That's Church

My column that appears in the November issue of Pittsburgh Magazine is available online now for your reading pleasure, this one about my experience doing drills with the men of Munhall Volunteer Fire Co. No. 4.

Available soon will be a slideshow for viewing along with a post giving more thoughts on the the experience, including a few things that didn’t make the column, the things that were going through my head as I sweated to near-death, and how I didn’t realize the chief was the chief. I thought fire chiefs were 60-year-old husky mustachioed gruff men. Not 28-year-old tall, strapping men like Chief Rogers:

A snippet of the column:

I don’t know at what point all of that turned into my body entering its own self-contained furnace, but I didn’t make one cute little face during those three grueling hours, and any thought of appearing adorable disappeared when the last drop of my makeup melted off my face like something out of an Indiana Jones movie.

Chicken-cooking pants are also mentioned.

Go have a read!

The Post-Gazette had a Sunday Forum front-page piece called, “Tweeting the next governor: Snappy answers from Tom Corbett and Dan Onorato.“ (pronounced ON-OR-OUGHT-OH. Do not pronounce it ON-OR-ATE-OH or his eyebrows will jump off his face and kill you with ninja moves)

This is part of the image from that piece:

So, we have “tweeting” in the headline and two Twitter birds in the image.

Here are the things I thought this article might involve:

1.  Asking the men to provide 140 or less character answers to questions. (140 is the Twitter limit. If you go over, the twitter bird shits on your head. True story.)

2.  Trolling twitter to find what regular folks are tweeting about the men. If so, they would have found awesome things like this:

Interesting stuff!

3.  A selection of Tom Corbett’s and Dan Onorato’s most interesting tweets:

And by interesting, I mean zzzzz.

But none of those three possibilities is the WHY behind the title of the article and the picture of the Twitter birds.

No, the Post-Gazette’s explanation:

[blink]

[blink]

[blink]

Join us next week for “Haikuing the Next Governor” in which we ask Tom Corbett and Dan Onorato to answer 15 questions in haiku form, except we give them five lines and allow them at use up to 20 syllables per line.

[golf clap], PG.That entire piece had not one thing to do with Twitter other than the fact that you seem to think “tweet” and “snappy answers” are interchangeable.

Also, the final question:

From the “Criminals are Criminals for a Reason — They are Stupid” file:

A Uniontown man Wednesday called police because what he believed was marijuana that he bought on the street tasted “nasty.”

He reported that he had just bought a small amount of what he thought was marijuana. The taste turned him off, so he called police to check it for him, said police Det. Donald Gmitter.

He called police to report that he purchased bad marijuana. He must have a brain the size of a neutron. He should also be the poster child for the next “Drugs Make You Stupid” ad campaign.

That’s not all:

“We’ve had people call about prostitutes who, after they give them the money, they run away,” Det. Gmitter said. “That’s happened quite a few times.”

Wow. Calling the cops because you bought bad illegal drugs or because your ho didn’t put out even though you paid her. I don’t know why I’m surprised. I mean, if people are going to call the police when McDonald’s runs out of chicken nuggets, of course they’re going to call when they buy bad drugs.

What’s next?

“Pittsburgh PD.”

“Yeah, um, I stole this hot car, right? And I’m pretty sure it’s a lemon. Total piece of shit. Who do I talk to about that?”

“We’ll be RIGHT THERE. Don’t move.”

“Oh, it’s a lemon. I ain’t goin’ nowhere even if I wanted to, knowwhaimsayin’?”

To serve and protect and smoke out the gruesomely huge dumbasses.

UPDATE: And, it’s gone. It was there. I swear it was there. I confirmed three different ways that it was there. I even went in from the main NHL shop page and searched “ice” and it popped up, but now it’s gone. SMOKE AND MIRRORS AND POLAR BEAR TEARS, YOU GUYS.

_________________________

I know nothing about ice.

I mean, I know about ice, but I don’t know anything about hockey ice.

I assumed they filled the arena with water, froze it with a super duper Frozone machine, and then when they had an event like a concert or what not, that they melted it, threw the old water away, put in new water, lather, rinse, repeat.

So I researched it because everything on the Internet is true.

And lo and behold, I was really really really REALLY wrong. Couldn’t have been more wrong unless I said the ice was frozen polar bear pee or penguin tears.

Regardless, now you, Internet, can own a bottle of Mellon Arena ice!

I love it! It’s a gorgeous bottle! It looks like vodka!

I want to drink it!

But I’m afraid it might be polar bear pee.

(h/t James)

There are certain things no one should have to do, and saying goodbye to their children is one of them.

There should be no half-sized caskets.

There should be no parent who ever has to look at the still body of the child they gave life to.

No mother having to say goodbye to both of her children.

No father eulogizing his 18-year-old son, an innocent bystander gunned down in the prime of his life.

Go have a read about Reverend Glenn Grayson and his son and have a read about Amy getting married without having Kate and Peter there with her to celebrate.

And remember that whatever you’re worried about today, is probably a million times better than what you COULD be worried about today.