By Josh Gondelman — 20 Jul 2026

#193. Taco Bell and You

I'd love if you shared and subscribed to the newsletter if you're enjoying it! I'd double love if you paid a couple of bucks for it, but if not that's okay too! Also, if you got a charge on your credit card from Sweater Weather Productions, that's your regularly scheduled renewal of your pre-existing subscription here and not fraud. Sorry for the misunderstanding!

Anyway! This became a long one! Sorry or you're welcome!

Hi everyone,

For the bulk of last week, I was cooped up at home, hiding from wildfire smoke and diarrhea lettuce. On Sunday morning the air looked clearer, and breathing didn't feel like standing directly behind an idling eighteen-wheeler. Maris and I took Maggie the Pug for a nice long loop through the neighborhood, and we kept passing and being passed by a young FedEx driver absolutely BLASTING r&b out the non-door of his truck. It felt exhilarating to get to enjoy an ambient element of the environment rather than shrinking from it.

Everything feels a little brighter (metaphorically) now that it's brighter (literally) outside. My across-the-street neighbor's roof deck features a single vibrant sunflower in bloom. It nods in the breeze. On a clear day, the lone flower is a small oasis of nature thriving within a grid of human-made structures. Amid last week's smog it's a bleak metaphor of what our species does to natural beauty, isolating it from its environment and choking it within an inch of its life. Thinking about it as the first thing is, unsurprisingly, better for one's mental health.

a blurry sunset behind the brooklyn skyline through a rain-spattered window — Isn't this lovely when you're not worried about the rain trapping smog inside it and leaving a layer of soot all over the ground?

A few times during the week I snuck out through the haze for a commitment I'd made pre-smog including a lovely double date and a small part in brilliant pal Rachel Litchman's Programme 4 live show. Rachel is a legitimate visionary who invented an entire town called Golden Sands and its many weird businesses and entertainment options. Programme 4 comprises a tv network full of uncanny programming as well as surreal advertisements. I legit lost it over hearing the Sklar Brothers do voiceover for Laser Melachrino Strings and Aimee Mann giving a testimonial for the UTI Institute, which teaches marketable skills to artists. Ted Leo was an amazing host and showed off a great breadth of wigwork. The whole evening has such a defined aesthetic and sense of humor. It's really special, and I am so happy I got to be a little part of it for a night.

Professionally, I'm experiencing a moment where people are open to hearing from me with ideas, but I don't have any deadlines. Theoretically, this is the best time to be creative. In practice, I'm in need of a little kick in the butt to get started with a big project no one has specifically asked for. I wrote my last book in 2018 while I had a full-time writing job and was itching for something of my own to sink my brain's teeth into. Now with my steady work mostly being touring and podcasting, I've got more time than ever and no one bothering me to use it wisely. And, like, how can I start outlining a novel when I have to get a haircut? When would I find the time to shape this new hour of standup into a one person show to take to Fringe next year when there are TWO DISHES IN THE SINK I NEED TO CLEAN? I will figure this out, but it's so funny to me that I seem to do my best/most work when I'm already doing other work. I am excited to see what I come up with once I am busy enough to keep myself busy. Anyone else?

Meanwhile, I have been staying occupied lately! I hopped on last week's episode of The Bugle with Andy Zaltzman and Nish Kumar to talk about the state of America and the state of the U.K. and how no one who was at Taylor Swift's wedding will tell me anything about it.

I also had a really fun chat with Siri Dahl about formative pop culture crushes for her podcast First Thirst. Obviously I talked for a long time about Julianne Moore as Maude Lebowski in The Big Lebowski. In addition to being such a fun and cool podcast host, Siri is a porn performer and the co-founder of the Corn Telethon a yearly event promoting free speech (in a cool way, not the way assholes do it) and raising money for organizations that support sex workers.

And I once again wrote an off-season pep talk for Boston Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla for the great Katie Heindl's digital magazine Basketball Feelings. And in other written stuff news, I learned recently that my looksmaxxing satire piece for McSweeney's was their most read-article in June after being the second-most-read one in May! That's so fun and exciting to me!

poster for my bottlerocket social hall show on 11/12 at 7:30pm (it's a thursday) — Pittsburgh! Let's eat your freaky french fry sandwiches and do a show!

