Top 10 Jack-In-The-Box Tacos

Top 10 Jack-In-The-Box Tacos
The traveling Crumpet Collection goes golden brown in San Diego.

Jack-In-The-Box taco #1: Order tacos in even increments for the two-for-99-cents deal at Jack-In-The-Box—16 should do—for loved ones suffering a three-year hiatus from the Westwardly-prevalent fast-food chain out of reach for most residents of the South. The aunt or uncle who willingly and shamelessly orders 16 tacos at the drive through, while also producing a wallet-full of free taco vouchers distributed at Padres games, is definitely deserving of a taco . . . or two.

JITB taco #2: Upon bodysurfing amid a swarm of young professionals deceivingly resembling lifeguards with their “official” red foam “LIFEGUARD” tubes, one should not be lulled into a false sense of rip tide security. These apparent lifeguards bobbing around aimlessly are merely “junior lifeguards” getting their elementary school feet wet in the life-saving industry.

JITB taco #3: The alcohol beach ban, which prohibits drinking ON the beach, may be circumvented by engaging in “Float-opia” parties at sea. BYOBAR al mar: bring your own booze and raft whilst boozing it up at sea.

JITB taco #4: One may read every informative storyboard about San Diego history in the museum-haven of Balboa Park (if one does this, visit the art museum first, not last, to avoid nodding off in the sterile, immaculate quiet of an art forum) and still remain at a loss for why the international border barely sneaks San Diego in as part of the U.S. There is no geographic difference to suggest a natural topographic border; on a clear day, one can stand atop any high point and see Tijuana, and on a light traffic day for the “5,” the border is a mere 17 minutes away, the traffic alerts report.

JITB taco #5: Seaweed. That horrid marine vegetation of the deep that slinks between toes and snakes around the legs resulting in the bunny hop bodysurf technique, I am happy to say, has been reigned in to an extent thanks to the prodigious advent of the public works occupation of the seaweed-bulldozer. How positively cheery it must be spending one’s entire day at the helm of a beachcombing monster vehicle weaving in between sandcastles and beach towels shoveling vegetative clumps into monstrous heaps left to bake and fester in concentrated gnat-swarms.

JITB taco #6: Sea World, formerly a welcome alternative to the scarring amusement park neighbor Disneyland, home to Space Mountain, has since developed competing amusements of its own with a deceivingly-timed climactic roller coaster and a jolting airlift to the “Arctic.” However, the Busch-run enterprise’s ability to brainwash impressionable minds to seek the marine biologist career whilst revealing the positive environmental impact of beer sales, is, for better or for worse, unchanged.

JITB taco #7: Assembling the entire Swikard family , give or take a photo-shopped absentee or two, in coordinating white shirts and jeans for one photo on the beach is a production rivaling a Broadway production of “The Sound of Music” (complete with exponential generations of von Trapps); however, this particular performance was not near as mono-nationalistic given the range of representative Irish, German, Romanian, and Latino nationalities present and perhaps not near as harmonious given the rolling eyes, the inadvertent inappropriate pelvic placements, the Grim Reaper grins, the far-off gaze toward the enrapturing hotel architecture, if indeed the appearance of rapture at all, captured ever-so-candidly by a photographer whose rumored specialty was photographing wild animals and dogs.

JITB taco #8: A visit to southern California is incomplete without experiencing the sound of an approaching semi-truck dieseling through one’s basement door whilst the computer monitor renders electronic text unstable, reducing it to undulating hieroglyphic squiggles as Grandmother’s 217-plus bell collection rattles and rings, heralding the passing of a 5.7 trifle of an earthquake.

JITB #9: Even after 22 years of sitting in the passenger seat watching San Diego’s ostentatious freeway mileage (being so far at the end of the road, so to speak, border town that it is, to have so much excess freeway) overlap in both tangled and unraveling coils that suddenly terminate in rattlesnake-tailed east counties, one should never trust such passenger “experience” to actually reliably arrive at a destination when that passenger finds herself behind the wheel.

JITB #10: While my dear grandmother has always warned us of the perils of entering her “shrine room,” her own forbidden West Wing of sorts, dutiful granddaughter that I am, I never thought to question what exactly was in the shrine room until this recent visit, when she gravely requested, “Now, I’m going into my shrine room. If I don’t resurface in, oh, about ten minutes, send someone in after me!” During those ten minutes I tried to imagine why my Catholic grandmother would have a room dedicated to a little gold Buddha with Tibetan gongs and such. However the mystique of the shrine room still remains, as in the brief glimpse I got I could not confirm the existence of a little Buddha but for the piles of Christmas wrapping and bows, similar to what Santa’s workshop must look like, minus the elves. Or perhaps instead of elves, there may be Buddhas.


