Good morning and happy Wednesday, or as Joey Tribbiani calls it, “Thursday, the third day.” He really was lucky he was so pretty.
So many of you reached out to me to offer kind words and encouragement, and to let me know that like me, you’re “floating in the soup too.” So that will be our phrase. When life is weird and insists on shifting underfoot when we really liked where we stood. When the uncertainty of our future won’t offer even a hint of encouragement that where we’re going is where we’re meant to be no matter how hard we squint into the hazy distance. We aren’t scatterbrained. We aren’t lazy. We aren’t aimless. We aren’t “napping excessively.” We are just “floating in the soup.” If you aren’t floating in the soup with us, at least toss us a crouton so we have something carby and delicious to hang on to.
This first full edition of the newsletter covers everything from sports to Pittsburgh history to the sinkhole bus. Let’s get to it.
I love Reddit. Don’t judge me. I’m aware it can be a dark corner of the Internet, but if you curate your feed carefully, it only makes you want to fling yourself into an erupting volcano once every third day. (Somewhere, Joey Tribbiani is nodding his head knowingly while muttering, “Yes. The third day.”) Recently, a great question was asked on the Pittsburgh subreddit:
Behold this glory glory hallelujah:
The. VERACITY.
Not Giant Eagle. Giant Eagle is fancy. That’s where you wear your good leggings and buy six-dollar boxes of crackers and 76 dollars worth of avocados (four avocados) and if you try to purchase items without the Almighty Advantage Card, alarms sound and the Shame Witch comes screaming from the mirrored-glass office to make you question your worthiness to exist. Shop ‘n Save is where you can wear your pajamas to use a bag of quarters to buy super-flow tampons and seven boxes of Little Debbies and the cashier won’t even blink twice at you.
Another response:
Someone please illustrate this scenario and put it on a Christmas ornament for me. Also, I can literally hear two of you opening an email window to tell me Giant Eagle is not expensive and Shop ‘n Save is not pajama-friendly and I cannot strongly enough encourage you to send it to virginia@nobodycares.com.
I recently accidentally started a debate on Twitter about the correct pronunciation of Carnegie, and … wait — how did you just sound that out in your head? Car-NAY-gee/Car-NEH-gie, the correct pronunciation? Or are you a faux-bougie monocle-wearing weirdo who says “Car-NEE-gee” or are you a straight-up psychopath who says “CAR-n’gie?”
The consensus on Twitter was that we correctly pronounce it with the NEH/NAY accent and with a hard g and the rest of the world has it wrong. There was one person who tried to convince me that Pittsburghers pronounce Carnegie differently depending on if they are referring to the school, the town or the person, but I’m 99 percent sure that person just noticed the pin in his chaos grenade and said, “I wonder what this doohickey here does.” Regardless, the debate sent me down a history wormhole and GOOD NEWS! We’ve been arguing about this in Pittsburgh for at least 126 years. From the Pittsburgh Commercial Gazette letter to the editor on April 18, 1895:
I hear ya, B.M., if those are your real initials. From the December 17, 1896 answers to correspondence in The Pittsburg Post:
Na or nay though? NA OR NAY THOUGH??! AND WHERE IS THE SYLLABLE STRESSED!? This is a non-answer, you cowards. September 23, 1905 in The Pittsburgh Press:
Because we all say plaguey all the time and that’s the perfect word to rhyme it with. But also, the Gaelic for “the fort at the gap” seems to be dùn an bheàrna or dùn aig a 'bheàrn. So I guess even back in 1905 people were just making shit up, or as I like to call it, “Wendy Bell-ing.”
February 16, 1965 in The Pittsburgh Press and we are still fighting about it:
ONE WOULD THINK! From the Pittsburgh Post Gazette on January 20, 1982:
It’s Car-NAY-gee. Hard G. End of story. If you disagree with me, you can write down your thoughts and feelings and email them to virginia@GTFOH.com.
Mayor Peduto has introduced some extremely cool legislation to reduce light pollution in Pittsburgh. Listen to me. Light pollution is absolute garbage and it’s completely unnecessary and it’s ugly and not good for your mental health. Just take a look at the difference in a city in New Zealand after they curbed light pollution using some of the same techniques Bill Peduto is pushing. What a change from post-apocalyptic hellfire to clear star-blanketed inky indigo. We can have that in Pittsburgh with this legislation. And here’s the other thing. These are the things about which Pittsburghers love to say, “Is this REALLY a priority?” Let me tell you something. The things that have made Pittsburgh great? Steel. Robots. Science. Medicine. They made our city world-class because we stayed in front of the pack. Pushed hard to be first. Best. Leaders, not followers. Too easily we forget that and fall backwards and get complacent and then have to play catch-up, five to ten years behind other cities. Get out of that mindset. Let’s be first. Every chance we get. Even on light pollution.
Anyway, the Trib and Civic Science asked their readers their feelings about the legislation and as you know, when Bill Peduto even breathes these days, half of Pittsburgh throws themselves to the ground in a temper tantrum while screaming about bike lanes. Why would this be any different?
ELL. OH. EFFING. ELL. 42% don’t support reducing light pollution? Really? I said to myself, “Self, as we float here in the soup, munching on this delicious crouton, I wonder what reason people give for not supporting this and I wonder how quickly the phrase ‘bike lanes’ will pop up.” So I checked twitter.
I hate you all. Not you. Or you. Just you, you and you. You’re okay. You can leave. You can email me at virginia@biteme.com.
Remember the sinkhole bus? I bet you do. I bet you have an ornament on your Christmas tree or a commemorative t-shirt sitting in the same drawer as your Zoltan gear. Or in the case of one local woman, an actual tattoo.
That is not for us to know, Peyton. There was one passenger on that bus when it fell backassward into the sinkhole and she has now filed a lawsuit against the water and sewer authority.
Imagine that being your news chyron label forever. No matter what newsworthy thing she does in the future, it will be mentioned. “Michelle Goodlow, the sole passenger on the Port Authority bus that was swallowed by a sinkhole in 2019, has cured cancer.” Pay the poor woman.
I almost can’t handle this story. A young man from Germany who spent a school year here in 2010-2011 at Woodland Hills High School as a foreign exchange student returned to Pittsburgh this year, at 27, to be a living donor to one of his host fathers who was dying of liver disease. I love everything about it. I need to cry. The soup might get a little salty, guys. Sorry.
As you know, I’m a lip-reading goddess. Yes, I’ve settled on goddess; don’t argue with me or I’ll stalk you from afar and lipread all the shit you say behind people’s backs. A friend recently asked me to lipread what Penn State football coach James Franklin shouted after beating Auburn:
The answer, my friends, is … wait. Avert your eyes, dad. Okay. The answer is, “MOTHERFUCKERS!” So I guess that’s a thing we are saying now when we are happy. This is going to make my arrival at family dinners at my parents’ house so much more interesting. My father is probably going to rip his decorative Ten Commandments plaque off the living room wall and throw it at me like Moses coming down hot from Mount Sinai.
“Thou shalt not!”
“Oh, but I shallst.”
And let’s end this edition here. In the soup. Munching on a soggy crouton. Squinting into the future. Wondering if our Zoltan shirts still fit. Let’s keep swimming. Extend a little grace to ourselves. Nap. I’ll see you next Wednesday. The real third day.