I missed Hard Knocks last night — I was TiVoing it in favor of the Mets game — but I’m told that Mark Sanchez was wearing a Taco Bell hat during one scene in a team meeting.

This, the intersection of Taco Bell and Mark Sanchez, is obviously the greatest moment in TedQuarters history. If someone can send me a screengrab or something, that would be tremendous. Until then, I’m just going to assume it looked like this:

Based on a Google Image search, that is by far the most common type of Taco Bell hat so I’m just going to go ahead and figure it’s the one Mark Sanchez was wearing. Also, if anyone has this or any other type of Taco Bell hat, please email me and we can negotiate a price.

And furthermore, one of the other Google Image returns for “Taco Bell Hat” is this photo, one of the more conflicting and terrifying images I’ve ever seen.

Bryan writes:

Hey Ted, you ever think about doing a mailbag feature? I know it’s kind of become a Bill Simmons trademark, but I feel like the TedQuarters mailbag would be hilarious. Maybe you could call it something else, put your own spin on it . . . I would be stoked to read such a post/series.

Well here you go. I thought about making this entire mailbag post consist of emails from readers requesting mailbag posts because a very high percentage of my reader emails do just that. I’m totally down — actually, I’ve done this once before. It’s just that I kind of space out and respond directly to most of my emails instead of posting responses here. My bad.

(And if I don’t respond ever, then that’s a double my-bad. I try to get to everything. Problem is I get a ton of emails — not because I’m special, just because I’m on a ton of silly distribution lists. So if I don’t reply it’s probably because your email came between a Red Bulls press release and a flurry of quote sheets from the Giants.)

There’s a contact form on the site now and a lot of you have been using that, so keep it up and I’ll do more of these. And please, feel free to send forth any random questions you’d like. I have opinions on nearly everything and I’m willing to formulate opinions on everything else. And tips to awesome stuff. I really appreciate tips to awesome stuff.

As for a name, I don’t know. I went with the above title because I couldn’t come up with anything more clever on a Friday afternoon. And as for my own spin, I’m not sure. My own spin is that I write it, I think. So it will most likely contain stuff about Taco Bell. Speaking of:

Catsmeat (who has a real name) writes:

I finally had my crack at the carnitas from Taco Bell.  Sorely disappointed and, frankly, a little grossed out.  It was a lot like the picture you posted on the blog — a nasty mess.  They even skipped out on the corn tortillas and left me with the regular flour tortilla, which was quite a travesty.  I’m also not impressed that I asked for carnitas and the girl looked at me and said: “Do you want the steak, pork or chicken carnitas?”  Sigh, Taco Bell.  Sigh.

Dude, our experiences could not have been more similar. Honestly, I’ve been mustering up the strength to write about the carnitas cantina taco for a couple weeks now, but it was just so underwhelming that I haven’t found the time.

Basically, it was exactly what Seth “Ted” Samuels described. Maybe worse. A pile of flavorless, unpleasant-smelling stringy pork in some sort of goo, overwhelmed by the onion salsa on top. Unlike Catsmeat, I got the appropriate corn tortillas, but they were dry, spongy and also flavorless.

And I also had trouble ordering! I figured it was because my local Taco Bell is the worst Taco Bell in the world, but Catsmeat has previously boasted a good local Taco Bell. Yikes. You’d think Taco Bell would have its employees adequately prepared to serve such a revolutionary new product. But the voice on the other end of the drive-thru menu acted like it had never even heard of the Carnitas Cantina Taco before. Also “Carnitas Cantina Taco” is very difficult to say.

Honestly, I didn’t even finish the thing. That is a terrible, terrible sign for a Taco Bell product. I even polished off the Pacific Shrimp Taco when I took it out for a test drive, even though it wasn’t exactly my thing. Plus — like always — the Volcano Taco I ordered came in a plain, yellow crunchy taco shell.

I really don’t even know what’s going on down there. I’m concerned that standards have slipped since the passing of Glen Bell.

Danny writes:

There’s some funky building in the works in Taiwan, with strange bulges in and out of it. And it’s called…TED!