Most Wanted List: sweet (sweeeeeet) tea

To save time in our race against the clock to complete San Diego Nostalgic Must-Eats Bingo, I am appending the checklist here for future expediency and efficiency: Jack-In-The-Box tacos, Lido’s spaghetti and meatballs, Gaetano’s pizza, Rubio’s baja chicken burrito, Santana’s enchilada combo #5, Aunt Sayde’s chilaquiles, Welldeck sandwiches, the entire El Indio smorgasbord, Bon-Bons, Miss Donut’s chocolate covered old fashions, breakfast at Coco’s, frosted animal circus cookies, and the chocolate Shamu cookie indigenous only to Sea World.

Crumpets Continued: Top 10 Black Mercedes

L.A. through the rear view

Mercedes #1: When driving in L.A. one is ever harrowed by the relentless tailgating black Mercedes hovering like a tow car in one’s rear view. Such tailgaters are especially menacing when careening down hills of a certain Beverly persuasion, exceeding 55 mph on oily roads after rain, high on the thrill (assumedly) of chasing a lunchbox-packed economy car with cranking windows and no power locks out of posh neighborhoods, where such plebian automotives apparently don’t belong.

Mercedes #2: One must ignore ominous admonitions such as “NO ACCESS to Hollywood sign” and “NOT A THROUGH STREET” whilst winding up and around the perilously narrow, designed-for-mules-only inches of “road” in the residential areas just beneath the Hollywood sign. Keeping the foot on the gas, deftly dodging monstrous rubbish bins, and whipping around uphill hairpin turns like a resident Mercedes will get one there in one piece for a stellar photo, albeit with shattered nerves.

Mercedes #3: As local angels of the Los are quick to point out, freeways are called “THE 10,” “THE 5,” “THE 110,” never I-10. The “THE” craze even extends to streets, such as Figueroa Street is known as “THE Fig.” However, this system is rather problematic. If one walked up to a handful of people on the street asking, “Where can I find THE One?,” oh the variety of responses one is bound to receive.

Mercedes #4: In light of the United Nations-like ethnic territorial delineation in L.A., which even includes such obscurities as “Little Armenia” and “Little Ethiopia,” the sizeable Jewish population seems to lack a designated neighborhood, resulting in having to trudge past world-famous Pink’s hot dog stand, where a scruffy gentleman holding a baby bunny condemns the 50-deep queue for eating hot dogs stuffed with mixed meats. Bon appetit.

Mercedes #5: After a night out in Hollywood and packing away those olfactory clothes, try explaining to one’s grandmother upon return home why the laundry reeks of a scent none too medicinal.

Mercedes #6: Due to the recent alcohol ban on California beaches, enforcement officers have upgraded the proverbial red Baywatch beach jeep to an entire fleet of patrolling vehicles, leaving Malibu beachgoers sunbathing on lockdown as four-wheelers, tugboats, helicopters, patrol cars, and barges patrol for alcohol, oneth by land, twoeth by sea, and three-eth by sky, in the highly suspect code red terror of the unassuming beach cooler.

Mercedes #7: However, the beach fleet has yet to adequately police public nudity, as some men feel it is acceptable to drop their trousers and slip into swim trunks not quite fast enough to ruin more than one beachgoer’s luncheon respite.

Mercedes #8: Motorbikes should be A-listed in “Lonely Planet’s” ‘Dangers and Annoyances’ section for L.A. travel. However, their deafening arrogance may be eliminated by an opportunistically-timed, accidental fist pump out the car window as they try to slide by in between lanes of traffic, thereby preventing hearing loss and heart attack for everyone within a 10-mile radius.

Mercedes #9: Blaring Alabama’s “Southern Star” with the windows down at midnight on Hollywood Blvd is in every way mortifying and inappropriate. Even “Angels Among Us” would have at least been remotely topical.

Mercedes #10: Driving the segment of “THE One,” stretching from Santa Monica through Malibu lives up to every iota of “scenic” as parked cars line both sides of the coastal highway, giving passersby a fascinating study into the people that make this little slice of Monte Carlo a California beach scene. The contemplative surfers lean against their hoods surveying the sea, paying homage to Helios and Poseidon. The narcissistic Ray-Bans teen snaps a photo of himself against a backdrop of parking lot. A naked child, well exceeding the diaper age appropriate for public nudity, bares all to the highway of passing cars. The clunker mini-van spills out a doublewide’s contents of rusty beach chairs, coolers, (TVs?!), tents, buckets, surf boards, and mayonnaise-based potato salad. And many a black Mercedes lurks menacingly, nightmarishly, waiting for sweating, jay-sprinter valets to return them to the twitching toes of the accelerating fiends.

Most Wanted List: Egg-based brownie mix

Peace out, Brussels sprouts. And may it be known that this adventure was made possible in part by Kyler Post and Kelli Stansell of the Academy of Parallel Parking and Offensive Driving Instruction, of which I am a recent graduate.