I may be breaking all the gambling rules, but in my defense, I'm terrible at it
Half a century of being as ridiculous as I can be at all times
Hold on to your butts. Got ‘em?
I am 50 years old as of May 30 and normally I wouldn’t tell you the exact date of my birthday, but when I turned 40, former Mayor Peduto presented me with a proclamation naming May 30, 2014 as Virginia Montanez Day in the City of Pittsburgh, and then Google saw this and Google went and added it to my information and just like that, everyone knows my birthday so I can’t even lie about my age if I wanted to.
It’s right there. May 30, 1974. 50 years old. Al Gore’s Internet is a nebby jerk.
Some of you are astounded at this because, in your head, I’m still the same batshit, irreverent, socially awkward, chaotic girl I was when you started reading me, and I know from meeting many of you that there are lots of you who started reading me when I first began blogging as PittGirl. While it is true that I’m still batshittingly chaotic, it is also true that I started writing about Pittsburgh in 2005 when I was … are you continuing to hold your butts while I get my calculator out and do this math?… 31 years old. That means some of you have been reading me for just shy of … hold your butts even more tightly while I carry the one … TWO. DECADES.
To quote Dorothy Zbornak …
Wait. No. Wrong gif. I mean …
Two decades. Whew. I mean, yes, the time has flown, but also it has not. I’ve lived a lot of life over those two decades, but if we are being honest, I’ve lived the most life in the last three years. Separation. Divorce. Pandemic. Second degree. Graduate school. Debut novel. Therapy. Pittsburgh Remains to be Seen. Commencement speech. TEDx talk. Book launch. NASA launch. Post-Gazette essay contributing. Return to column-writing for Pittsburgh Magazine. Teaching.
I knew I didn’t want to be here at home for my 50th because my 40th birthday marked the start of the decline of my marriage, to be frank. My birthday became emotionally painful for me and turning 50? Well, I didn’t want to be here. Didn’t want to feel the need to have some great celebration. Didn’t want for anyone who loves me to feel the need to plan anything. So instead I sent my son and daughter off with their father and I spent my 50th birthday standing on the edge of the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland with my oldest sister Ta-Ta, which is particularly poetic considering those cliffs were the stand-in for the Cliffs of Insanity in The Princess Bride, one of my all-time favorite movies, as you know because you’ve been reading me for six hundred years.
It was a perfect trip with perfect weather and the start of a new attitude toward my birthdays—not as days of pain, but days of celebration for all I’ve accomplished and all I still have left to accomplish, like a second book (maybe) and finishing my Master’s degree in U.S. history and hopefully finding a fulfilling role that allows me to use that degree to foster in others an understanding of why Pittsburgh’s history still matters to our lives today and in the future.
So thank you if you’ve stuck by me this long; here’s to what’s next!
Let’s talk!
1. It’s one thing to suck; it’s another thing to pay money to display your gross level of suck
If you read the name Tucupita Marcano and go, “Is that one of the aliases Shawn gave to Gus in an episode of Psych?” you would be forgiven. He wasn’t the most well-known name to ever wear a Pirates uniform. (Side note: the two best names ever given to Gus by Shawn were Jet Blackness and Chocolate Einstein. Yes, I’m in the middle of a Psych rewatch.)
Anyway, Tucupita Marcano, not to be confused with Ovaltine Jenkins, is a 24-year-old professional baseball player who played for the Pirates from 2021-2023 in a stint filled with call-ups, send-downs, and injury—specifically an ACL tear that ended his season in August of 2023.
As revealed this week by the MLB in announcing his lifetime ban from the league, Tucupita Marcano, not to be confused with Ghee Buttersnaps, spent his downtime doing the most stupid thing ever—betting on MLB games. All told he placed 387 bets totaling nearly $150,000.
It gets stupider. Over two dozen of his 387 bets involved the Pittsburgh Pirates while he was a member of the team, but not actively so due to his injury.
And even stupider. Of the 25 bets he placed on Pirates games (“almost exclusively on the outcomes of the games”) guess how many he won?
Zero. Zee. Ro. Listen, I know exactly zero about the world of gambling and sports betting, but I swear if you had me place bets on 25 Pittsburgh Pirates games, I would win at least SOME of them much the same way you can sometimes get a decent grade on a test just by selecting C for every answer. Just bet against them.