Holy crap, what is that thing? I don’t know, but I know it’s awesome. The link within the link mentions that it’s “evocative of a mushroom,” and I’d say, ahh, which kind do you mean there, Mr. Huxley?

Also that ampitheater on top? Probably a badass place to take in a show, except that the renderings alone make my head hurt. Plus there’s almost no way that thing’s not going to leak. Whatever, that’s fine. Awesomeism in architecture never called for any sort of utilitarian design. It’s the opposite of that.

Wait a minute, hold on. Team Ted co-founder Ted Burke points out that this has to be some sort of practical joke: The design firm’s website is big.dk.

Note: This is the first-ever TedQuarters post that’s not by me. I’m out of town until Thursday, but I’ve enlisted the help of some friends and interesting Internet people to keep the content flowing here while I’m gone. Because this is TedQuarters, they will all be honorary Teds for the sake of their posts. I figured I’d start you out with a Taco Bell post so you didn’t get disoriented. Seth is a reader with access to a Taco Bell test market. He also recently kept a blog about his adventures south of the equator and co-authored an  epic JonahKeri.com post. – Ted

I’m settling into my new home in Berkeley, Calif., and I noticed today that a nearby Taco Bell is selling Cantina Tacos.  Seizing the opportunity to test them out, I swung into the drive through to pick up a carnitas taco and see how they did on this whole pork thing.  I also got two taco supremes (or is it tacos supreme?) with fire sauce, because I wanted to hedge my bets.

Unfortunately, the carnitas didn’t really do it for me.  The taco has a very strong porky flavor, but it seems much more like what a focus group thinks pork is supposed to taste like, as opposed to a real pork flavor.  Nor is it, like Taco Bell beef, its own real thing.  If you can imagine the shredded pork equivalent of bacos, that comes close.  The tortillas were the right level of softness, though a bit thin, and it was served with a lime, which is nice.

I appreciate the risk they took and they effort they made, but it just didn’t do it for me.  While there is a clear distinction between a beef taco and a Taco Bell beef taco — each with its own appropriate circumstances — to me this just tasted like a bad pork taco, as opposed to the Taco Bell styled alternative.  It’s hard to see this replacing a craving for a real pork taco, or anything else for that matter.  Granted, I’m in California, where tacos grow on trees.

We ran shrimp in March and are introducing new, slow-roasted pork carnitas. We’re doing more innovation around new premium proteins, not just chicken and steak. We’re also working on day parts: For late night, we’ve developed a “fourth meal” concept around music called Feed the Beat. For breakfast we’re in test in Tucson, Bakersfield, Dayton and Baton Rouge with a traditional breakfast at Taco Bell value prices. In Southern California, we have concept stores looking at beverages and snacking. We’re also trying out three premium-style beverages, [including] a Frappuccino blended drink.

- Taco Bell CMO David Owens.

There it is: In the midst of an otherwise uninteresting interview filled with business-speak, Owens spills the beans about a number of items of crucial import to Taco Bell enthusiasts like myself.

First of all: Pork! Outside of the brief shrimp experiment, it’s been a long, long time since Taco Bell added a protein of any sort, and it seems like pork is way overdue.

I’m not saying I’m sure I’ll enjoy it — to me, Taco Bell’s excellence is inextricably linked with its ground-beef products — but I’m excited to give it a try. Looks like the Bell is taking cues from Chipotle and other more upscale “Mexican” fast-food chains, and that’s fine by me.

They’re “also working on day parts.” That’s a hilarious marketing-guy thing to say. But hey, if it eventually means the glorious return of Taco Bell breakfast, I welcome it.

Speaking of: Now we know the closest breakfast test market to New York is Dayton. That’s about a 10-hour drive, so I guess I’ll have to leave in the evening and drive through the night to get there in time.

Owens mentions nothing about “Authentic Tacos,” “Cantina Tacos,” or any of the series of products detailed here. Looks like I’m going to have to move to Tustin, Calif., as that’s where all the interesting Taco Bell stuff seems to happen.