"Would sir like a bathroom mint or a perhaps a piece of hay?"
"Would sir like a bathroom mint or a perhaps a piece of hay?"
Elmo is AGHAST
This is a picture-heavy post, so here’s my entire newsletter intro:
Hiya! It’s Wednesday! Let’s get to it!
1. The Bat-signal actually worked??
I’m already insanely excited for Andrew McCutchen’s return to Pirate baseball, and now I get THIS news?!
That 2013 playoff run will always be one of my most cherished memories. I went to those games. Felt the power of Pittsburgh fandom localized into one heaving, hopeful mass that truly felt nothing short of otherworldly. Electricity humming inside your body. I made memories with my dad. I’ll never forget walking back over the Roberto Clemente Bridge with him after a postseason win, shoulder-to-shoulder with crushes of chanting fans waving flags. Sports fandom can be so uplifting and edifying and connective sometimes, and that should be celebrated. Your response doesn’t always have to be a snarky, “Yay, sportsball.” Let people love what they love unless they love pigeons, then shame them to ruin.
And now Batman comes home to Gotham to throw the first pitch to Russell Martin. STFD, indeed.
2. Is there a wall-mounted bucket of feed too?
Well, as a woman, this is … a bit much.
I beg your pardon?
The Steelers are renovating 12 restrooms at Acrisure Stadium this offseason, and as part of the latest change, the urinal troughs in four men’s rooms on the stadium’s 500 level will be replaced with separate urinals that have dividers.
Excuse me?
I need to find a picture of this. Hold on. Okay, here’s one from Wrigley:
Ladies, I promise you this is not a photo from your neighborhood dairy farm.
Maybe I’m naive because I haven’t been drunk enough to ever find myself using the men’s restroom at the stadium, but you mean to tell me that men are out there just standing in a line peeing into communal troughs with no indicator or divider to tell drunk yinzers where to stand or how far to space themselves away from other urinating humans? And you just mingle your pee streams like you’re mixing Spin Art paints at vintage Kennywood?
To quote Elmo …
I realize that women do fit the stereotype in that we often go to the bathroom together, but I assure you, we are not PEEING together and if you ever find a group of women willingly peeing in front of each other, their pee mingling down one communal drain, you can be absolutely sure it is a dystopian world and they’re just trying to survive the latest zombie uprising.
Until then … ew.
3. Briefly …
This feels like DVD-logo-hitting-the-corner-of-the-screen-perfectly levels of satisfaction.
I need a cigarette.*
*No, Dad. I don’t really smoke and I never have. Don’t start texting me medical articles.
4. History photo roundup
My next two columns for Pittsburgh Magazine called for an extremely intense round of archival research these past few weeks. Hours and hours. And in doing so, I stumbled on so many cool random finds that I wanted to share with you.
This illustration, “Pittsburgh: Halfway from Everywhere” is from a 1937 public relations booklet called “Invitation From Pittsburgh” which I found in the same Pitt archive. I’d never seen it before and so you likely haven’t either:
I love it and am 100 percent getting it blown up to hang in my home.
This is “Liberty Street” from “Pittsburgh Illustrated Part 9” published in 1889 and …
Look at that engine and coal car (I believe that’s what I’m seeing, but trust you train aficionados will correct me if I’m wrong) just rolling through city streets alongside some horses and buggies. LOVE IT. But it’s all fun and games until some angry buggy driver is screaming, “THAT TRAIN JUST MADE A PITTSBURGH LEFT IN FRONT OF ME! EVER HEAR OF A TURN SIGNAL, YOU JAG?!”
This is a stained glass idea that appeared in the booklet for the Pittsburgh Architectural Club’s 1910 gathering and I need it to exist somewhere:
Who can make this for me? And finally:
I also lost the name of the source of this one, but it’s from the late 1880s and I just am in love with the list of dances you could learn. Society, minuet, jig and clog are pretty self-explanatory. Reel goes with jig as a Scottish dance. Wing and Buck was a kind of tap dance that consisted of gliding, sliding, and stomping movements at high speeds, according to Wikipedia, and it was often associated with Black vaudeville acts. Dramatic dance is what it sounds like—telling a story via dance while wearing costumes. Think, like the story of Cleopatra or whatever, but via dance. Posing sounds like what it is and don’t get tripped up by "Grotesque” because that’s just dance more comedic in style. Finally, Delsarte reminds me of modern dance, in which you express emotions via your body and face, often via the aforementioned posing:
Discovery, mourning and supplication. Or as I call them “Is this a trough in this bathroom?!,” “I guess I just squat here??” and “Why dost thou force me to pee as such, m’lord?”
5. Conor Lamb hands out an L
I honestly didn’t know he had it in him:
Oh, snap. My one rule in life is that when I’m calling other people “fools,” I 100 percent make sure my grammar, spelling and punctuation are PERFECT, because otherwise you’re just a person calling other people “maroons.”
And yes, Criminals & Cartels is my new band name. Our tour rider consists of one demand: “NO BATHROOM TROUGHS. ARE WE NOT A CIVILIZED SOCIETY?!”
6. I’m out of space for today!
Reminder to check out Venus and Jupiter being all close together this evening after sunset. They were basically making out last night. Quite a sight. Have a fantastic week! Be kind! Don’t mingle your pee streams unless the zombies leave you no choice!
Watch your brainzzzz, yinz. See you next week!