I went looking for the waffle taco. I did not find it. But I did find something worth writing about.

And now, like every annoying independently made comedy movie ever, I shall metaphorically cut to black, and raise the title card that reads, "Seven days earlier..."

Cut to a scene of me checking email, because that's a fascinating visual in and of itself. Count the number in my inbox cluing me in to the fact that Taco Bell has been testing a taco that uses a waffle for a shell. Close in on my frantic, jerking hand movements as I...manipulate a mouse to find out the deal on Taco Bell's official site (you were expecting a more literal self-pleasuring, maybe? Nahh, not during work hours).

This was a last-minute thing that evolved from an editor-writer hangout into something more. Fun and beers were had by most.

TR contributors Peter Paras, Natalie Nichols and Melissa Molina.

Peter and Natalie with actor/producer Edwin A. Santos.

Editor and wifeslashboss

Deadline.com reporter Ross Lincoln and the TR crew.

Ross' "sacred heart of Mario" tattoo.

Melissa with regular commenter "Regular_Stormy."

I'll try to have another one of these around E3. It was great to interact with everyone in meatspace.

It won't be better than this one

Every time you think the movie industry is completely out of ideas, they prove that there are even more unoriginal concepts than you can possibly imagine, and producers will throw money at. Thus is Medieval Times, the restaurant where you get to watch live jousting, on its way to becoming Medieval Times: The Feature Film.

Well, right now it's in the shopping around stage. I suggest that if it does get picked up, a competing studio should immediately buy the movie rights to the Excalibur Casino in Las Vegas, which has a restaurant that's exactly like Medieval Times in the basement. Competing joust-restaurant movies - how can we lose?

And just to tie everything together, since the best Medieval Times reference was in The Cable Guy, how long before it occurs to somebody to cast Larry the Cable Guy in a Cracker Barrel film?

It's too bad the creepy Burger King and the Taco Bell chihuahua are retired.

Wait, did I really just write that? No! We must not accept chain-restaurant movies as a fait accompli! They need to stick to killing our arteries, and not expand their lethalness to our eyeballs and brain cells as well.

Although, to be fair, there is one that worked. And I give the company a ton of credit for going along with the joke.

(Requested by James.k.polk, if I remember correctly)

I've handled battling chicken nuggets before, but this is the first time I'm really delving into all-out, four-way fast food war. And there's no better item for this Texas Tornado-style oblong-off than what is pretty much my favorite cheap, deep-fried thing in the whole world - the jalapeno popper. Or depending where you get it, the Ched'r Pepper. Because there are a lot of fast food items I can buy frozen at the store which do a decent job: White Castle cheeseburgers, pizza, chicken nuggets, pizza bites - on a side note, Jack in the Box's new pizza bites are the worst item they've ever had. Mine were as tangy as blue cheese, but they were meant to be cheddar; I think it had gone way past sale date and I may or may not have had hallucinations as a side-effect.

This has been showing up in London, and will soon be making stops in Los Angeles and New York to promote the new Netflix episodes in the tastiest way possible. In a departure from the show, they are expected to be staffed by competent, well-adjusted human beings.

Follow Arrested Development on Twitter to find out when you can grab a frosty, phallic fruit on a stick. You can even choose your own toppings!

What's that you say? (In my imagination, anyway) Weird pet costumes are nothing new? You might be correct, but these are no mere costumes. These sushi cats - Neko Zushi - have a comic-book style origin story:

Neko-Sushi is an extremely unusual life-form consisting of a cat on top of a portion of sushi rice...

There are several academics who have devoted their lives to the study of these creatures. According to a number of these, Neko-Sushi make use of gaps in space to come to us from an alternate dimension. Beyond these "gaps" lies the world of the Neko-Sushi in which, it is recently understood, lies the true identity of the cats that dwell with us here in the human dimension.

They also have their own app...

And their own existential questions...

We know the rule of Sushi - fish on top of rice.
On the other hand we know the rule cats eat fish.
Cats sit on rice, where fish is supposed to be - why?
Contradiction and mystery in this world is always center of the criptic questions among Japanese zen monks.
And this is another Zen question -why Cats sit on rice instead of fish, not eating them? - the graet zen question, which proves the magical power of Sushi Cats.

..plus a movie. That will MELT THE FUCK out of your mind like so much uni sashimi at room temperature.

via Rocket News 24

A South African campground has its priorities in order, as it attempts to program robo-drones to deliver beer-a-chutes.

Whatever your feelings on drones in warfare, I suggest we can all get behind drones in beerfare, so long as they don't become sentient like Bender and hog all our booze for themselves. The only surprise is that alcohol came before porn on the research priorities list.

h/t Gallen_Dugall

Okay, so this happened last year, but it seemed worth talking about...

When it comes to labels and definitions of words like "nerd" and "geek," I've always identified most with the classical meaning of geek - a sideshow freak who bites the heads off live animals. In my case, they've generally been shrimp, and they've not put up a fight.

Now, restaurants make you aware of the risks to your digestion of eating raw seafood. What they don't do is warn you that your dinner could ejaculate into your mouth, with spermatophores that burrow into your skin. You might have a hard time arresting your dinner for beastiality, but the charge would not be inaccurate.

Check out the date of this story from last year, too: June 15th.

It's like this was the world's grossest marketing campaign for Prometheus.

Too late for Hamlet 2.

h/t Dana Harris

Expanding the menu is a noble thing, when you get it right - Jack in the Box is one of my favorite chains precisely because you can't really define what its signature item is, Carl's Jr establishments are best when they incorporate Green Burrito menu items, and Del Taco actually makes a mean double cheeseburger. So I generally applaud the pizza lace that takes the plunge - no order to the Hut is complete without chicken wings on the side. But Domino's and sandwiches? There's a big psychological disadvantage to that.

powerplantop

I blame Doc Brown - not the Christopher Lloyd version, but the soft-drink company - for starting (I think) the horrible trend of sodas based on savory foods by inventing Cel-Ray, the gag-worthy sweetened-celery beverage.

Now Jones Soda thinks they're doing Canadians a solid by making a poutine-flavored carbonated cocktail. Instead, I suspect they're going to make anybody who tastes it curse the name of Jones harder than Belloq ever did. Whoever decided that adding cheese and gravy to fries was a good idea should rightfully be a national hero, but the person who then decided that it would be better if you could drink it instead deserves to be force-fed Cel-Ray.

The only possible redemption I could see for it is as an ingredient in a really twisted version of Quebec''s favorite adult beverage, the Caesar. Because if you're already drinking something that tastes like tomatoes and clams, might as well have a side of fries.