Like many of you, I plan on spending the 4th of July doing two things; loving America and watching the Coney Island Nathan’s Famous Competitive Hot Dog Eating Competition. This contest of consumption, the Super Bowl of the competitive eating sport, pits twenty men and women against, if not the scum of the meat product world (That distinction goes to Spam and the other potted meats) then it’s inbred cousin, the hot dog. Why does this food get raised to such a level of glory above all others? Is it its apple pie American-ness? A phallic fixation? The congressional lobbying of Big Meat Slurry? Who can say.
Other foods, while excluded from the competition (save the hot dog bun), do receive notoriety in other IFOCE (international Federation of Competitive Eating) Gurgitation (Competitive Eater) eating challenges. These other contests; beef tongue, butter, chili spaghetti, cow brains, haggis, mayonnaise, pig’s feet and knuckles, exist, but in far less grand competitions, Stanley and World Cups vs. the Super Bowl. The might nacho however is not the star of even one of them. Indeed, the only mention of the nacho in any of these competitions is when they are combined in multi-food events, a place far below the respect the epic dish deserved, and more importantly, a low down crying shame.
When this gets an eating competition and nachos don’t, there is something truly wrong with us as a society.
This 4th however, under the blessed gut of Oslorf, the Norse God of Consumption, or more fitting his Aztec counterpart Omacatl, I decided to right this infernal wrong. On a day when America can best be worshiped by sacrificing consumables at the altar of your jaws, the name of the game is patriotic gustatory overload. The martyr to be sacrificed is unimportant, and in the choice between a hot dog savior and giving nachos the glory they rightly deserve, I’m giving the underdog, not the hot dog, the upper hand.
So next year, while you’re fireworking it up at your local backyard BBQ, put down that intestinal case full of nitrates and meat slurry and pick up a nacho chip. As you get down on your knees in praise and stick it in your mouth, that it’s the American thing to do. George Washington would have done it too.
He killed his sensei in a duel and never said why. Was it over nachos?