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Image 1: [[A large bear-like character bends over a takeout carton, with gray streams pouring from its mouth into the box.]] JACK IN THE BOX® Attachment 1, Page 1: Daaamn, I Got the Munchies. HARD-type. [[A bear-like character wearing sunglasses leans over a Jack in the Box takeout box, eating from it with a long tongue. Food spills around the box.]] From the Desk of Ray Smuckles. This was originally penned in 2009, which will become readily apparent. Wow. It’s actually been a long, long time since I had some proper, roots-style, couch-and-dudes munchies pullin’ at my soul. It hurts! I’m practically insane as I write this, completely imagining glowing outlines around the latest Jack in the Box creation. Have you seen this thing!? As part of its “LateLab” line of food designed to get stoned people in the car and on the roads, old JB just released the Ultimate Nacho Warrior PM Box: three of their basic fried tacos, sliced in thirds, covered in ground meat and nacho cheese sauce, with bacon, sliced Jalapeño Poppers, and Triple Manchero Sour Cream (sour cream with their Ranch sauce packet and Buffalo sauce packet mixed in) as garnish. In the ad they make Attachment 1, Page 2: the Jack in the Box logo out of hard-ass Wrestlemania chrome, totally with heavy metal edges and pointy spaces, basically glowin’ above an unseen smoldering battleground strewn with the bodies of faceless nacho warriors who couldn’t bring their hardest hang. This dish will be to my November what The Terminator was to American cinema. (A fun, good thing.) What the hell do I do though? I can’t go launchin’ the Escalade. We been ’dillious on puff since six PM, and I am pretty sure we all had about six Enrudened Tanquerays each. (These cocktails are basically a G&T with a small scoop of lime sorbet, but you got to have just the right slap’n’fizzle so the sorbet sinks and don’t make the thing creamy too fast. Kind of Molecular.) Fast food don’t deliver around here, far as I know, and pizza joints are closed. We could call a cab, but we’d tell him the wrong things to do, and wind up in the bottom of a river. (Ask me about Smacks Peel’s last birthday sometime...let me just say it’s a good thing that everyone in the taxi had health insurance, that the taxi was insured, that the city had insurance, that insurance answers the phone even though I am their client, and that Ben Manks’ Marina and RV Park had so many wannabe-hero rednecks to pull us to safety—even though we were obviously at fault for flipping into the cove after clipping the back deck of a houseboat named “Plaintiff Widow Junusuke Tanaka’s Den of Iniquity II” at a high rate of travel). Not about to risk that again. So, what can happen?! Me, Beef, and T ain’t gettin' any less hungry. The conversation’s gone bad, and real tense. We know we’re at edges, and my fridge is seriously lackin’ as I been outta town for a few weeks. It’s like that scene in Pulp Fiction where Samuel L. Jackson, as Jules Winnfield, shoots all those guys who have tasty burgers, only nobody has any tasty burgers or guns, and Beef is so frozen with anxiousness that he’s basically just a couch cushion with small wet pukes forming inside. [Okay, I’m gonna transcribe what happened next using the security footage of my home security system, which I accidentally had installed on the inside of the house due to me tryin’ out my Spanish on the wrong day.] Attachment 1, Page 3: [[Stands up from blogging, closes laptop, turns off TV]] Guys, this ain’t getting any better. Anybody able to cook from here? T? You’re like Cupboards MacGyver, right? [[Lying on back on couch, rigid]] Don’t talk man you’re freaking me out I can barely accept that there is more time Beef! Hush! Tasty hot food is gonna lead you from that forest you in! Ok. I’ll try. But you have to keep an open mind. [[Eyes closed, silently mouths]] No no no no no Oh, I got an open mind. It’s this open. [[Opens mouth, points into mouth]] [[Rummages around in cabinets and fridge for like six hundred minutes]] Okay! Uh...it’s kind of a mixed bag in here...lots of pickled stuff, and lots of cans. The only real starch is...I found one opened bag of tortilla chips, but they’re from last year, and so stale that I can’t bend or break them. Damn. We are screwed. We may not make it til daybreak. [[On back on sofa, eyes clenched shut]] Braise them in a sour cream escabeche then layer with cheese and rice and beans and roasted peppers like a nacho lasagna What? Beef? Top with shredded jack and broil until brown and bub...bub...bubbly... [[After saying “bubbly,” he makes a horrible frozen grimace like a doctor is sawing off his hamstrings]] Nacho lasagna! That’s brilliant! Like, just starches in layers, with a little acidic moisture, and cheese to bind! Just like any recipe meant to rehydrate stale bread! Beef, how do you do it, man! Attachment 1, Page 4: [[Rolls over and faces into the crack of the couch]] [[Concerned]] Nacho lasagna, huh. Well, this may be our only hope, so be careful, T. Make sure that top is extra-bubbly brown. [[I salute him, like I am the leader on Star Trek, and he deadpan mimes that his belly is growing.]] AFTERWORD. THE FOLLOWING EVENING. My boy Téodor really set this one to stun, I got to tell you. He “braised” ancient tortilla chips in some kinda’ tasty pepper solution, then used them like lasagna noodles between layers of jarred pickled peppers, canned refried beans, and cheese. He also microwaved some instant rice and smoothed that in, real nice. He topped it off with some totally ass salsa from Trader Joe’s, but then set it alive with a layer of cheddar (he sliced off the moldy parts of the block) and extreme dashes of my hot sauce. The whole thing went in the oven for WAY too long (my opinion at the time, not relative to actual time), then got bubbled under the broiler. Eleven hours, five days, and one Pope later, two dudes were fangs deep in a thick pile of scooped, rich, flavory goodness. When I say that two dudes were fangs deep, I mean that Beef was too frozen and freaked out to eat stuff, though I did wave a forkful under his nose (he didn’t move). Eventually we sat cross-legged on the carpet in front of him as he lay on the couch, and we pretended that he was Han Solo in carbonite. This worked really well for all of us, as T and I pretended to be Han Solo in various other types of material. Han Solo in a vat of slowly-cooling Bananas Foster had T at the top of his interpretive game, and my Han Solo in a bookstore that only sold books set in Dingbats had T bustin’ a valve (I was cribbin’ Chaplin heavy, I got to admit). Beef didn’t move once—straight carbonite player. So, things ended alright. We had tummies full of hot “Messy-can” (T wouldn’t let me call it Mexican) casserole, with a little Angostura to drill a hole. Then we made it most of the way through Braveheart before neither of us knew what happened next. ### Attachment 1, Page 5: [[A copyright notice appears near the top of an otherwise blank page.]] All content copyright 2023 Chris Onstad. This piece produced exclusively for viewing on Patreon, so forwarding it around is obviously uncool. Find more at achewood.com

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