the border." This was presumably intended to suggest the Mexican inspiration for their menu, but I expect most people silently added something like, "And if you can't make it that far, there's always Taco Bell."
Taco Bell and I have been spending some time apart over the past couple of years, largely because right across the street sits El Pollo Loco, home of the Grilled Fiesta Burrito. But lately I've been finding myself drawn to it again. I blame television. My friend Lee has gotten me and some other friends watching "Beauty and the Geek", a show where beer spokesmodels assemble computers and guys who track monkeys with lasers redecorate rooms with such lovable touches as messages on the wall that recall The Shining. The commercial breaks on this fine specimen of entertainment have featured the Crunchwrap Supreme, which sports the exact same few ingredients as every other Taco Bell menu item, yet is hailed as an "innovation in taste." On one night of weakness (as if watching Ashton-Kutcher-produced reality TV on the WB wasn't enough), this item looked startlingly good to me. And so it began.
As can be expected, the Crunchwrap Supreme wasn't anywhere near as good as the commercial made it look, but it reminded me that I really did like going to Taco Bell once upon a time. It also introduced me to the Caramel Apple Empanada, which, like most of the Bell's creations, shares little in common with its namesake, but is rather enjoyable if you take it for what it is. It reminds me somewhat of the old fried apple pies at McDonald's. I recently was seized with a craving for those things, and in my madness I came across a web site that cataloged the remaining McDonald's locations that carried the fried wonders. One of them was the Wal-Mart in Rancho Cucamonga. Imagine, all this time, I was a mere half hour away from oil-soaked apple goodness! But alas, sad news awaited me when I arrived at said Wal-Mart last night: on February 1st, the McDonald's there "went corporate" and switched to the accursed baked variety. I very nearly wept openly. Wal-Mart disappoints again.
So, for now, my apple-filled fried fast food fix will have to be satisfied at Taco Bell. Should I be glad for the ultimately disappointing commercial? Should I abandon the quest for the classic golden arches fried pie? Should I continue pondering what separates a Double Decker Taco from a Crunchwrap in terms of taste innovation? I'd ask for comments, but I know I'd just get invitations to poker sites in return. Lousy spammers. I hope you're happy you've ruined the internet. Well, no I don't. I hope your business fails and your buildings get crushed by burning trees but you escape unscathed to lead a better life because I really don't mean you any personal harm. I just wish those spamming energies went into something more productive, like cataloging the McDonald's restaurants that still sell apple danishes for breakfast. I seem to recall them being similar to the Sara Lee danishes, and nobody doesn't like those.
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Posted by marshall
Tue, 24 Jan 2006 14:25:00 GMT
Having a cold is lousy. But at least there's a bright side: Dimetapp. I love that stuff. They say it's for children, but so was The Incredibles.
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Posted by marshall
Tue, 15 Nov 2005 01:44:00 GMT
There are two key elements to a successful microwave dinner: quality and convenience. Quality is of course obvious: you want the food to taste good. I avoid Freezer Queen and Banquet dinners for this reason; I simply don't like the way they taste. But the convenience aspect seems to be sadly misunderstood by several of the microwave dinner manufacturers.
Read more...
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Posted by marshall
Mon, 26 Sep 2005 18:10:00 GMT
I came in to work this morning and there was an instant message up on my screen. It said it was from a user named rn55gjs2721950. I knew at once that it must be my long-lost friend Ronald Norman, who's currently 55, works in Australia for GJS Machinery, has a collection of 272 PEZ dispensers, and was born in 1950.
But alas, it was merely IM spam. Oh well. Guess I'll never hear from Ronald after all.
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Posted by marshall
Wed, 14 Sep 2005 22:48:00 GMT
I came across this history of Tetris recently, and it's quite interesting. What a crazy mess of licensing. I didn't know that there were two versions of Tetris for the Nintendo; I only knew about the version by Nintendo itself. It turns out that Tengen -- a division of Atari Games -- created a version as well, but was forced to remove it from the market because the rights to Tetris that were sold to Tengen weren't legitimate.
I like the Tengen version a lot better (you can find it for emulators at ClassicGaming); it's much closer to the Atari arcade version, which was always my favorite.
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Posted by marshall
Thu, 18 Aug 2005 06:32:00 GMT
Breakdancing Transformers
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Posted by marshall
Fri, 06 May 2005 08:03:00 GMT
For anyone who likes Star Wars and hasn't seen this yet, here's a wonderful article about How Lightsabers Work. Now you too can understand the wonders of the lightsaber! Helpful tips on everyday application of the lightsaber are included.
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