Looking into the future, tickets for my live shows in Pittsburgh (11/12) and Cleveland (11/13) are on sale now! Bottlerocket Social Hall and Hilarities are two of my favorite venues, and it would be great to see you there if you live nearby! My whole hour of jokes is different than last time I was in (either) town!

I've got a whole bunch of fun stuff in NYC this week (plus a Wait Wait recording in Chicago) including Frankenstein's Baby tonight at Union Hall listed below!

PEP TALK FOR TACO BELL

NOT the scene of the crime. Mario Tama/Getty Images

The parasite cyclospora has been traversing the nation like The Dave Matthews Band on tour. And PLEASE know that the only reason I am not making a joke about dumping a bunch of poop out of a tour bus into the Chicago River is because I've made one of those too recently. But I DO understand that it's relevant given the amount of times the word "diarrhea" has appeared in the news lately. How do I get linked up with diarrhea's agent, am I right? It's in everything lately! Timothy Olyphant WHO?

Lettuce, ultimately, provided the vessel through which the illness spread, which means my childhood distrust for salad has finally been validated. And there's not really a way to mark yourself safe from spring mix. Washing greens and herbs can only do so much to avoid disaster. You really need to cook them in order to stave off explosive diarrhea. (Quick digression: As far as I'm concerned, ALL diarrhea is explosive diarrhea. If your diarrhea isn't explosive, you're just taking a shit. And yes, it makes me laugh to imagine Bill Maher saying that in his extremely smug tone on television.)

The only upside to this whole calamity is that a new bit has been inducted into the Dad Joke Hall of Fame on its first ballot. Congratulations to: "Salad? No thanks. I'll have the fries. I'm trying to be healthy."

Because some of the culpable lettuce had eventually made its way through various Taco Bell locations and then RAPIDLY made its way through the bodies of their customers, the government started to probe Taco Bell. In actuality, the lettuce was not generated by the innovators of Fourth Meal; it originated with an agribusiness giant called Taylor Farms. Taylor has since recalled the lettuce, which is both the normal choice of words and a weird one. It sounds like you're reminiscing about bygone leafy greens. "Yes, I recall that lettuce. It was the produce that made me almost shit my pants for an entire fortnight."

In even more actual actuality, the outbreak has gone unchecked thanks to the Trump administration's demolition of public health infrastructure and food inspection (aka RFK Jr.'s personal 9/11, as in he committed it, not that it was inflicted upon him). Far be it from me to imply that the guy whose commitment to science begins and ends with prodding at roadkill he found might be underqualified for the job of keeping America healthy, but perhaps he could use some supervision from someone whose Wikipedia page doesn't include the phrase "[he] took the raccoon's genitals."

Now, look. I do not consider Taco Bell to be a haven for balanced and holistic nutrition. But I do think if we are blaming them for more than their normal, industry standard amount of diarrhea instigation (already overstated, imo), we're taking our eyes off the ball a little bit. Taco Bell, you do not deserve the blame for this crisis. You do deserve the blame for convincing the world that Mexican cuisine includes Doritos. But not for cyclospora. If you are guilty of anything at the national level, it's for making us all think that "supreme" means delicious, thereby laundering the reputation of an increasingly-illegitimate and politicized judicial branch of our federal government. And while that is enough to make me sick, it does not give me diarrhea.

After all Taco Bell has given us, it's only fair that when we talk about them, we think outside the buns. If you know what I mean.

PEP TALK FOR A READER

I recently received two similarly broad pep talk requests. I tuned them both up a little bit, format-wise, and I'm going to respond to them together.

I know I need the pep talk but I've gotta narrow down the prompt.
AND
I need all the pep I can get, kind sir.
- Ennui Will Rock You

I want to thank both of these readers for writing in to express their general malaise. I get a lot of requests about impending job interviews, feelings of loneliness, family misfortune, and frustration with AI, and I appreciate the specificity. But I also respect these readers' willingnesses to – in the words of the somehow not-late Don Henley – get down to the heart of the matter and talk about a kind of overall badness of vibes.

