Happy Wednesday!
Yes, Wednesday. This bitch finally managed to publish a Wednesday newsletter on a Wednesday like some kind of Wednesday-worshipping nerd.
Speaking of nerd, grad school went from 0 to a billion in the first week and since I’ve been on an academic break since March, my brain now always smells just a little bit like a campfire from working harder than it has for a while. Topics this semester include the Cold War, the Pandemic of 1918, Angel Island, the history of the shipping box (srsly), history of black incarceration, Alger Hiss, the Makahs, and more. So if you encounter me IRL, I know about the burning smell coming from the general direction of my hair. It’s managed.
Last week I mentioned I’d written my thoughts about the NASA launches, or lack thereof, that I attended at the invitation of NASA Social. It looks as if the Post-Gazette will be publishing those soon, so that’s where you’ll be able to read those words. Honestly, I wasn’t sure if I was going to write about my experience considering THERE WAS NO LAUNCH AT THE LAUNCH FOR THE LAUNCH OF A LAUNCHING ROCKET THAT I ATTENDED TWO TIMES FOR LAUNCHING BUT SAW NO LAUNCHING LAUNCH. But the P-G asked if I had any thoughts I wanted to share and when I finally sat down to digest them, heck yeah, I had some thoughts. Hence, the burning smell.
Let’s talk!
1. Annnnnd ittttttttttt’sssssssss—
Let’s start with the Steelers and their game 1 that was really the highs and lows and injuries and stupidity of 16 games rolled into one like an overstuffed chaos burrito. The Steelers managed, despite four interceptions, five turnovers and SEVEN sacks, to pull out a win only in OVERTIME. And that win came despite one of the goal posts rudely intercepting a Chris Boswell 55-yard game-winning field goal attempt. Ladies and gentlemen of the yinz, please up your volume:
I have to ask, is this the sound that a football being clotheslined by a goal post has always made or have they gone and mic-ed up said goal post, or even the football? It’s not just a ding. A dong. A doink. A donk. It’s more like someone dropped an unabridged dictionary onto a metal table from a mile up. An otherworldly THUD-BONG echoing through the stadium to announce to the world that Chris Boswell’s attempt was no good. It might as well just screamed out, “DENIED, YOU LOSER!”
What’s amazing is that some Steelers thought the kick was good and began celebrating, but none more embarrassingly than Kuntz who only realized the ball sacrificed itself to the upright after Boswell’s body language announced it.
DID HE NOT HEAR THE SOUND OF THE GOAL POST THUD-BONG REVERBERATE IN HIS BONES LIKE EVERY OTHER PERSON ON THE PLANET? People’s entire vestibular systems were reset by that sound.
I’ve written goal post so many times in this post that the words have lost all meaning. Just like the word launch, NASA.
Just call me Stare Glare Care Bear.
2. Re-enacting racism
Here’s a picture of Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano dressed up for funsies in a Confederate uniform in a 2014 staff photo at U.S. Army War College which I guess is a real place.
His defense of this:
First, labeling people who are calling out the celebration of an oppressive and tyrannical government that oppressed via tyranny an entire race of people as “oppressive and tyrannical” is some real meta shit. (That sentence made sense to my toasting brain. Just read it six times.) Absolutely no self-awareness whatsoever. Now, here’s where you all are going to sit your asses down and let me explain why this uniform is actually an inarguable manifestation of his racism and I’m going to do so as a student of history and a scholar of American slavery and the Civil War.
Confederate reenactment is absolutely a thing. Pulitzer Prize-winner Tony Horwitz’s Confederates in the Attic is a remarkable book (I have an autographed copy!) that takes a look at how the South keeps the legacy of the Confederacy alive, often through super realistic reenactments that see reenactors facing some of nature’s harshest punishments for the sake of realism. For these specific people in the South, they see the Confederacy as their heritage and they are weirdly devoted to that shameful heritage. Okay? So that’s one thing. The South and southerners and reenactments. Let’s set that aside.
Now. Yankees? Men born in FORKING NEW JERSEY* like Mastriano? Northerners? With no attachment to Southern heritage (and again, “heritage” is a shitty reason to keep alive the ideology that enslaving humans for the advancement of a regional economy and being willing to die for that ideology and to tear apart a union for it is something to celebrate)? For that kind of person to make a choice to “occasionally” dress as a Confederate and to do so at a school in Pennsylvania? There is no reason. No claim of heritage. No desire to honor forebears who made really shitty racist decisions. No emotional connection to anything … OTHER THAN THE RACISM REFLECTED BY THAT UNIFORM.
That’s the problem. That Mastriano has shown you time and time again that he is a racist but some of you will still vote for him. Here he is, this Northerner, this Yankee, this product of America’s armpit, thanking men for defending a statue of Robert E. Lee.
We don’t need a bunch of GI-Joe cosplaying racists with Betsy Ross flags and poor diets to be vigilant because statues of their racist heroes who went to war to defend their right to enslave Blacks might finally get torn down and relegated to the trash heap where they belong. Instead, we need all of us to be vigilant against this rise in the prideful display of bigotry from a section of the population that can’t seem to look past their damn AR-15s to see that the person holding it isn’t very supreme at all.
*For the love of God, New Jersey is not sending Pennsylvania their best. Oz. Mastriano. Ugh. Please send Bon Jovi.
3. BRAINNNNNNSSSSSS. But teeny tiny ones.
I love this. The Miniature Railroad and Village display at the Carnegie Science Center is always adding cool things and they’ve done it again with … ZOMBIES!
On Tuesday, the Science Center unveiled the miniature railroad’s latest addition: a replica of the Evans City chapel and surrounding cemetery as seen in George Romero’s 1968 zombie classic “Night of the Living Dead.” The model was installed Monday, revealed in a press conference Tuesday and will be on display to the public starting Wednesday.
Here it is in the actual movie:
I hope there’s a tiny muddy hand bursting out of one of the graves.
And while we’re on the subject, where are we on my idea to do this type of sculpture (Black Ghost in Lithuania) along one of our waterfront paths near the confluence except of a Romero zombie crawling out of the river?
I have the best sculpture ideas for Pittsburgh—like my Gene Kelly swinging from a working lamppost/fountain sculpture idea. Why don’t they ever happen? Instead we get actual human people trying to get Jane Seymour’s department store Boobs and Butts necklace charms made into giant Mount Washington sculptures.
Stare Glare Care Bear PREPARE TO STARE**.
**Hell yes the Stare Glare Care Bears is my new band name. Our first album is called Cute but Deadly.
4. Don’t whine
It’s short today. I have tons of research to do for a bunch of various Pittsburgh history projects I’m working on. And you’ll get bonus words from me this week when my NASA piece publishes. Have a great week and remember to send me suggestions for this year’s Yinzer Holiday Gift Guide!
A bunch of you emailed me responses to last week’s edition and I haven’t yet gotten around to replying to them, but I will.
If you’re mad I flat-out called Mastriano a racist, you can call the Care Bear Help Line at 1-800-CARE-BEAR.
Don’t press 1 for Share Bear (goody-two-shoes) or 2 for Dare Bear (naughty). Instead, press 3 for Swear Bear …
… and get ready to hear some shit.