Welcome to YELLOW!
I’m not going to lie. If we have to go back to red, I will go, but I will absolutely go KICKING AND SCREAMING AND POSSIBLY PUKING.
I’ve decided to embrace yellow. Cautiously. Like I’m hugging a cactus. Or a chihuahua.
It’s a new world out there, is what I’ve realized as I’ve chosen this week to begin putting my unmanicured troll toenails (this is not even a 1% exaggeration. I need to check the Constitution to see if I’m even allowed to open-carry these bad boys) into the water of civilization again. My car desperately needed tires, so yesterday I got them. I’ve made appointments for the dogs to see the vet in June, for me to get new glasses, for my kid to get his braces adjusted.
It’s a bit scary, but I’m also ready to be cautious and take that step.
But here’s a pickle. We all should wear masks. I do. But, EVERYONE IS WEARING A MASK. I’m a nearly-deaf lip-reader, yinz. I no longer know what anyone is saying to me. The service technician greeted me at the car dealership and I tried my damndest to read her eyebrows, I did. And apparently what her lips said that her eyebrows did not was, “This is going to be $400 more than what we quoted you.”
Who the hell knows the things I’m going to agree to now that my lip-reading superpower has been Kryptonited.
“Yes, I’ll take the $7 warranty on this $12 coffee grinder, Target.”
“Yes, you asked if I’d like to make a donation to the food bank, but I thought you asked for my zipcode, and I said, ‘Sure. 15642!’ and now I have negative $14,000 in the bank.”
“Yes, I’d like your store credit card, Marshalls.”
I’m screwed.
Let’s get to it!
The sequel to me trying to teach my father how to take and send a screenshot is me trying to teach my mother, over the phone, how to copy and paste a link from one text message convo to another.
I was driving when she called. (Hands-free, so don’t email me, jag.) This is verbatim:
Mom: “Gin, when you get home, could you send Stacey (my sister) that link you sent me earlier? She wants to see it.”
Me: “You could just copy and paste the link to her yourself right now.”
Mom: …
Me: …
Mom: “What?”
Me: “I’ve shown you how to do this. You’re gonna go to the message where I sent you the link, right? And you’re gonna put your finger on that link and you’re gonna hold it. Don’t lift up. Press your finger down on it until a little option to ‘copy’ pops up.”
Mom: “Okay. Gonna open up your message. Gonna hold down. Okay. Got it. Then what?”
Me: “Then you’re gonna go to your text message convo with Stacey.”
Mom: “Right.”
Me: “Now, you know where the words appear that you are typing? That little box?”
Mom: “Sure.”
Me: “You’re going to put your finger to that box near the cursor and hold your finger there and a ‘paste’ option pops up.”
Mom: “Okay. Okay. Gonna hold my finger down. Paste. Okay, great.”
Me: “Did you do it?”
Mom: …
Mom: …
Mom: “So you’re saying I need to open my text messages to Stacey?”
I need this pandemic to be over so my dad can just show up at my house like he normally does and drop three personal computing devices in front of me and say, “All the text messages I send say they are coming from your mother, but all the emails your mother sends say they are coming from me. And I accidentally deleted the internet from this laptop."
Pittsburgh history time!
The other day, I typed “Pittsburgh accent” into the newspaper archive search and I set the dates within my favorite range of Pittsburgh history — 1865 to 1960. I was not disappointed. Come with me, then, as we take a look at some of the historical news articles about our manner of speaking — which is the verbal equivalent of shaking a box of glass and rocks while kicking another box of cats.
First, we are going to take it back all the way to 1891 when this article appeared in The Pittsburgh Post:
Interesting. The first hint that Pittsburghers were speaking differently was their word emphasis choice. Putting the emphasis on the first word to the point that it took up all our energy and we had nothing left to give to the rest of the sentence.
“ARE yougoingtoseeamanaboutahorse?”
“HAVE youseenthepuffedsleevesonMillieMays’dress?”
Moving on. 1915. Pittsburgh vocalist Christine Miller has appeared on stage in New York City. The next morning, a critic for The New York Telegraph absolutely dragged her, calling her dress “Jezebelitish” and mocking that she probably got it at Horne’s. The nerve! He called her voice “highly overrated.” Early on in his critique, however, he went after the city as a whole:
Noo Yarrk.
Cincinnater.
It seems that the Pittsburgh accent one hundred years ago had a bit do with some long Rs and also some Rs put in places where they don’t belong. This of course brings to mind one word, right? Worsh. This is all making sense.
Now, we shall go to 1932. It’s April and Carnegie Tech’s Drama School is putting on a play, “Who’ll Take Papa?” What fun! In attendance is The Pittsburgh Press’ showbiz columnist Florence Fisher Parry, and Florence has a nit to pick:
Florence could not handle the young actors’ Pittsburgh accents. And she wrote her column to convince Carnegie Tech that they need to help their drama students speak a more “cosmopolitan” english.
