Friday, September 19, 2008

The Volcano Taco...

It was a Friday night.

I had just finished my interviews with Rhode Island College women's soccer co-captains Christina Tavana, Kayla Fleming, Danielle Martino, and coaches Mike Koperda and Jessica Knobel for my Advanced News Writing class.*

*I'm doing a feature on Tavana for this class. Boy, do I have a TON material to go over, and a TON more interviews to do. But it's for the alma mater...and my favorite college soccer team. It's a labor of love.

You see, Taco Bell was a staple of my diet during my undergrad years. A collection of candids during my senior year can absolutely confirm that. Since those years, I have developed far healthier eating habits, which has kept me away from the Bell for quite some time. What can I say? The Cheesy Gordita Crunch Supreme begins to lose its appeal after becoming cognizant of every single one of its 610 calories (333 of which come from fat). What's crazy is that I used to down these cheesy, melty, crunchy mini-meals 2-3 at a time, with a side order of nachos and a large Code Red Mountain Dew to complete my early-morning Mexican feast. No wonder my baggy jeans no longer needed a belt after a few months.


ANYWAY, I was oddly intrigued by this new Volcano Taco. The minuscule part of my brain where a small community of ommon sense cells reside told me it nothing but a standard issue hard taco with a red shell and cheesy lava sauce. But at 89 cents, it wasn't the biggest risk I'd ever taken.

In a phrase: it tasted like a damn taco. In fact, the sweet-sounding young woman who took my order immediately advised that they were out of the red shells, but "it still tastes the same with a regular shell." GIMMICK! GIMMICK! 01010101010101!!!!1

Nevertheless, I handed over my 94 cents (MA sales tax = 5%), drove twenty feet ahead, unwrapped my warm delight, and CRUNCH!

MMMM...hard taco. Somewhat spicier, yes. Volcanic? Hardly. There were no eruptions. My face did not turn red, and my upper orfaces did not emit smoke or fire (or lava), unlike that dude in the commercial. It was a marginally edgier taco, with a spicy aftertaste. That's all.

But tasted like nostalgia. And that, my friends, is sometimes better than any hyped-up promotional gimmick to attract suckers like myself.

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