How NOT to be a hockey player
I lost my wife to the apocalypse, but that's not what I'm mad about
May 5 Welcome to a special Thursday edition of Breathing Space!
Why Thursday? Because on Tuesday, Pittsburgh was smote by either Mother Nature or the back of God's angry hand. A huge tree downed near my house meant my wifi was out for nearly the entire day yesterday. Luckily, I only lost power briefly, but my mother and sister, who live just a few miles away, were less fortunate.
Around the 12th hour of their outages, my sister texted that she and her family were heading out in search of an open restaurant for breakfast, and invited my mother and father to come along. This was my mother's reply:
You see it too, right? I'm not crazy, right? Of course you see it. I responded in the correct fashion.
Like, what is my mother? What is she? Why can't she comb her hair without electricity? It was daytime. There was plenty of light hitting all the various mirrors in the house. Why was there "NO WAY" to comb all four inches of her hair? Does she keep her comb in a safe that's hard-wired to the electricity in the house? Is she using a hedge trimmer to comb her hair? Is she a robot? Did her battery die and she's just standing there frozen like a rusted-out C3PO, using voice-to-text? Her response was to tell me I'm "so funny, Gin," and then she ignored the question. So I still don't know why my mother cannot comb her hair without electricity.
Anyway, the power is back at her house, so she successfully combed her hair all beep-borp-[comb]-borp-[comb]-beep-ding, and my wifi is back up, so here's the newsletter!
1. Will you marry my cheap ass?
One thing you should not do is use an MLB park's jumbotron to propose to your love unless your love SPECIFICALLY and IN BLOOD-WRITING tells you that their dream is to be proposed to in that way. That said, should you eschew my good advice and decide to do so as if I've ever steered you wrong, it will cost you.
For instance, if you were to want to do it at a Dodgers home game, a LifeHacker article says it will cost you a whopping $2,500 to rent the jumbotron for your proposal. You could fill up your gas tank AND buy a gallon of milk for that much money!
It's a bit cheaper at Washington Nationals Park at $1,500. It's $450 in Philly and $350 at the storied Fenway. And at PNC Park? At our home park? At the jewel by the confluence (drink!)? Place your guesses now. Okay. Ready?
Thirty. Nine. Dollars.
These people sat in a meeting and were like, "$40 is too much. We need to bring it down one dollar to trap people into thinking it's really only $30, the same way people will buy something that $19.99, but not something that's one penny more. Suckers."
And honestly, if you rent the Jumbotron to propose at a Pirates game, you might end up proposing to your love in front of 42 fans, two wooers, five to six pierogies, and an obese bird. You might as well just take your love to the Mon Wharf parking lot and propose in front of a nuisance of geese. (I assume a group of geese is called a nuisance? Seems right. Nuisance of Geese is also my new band name. Our first single, "Make eye contact and I'll f—k you up" is out now. It's pretty explicit.)
Now, that said, did you know you can rent a single Pirate pierogi for $100 and the Parrot for $200? I'm just surprised it's not $99.99 and $199.99. (Call now! These prices won't last!) My sister and I were once shocked to learn you can throw out a first pitch if you buy 250 tickets for your group, and you can actually sing the national anthem at PNC Park so long as you buy, I believe it was 500 tickets for a game (that number might be down to 10 by now). She and I said we were going to do it and get out there and give it our best shot even though we can't sing two notes without making random babies and dogs cry.
We would make the local news for sure. On the bright side, we'd probably only be singing in front of 17 fans, the Bucco Brigade, and 22,000 bobbleheads.
(h/t GAScubaBum on Twitter)
2. The Pittsburgh Pahr (went aht)
As a result of the power outage, many fans were unable to watch the Penguins' amazing triple-overtime victory in the first round of the Stanley Cup Finals. WTAE interviewed one such disappointed fan and please, please, please behold the power of the perfect, textbook yinzer accent:
I'm bummed aht. Pahr. Haw-kee.
And the sentiment that we don't care about no damn power or the spoiled food in our fridges; we just care about the hockey. Glorious. Beautiful. Quintessential. It could be the actual apocalypse and old yinzers would be on KDKA going, "I had to fight off one of the horsemen and I lost my wife to the rapture, but I'm really just mad I missed the fourth quarter of the Steelers game. What was the score?"
