TORONTO—In a position to make the postseason for the first time since 2022, the Penguins’ resurgent push for a playoff berth collapsed last night after the NHL determined Ab McDonald’s Cup-winning goal in April of 1961 was offside, forcing 26 franchises to fold immediately as the league will resume operations from 65 years ago effective tomorrow, according to sources “sorry to share, but the rules are the rules.”
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NORTH SHORE—Building on the club’s off-season activity, the Pittsburgh Pirates have launched a new ticket package campaign this morning aimed at “total fucking duds who have never better to do on a Wednesday, so they’d might as well go to a baseball game,” team sources confirm.
“What are these shut-ins going to do instead?” asked the franchise’s assistant director of marketing Gina Zellers, appearing to reject possible alternatives with a brief male masturbatory gesture. “Go to trivia night? News for you, buddy: you don’t know anything because you just watch short-form videos on your couch and listen exclusively to music released between 2003 and 2009. Instead of pretending you still have enough hair to swoop, why not come to a Buccos game instead, you sack of shit?”
Pirates operations spokesperson Kevin Cooney discussed how the fresh campaign mirrors the team’s “more aggressive” tactics in the winter.
“We know Skenes games are an instant sellout and getting Griffin in the lineup is sure to help fill seats on a day-to-day basis,” he said. “But we need to be a complete program, from top to bottom, so what do you do when you’ve got a long reliever making the extra start and Jared Triolo is in the clean-up spot? Easy: you tell these nobodies that their FL Studio beats are dogshit, their Instagram art is derivative and toothless, and they’re better off spending three hours at PNC Park sucking down domestic tall boys and hand-scooping nachos cheese into their gullet.”
Cooney admitted concern that fans would balk at what he described as the team “shooting from the hip,” but some fans found the approach refreshing.
“Have the signings been the big splash that’s going to change the franchise? No, probably not,” said Ryan Fields of Bellevue. “But as the team has assured me via online newsletters and personalized DMs on social media, I’m an unlikable tool who’s terminally online and should come to a game if I think I know so much. I appreciate that candor. It shows they’re not planning to be pushovers this year and, frankly, they’re kind of got me figured out.”
As of press time, the team had also announced that Wednesday packages purchased this week would include 15 dollars loaded value “so maybe you actually have to talk to somebody” and a tiny violin.
GREENFIELD—A combination of several rescue crews worked for several hours this afternoon to save a five-ounce fish fillet caught under nearly 4,000 pounds of fried batter, onlookers reported.
“A handful of Good Samaritans held the fort before professionals could arrive,” said fish fry volunteer Deb Szewiczyk. “The two bigger gentlemen were biting off as much as their mouth while people got them tartar sauce and some light beer, but you can only do so much without the right tools. We’re just thankful our local heroes were able to save the little darling, so it could get tossed into a Styrofoam container of mac and cheese like it deserved.”
Lieutenant Allison Marshall of the Munhall Fire Department detailed hardships that crews faced completing the rescue.
“Every scene like this is different,” she said, wiping fryer oil from her brow. “Lot of times you see some weak points in the exterior fry to enter. Not here, though: this bad boy must’ve been triple, maybe even quadruple-battered, which meant we had to put in a lot of effort just to achieve ingress. You could tell that little fillet in there was a tender and flaky one, too, so we had to take extra precautions or the tiny thing could’ve fallen right apart in our hands before we could complete the rescue.”
Crews had little time to celebrate, however, as safety officials confirmed they were called shortly thereafter to remove a french fry that had gotten lodging under 700 pounds of Old Bay seasoning.
I haven’t written something sincere in a long time. OK, that’s not quite right. Let’s say sincere without the leitmotif of a punchline driving it.
I put together this piece in 2020 about the Strip District — about its peculiarities, its foibles, but the prevailing sense of something that uniquely represented the city all the same.
The area has undergone notable real estate and cultural changes since then, as we know. Some of them seem just fine: it’s good that young people like to spend time and be young there; it’s good, broadly speaking, that the old fruit terminal isn’t just a dead space for parking.
Of course, some of the changes suck shit, too. Starbucks, Primo Hoagies, Chipotle, massive breweries — a lot of it feels counter-cultural to what made the Strip a spot locals adore. Likewise, you’re left to wonder if the giant condo buildings aren’t going to become unpopulated concrete husks in the decades to come if people don’t commit to staying in the city.
That’s just the thing. Few of these matters are simple. Few of them can be summed up neatly, thoughtfully, and entertainingly in about a dozen words, and that’s what can make humor-centered satire a slog: to do the job ‘successfully’ nowadays almost obligates you to do it wrong. Points and positions that require paragraphs of cooked-up exposition and viewpoints are boiled down to a single serving of punchline that either elicits a radically positive reaction, radically negative reaction, or barely one at all.