“Harsh and unpleasant.”
So, let’s add this on to what was distinct about the Pittsburgh accent in history. A hard, guttural R and a liquid L. Plus throaty consonants. Basically, according to Florence Fisher Parry, Pittsburghers were just growling their words, I guess. In fact, earlier in her column she says that if anyone in the cast had needed to say the word “bird,” it would have come out at “bur-r-r-r-d.”
Basically what I’m learning here is Pittsburghers have always really loved to show off their Rs.
Also in 1932, a professor of English at Pitt published a piece in The Record about the Pittsburgh accent/manner of speaking, and he found it to be more about intonation than pronunciation as told to The Pittsburgh Press:
So by emphasizing PRUNES it sounded to Mrs. Jones as if the grocer was saying, “PRUNES?! What’s wrong with your stopped-up-butt that you need a whole pound of PRUNES, lady?!”
So far we have misplaced Rs, guttural Rs, liquid Ls, emphasizing the first word and then having emphysema for the rest of the sentence, and now, emphasising the wrong word. Whew. We got problems.
Let’s jump ahead to 1954. In a letter to the editor of The Pittsburgh Press, Mrs. Charles Terr of May Street, formerly of Brooklyn, wrote:
First, the uppity hoity-toitiness to name these Pittsburgh girls after COAL is some Real Housewives of Brooklyn shit, Mrs. Terr.
Second, she’s not wrong. It all sounds just about right.
And third, gotta love the illustration that ran with the letter:
Damn it, Anthracite and Bituminous! Stop yer hollerin’, yuns kids! I’m tryna worsh the clothes dahn ‘ere!
Like I said — rocks. Glass. Cats. There’s just no safe place for the ear to rest.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this little stroll down History Lane. It’s interesting to see how our manner of speaking has changed, and how it has not changed at all. Finally, if your children don’t name their next Terrible Towel-diapered doll either Anthracite or Bituminous, are you even a Pittsburgher?
The Post-Gazette’s TV writer Rob Owen has the fun job of getting paid to watch TV, but he also has to deal with local boomers regularly emailing him ridiculous questions and complaints. And 99% of the questions they email him could easily be answered via a five-second Google search. (“Settle a bet. Is there a comma in Walker Texas Ranger?” “Whatever happened to Falcon Crest?”)
But the complaints? That is where true joy lives. Take, for instance, a recent email he received from “Barry, Cranberry Township.” No age is given, but I’m going to put Barry’s age at older than a Golden Girl but younger than a Grumpy Old Man.
Barry is upset about a specific set of infomercials that regularly shows up on the local stations. Here are some of the words he uses to describe them:
“Nauseating”
“Absolutely sickening”
What in the world is being sold on WPXI that has got Barry bent over his rusted burgundy toilet bowl praying his Cracklin’ Oat Bran doesn’t make a reappearance? Guns? Rolling papers? MAGA hats? (BOOM! POLITICS!)
Nope.
. . . I would like to know how he can make those statements when those absolutely sickening Westshore infomercials started airing last fall far before this pandemic existed and supposedly created a different commercial landscape for WPXI.
West Shore Remodeling.
Those nauseating bastards. Trying to make money by selling their home remodeling services.
Absolutely sickening.
Makes me want to force-puke my pineapple tapioca jello salad all over my TV doilies. It’s bad enough I gotta regularly hear about four-hour erections, but can’t a girl just watch Ryan’s Hope without having to hear about ENERGY EFFICIENT WINDOWS, WPXI? Land sakes.
Barry. Call me. I’m at 976-BABE.
Well, here’s some good news!
“Our technicians are reporting an uptick in blatant open area behavior with an increase in rat activity and cannibalism,” Witt said.
First, Blatant Open Area Behavior is my new band name. “Rat Activity and Cannibalism” is our first album.
Second, you already know the question I’m going to ask, so say it with me …
At what point will the pigeons start feasting on each other?
And can I watch?
I’ll bring my own pom poms to the Market Square Pigeon Thunderdome.
When it’s pigeon versus pigeon, I am definitely team pigeon. Embroider that on a pillow and send it to me.
Twitter out here stealing my schtick:
People I have asked, “Wait, what day is it?” in the last week: My son. My daughter. My car service technician. The dentist receptionist. People who have asked me, “Wait, what day is it?”: My son. My daughter. My car service technician …
No one knows. Time is pointless. People out here trying to DoorDash Chick-Fil-A on a Sunday.
One of these days I’m going to ask Siri what time it is and she will say, “Bitch, who cares? I’m napping.”
I’m going to end this one here because it’s Friday. It’s Yellow. And it’s also purple thirteen o’clock.
I don’t need to tell you to stay home this time, jags. You’re allowed to step your own troll toes into civilization now. Cautiously. Be safe. Do what the health officials recommend you do. Wear a mask. Social distance. Wash your hands.
And for the love of God if you see me out and about, enunciate with your eyebrows please.
Stay well, jags.