Grand Galop
Week 2
What time of day is it?
Does anything matter?
Yes, for you must wait to see what it is really like,
This event rounding the corner
Which will be unlike anything else and really
Cause no surprise: it’s too ample.
Right around the time a man I didn’t know breezed past my high table and dropped off a bag of Tostitos (no apostrophe, incidentally, which may not have occurred to you before now because it didn’t to me until I realized the “diacritics”/human head-esque marks over each “t” don’t actually mean anything) with no explanation, turning to another table of regulars and chatting them up for a minute before returning to mine to answer what exactly I did to deserve a bag of free Tostitos, to which the man replied he had a friend who was a truck driver for Frito-Lay (hyphen optional, so who’s to say what those diacritics in Tostitos really mean after all?) and the company had done some Bears-branded Tostitos bags that evidently did not run through the team’s legal department and therefore had to be hastily removed from shelves and given away on the low, so that’s how he came to be passing out all these chips and hey, he said, maybe you’ll wanna keep it as a rare souvenir for such a dreary Sunday, which did occur to me but not in a serious way, though I did make sure to offer my thanks because only an idiot would turn down a perfectly good bag of TOSTITOS® Original Restaurant Style Tortilla Chips with a bonus special recipe on the back just for us Bears fans of Hot Italian Beef Nachos despite the flagrant disregard of general grammatical and punctuational points of order — and here I don’t feel like I have to tell you I’d long since finished John Ashbery’s Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror or that it was pouring rain out to such an extent that a local flash flood warning was in effect, which a teen driving a late ‘10s Ford Explorer would shortly hereafter find out when he flipped it on the road around the corner from where I was at the back of an industrial park, necessitating an ambulance, the fire department and a volunteer of at least one of those two who had been sitting at the table behind me to check out the scene — Joey Slye was kicking one of the worst field goal attempts I can remember seeing at a professional level, and probably the worst Washington FG attempt I’d ever witnessed in real time.
Not only was it wide right, it was short, flaccid, pathetic. The offense I was able to see as RedZone shifted schizophrenically from the first quarter of the Commanders in Denver to the climactic end of Chargers-Titans and Packers-Falcons — everyone in the place had signed off on the Bears as they stumbled to another defeat in Tampa Bay, content to watch more interesting games requiring less emotional investment — was looking, once again, like the Washington of old: A weak offensive line letting Sam Howell get sacked repeatedly, multiple missed FG attempts and an impotent defense making Russell Wilson look like he belonged on a Madden cover all felt as familiar to me as the cool side of my pillow or the taste of a staple Oktoberfest Märzen (which, by the way, is worth giving a little extra consideration to since a Märzenbier, which is German for “March beer,” is like the beer of Oktoberfests, which happen in September — a bizarre cross-calendar relationship that can, as with many other things brewing-related, be blamed on arcane Bavarian law).
The dog barks, the caravan passes on. Right? Right.
Ah, but then.
With the sky now a bit impatient for today to be over
Like a bored salesgirl shifting from foot to stockinged foot
By the time I’d finished winning on an oversize Connect Four board amid historical buildings and talking with two indie wrestlers who’d just wrapped up a Sunday afternoon match in the back space of a brewery somewhere out beyond the far South Side of Chicago, Denver had proven it was exactly the team we saw in Week 1 against Las Vegas. The funny thing? So had Washington.
Ask a hog what is happening. Go on. Ask him.
What it came down to was, once again, an ugly game the Comms got away with. How much longer can they keep it up? For now, again, the refrain remains urgently upbeat: Who cares? It’s a three-way tie atop the NFC East (spare a thought for the almost hapless Giants, who like Washington in Week 1, managed to get away from Arizona with a win). The Commanders are 2-0 for the first time in a dozen years. Eric Bienemy is on the ballot for mayor of D.C. Everything’s still coming up mangled roses.
And amid all that ugliness, the nonexistent first half defense, the missed FGs, the bumbled catches, let’s not forget there was maybe the single most aesthetically pleasing throw of the whole weekend. The way Spero Dedes describes Howell “slinging it” contrasts directly with what your eyes process simultaneously; how serenely the ball seems to glide through Mile High Stadium’s afternoon shadows before hitting the hands of Terry McLaurin is the stuff dreams are made of. (The NFL being what it is, of course, means you’ll have to click through first.)
Then the work is redeemed at the end
Under the smiling expanse of the sky
That plays no favorites but in the same way
Is honor only to those who have sought it.
Slice it how you want and help yourself to the talking head leftovers: The Washington Commanders are still undefeated in the Josh Harris era.
A nucleus remains, a still-perfect possibility
What You’ll Need
Makes 6-8 servings
1 bag TOSTITOS® Original Restaurant Style Tortilla Chips
4 oz Beef fat trimmings (from your local butcher)
1 Yellow onion, sliced
3 Cloves garlic, chopped
1 Red bell pepper, cut in small strips
⅛ tsp Red pepper flakes
Salt & pepper to taste
1 lb Thinly sliced deli roast beef, cut in wide strips
1 ½ cups Beef stock
1 ½ cups Hot pickled peppers
Directions
Place beef fat trimmings in food processor and blend until smooth.
Transfer to skillet over medium head and cook until fat has rendered out.
Drain liquid fat and set aside.
Discard solid fat.
Place rendered fat into large skillet on medium-high heat and add onion, garlics, and red bell pepper.
Season with red pepper flakes, salt, and pepper.
Stir frequently until tender (about 5 minutes).
Add roast beef slices and beef stock, lower heat, and simmer for 15 minutes, stirring frequently and separating beef slices.
Arrange TOSTITOS® chips on platter and top with juicy beef mixture.
Top with hot pickled peppers and serve.
Optionally, top with grated provolone and place in oven for 3-4 minutes.