While I don't think that the present is a uniquely demoralizing period of history, it does feel demoralizing in some unique ways. All sports entertainment seems to be sponsored by apps that let you bet on whether cities will be consumed by wildfires and which political leaders will be overthrown when. If our government were at all interested in curtailing actual fraud, the whole "prediction market" industry would be a honeypot for the kinds of low-effort scammers like Donald Trump's longtime teleprompter operator who allegedly made $100k betting on what words would appear in the president's speeches. It's maybe the most obvious non-coincidence in the history of occurrences and happenings. And yes, I am dismayed at how many of the bottom-feeding hucksters in the Trump administration look like me in different little outfits. Thank you for asking.

With the only growing industries apparently being insider trading and plagiarism, and climate change continuing to accelerate thanks in large part to a domestic fetish for fossil fuels, things really feel discouraging in novel and exciting (?) ways. Housing and healthcare are now so expensive that having a primary care physician is more of a flex than driving a Lexus. There are myriad systemic reasons for this pandemic of gnarly feelings. It's important that we think about how we interact with bigger systems and what we can do to organize and influence them (or dismantle them) for the purposes of creating a better world. And it feels good to get involved. But sometimes the little picture of "think globally, act locally" means taking an afternoon to throw a frisbee around in the park with a couple of friends or making ice cream from scratch at home for a pot luck dinner.

It can feel enormously satisfying to attend a protest or form a union at your workplace or canvas for a political campaign. But no matter what Bluesky tells you, there are other ways to spend some of your time that also have value. And no matter what Instagram tells you, you don't have to be on a lavish vacation in Italy (sponsored by CauliMarket, the website where you can bet on which vegetable will cause the next outbreak of gastric distress) in order to have a good time.

As stupid and bad as our larger structures feel lately, the world is full of the small pleasures that make life worth living. No matter how oppressive the big picture feels, nothing can stop you from hearing a child pronounce a word incorrectly, and failing to correct them so that they keep doing it. It is likely that you can afford to pick up coffee on the way to work for your favorite colleague, but even if you can't, it costs nothing to enlist them for a little trash talk about your least favorite coworker.

You're allowed to call someone you haven't spoken to in too long and tell them you miss them. You can do it any time of day if no one's watching. Write a birthday card by hand and drop it in the mailbox if you have ten minutes and a stamp. You can look up the answer to a crossword clue that's making your brain itch if you really want to, as long as you don't then lie and tell people you finished the puzzle on your own. (A person has to have a code after all.) Invite your friends over for game night and then get drunk and reminisce instead of playing games. Or just play the games. I'm not your boss or your dad.

Listen to a record by a band you've never heard of. Re-listen to a record you've heard a thousand times. Laugh when your dog farts. Teach yourself to sew from a YouTube tutorial. Read the book that's been sitting on your nightstand for weeks.

The best things in life might not be free, but a lot of the good stuff is available for twenty bucks or less. Sometimes you've got to remember what actually feels good to your body and brain rather than exclusively letting the legitimate reasons you SHOULD AND DO feel bad take their toll.

Beauty and joy do not exist regardless of oppressive headwinds. They persist despite those forces. As long as we have to show up and be people every single day, it's nice that there are still french fries and mini golf and inside jokes. It's okay to have fun in the present as we work towards a better future for everyone.

PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK:
Matt Berninger - "Martini Me Fatso"

Like many guys my age, I have a soft spot (gut) for the music of The National. I'm pretty sure I've slotted Matt Berninger's solo work into the newsletter before, which is a little ironic considering his band is known for tunes that range from glum to bitter. Sure, they occasionally detour into the wistful as well. But that's not the dominant mode. The National makes drinking alone anthems for after the midlife crisis hits but before you buy a motorcycle about it (or after you've already had an affair go wrong about it).

On the other hand, this tune almost has some shake to it. Certainly it's got a little chug going on. And the opening lyric "Martini me fatso/I can't die" legitimately made me laugh out loud. It's such a funny thing to consider someone shouting to a friend while drunk. This is mid-midlife crisis music designed to be played loud before the other shoe comes crashing down and sending aftershocks through your hangover.