Welcome to another edition of Breathing Space! This one promises to be less controversial and less opinionated than last week’s.
I’m totally lying. Your butts — hold them.
1. Best Pittsburgh nickname ever?
Let’s start off with a fun one! My pal Jonathan Wander (who some of you recall was my partner in mental exhaustion during the post-earthquake Haiti rescue) gave me the best Christmas gift — an old 1,200-page slang thesaurus. What’s a slang thesaurus, you ask, young Padawan? It’s like the Urban Dictionary but in print and from the 1940s and ‘50s … and also not every single entry pivots to sex, so that’s refreshing. The entire book is highly entertaining. Before I get to the Pittsburgh part, let me give you an example of an entry:
You look at “ring” which is under the main heading of SOUND and you get all the fun ways people used to refer to ringing of doorbells. Ding the tingaling is my absolute favorite and I’m getting an un-welcome mat made that says, “Salespeople, ding the tingaling at your own peril.”
(Imagine a “ding the tingaling” entry on Urban Dictionary. Good God.)
Now let’s talk about Pittsburgh in this book. Here is Pittsburgh’s main entry, listing its nicknames back in the ‘40s and ‘50s:
CINDERS. Cinders. I love it so much even though it speaks to a bygone era of skies so smoky the street lamps had to burn at high noon. Here’s where it gets really fun and again references Pittsburgh — the diner orders entry. So you’re Back to the Future-ed, McFly, and you find yourself in a diner in any American city in the 1950s and the waitstaff are shouting orders to the cook. Some of the fun things you’d hear were:
“Grind a doggy” for hamburger order
“The gentleman says he will take a chance” for an order of hash
“Put out the lights and cry” for adding onions
If you ordered a to-go bacon hamburger with American cheese, onions and fries, you might hear “Grind a doggy, cremate the bacon, naturalize the cheese, put out the lights and cry. Don’t forget the shoes and let it walk.”
Absolutely amazing. But what if you were sitting in that same diner and you heard someone shout, “Pittsburgh!” from the kitchen or counter; what could that possibly mean?
TOAST IS BURNING. BECAUSE PITTSBURGH IS CINDERS.
Ugh. It’s perfect and I plan to intentionally burn toast in my kitchen soon just so I can shout “Pittsburgh!” and maybe have my children growing concerned for my mental state and wondering if the next time the oven timer goes off I’ll scream “SYRACUSE!”
As a final note, you can open this book to any page and find a phrase that would have made for perfect Mike Lange goal calls. PUT OUT THE LIGHTS AND CRY, SIDNEY CROSBY TIES IT! BEEZY-WEEZIES SCREAMING MEEMIES, MALKIN BURIES IT! WELL, BAKE A CAKE AND CALL ME COOKIE, GUENTZEL HAS IT!
And yes, of course the Beezy-Weezie Screaming Meemies is my new band name. We play square dance music.
2. This is CVS Pharmacy. Would you like to refill your prescription for Crazy Pills 500 mg?
Let’s talk about this like rational adults, okay? Everyone take a deep breath and stay calm.
In letters to the Republican National Committee, top officials from Allegheny County — including Pittsburgh’s new mayor and the county executive — put their support behind a bid by a city tourism agency to bring the GOP’s rambunctious, high-profile nominating convention to the city in 2024.
We’re going to put aside the differences in the traditional political platforms of the two parties. We’re even going to put aside the different approaches to the pandemic they’ve adopted. Sure. Bring the convention here. Take advantage of the revenue injection. Whatever. We’ll deal.
Forget all that. We only need to look at one issue to understand why this is not only a terrible idea, but also an insulting one to the people of Pittsburgh. And that is this:
HOW IN THE HELL ARE YOU GOING TO INVITE THE PARTY THAT TRIED TO THROW EVERY SINGLE ONE OF OUR VOTES AWAY BASED ON A LIE TO COME HERE AND HOLD THEIR NEXT CONVENTION DURING WHICH THEY WILL PROBABLY CONTINUE TO PUSH THE LIE?
Oh, you sued multiple times to throw our votes away? All of them? And Ted Cruz agreed to argue the case in front of the Supreme Court? To, again, and I cannot stress this enough, throw away every one of our votes and allow the State Legislature to choose our president against our proven data-supported will? Please, come to our city! It’s the best and we will take good care of you here! Let us show you a good time! Hope you like french fries on things! We are so excited that you are even considering gracing us with your presence! How lucky are we!?
More than that, how the hell are you going to invite the party that continues to defend the people who marched a Confederate flag through the halls of the Capitol when Pittsburgh is FACTUALLY the worst city in America for Black people? It’s a breathtaking insult to do so. No. No. Noooooo. There must be consequences for what happened following the election and on January 6. At some point, it has to be bigger than the money. At some point, principle has to show up and stomp down the dollar signs and the Confederate flag and the lies and to say, “We saw what you did and we’re not okay with it.”
