SXSWi 2008: Some Like It Hot

Posted April 16, 2008 By Mike Wisian |

The Trademark Media team represented South by Southwest Interactive here in our own Austin, Texas last month. We learned some new things, made new friends, and consumed a lot of complimentary food and drinks (and some of it at a price). Rather than bore our readers with the latest interactive industry buzz, I’d like to share with you a tradition that we participate in every year at the festival: Nuclear Taco Night.

Nuclear Taco Night is an annual event put on by local taco/hot pepper enthusiasts during SXSW. Celebrating its sixth year, the event serves free tacos to badge-holders and non-badge-holders alike with only one catch: the tacos are laced with a generous helping of habenero peppers, then doused with various brands of hot sauce for good measure. These guys aren’t playing around. They even have a disclaimer that reads “Eat at your own risk” posted at the serving line.

At this year’s event, we had three TradeMark team members that had yet to be initiated by the trial of fire: Jean Conover, Janis Gonser, and Manoj Thomas. We got in line and loaded up our tacos. There were mixes with various “hotness” ratings from “2 out of 5” to “4 out of 5”. Everyone was required to get the 4 or face the greatest shame imaginable: um, well, being called a “wuss”.

We made it to our table, with tacos in hand and in taco-neck position, we all dug in. I’m not sure if living in Texas creates an immunity to hot foods, but surveying the table, I did not see anyone breathing fire or blowing smoke out of their ears. Perhaps some mild sweating at the nose. All of the inductees took the 4 out of 5 like pros and three of us were egging on the staff to cook up some 5 out of 5s.

The Nuclear Taco cooks would not be shown up.  They answered the challenge and began mixing up a new batch. I’m not sure, but I think I saw a tiny mushroom cloud blooming up from the pan.  After a few minutes we were summoned to get our 5 out of 5s.

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Taco-necks repositioned, we took a bite in unison. This time the Texas immunity did not save anyone. This batch must’ve contained some kind of Texan Kryptonite.  The reactions varied across the table: I panted much like a dog, Janis tried to deny his pain while simultaneously shaking his head repeatedly and tearing up, while Manoj wiped off the sweat from his scalp with eyes bulged. We can thank Nick Weynand, TradeMark Media president, for getting all of our expressions on film.

Luckily, the Ice Cream Man was there to extinguish our flames, serving free Pink Panther- and Ninja Turtle-head ice cream (with bonus gum ball eyes!). You won this round, Nuclear Taco, but we will be back… and next time we will settle for nothing less than a 6 out of 5!

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Mike Wisian is TradeMark Media's Technology Director. He uses his XHTML, CSS and programming skills to create Web sites and rich Internet applications.

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2 Responses to “SXSWi 2008: Some Like It Hot”

  1. Posted April 17th, 2008 at 1:13 pm, by Matt

    Awesome. Music is pretty spicy also. You guys need to come play “Nacho Roulette” with us sometime. 9 bean and cheese nachos…1 bean, cheese, and “Da Bomb” nacho. Take your pick.

  2. Posted April 17th, 2008 at 1:20 pm, by Mike Wisian

    Hey fella, you callin’ me out? Pick out your best nacho and meet me in front of the capitol, 1 fortnight, high noon.

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