SWEET ON U

Dear Puddin' Pie,

The Hard Taco song for April is called "Sweet Tooth Trollop." To coincide with the release of this ridiculously splendid song, I am also unveiling a brand new swing dance move, the "Bob Cratchit." It goes like this: the couple is dancing... they're dancing... they're dancing, and then suddenly the man FLINGS the woman straight up in the air. There is another man waiting in the second story window, and he does a quick Charleston kick with the girl as she flies by. Then all three partners yell "Bob Cratchit!" (Some day, my biographer will criticize the fact that every dance move I invented features the dancers yelling out the name of the move as they do it. My preemptive rebuttal: that's why you're the biographer and I'm the dance move-inventor.)

Download Sweet Tooth Trollop, and other songs that make you want to Bob Cratchit the night away.

Love + Candy = Better Love

I'm totally going to get into trouble for this, but I’m prepared to disclose the unofficial list of NECCO's Candy Conversation Hearts phrases for next year. These phrases are chosen 9 months in advance because the recipe for the candies calls for both barrel-aging and a process called "The Trials," a confectionary boot camp in which imprinted candy hearts are subjected to extreme temperatures, white noise, and violent desiccation.

In a recent phone conversation, a NECCO employee detailed this lengthy process to me, saying, "HAND-CARVD. HARD WORK. CARPL TUNNL. MISS FAMLY. WORTH W8ING. THEY RULE." He then added, "LET'S KISS."

Why would anyone care about the Sweetheart phrases for 2011? Let’s just say there is a girl you are sweet on. (If you are a woman, then you are hypothetically bi-curious in this scenario.) You work out a can’t-fail strategy of giving her a Valentine's candy heart inscribed with phrase, "SWEET ON U." You draft a mock-up for this plan on real blueprints. Everything is all sunbeams and buttercups, until you buy a box in January and learn that: Holy Buckets! The phrase "SWEET ON U" has been discontinued!

Did I mention that it's already January?! 

That's why I'm leaking the 2011 candy conversation phrases now. I want to ensure you have ample time to construct your intricate bi-curious wooing strategy around them. Here goes:

 (I believe the idea of this one is that consumers can scratch off either the B or the last O, depending on their needs)

  

The last three are somewhat enigmatic right now, but it is my belief that they are topical and will make sense to us by the end of the calendar year. Sweetheart phrases often have predicted cultural trends for the following year, such as "Tweet Me" (2009), "Dwarf Planet" (2005, in reference to Pluto), or "Ripken Streak" (1982-1998). 

Was BPaul BBunyan a Blumberjack?

Technically, he was a blogger (groan!), and while I'm blogging about food (still groaning from prior joke!), I wanted to rant about the fact that the health food is just food with more adjectives. Like “health.” Let’s compare Triscuits to their Trader Joe’s equivalent.

Triscuits contain: wheat, soybean and/or palm oil, salt. Warning: Contains wheat.

Wendy's Organic Woven Weaves contain: whole-grain bulgar durum semolina flour, pure deionized Cascade Mountain fair trade Spring water, sun-ripened Baltic sea salt, organic expeller-pressed eastern pasque flower oil and/or hemp-filtered rapeseed oil, hand-teased early autumn butcher's yeast, high fructose free-range Indian corn syrup, 100% anti-oxidant enriched privy-aged dung butter. Warning: Hand-woven on wooden wheat looms that are also used to process traces of weathered prune masa.

Which cracker would you rather eat? Neither! Because like the rest of us, you are saving your appetite for January 2011, when you can eat platefuls of XBOXO!

With warmest regards,

Zach

The Two Man Flannel Springboard 14" Flying Hack

Dear Friends,

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In this issue:

I. Toe Heel Flap Step Stomp Buffalo Scuff He-ball

II. We Came, We Saw

III. New Hard Taco CD Available... wait for it... NOW!

IV. The Frugal Philatelist

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I. TOE HEEL FLAP STEP STOMP BUFFALO SCUFF HE-BALL

Maybe you're a tap-dancing junkie, or maybe you're just a kid that likes to party now and again. Either way, I'm your pusher-man. The Hard Taco song for August is called, "The Funny Wagon," and it has all the real tap-dancing you need for some real good times this weekend. I've got your basic paddle and roll, your shim sham shimmy, and of course, I can set you up with some shuffle ball change heel dig flea hop flap triple cramp roll.

