I’m dealing with Tace Bell’s “Tortillapocalypse” and when you’re writing late night, what could be worse than not having warm flour tortillas to ease your late night needs to push through your writing block?

At first I thought I was an advertising ploy, but Taco Bell big wigs say this will impact profits and, I mean, Taco Bello never lies, amirite?

This Fourth of July was a welcome respite watching fireworks at Dodgers Stadium, which happens to be a longstanding Lloyd family tradition Another tradition is fighting the thousands of bad drivers trying to exit en masse from the Dodger Stadium parking lot while traffic control and whomever is helping them watch the anarchy in their lime green neon vests while we kill the environment idling on the asphalt trying to claim every inch of Elysian Park real estate. The entire process to exit was an excruciating one mile, 48-minute debacle.

The whole experienced harshed my mellow and put me into a funk as I mentally dived deeper into the spiral of writer’s block that the postgame Independence Day fireworks was supposed to eradicate.

So there I was at two a.m. trying to get the words on the page and wound up going Jack Torrance once again trying to get words on a page and yet going insane with mindless, hypnotic gibberish on the page. Surely this type of work won’t get me more Telly Awards (the latest arrival pictured here) to soothe my fragile ego that shiny trophies seem to embolden in one fell swoop at an awards ceremony. There is nothing better than flubbing your way through a speech with a gold or silver trophy in your hand and Kelly Clarkson’s “Stronger” song soundtracking your night. Nonetheless, my work resembled something like this:

I’m firmly convinced that if I wasn’t in the business of putting words on paper that eventually turn into moving images on screen that I would be twenty pounds lighter which would be a welcome sight to my cardiologist, but I do so one of my challenges is crafting that Big Idea consistently. It’s a burden I have embraced, but when the words fail, there’s only one solution: Make a Run for the Border. That border is the all night drive thru at Taco Bell. Here’s a classic TV spot from 1988.

I actually learned the secret of the Taco Bell Inspiration hour from an old colleague from the New York agency days. Scott Greene (* – names chanced to protect the guilty) was an incredible copywriter who got caught up in office politics after taking the private elevator of an XYZ Advertising Agency’s big cheese one late night and the boss had to wait an extra six minutes for his ride and fired Scott on the spot. In the hopes to relieve his elevator PTSD one late night after his firing, he called me and asked me to meet him at a Midtown Taco Bell to talk him down from an impending bender.

So I arrived in the middle of the night and there was Scott in his smokers jacket over pajamas and slippers looking every bit of insane as it sounds. We sat down and ordered from their value menu/dollar menu or whatever it was called racking up thirty-six dollars of meat and cheese filled tortillas and Mountain Dew to keep him on the sobriety wagon.

He said he didn’t want to become part of the “Wasteland of Forgotten Men” where old copywriters toil in writing coupons and obituaries late night at some newspaper with their graveyard crew. He told me all of the best Big Ideas can be found in the smooth future heartburn of a Taco Bell quesadilla with fire sauce. He swore by Taco Bell calling it the best Mexican food he ever ate. Being an Angeleno, aka the actual home of the best tacos int he world, I knew factually there is no such thing as “the best tacos in Manhattan.” There are only two kinds of tacos in that island: adequate, and whatever passes as a little better than adequate. He seemed to agree with me, but he pointed out that was true, unless you’re talking Taco Bell.

He then went on a rant/soliloquy detailing how fast food is unhealthy, how it preys on the poor by offering scientifically-engineered food products that are devoid of nutritional value, yet extremely high on emotional satisfaction. It was the emotional satisfaction that spurred Big Ideas he told me. All of the menu offerings at Taco Bell are extremely tasty, and best of all, cheap. Why spend fiver on groceries, he argued. What do you get for a fiver at the supermarket? A candy bar, a few oranges and a drink? Maybe? At Taco Bell, you can get a meal and hangout with the stoners who are wasting away.

“Taco Bell tacos are crunchy, crispy, meaty banana boats of spicy chemical goodness with the the Taco Bell Cool Ranch Doritos taco shell being the THE most important invention of this century,” he boasted. “But the once you sink your mouth into any of the flour tortilla creation, there’s an award waiting to be crafted and earned on the other side. These are must haves!”

He continued as to why Taco Bell delivers brilliance to the “Woke,” “Parents lie to their children about the cruelties of the world, and children grow up to return the favor to their parents. None of these things were true. Parents lie to their children about the cruelties of the world, and children grow up to return the favor to their parents. There are lies everywhere, except Taco Bell. Taco Bell doesn’t care about the fact they deliver heart attacks in a shell. All they want is to deliver you the ultimate food porn emotional satisfaction so you can get on with other satisfactions.

Since they share the same owner, in Manhattan, the Taco Bells and KFCs often share the same storefront. That equals a single “restaurant” that combines two famous brands into one mighty, delicious Frankenstein’s monster of empty calories, the Holy Grail of Mexicano and Souther USA blended into some sort of B-movie two-headed snack shack.

And just like that over a constant hum of munching seven-layer burritos—yeah, that not six, not five, but seven unbelievable layers of blended emotional satisfaction—we sketched out a new resume of for Scott that netting him a directors job that guaranteed him access to private executive level elevators. That was also the genesis of my Big Idea hunting that netting me dozens of shiny gold statues.

So today when I drove to my Taco Bell (along the same route that was detailed in Tom Petty’s famous “Free Falling” song about the very Valley I’ve called home since 1979) and they announced they were out of tortillas I was speechless. I was flummoxed to the point I didn’t know what to order and as the cars started beeping in a strange karmic payback for all of the ear damage I inflicted on the Dodger Stadium crew I ordered a mountain of food I wasn’t prepared for. I just sat in my car slackjawed wondering why the Tortillapocalypse choose to infect my neighborhood.

But you know what? After $14 of emotional satisfaction and a six a.m. five-mile walk to burn off the calories, the words flowed the second I sat down after a warm shower. By 10 a.m., the polished product was complete and emailed to the client. By one p.m., it was approved.

Taco Bell saves the day again…with or without tortillas.

*-Names are changed to protect the guilty.

Someone in your life, somebody has tried to rule you and told you that you would fail without them. Be inspired and conquer:

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