It gets even more stupidly stupider. Of his 387 bets, he won … 4.3% of them.
Four! One. Two. Three. Four. Four out of one hundred bets. And he just kept betting until he lost his money and his future as a professional baseball player. Hard to imagine the keen cruelty of being locked in the prison of addiction to something you are absolutely atrocious at.
It would be like me getting addicted to math.
What a nightmare.
2. “It’s me. Hi. I’m the problem.”
An animal communicator was recently published in Public Source via an essay she wrote about how relocating to Pittsburgh disappointed her.
I should actually note all of her jobs: astrology coach, angelic healer, card reader, spiritual medium, sound therapist, animal communicator, psychic, Reiki master, writer and self-published author, which Public Source distilled down to “energy-healer, astrologer and writer” because if they listed all of them we’d be like … ummmmm.
Yes, she claims she can communicate with animals. I imagine if she talked to Milo she’d tell me, “This dog is telling me that you are being stingy with the snausages and that he’s perfectly happy being five pounds overweight, vet be damned, and also, his farts are burning your nostrils and watering your eyes leaving you running screaming from the room because he has been eating dandelions while you aren’t looking.”
First off, let me state that I love this city, but heckin’ yes there are problems here. I see them. I acknowledge them. I hope I can eventually use my history degree to help us better understand the deep roots of them.
The author left her life in Washington state to move to Vermont where she hoped the granola people there would launch her animal communication micro-business into profitability. When it didn’t, she headed for Erie, but she found the economy there stagnant and not good for the animal communication business either, which is no surprise. Most of the granola in Erie is in Wegmans; not the lake people. Nearly broke, she decided to give Pittsburgh a try. Here’s what bugged her:
She wasn’t aware of how poor our air quality is. Oh, dear. This isn’t a secret. This isn’t even an open secret. This is something we openly acknowledge and seek to address. This one’s on her for being surprised by.
The hilly terrain. I mean. Sorry the melting glacier water carved these beautiful but bonkers hills and valleys that we’ve spent hundreds of years learning to fold into our infrastructure and housing. Did you expect Ohio? This one’s on her too.
Our public transportation. Yes, it’s a problem. Also an openly acknowledged one. This is also no secret. But also, she lived in Mt. Lebanon, so this one has a bit to do with where she chose to live.
She wrote, “I’m from the West Coast, where there are reliable social services, efficient recycling programs and organic farms. I’ve realized that my health nut West Coast lifestyle just isn’t suitable for the Iron City.” I beg to differ, first because I don’t understand how the inefficiency or efficiency of recycling is her big sticking point, but also, there is simply no shortage of organic foods to be found in Pittsburgh. We have gone nearly full Portland granola people in some parts of the city. This feels like a nitpick on her part.
Public transit was too expensive at first because “no one told me about the ConnectCard.” Again, DO YOUR RESEARCH or just open your eyes. No one has been gatekeeping information about the ConnectCard.
Construction. Eh. You might as well complain about death and taxes because this is Pittsburgh and we have highways that have been under continuous construction since 1832. Valid.
“While at first I thought the trains were fun, eventually my ears grew numb from the repetitive messages about station closures, rerouting or the dystopian message about reporting abandoned packages: ‘If you see something, say something.’” Dystopian. Excuse me a sec …
Such a ridiculous word choice that I can’t take her seriously anymore.
“The city I encountered is subject to unpredictable weather, smells like an outhouse on warmer days and exudes despair and inequality.” Yes, no, no, and yes.
“Post-publication, this essay was amended to reflect the author’s recent receipt of help from the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, Dress for Success and the South Hills Interfaith Movement.” Huh.
I encourage you to read the whole thing for yourself to see where she had valid points about things the city can improve and where she is reaching farther than Elastigirl could on her stretchiest day.
Interestingly, user ArbyBeast on Twitter pointed out that the author also wrote about her time in Vermont and would you believe it follows nearly the same MO? Here’s what I expected! I did not find what I expected! Pay me to write 2,000 words about how shitty this place is! Both articles mention gaslighting but whereas Pittsburgh merely attracted her with social media posts of bridges and water, Vermont downright dared to “seduce” her. Scandalizing.
