And we’re back!
A two-week break for AS GOD IS MY WITNESS I THOUGHT TURKEYS COULD FLY means we have some stuff to talk about. I’m still working on my Pittsburgh authors gift guide and I hope to have that up by Saturday so you can hit up the local bookstores for some great gifts for the bibliophiles in your life.
Let’s get to it.
1. “She’s gonna do a superhero landing!”*
My oldest sister Ta-Ta and her husband became collegiate volleyball fans a few years ago, and when they realized Pitt volleyball would have a match during their Thanksgiving trip here from Virginia, they invited me and the other sisters to go. So on Thanksgiving Eve, most of my family (about 14 or so) headed to the Penguins game, while me, Ta-Ta, and my sister Tina Fey headed to Fitzgerald Field House with Ta-Ta’s husband, who we’ll call Dubya because that’s how my yinzer father pronounces his name. So listen, I knew Ta-Ta and Dubya were fans, but reader, they are STANS. They had us wait outside in the cold 30 minutes before the doors opened so we could get close seats to see the Pitt side of the action. They went on and on, amping me and Tina Fey up for THE TIME OF YOUR LIVES JUST YOU WAIT. They knew every Pitt players’ name, number, height, birth sign and preferred steak doneness. They could barely keep their excited butts in their seats during warmups, and Tina Fey and I, the cool cats that we are, looked at each other like LOL THESE NERDS.
Then the match started and us cool cats saw the first real jump and kill by a Pitt player and it felt like watching Thor land out of the sky in front of you on Grant Street. Just like …
Boom.
Sudden. Extreme. Awe.
How are their bodies doing this? These girls are FLYING. They are effortlessly sailing through the air, destroying souls with kills, saving last shreds of hope with impossible digs. About five points into the first set, my mind blown by the athleticism, I, a physically fit woman who exercises 45 minutes a day, leaned over to Tina Fey and whispered with complete sincerity, “I am a potato.”
By the end of the first set, I had picked out my favorite players (#5 and #13). By the end of the second set, I was in a constant state of heightened anxiety, my palms sweaty, every point sending me up to the moon or down to hell. By the end of the third set, I would die for any single Pitt volleyball player no questions asked here is my potato life it is yours.
I’m a new fan, nay STAN. I had the time of my life, and I bought tickets for this weekend’s match.
Hail to …
2.Pittsburgh would like a word, Elon.
I’m going to need you to read that again. Go on. Traffic … or tunnels. That is the choice, according to Elon Musk, the penis-shaped-rocket-building billionaire (not to be confused with the OTHER penis-shaped-rocket-building billionaire who also LOOKS a little bit like a penis).
Anyway, Elon, whom I openly adore for SpaceX, has decided that his idea to dig a network of subterranean one-laned tunnels under the most clogged American cities will be the magical traffic remedy. He believes these underground vehicular naked mole rat tunnel systems are our only salvation … from traffic. Not more bike infrastructure. Not better mass transit options. No, Elon Musk believes tunnels are our only choice to alleviate traffic.
Tunnels.
Elon? A word?
Have you met Pittsburgh? Have you met a Pittsburgh tunnel? Have you met a Pittsburgher and their ability to treat an approaching tunnel mouth like it’s a brick wall or a ring of fire or the actual entrance to Satan’s hell-lair? Tunnels don’t alleviate traffic, you magnificent batshit egotistical market-manipulating space wizard; they CREATE traffic. Just because you’re going to send cars through the tunnels at 125 mph doesn’t mean people are going to APPROACH THE TUNNEL MOUTHS at 125 mph. No, they’re going to brake and they’re going to bottleneck and they’re going to make lots and lots of traffic and no amount of “maintain speed to tunnel entrance” signage is going to fix that. But good luck with shooting single cars around a loop underneath Vegas like you’re playing with pull-back toy cars on a Matchbox playset.
Also, I can’t decide if my new death metal band will be called Satan’s Hell Lair or Penis-Shaped Rockets. Screw it; we’ll just be called The Elon Bezos.
