Considering the Godzilla of Tortillas

Mike Venema is the kind of publicist who can convince you that the unveiling of a tortilla machine is nothing less momentous than the day Jesus was seen shopping for hot-pot holders at Pic ‘N’ Save.

He uses phrases like “I feel this in my heart” to hint that the machine might be the very implement needed to revive the national economy, reduce unemployment and communicate with creatures living beyond the stars.

“They call it Godzilla,” he said, preparing to lead me into the large, cavernous room where the Amazing Tortilla Machine lurked.

We were at the factory of a company called La Tapatia, which is a term to describe someone who lives in Guadalajara, although the factory is in Compton. I’m not sure why they named it that. I have been to both places. Trust me when I say they have nothing in common.

I am not here, however, to trash communities, but to introduce you to Mega Press, the largest, fastest, most efficient tortilla-making machine in the world. I know this for a fact. Mike Venema felt it in his heart.

How fast is the Mega Press, a.k.a. Godzilla? Well, if all the tortillas produced by the Amazing Machine in a 24-hour period were laid end to end, they would stretch from Valencia to Mission Viejo, a distance of 76.8 miles.

If you tippy-toed along it like Dorothy on her way to the Emerald City, you would be sashaying atop 576,000 delicious, eight-inch flour tortillas.

Gulp.

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It was a slow day when Venema felt it in his heart to contact me about Godzilla. The Heidi Fleiss trial had reached a predictable conclusion, the O.J. Simpson trial was continuing to simultaneously bore and fascinate millions, and Roseanne had not married, divorced or cursed anyone in weeks.

I was therefore susceptible to new ideas in my continuing effort to define L.A. A giant tortilla machine seemed at the time to fit into the wider scheme of things.

There is something almost cosmic about a single machine that, by next May, will have produced 100 million tortillas. It is a concept larger than life, a calculation beyond the average person’s ability to comprehend.

Albert Einstein was the first to create a formula that made the machine possible, t=fc2 (Tortilla equals Flour times the speed of a Conveyor belt squared), and Stephen Hawking expanded on the theory in his trailblazing “A Brief History of Tortillas.”

I am ignorant when it comes to understanding such matters. Before visiting La Tapatia’s Godzilla, my only close experience with tortillas was at a Venice restaurant called Casablanca, where two elderly women known as the Tortilla Sisters slap out dozens of them in a short period of time. I don’t know how many, exactly, because I never counted them.

Carlos Haro, the owner of Casablanca, shrugged when I asked and said, “Many, many.”

Many, many does not compare to the 400 zipped out every minute by Godzilla, but then Godzilla doesn’t smile and hum the way the Tortilla Sisters do.

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Mega Press stands 18 feet high and is 120 feet long. When I first saw it towering ominously over its smaller cousins I was reminded of a Stephen King short story from his “Night Shift” collection.

In it, a giant pressing machine in a dry-cleaning establishment somehow tastes blood. On the night of a moon as round as a Tapatia tortilla it breaks free from its moorings and strides through town, killing and terrorizing.

I do not anticipate that Godzilla will do that. Mike Venema feels in his heart that it is a beneficial, peace-loving machine, much like Jane Fonda, and will do its job forever with wit and good taste.

Tapatia’s president, Larry Flores, is proud of Godzilla. When his family began the business in 1971, they were producing 10,000 tortillas a day. Today, thanks to the Machine, they produce more than 1 million a day.

A million eight-inch tortillas, laid end to end, would reach from Malibu to Downtown L.A. and back again, as driven on by a 450SL at speeds exceeding the legal limit.

But I’m sure you’ve heard all you want to hear about a tortilla machine that does everything but sing “La Cucaracha.” I feel in my heart it’s time to end this and disappear in a cloud of tortilla dust and . . . Wait. What’s that I hear? OH, MY GOD, IT’S THE TORTILLA MACHINE RIPPING FROM ITS MOORING AND HEADING . . . NO, NO . . . DON’T. . . SCREEEAAAMMM !. . .

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