Hopefully Dr. Oz didn't lose power though because otherwise his 900 carrots and a broccoli might spoil.
Bah-dum-TISS!
3. Even less good coming back up
Speaking of broccoli, can we give it up please for clutch Penguin goalie Louis Domingue who, thinking he would not be playing by the time OT rolled around, WENT AND ATE A FULL MEAL BETWEEN THE FIRST AND SECOND OVERTIMES only to be called into the game in the third and decisive overtime. Not only did he eat a full meal, but he didn't get, like, a ceasar salad or a protein bowl. The man went and ate SPICY PORK AND BROCCOLI.
Live look- "spicy pork and broccoli, not the best." (Photo by Louis Domingue).Allan Walsh @walsha
Tim and Friends @timandfriends
Louis Domingue said he ate some spicy pork and broccoli in between overtimes because he never expected to play 🥦🥩 #StanleyCup #Penguins https://t.co/Ak9ip2BbkzMay 4th 2022
93 Retweets920 LikesIf you were to make a list of things that would not be fun to wet-burp up as you're facing an onslaught of thousand-mile-an-hour vulcanized rubber missiles, spicy pork and broccoli are right up there with chili cheese fries and fettuccine alfredo.
There's just no way it's staying down. This story was an eye-opener for me because I just assumed that professional athletes were under strict diet guidance during games and now I'll be wondering if the Steelers aren't actually sitting in Primantis at halftime washing down Cap' and Cheeses with Iron City. All those times we've seen players vomiting on the sidelines is starting to make so much more sense.
4. Speaking of needing to use the bathroom
My pal on Twitter @addiful pointed out that you could buy toilet paper to-go from Eat'n Park and I honestly didn't believe her and had to go see it for myself and hello:
Somewhere Dr. Oz is sitting in his at-home bowling alley grumbling to his wife, "Five dollars for a cottage formaggio! Thanks, Joe Biden! Debate me, you coward!"
It's only a matter of time until the Eat'n Park on Banksville gets an order for 15 rolls of toilet paper and a frantic-looking Penguin pulls up to the take-out window all, "THE GAS STATION SUSHI WAS A BAD IDEA AND I STILL HAVE A PERIOD TO PLAY."
5. May the Pepsi be with you
You may have heard of the Legend of the Phantom Menace Pepsi Machine, and yes, it does exist. A machine so old, the child actor depicted on it is now 67 years old, give or take.
I'm exaggerating. Don't email me, you nerd.
But yes, this old vending machine was originally used to promote the first Star Wars prequel in 1999, which, oddly, by my math was also only ten years ago. Don't email me, you nerd.
The vending machine is located outside the Pittsburgh Bureau of Fire Station 27 headquarters near the intersection of Virginia Avenue and Shiloh Street. It has remained operational all these years, thanks to the efforts of that station's firefighters, who have kept it stocked and functional after Pepsi stopped maintaining it.
Here it is on Google Maps and should be flagged as a landmark honestly:
Anyway, Pepsi went and did a really cool thing!
On Tuesday and in advance of May the Fourth (aka "Star Wars Day"), Pepsi showed up in Pittsburgh to repair the vending machine, provide it with a year's supply of Pepsi products and donate $10,000 to Fire Station 27.
The machine that had been selling Faygo is now stocked with Pepsi, and the cash mechanism has been repaired. This is the kind of Good Content I am here for.
No snark. Just joy.
Oh wait. One snark. I hope we get to see Dr. Oz make a campaign stop here so we can watch him say, "Will it make change for a hundred-dollar bill? I need to bring my wife two a Pepsi-colas. Freedom guns babies eagle flag above the fruited plain!"
(I'll never stop.)
6. And I'm ending it here! I'm near the email length limit and I have plans to show up at my "mother's" house unannounced to see if I can catch her plugging herself into an outlet. I will solve this comb mystery, damn it. I'll keep you posted.
Have a great week! Enjoy the warmth! And if you're wanting to math-check me or are angry at my constant digs at New Jersey's Doctor Oz, here's the number to call:
Let me know if you're the father. You owe me so much money.
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© 2022 Virginia Montanez Unsubscribe
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104
Thursday, May 05, 2022
Re: How NOT to be a hockey player
On Thu, May 5, 2022 at 10:11 AM Virginia Montanez from Breathing Space <breathingspace@substack.com> wrote:
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