It is actually that simple. No need to go into the revenue argument at all; the principle argument drowns it out completely.
The letter to Ronna McDaniel should have said, “I understand you are considering Pittsburgh for your 2024 presidential nominating convention. While I cannot prohibit you from coming here, I would like to discourage you from doing so in the strongest terms possible. We do not wish to host the convention in light of your party’s attempts to throw our votes away in the 2020 election. As such, should you choose Pittsburgh, please expect protest and please expect me to be on the front lines standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the people whose EVERY voice you tried to silence.”
The. End.
3. The head of a what, now?
Whew. Let’s lighten it up again! This is another fun one. I can’t remember how I stumbled on this bit of Pittsburgh history. As you know, there have been rumors of water monsters living in our rivers since the days of the Native Americans. Mythical creatures lurking in our depths, waiting to snatch us down or upend our boats. Well, in the summer of 1897, The Post-Gazette reported on such a sighting and it starts slow but escalates so fast I nearly passed out.
Holy shit. Eyes shining like balls of fire. The head of a horse. A scale-covered body of 15 to 20 feet long. And witnessed by a dozen people. Now, I’d discount this as merely a giant-ass river fish except for the HEAD OF A HORSE. Like, what the actual.
Fast-forward to 1964 when the huge 1-ton paddlewheel mysteriously disappeared from the back end a Gateway Clipper boat and rumors spread (probably jokingly) that it was the work of the river monster. The Post-Gazette ran an art contest to create and name Pittsburgh’s boat-chomping river monster. The winner? The MonAllegO:
I’m sorry. No. I mean, the city skyline for ears is cute, but this thing, designed by a 50-year-old man, has a blue nose, fuschia eyes, a green body and an orange neck and looks about as ferocious as a cotton ball. Second place was the garbage-attracting Zoo-Blick who seems to have skewered his own head with the paddlewheel, and unfortunately lived:
And finally … the real winner in my book. Head of a horse-ish. Long body. Soul-sucking eyes. Meet the Al-Mon-Oh.
Hide yo boat. Hide yo kids. Hide yo wife.
4. Allegheny County, are you okay?
It’s starting to look like we need to stage an intervention for Allegheny County.
Once again, Allegheny County has had the highest liquor sales revenue in the state, according to the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board’s yearly report.
Okay. We drink a lot here. That’s actually our history from practically our inception. It’s what we were known for all the way back to the 1800s when we were named “The Drinkingest Town in the West.” We treated Prohibition like it was a suggestion. BUT!
Allegheny County reported $347,631,879 in total dollar sales, up 20.6% from last year’s $288,159,746. Philadelphia County, which came in second place, saw $245,055,272 in sales.
To quote my slang thesaurus … well, shut my mouth and call me clammy!
The SECOND year of the pandemic saw a 20% increase over the first year of the pandemic, which saw a 5.8% decrease from the year before. We are not coping well, my friends. Or, actually, we are coping very very well wink-wink. Not only that, Philadelphia County came in second with over ONE HUNDRED MILLION less in liquor sales than us. Yinz, Philadelphia County has 368,000 MORE people than Allegheny County but we essentially drank a hundred million more dollars in liquor than they did.
To again quote the slang thesaurus, we sure do like to visit the bottom of the manger, don’t we.
Thoughts and prayers for all our livers.
5. Is shiremuth a word?
Here’s a bit of scary news. Pittsburgh nearly didn’t get a new “Here We Go” Steelers fight song this year because the creator of the annual playoff anthem didn’t think the Steelers would make the playoffs.
“I didn’t really prepare anything for this year,” Wood told the Post-Gazette by phone Wednesday. “Because I never expected this.”
I get it. Basically, to make the playoffs the Steelers needed some very specific losses, some very specific wins, some very non-existing ties, some very frog-heavy potions, and all the stars in the heavens to realign themselves against the very laws and order of the universe.
He has now gotten to work on the anthem and ran into a few problems along the way:
So the first thing Wood did Monday was begin to brainstorm lyrics and how to make everything fit together, which turned out to be a tall task when he got to the part of rhyming actual words with Freiermuth, as in Pittsburgh’s tight end, Pat.
“The names have to flow,” Wood said. “Freiermuth isn’t exactly a very singable name…”
Listen, if Digital Underground can rhyme cupid with loopid, you can find a rhyme for Freiermuth.
Voting booth. Wisdom tooth. Doctor Ruth. Gospel truth.
Whoa. I’m apparently a lyric genius. Let me put my shit into a rap name generator. Hang on.
I would like to point out that Inspectah Smooth also rhymes with Freiermuth. Put it in the song.
6. Let’s end it here!
Ban the RNC from Pittsburgh. Mask up. Get vaxxed without shame; we love you. And finally, from here on out, you can call me JeeEyeEnEnWhy.
And as always, if I’ve upset you or in any way made you feel attacked, you can direct your complaints to
Choose option 3 for “Wah-mbulance services.”