Mexican Food Sucks

Hello. Okay, FWIW, I don’t actually believe Mexican food sucks. I have enjoyed Mexican food, even though much of it looks like the photo above, an amalgam of disparate colorful cheap stuff in greasy fried bread. But I am now empowered to make this terrible and unfair generality about Mexican food because the concept was uttered during the final episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. It is now part of Pop Culture. I will now probably be officially cancelled once again, as I was several years ago when I disparaged Indian food. This is liberating. Full circle. Exciting.

I didn’t actually think Indian food sucked back in 2021, when I wrote that it did. It was part of an extended joke about cultural chauvinism and unsophisticated food stupidity. But the column was widely slimed because I seemed to be disparaging an entire Asian subcontinent and their dining habits. Now I get to go after Mexicans! Free of charge! And I can be terribly unfair and ridiculously judgmental and wrong.

One problem with Mexican food is that you can buy it for a dollar because it is essentially made of crap . Also, that it is all fajitas and tacos and empanadas, made with, like, two spices, but I don’t want to generalize. The truth is that one of the best meals I ever had was in downtown Cancun in 1978, a chicken dish in mole sauce, which I bought for a dollar. These were different times.

I hope you know I am kidding, but I don’t really care if you don’t. My point is that Mexican food sucks. Live with it.

Also, most South American food sucks. I frequently go to a Peruvian / Mexican / Spanish restaurant in Capitol Hill DC called “La Plaza,” where I am willing to pay $30 for a sizzling plate of two-minute old garlic shrimp, which tastes great but sucks.

You know what also sucks? Jewish food. I’m straying from the point a bit, but these Jewish people think you can chop up a calf’s liver, and mix it with a little chicken fat, and throw in some onions and hard-boiled eggs, stick it on rye bread, and people will pay for a sandwich of that goo. I will, but I’m an idiot.

Also, Italian food. Italians don’t know how to make food. They’ll eat squid! They cook it in its own ink! It’s like preparing chitlins in its own poop. Don’t get me started on soul food.

Oh, wait. Japanese food. The Japanese are an ancient society with a proud history but have never figured out you have to cook things. They will serve you objects that are still alive, with googly eyes and mournful faces.

Okay, I think I’m done here.

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Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll:

Good, then. Now is the time for real-time questions and answers and observations. Please remember that if you are reading this in real time, to keep refreshing the screen to see new questions, answers and observations. Many of today’s questions relate to Gene’s call for your stories about moments when you got really scared. Also, office hijinks.

Q:  Here is an aptonym for you:

In fact, there seem to have been a lot of murders committed by people named Slaughter.

—Jon Gearhart

A: Thank you, Jon. This is something important, in the aptonymic world, that had thus far escaped me.

This is Gene. All the water to our house in DC has just been cut off for 6 hours. The street crew just informed us. If this has never happened to you, it is devastating. If you have to poop, you have to go to a McDonald’s or something, and sit on their fetid toilet. Nuff said. In short, this chat might have to be cut short. It’s kind of like the end of the world.

I actually just heard myself asking the following question of Julien, my son-in-law and landlord, who is temporarily, for complex reasons, residing in the basement: “Do you think I can poop ONCE?” He said, “I think so. I hope so. “

I can report that it did work — Julien said, “excellent.” From this point on, should it be required, I will have to poop into a Washington Post sleeve, like a dog, and deposit it in a wastebasket.

Julien is married to my daughter, and the father of their children, and I feel shame.

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TIMELY TIP: If you’re reading this on an email: Go back to the top of this post and click on “View in browser” to see the full column live and online, and to read and make comments.  If you are doing it in real time, keep refreshing the screen to see the new questions and answers that appear as Gene regularly updates the post.

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You are officially allowed at this point to upgrade your subscription to “paid.'“

Also, you can send it new questions / observations right here.

And you can comment right here

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Q: Office hijinks: I once superglued an officemate’s chair to the floor. It was hilarious for about ten minutes, and then I got reported to HR.

A: Thank you.

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Q: Office hijinks: My ex-wife once went to the bathroom in her office and soaped the mirrors with hilarious expressions such as “no farting in these premises.” She never got caught.

A: This made me laff.

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Q: Not what you are asking for but similar to your experience working in Albany (where I actually happen to live now) I spent one semester of college inserting the phrase ""the sun never sets on the British empire"" into every paper I wrote. "

When my mom married my dad, she was working as a lawyer and her secretary was VERY MAD she wasn’t invited to the wedding. My mom had to get new business cards since she was changing her last name to “Koch” so while she was on her honeymoon, her secretary “accidentally” got her business cards spelling it “Kock” as revenge for not being invited. On my mom’s first day back, her secretary handed her the cards with a sarcastic “Oops” and a shit-eating grin on her face that made it clear she knew exactly what she was doing. 

A: Nice.

 "Office hijinks:

Q: As a bored tech support guy, I would sometimes remotely configure people’s mice to only operate when moved at a very specific (usually slow) speed.  Then revert settings when called over for help, and revert  back again once I’d left.  Rinse and repeat untilI I got bored again.

One April Fool’s Day I submitted a proposal that for various technical reasons involving acoustic measurements in an air traffic control room, my team should send somebody to fire a starter pistol in that room while the controllers were on duty and actively directing traffic.  Without warning.  I even spelled out “APRIL FOOLS” with the first letters of each word in the title (I remember it started “A Proposal: …”).  I nevertheless had to back things off in a hurry when at least one executive expressed enthusiasm for the project.

A: Might this not have been a fatal event??

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Q: The search and replace function is a good one for hijinks.  Select find and replace all in an outgoing email:replace the word ""I"" with the phrase ""I, the great one"" and replace the word ""you"" with ""you, you idiot.""  Can be done quickly when a colleague has stepped away from his/her cubicle.  Or for fun together with office pals at then end of a day with an odious incoming email from an arrogant higher-up, to laugh but not lose job."

A: Okay, this made me laugh out loud.

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This is Gene. I feel I need to retell a story. One day, in the late 1980s, I was in my office in the Miami Herald and got a direct message from the publisher of the paper. He was a nice but very straitlaced guy. The message said, in its entirety ,“Suck my Protestant Dick.” It took me a few seconds to realize that Dave Barry was in his office, and apparently took a few seconds of his absence- he was probably peeing — to do something subversive.

Gene, again. I’m calling us down again, because we have no water and I have to use the potty. Which I will have to find elsewhere.

I will see you on Thursday. The results of the Invitational are excellent,