As a child I idolized the great tap dancers, many of whose names have long since been forgotten (I want to say Teresa Heinz and Danny Glover?) They had so much grace, and they could say more with a bunch of clicking sounds than most dancers could say with no sound at all. Truly, there is nothing more satisfying than the sound of metal on wood. Not only does that explain our universal love of tap-dancing, but it also explains our universal love of hitting cymbals with wooden drum sticks and watching horses walk back and forth on covered bridges.

It is also why one of the most popular sports on television is the Lumberjack Games.

II. WE CAME, WE SAW

What can I say? If loving lumberjack games is a crime, you might as well whip out the ink pad and take my fingerprints now, because I have no intention of being rehabilitated. I cannot resist the erotic sounds of the underhand chop, the jack and jill crosscut, the hot saw double buck, the ironjack axe throw, or the two man flannel springboard 14" flying hack.

You may be saying, "Hold on, Hard Taco. You didn't mention log-rolling (otherwise known as birling) in your list of favorites."  That was intentional, and asking only makes you look more foolish. Many of us do not feel that log-rolling should even be considered a Lumberjack Sport, because when the event is completed, the appointed log has not been chopped/cleaved whatsoever! You wouldn't say someone is a great axe-murderer because they can stand on top of somebody, would you? Of course not, and standing on top of a log doesn't make you worth beans as a lumberjack, either.

In reality, my beef with log-rolling is that it is the only event that doesn't produce that satisfying metal-on-wood sound. I have thought about this a lot, and I have reached the conclusion that the rules need to be modified so that the competitors wear tap shoes. It would sound just like regular tap-dancing, but soggier!

Anyway, if you want to get a taste for lumberjack sports, I recommend the Squamish Timber Sports Games in Sqamish, B.C., on ESPN3, or the Vicodin International Lumberjack and Lumberjill Games in Oconto, WI, also on ESPN3. The Vicodin International is the only event that I know of in which the chief sponsor is a schedule III narcotic.

III. NEW HARD TACO CD AVAILABLE... Wait for it... NOW!

Run, don't walk, to the nearest record store right now! Now turn around and run back home again!

Now you've burned off enough calories so that you can sit and listen to this CD a few times and not gain too much weight. The dazzlingly new album, "Down the Wrong Pipe," is guaranteed to be as loveable as your own children, and as magnificent as that necklace of human ears you made in Vietnam. As usual, the price is lung-shatteringly low at just $6, including shipping!

IV. THE FRUGAL PHILATELIST

Have you fantasized about owning the rarest stamp in the world? When I was a kid I used to dream about that stamp with the upside-down airplane on it. Then I discovered girls. And then I discovered this stamp with 12 small tacos on it and forgot about girls completely. You, too, will lose interest in women once you see this stamp, and with enough of them, you can ship that mail-order bride back to Greece!

With warmest regards,

Zach

A Decade Fondly Remembered

Dear Friends,

   If you remember any of the following, you were probably alive during the 1980s"

1. The phrase, "That would be Smurfy!"
2. The first two years of George Bush Senior's presidency
3. Funny T-shirts

   That's all I can think of right now, and I'm second guessing whether the last one should count. Nevertheless, it should now be abundantly clear why I burden you with pointless, impersonal mass emails every month. Where else would get such charming regurgitations of pop culture nostalgia?
   For those of you who weren't alive during the 1980s, don't feel bad. There will be a special section next month of jokes that will only be funny to people who were dead by 1979.
   Anyway, the reason I bring all of this up is that "The Eighties" (as we used to call it) was when we, as a nation, finally learned how to dance. If you ever want to be completely repulsed, rent a movie that was filmed in the sixties or seventies, and fast forward to the dance sequence. It will make you wonder how the human race ever perpetuated itself. I did a little research on the web, and it turns out there may have been a rudimentary form of dancing even as early as the 1940s! Thankfully, there aren't any movies that go back that far, and no one filming a period piece about that era would be sadistic enough to subject us to this.
   How does this apply to Hard Taco? Well, the June song, "Pottymouth," is a quirky, danceable frolic that will make you want to really cut footloose like that maniac in "Flashdance." It's perfect for doing all the great moves from the Wiener Dog Strut and the Chubbo to the Funky Skidoo. Don't waste another second... Hurry over to K-mart because you can't download leg warmers from our site (yet!)

With warmest regards,
Zach

Our motto is and always will be: "There is no cure for Pac-man fever! But a couple of aspirin may help bring the fever down."