As it stands now, she has launched another GoFundMe to get the hell out of here. The $10,000 she said she spent relocating to Erie is now said to be $15,000. She is seeking $5,000 to relocate back home to Washington.
I bring this up because the article is getting attention and people should know that this isn’t the first time she has done this—moved to a city without doing adequate research and then bashing said city in a local publication. If Washington wasn’t good for her, nor Vermont, nor Erie, nor Pittsburgh, maybe it’s time she asked herself what the common denominator is.
That said, I will pay her $3 if she can have Juno explain why he ecstatically rolls in deer poop like its the nectar of the gods.
3. To Kamin or not to Kamin, that is the question.
In January we were all told that the Carnegie Science Center would be renamed to the … ugh. Hold on. I actually have to go look it up much like when I couldn’t remember if it was Aflipure or Ambliture or whatever the hell. Okay, the Daniel G. and Carole L. Kamin Science Center.
Initially, things seemed to be changing very rapidly, but recently, as a member of the museums, I received my latest Carnegie magazine and all throughout the magazine it is referred to as the Carnegie Science Center. Even weirder is the last four press releases coming out of their communications office have it as Kamin, Carnegie, Carnegie, and Kamin respectively. Their Twitter page is just as bonkers, and yes, I know it was renamed to X. Maybe the Carnegie Museums are taking a page from Elon’s Book of Terrible Name-Change Rollouts …
Carnegie, Kamin, Carnegie. But I am nearly positive that for a time that first Carnegie was changed to Kamin? Maybe I imagined it. Regardless, this whole thing is being poorly executed and has left me confused as to what we are supposed to be calling it these days. So in my recent tweet about the Pixar exhibit, I didn’t tag them and called it Carnegie. It wasn’t me being difficult and refusing to use the new name; it was me literally having no clue what the name is right at this moment.
Moral of the story: changing the names of iconic things in Pittsburgh is just never a good idea unless you are changing the name of the Marty Griffin Radio Show to Virginia Montanez Talks Pittsburgh While Getting a Little Bit Drunk Until They Fire Her for Reading Her Jaromir Jagr Fanfic On the Air. That is definitely a good idea.
If any of you have insight as to what the heck is going on six months after the gift was announced, I will permit you to email me provided you praise me very specifically in your first sentence.
4. Random n’at!
I’ve written three long things, so just a bit of space to share some shorter things:
Turner’s Hard is coming and Yinzers may molt out of their skin in excitement
Both Wegmans and Meijer are rumored to be seeking to enter the Pittsburgh market and I sincerely hope they do. We need way more competition for Giant Eagle who in one generation managed to transform themselves from the yinzers’ everyday store to the store where yinzers shop mostly for the things they couldn’t find at Aldi or Walmart. What a pricing failure on their part. Don’t email me.
The Clemente Family may be in hot water for selling Roberto’s story rights twice. I don’t love this and I hope it turns out to not be true or just a misunderstanding. If there is one Pittsburgher whose legacy should remain protected above all others, it is Roberto Clemente’s. We should all keep our eye on this story as it unfolds, regardless of where the truth leads us. Speaking of Roberto’s legacy, there’s a new children’s book about Roberto coming out soon! Not an ad.
The Pittsburgh Zoo has a new mascot who gives off decided Fursona vibes and I don’t hate it. Meet Ruby the Red Panda!
I’ve been screaming that Pittsburgh’s leaders need to start looking at turning the city into more of a destination because treating it only as a neighborhood/business center isn’t working. So the news that a new downtown revitalization plan has been developed is so welcome, and it looks AMAZING. One hundred percent on board with this.
5. That’s all!
That’s all for this old lady! Have a fantastic week! I have no schedule anymore with this silly newsletter, so you’ll get the next one when you get the next one! Be kind! Don’t litter! Stop driving like jags near cyclists! Look both ways!
And if you happen to see me at the local CVS screaming “CONDOMS. CONDOMS. CONDOMS,” don’t fret. I’m probably just rehearing for my show this week with my new gray-haired band Batshittingly Chaotic.
We may be old, but we still rock very hard until 8:30 p.m. at the latest.
See you soon!