Can you fill up a brain? Is what I need to know. Because I think I’ve filled up my brain with so much history that the history stuff is starting to kick out the stuff that’s useful to me on a daily basis. So while I can talk for an hour about the intersectionality of international Cold War politics and the Civil Rights movement, I could not tell my waiter the name of the yellow fruit of which I wanted a slice in my water because the word had been evicted from my brain.
“Can I have water with … you know … [gestures meaninglessly] … the thing … yellow … [slicing motion] … you put it in the water … [snap snap] …”
Top of my game, people.
There was no newsletter last week because I didn’t have time because what is time even?, so let’s get to it today!
*Not a euphemism
1. Seems high
This is nuts. This is a whole bowl of Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut cereal with a side of Grape Nuts with a chaser of Raisin Nut Bran.
YouTubers Adventures with Purpose were in town recently using diving teams and sonar to search our riverbeds for two missing women (Janet Walsh, missing since 2020, and Bunnie Lee, 2013) and they happened upon the car of local dad Tod Diminno who disappeared last month. Mr. Diminno’s body and car were then recovered.
That’s one part. The second part is how many OTHER cars the team found while searching our riverbeds, and yinz, they found not 1. Not 10. Not a few dozen.
They found … over ONE HUNDRED CARS.
Doug Bishop, the lead diver and investigator with AWP, said a majority of the vehicles were found in the Allegheny River between the Fort Duquesne Bridge and the Clemente Bridge. Most of those were roughly 30 years old, he said.
He said the location and the age of the vehicles could be a sign of a more organized operation rather than a random collection of cars ditched over the years.
I’m such a naive pilgrim that my first response was, “Wait. Does this mean there are 100 bodies down there?!” But it seems more to be that these cars were mostly ditched into the rivers without drivers in them at which point my naive brain was like, “WHY WOULD THEY DO THAT?”
So I had to Google “mob ditch cars in rivers why??” and Google was like, oh, my sweet summer child. The answer is lots of reasons. Yes, murder. Also, cab driver disputes (“Oh, you want to drive your cab? Good luck finding it.”). Family disputes. Territory disputes. Getting rid of cars used to do crimes because the mob loves crime-ing so much they want to marry it and then kill it while it sleeps so they can marry a younger, hotter crime.
Anyway, I fell into a Google wormhole, ended up learning way too much about the old-timey mobster Pittsburgh families with names like Genovese and Ripepi and Sica and Rosa and Bazzano and Larocca and now I’m scared their descendants are going to come and take my car and ditch it in the Mon just because they can.
In my defense, mafia people, I will forget everything I just learned when history comes along and kicks everyone out so it can fill my head with information about Angel Island and the Civil Defense Administration.
Now, all this is great, but here’s the real question: will they find any remains of this?
I’m not holding my breath. Unless the mob puts me in the river with my car.
2. Son of Satan, child of Beelzebub, spawn of succubi, snot of Lucifer**
Band names! (“Opening for Ozzy Ozbourne, here’s … SNOT OF LUCIFER!”)
Recall for me, please, the snake Gene Simmons—the legless albino nightmare that went missing in Duquesne. Gene Simmons, the slithering spawn of Satan, whom the media click-baited us all by telling us he had been “out on a walk” with his owner as if Gene was leashed like some kind of domesticated pig***.
Anyway, good news for those who, like me, avoid snakes— the physical embodiment of a demon’s rancid hot breath.
Neighbors in Duquesne can rest easy. Gene Simmons has been found. No, not the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer — the python that went missing from a local home over the summer.
Whew. One less turd of Beelzebub slithering around out there waiting to swallow my soul.
How was Gene found? Gene’s owner’s house painter found him and …
PUT HIM IN A BIN. Which tells me he touched that snake instead of doing what I’d have done, which is get admitted to a hospital in Cranberry after running a full marathon in a straight line away from it while screaming the entire time.