3. Finally, I feel smart while watching Jeopardy!
If you saw Jeopardy! on November 17, you saw that the Double Jeopardy! round had an entire category dedicated to Pittsburgh addresses! I’m not going to lie — I got the $1,600 question wrong. I could not figure out what the hell they wanted as an answer on that one, but a contestant did get it correct. In fact, the contestants had a correct answer for every one of these Pittsburgh address questions:
You can click here to try for yourself and see the answers (scroll down to the Double Jeopardy! screen). Good luck! Don’t cheat; Mister Rogers is watching you.
4. Pittsburgh in brick
A LEGO creator, Zandecreates, posted on Rebrickable his MOC (My Own Creation) of the Pittsburgh skyline, with a parts list and building instructions and it’s amazing.
I so badly want to get a little Batman LEGO minifigure and put it on top of PPG Place, his cape flapping in the wind behind him.
Now, fair warning — if you wanted to purchase these parts, you’re looking at buying over 1,200 of them and spending more than $400, but if you’ve got the money, Carnegie, what a cool gift to give to someone for the holidays.
I found that one via Reddit, but it sent me searching for other Pittsburgh-themed MOCs and I was not disappointed.
Station Square and Mount Washington by GreatToBeGary:
Linear Pittsburgh Skyline, also by GreatToBeGary:
Check out the others on Rebrickable, including Heinz Field, PPG Place, and the Pennsylvania skyline with the Liberty Bell and more.
Someone please post a MOC of the Sinkhole Bus. I’ll pay you $1,000 if you include a little dead-eyed pigeon figure that gets tossed into the sinkhole at the end of the instructions.
5. “Paging, ANYONE but Dr. Oz. ANYONE but Dr. Oz, please report.”
Commonwealth-ers, hold onto your butts.
First of all, Dr. Oz, who once claimed losing 2-3 percent of school children to COVID was an acceptable trade-off, is from New Jersey and the last time I checked, America’s armpit was not a part of Pennsylvania. But secondly?
The pandemic, he wrote, has been mishandled by “elites” who stifled dissenting opinions, “mandated” policies and “closed our parks, shuttered our schools, shut down our businesses and took away our freedom.”
“Elites with yards told those without yards to stay inside, where the virus was more likely to spread,” he wrote of the response to the pandemic…
Yinz, this is Dr. Oz’s house:
Buddy, you ARE the elite. Go sell your lavender-scented, raspberry-flavored hydroxychloroquine-laced lies somewhere else.
6. Jags are wild
My gift guide is already published but if this item had dropped before I published it, it would have for sure been on the list. And coming in at only $20 with a portion going to UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh? Extremely affordable, unique gift.
Pittsburgh-themed playing cards from Commonwealth Press!
Hypocycloids for diamonds. Keystones for clubs. Jagoffs for jokers. Famous Pittsburghers for kings, queens, and jacks. Absolute perfection and it’s almost crazy no one has done this yet. Grab a deck for your poker buddies or do like me and use a deck yourself to destroy your children at gin.
No mercy. Sweep the leg. Mama wins. Pay up.
7. Alas, fair halfback!
This Pittsburgh history lesson is going to be short and sweet because all my history research time lately has to do with early Roman rhetoric for school (kill me). This is one some of you likely know, but it was new to me.
Let’s take it back to 1936. The Steelers are still known as the Pirates or Bucs and they’re about to pick their first player in the first-ever draft. Their choice is a Notre Dame halfback named …
ready?
William “Bill” Shakespeare!
From the September 11, 1936 Pittsburgh Press:
From this article, it seems he was immediately traded to the Eagles in exchange for Dick Matesic, a former Pitt halfback. Bill also played baseball for Notre Dame and was quite an athletic star at the school. Here’s a pic from the February 25, 1936 edition of the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph:
Bill signed a deal with famed RKO Pictures and appeared as himself in The Big Game film, his only role. He eventually went on to a career in business.
So now you have the answer in your pocket about the first Steelers draft pick should it ever come up on a Final Jeopardy! question. And if it does, you legally have to send me 95% of your winnings.
8. Let’s call it there until next week. In the meantime, hit my inbox or Twitter DMs or Insta messages with thoughts, prayers, tots, pears, ideas, comments and praise.
Insults and criticism can be sent to your mom.