Taco John's has been fighting to hold the copyright to the term "Taco Tuesday," but now they're letting it slip from their tired grasp. They'd been fighting with Taco Bell, which sought to wrest the phrase from the smaller company, saying the phrase "should be freely available to all who make, sell, eat and celebrate tacos."
Hearing that the phrase was copyrighted makes everyone wonder: Do I owe them royalties? Because I've been saying that for years: "Time to plan the week's meals. Well, we can start with Taco Tuesday."
Somehow we all got hypnotized into producing crisp shells filled with spiced meat simply because it was Tuesday. The day is named after the Norse god of war, Tyr, so it's not exactly the most natural connection. Unless Tyr was appeased with cheese and lettuce.
You'd think Thorsday would be better, considering he was the god of thunder.
Taco John's was my introduction to tacos, because they opened a stand in Fargo before Taco Bell did. As typical North Dakotans in the early '70s, we were wary of this foreign food with its tongue-bedeviling qualities, and we approached the store like the apes in "2001: A Space Odyssey," hooting with fear and false bravado at the monolith. Eventually, we tried the tacos, and were instant converts to this thing called "spice."
But we never felt compelled to have them on Tuesday. That would dislodge Tater-Tot Tuesday, and Tyr might smite us for our heresy.
There is no other food-day pairing that works as well as Taco Tuesday. Think about it. Taco Thursday is limp, because it's a hard T and a fricative "th." Before you write with complaints, yes, it's a voiceless interdental non-sibilant fricative, but I'm writing for a mass audience here.
Let's try some other pairings.