There was a paragraph in here covering this last point in more detail, but let’s go ahead and get to what matters. Namely, communal experiences pull us together. I would say they outlast any bonding a digital joke might manage, no matter its potency. In fact, it’s surely why the yinzer category of jokes often performs so well: they poke at a moment, value, behavior — you name it — that belongs to a more meaningful community we’re a part of. That’s why this year, more than ever, we need to get back to our roots.
We need to neb our hearts out.
I get it. We all know that neb. The one that comments on people’s weight. The one that loses their shit on somebody parking near their house to visit family or friends. The one that casts suspicion for no reason other than to satisfy some internal fear or angst or discontent or undiagnosed spiritual malaise.
Fuck ‘em and fuck the way they’ve tainted a cultural practice that’s good for our hearts, good for our soul, and good for the places we live. In a time where the digital black hole only folds us over and over again in doubt and despair we could do ourselves and those around us a favor with an occasional shift on the stoop, in the yard, or a public space.
It’s not entirely unlike a dog showing its belly. To share a space openly with others is to apply at least a degree of trust in the social contract. It’s to expose yourself to that, most likely your, community’s reality. I won’t use ‘we,’ as it suggests a level of certainty I’m not willing to claim, but I often feel adrift from reality, lost in a space too contrived and manufactured to carry any value, to make that same aforementioned personal impact outside a few random flashes that appear before me.
Is nobody else hearing their internal voice shouting from within how desperately it wants this?
It’s the dog’s name you learn. Yeah, he barked at you. He’s just cautious around new people — you get it.
It’s the couple that used to run together. Now they walk. With a stroller. Oh, and a four-year-old. Sorry, boss, you don’t play Minecraft, but you appreciate the expert’s info on it.
It’s the kids bicycling with reckless abandon through intersections. Jesus, please be careful.
It’s the indoor-outdoor cat that walks by without a care. It’s got a name, but you’re going to keep call it that other name you made up instead.
It’s the young man who lives down the street driving his car too fast. You used to drive yours too fast, too. Maybe you’ll tell him to cool it. He’s slowed down in the past year or so, though, so that’s good.
And it’s the jagoffs — OF COURSE it’s the jagoffs. That’s part of the whole damned point! Your actual, physical, “I’m right here if you wanna talk about it” presence will make a 1000 times greater impact over the angry post on Next Door.
We don’t have to reinvent being human; it’s already coded into us. The neb within is indeed strong, coaxing without. We just need to resist the extrinsic demand to dehumanize ourselves on a semi-permanent basis. Go for a 10-minute walk. Do your work at the coffee shop. Put on music at the bar. Some people will think it sucks; they’ll never get to thank you for the story or conversation point. Doodle on the napkin and leave it for somebody. If it gets thrown away, you can always doodle another. Shovel the walk one house over.
Just sit on the porch and verify the existence of someone who walks by. Sometimes, all we need to do is answer another person’s “Is this thing on?” and it means everything.
Recent events only serve to underscore this need to participate in community, not just in permanent marker, but in blood. Right now it’s the blood of somebody far away, that you don’t know, whose bonds, whose life, whose dreams and cares and hopes and those tiny threads of being that makes us who we are can only be inferred from outside information and what we see on a screen. How long before it’s in our state, our city, and then in our backyards? With the folks with whom we break bread, crack a beer, ask about the dog, watch bike in the streets, and, among a trillion other things, share the strange phenomenon that is the human condition?
If we weren’t meant to neb, it wouldn’t come so easily. It wouldn’t be something that we could learn through a mix of observation, natural inclination, and some willful intent. Did Descartes neb? He thinks and, therefore, is —famously. But what’s being without being a part of something?
You don’t need training. You just do it. Sit. Watch. Chat. Don’t chat. Stare. Just be present and part of it.
Our lives depend on it, now more than ever.
WEST MIFFLIN — Calling the experience “more ass than the Steelers offense,” high school sophomore Bobby Kline has spent the last two hours avoiding remote learning assignments by carving the decal of radio station 102.5 WDVE into his Chromebook, according to sources who told him to cover the damage with a sticker because they sure as shit ain’t paying the insurance on it.
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Some folks can’t get enough of the sauce—any sauce. They think the toppings party keeps rolling on and on, but for three long years now, Sam McGrady has escaped the condiment-heavy cycle he’s described as “self-abuse,” thanks to the support of friends, family, and his wife, Kim.
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PITTSBURGH — Local safety officials finished rescuing several NFL defenders yesterday after the players were discovered late Sunday afternoon stranded partway up Steelers TE Darnell Washington.
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Whoa there! It’s me. Here. Now. I am me…me.
But who else would I be if not myself?
Well, let’s grasp at something philosophical, say, to help “me” figure it out.
I think…therefore, ah ha! Yes, I think — therefore, I am.
But what I am, well, I haven’t the faintest of a clue. That won’t do. That clever little Descartes, his witty bits of thought prancing about like a cat — crafty devils, those ones, oh yes indeed — that improbably jumps to and from and off into freedom just the second you think you have it firmly by the whiskers.
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