My point is this. Snakes are demons. The end.
**Somewhere in hell there’s a demon food blogger all, “HAVE I GOT A RECIPE FOR YOU!” And all the demons are like, “Okay, but do I have to scroll past 76 pictures to get to the recipe only after you tell me about how your demon baby ate its first puppy today?”
***I could have said dog. But that’s just lazy writing.
3. Sure, Cam
Shot:
Chaser:
I mean. Come on. His butt tapped the retweet icon and then his butt selected “retweet” over “quote tweet” or “cancel” and his butt happened to do this on a tweet bashing Mike Tomlin while praising Cam Heyward?
This is the “sure, Jan”-iest thing that ever "sure, Jan”-ed.
Either he retweeted it out of anger and then regretted that poor choice, or he retweeted it thinking he was on his burner account, but there is no way on this earth his butt retweeted it for him accidentally or I’ll literally hug a snake if I’m wrong.
And then I’ll feed the snake to a hawk.
4. Vote with your butt****
Speaking of butts doing things, I love this:
But I think there are better, more useful questions we could ask that will further motivate people to properly dispose of their butts because just on my most recent stop in town, it’s still a huge problem. Like:
Are pool and pole pronounced the same?
Do you know how to zipper merge?
If you know how to zipper merge but you don’t do it, are you a piece of shit?
Will you ever call it Acrisure Stadium?
Did Jesse James catch that ball?
Is there a speed limit on Bigelow?
Steeler Nation or Steelers Nation?
Is “yinzer” derogatory?
Was your road salted within 48 hours of the most recent snow?
Which Harbaugh brother should fall off the face of the earth?
The possibilities are endless. I’ma run for mayor and settle some debates and clean up these streets, yinz.
**** Somewhere Cam Heyward is all, “Wait, butts can vote too?!?”
5. Seems legit to me
Apparently these notices warning about “Bigfoot” sightings have been popping up in State parks and along trails:
This is REMARKABLE. Because it’s not only grammatically correct with proper formatting, but including the Spanish translation gives it an extra air of legitimacy, so first, kudos to whoever did this. Well done.
I love the part about watching your kids and pets because Bigfoot might come and take them from you because that’s apparently a thing Bigfoot does, which leads me to an important question.
Does Bigfoot eat snakes?
God I hope so.
When reached via email DCNR spokesperson Wayne Robinson confirmed the signs were not their doing and were likely a prank.
“Bigfoot is not real,” he added.
Sounds like something someone who has 100 percent seen Bigfoot would say.
Very very sus, as the yutes say.
6. Things I need from you
Please continue to send me item recommendations for this years’ Yinzer Holiday Gift Guide
If you have sources or family oral stories or even historical family journals about child labor in Pittsburgh’s mills and mines during the Second Industrial Revolution (1850-1914 or thereabouts), please email me as my major research for grad school this semester is looking at the impact child labor had on Pittsburgh’s industrial growth and also the impact that work had on children.
If you encounter any still-visible artifacts or remains from long-gone structures in our region, please email me those so I can research them for inclusion in the forthcoming “Pittsburgh Remains to be Seen” Google Map project I’ve been working on.
Learn to zipper merge.
Your help, as always, is greatly appreciated.
7. Quickly.
Just a quick note that I love these “Misadventures of Pittsburgh” magnets so much. I think I’ve featured this shop before on my Yinzer Holiday Gift Guide, but this little collection is perfection. Not an ad.
Only true yinzers know.
(h/t @junofive on Twitter)
8. And that’s all!
Have a great week! I should be here as scheduled next Wednesday unless my brain dies or the mob ditches my car into the river with me still in it or I get killed trying to feed a snake to Bigfoot. Be kind. Make good choices. Don’t let your butt write checks you can’t cash*****.
There’s no customer service line this week because if anything I wrote in here upset you, that’s on you, snowflake. Go cry about your hurt feelings to your emotional support Terrible Towel.