45. Taco Bell, Batman: The Animated Series, Crossbows

Phil, Jake & Jason rank fast-food chain Taco Bell, Batman: The Animated Series and crossbows on the List of Every Damn Thing.

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SHOW NOTES:

• Youtube is aggressively pushing sexy Fran Drescher content at Phil, such as this video where someone combed through episodes of the Nanny for material.
• We engage in some speculation about a reboot of The Nanny. After thinking about it, the Nanny itself was a reworking of similar stories.
• Dorito taco shells don't go hard enough, they're not dumb enough, there's not enough crystals on the shell. Go all the way. There should be a Mountain Dew sauce. Don't half-step!
• We discuss many Taco Bell ads, including those featuring Little Richard, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Godzilla and of course the Taco Bell Chihuahua. Phil has a lot to say about how Shaq & Hakeem Olajuwon helped Taco Bell launch the Double Decker Taco.
• Taco Bell was using the Run for the Border slogan as late as the 90s.
• The Taco Bell Cantina in Pacifica is the world's most beautiful Taco Bell.
• Here’s Taco Bell’s appearance in Demolition Man.
• Man-Bat is like a werewolf but he turns into a bat instead of a wolf.
• Harley Quinn is a culturally omnipresent sexy clown with a baseball bat and a PhD.
• Renee Montoya is a hard-boiled detective who was played in a recent movie by Rosie Perez.
• Clayface is a washed-up actor who uses makeup that turns him into a shape-changing mud-man. Body horror!
• Jason mentions the legitimately upsetting movie Monsturd. 
• Fleischer Superman cartoons are really good, they're by the animators behind Popeye & Betty Boop but they go more realistic here. They rely heavily on (and were innovators in) rotoscoping (where real motion is traced). They look super Art Deco. Here's an example of Superman dealing with some robots.
• The 1989 Batman movie directed by Tim Burton (who also made Pee-Wee's Big Adventure) maybe doesn't hold up that well but the soundtrack includes “Batdance” by Prince which would go high on the list if we ranked it.
• Bruce Timm was one of the main artists and designers on Batman: The Animated Series. His stuff looks really good but you get the idea that they needed to spray him with a water bottle every so often cause he'd get too worked up.
• Paul Dini was the head writer on Batman: The Animated Series. His sister taught one of Jake’s college classes.
• Beer Street and Gin Lane are a couple of woodcuts showing you two places: a cool place where people drink beer and an awful nightmare where they drink gin.
• The Ventriloquist is Phil's favorite villain. The actual villain is "Scarface", a dummy.
• Poison Ivy is a mad scientist, femme-fatale, ecoterrorist who looks like Tex Avery designed her in the 30s.
• Talia Al Ghul loves Batman, but her father is his sworn enemy.
• The Watchmen comic is ranked really high because it's good. It doesn't hit now like it did in 1986, what could?
• Here’s the cover of Wolverine Limited Series #4, which inexplicably features a gun sight on a crossbow.
• It turns out harpoon guns are more similar to cannons than crossbows.

ALSO DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:
Glenn Bell * Chipotle * Legally Blonde * Legally Blonde 2 * plant-based meat * sexy CEO Brian Niccol * hot sauce * Mexico City * Popeye’s chicken * vegans * square pizza * bagels * shirtless men wearing elaborate angel wings, gold lame shorts and furry cha-cha heels * loggerheads * cartoons * Lady Lovely Locks and the Pixietails * Mark Hamill * Martin * Ewoks TV series * the 1960s Batman TV series * Saturday Night Live * Shakira * Birds of Prey (movie) *