All spelling errors are intentional (we think). - Ed.
PITTSBURGH -- The first thing I can tell you about arriving in Pittsburgh Pennsylvana is that you literaly have to drive through a goddamn mountain to get there. Im not kidding I got off a plane and started driving downtown when I came across a tunnel straight through a halfmile of Iron Ore and bedrock. "Oh wow," you might say, "thats pretty cool is there anything else cool about that fact?" Well yeah the fact that you have to drive through a goddamn mountain at EXACTLY mile marker 69 is pretty cool obviously.
Right of the bat I knew me and Pittsburg were going to be friends.
Pittsbugh Pennsylvania and the Pittsbugh Steelers in particular embody every thing thats right about how to play football and every thing that use to be great about America. Its a hard nose blue collar town that loves there Steelers and commits to the running game and stopping the run except the whole city must take pretty poor angles of pursuit on every one whose over 20 years old thats trying to escape.
I counted 4 sleeveless tshirts on my flight into Pittsburgh which is a allstar choice for airtravel, and from what I could see there were at least a dozen Steelers hats on my plane that fit like 100. The lady behind me had a great convo with the flight attendent as we were taking off about how that plane disapeared because either it crashed or terrists were going to do a nother round of hijackings which was reassuring. She seemed to know what she was talking about though sense her husband flew a cessna once and advised her to allways sit in the back of the plane because "thats were the black box is, and that hardly ever gets destroyed."
Really makes you think.
Theres a great statue in the airport of the immaculate reception which is perfectly fitting because for the first 20 years of the Pittsburgh internatonal airport all the flights were pretty much in Gods hands and you always woud think in the back of your mind that each flight might touch the ground
Now Ill be honest here every single danmed person I met in Pittburgh Pennsylvania was as nice as can be with the exeption of all the women who were real stuck up and wouldnt even let me touch them no matter how drunk I got. But every person I met was way nicer then me so I'll go ahead and say that right here- a very frendly city. I expected alot of casual racism and reverse racism and I didnt see any of that except for one guy (more on that later)-it was a unified town where both black and white, young and old, join hands together to call for Mike Tomlins head on a stake.
This was a very diffucult weekend to be a Pittsburghian (Pittsburger? Pittsburgionian? Pittsburghite? No one knows.) As weve all heard by now, Coach Chuck Noll had passed away on Friday night, the day before I flew in to town. ICYMI Chuck was a oldschool coach who packed more lunchpails then Philip Riverses wife and more rings than Elizabeth Taylor!!! He was never a flashy type guy but he got his team to work I guess you could say he was the Ronald Reagan of Coaches accept Noll instead of tearing down a Iron Curtain he built a Steel Curtain to prevent Patriots from Russian on him! (USSR reference) Chuck Noll was a great coach and the entire town was in a state of mourning when I arrived. The line at Primanti brothers was only a hour long so you knew that somthing was off.
French Frys are to Pittsburgh what crack cocane is to Washington DC=they put that stuff on every thing. I enjoyed a worldclass sandwich and several many Iron City beers at Primanits.
Primanti brothers is a sandwich places for busy people on the go who dont have time to eat side dishes like frys and cole slaw seperate from there sandwiches so they stack them right on top. To be honest Im suprised they havent invented a sandiwch milkshake to speed the whole process up. I asked for my sanwich to be dunked in Iron City beer to save me time and they looked at me like I had two heads SMHs. Primantis is alot like the Steelers in general, they only accept cash as payment because they dont spend money on things like signing there wide receiver free agents or credit card processing bills.
NOTE: THEY DO NOT ACCEPT GRITCOINS no matter how politely I yelled.
Iron City beer is a no frills beer thats pretty much like if you mixed Milwauklees best with ayahuasca and had a vision quest where you saw a elderly woman chainsmoking on a bridge as your spirit animal. I had heard the urban legend about I.C. beers before but I didnt beleve it until I saw it with my own to eyes: on the night of a full moon in Pittsburgh you can dunk your french fries in Iron City and end up with this amazing super natural reaction:
Walking a round Pittsburgh its just amazing to see all the Steelers merchendise there. You cant help but think maybe if kids in Chicago had good jobs like selling Steelers merch maybe they wouldnt shoot each other in the neighborhoods they choose to live in. I had a idea for a charity to drive kids on a greyhound from Chicago to Pittsburgh and then just leave them there with a backpack full of terrible towels and a card table and see which ones can make it like a Pursuit of Happiness where you kidnapped children for their own good. Serously the branding is tremendous there are Rothlisberger jerseys everywhere you look in this town I thought the placement of this one in particular was a bit curious but I guess this towns crazy for winners!
Pittburgh is awesome #notallmen pic.twitter.com/i77B7JZI70
— PFTCommenter (@PFTCommenter) June 14, 2014
I had to make the trip to Heinz field where sure enough I saw a shrine set up to Coach Noll. The shrine was like Chuck himself, unassuming but who needs all that rah rah stuff when your literaly living in heaven:
There was a cool poster and someone left behind a bag of stuff for Coach to use in heaven including a tin of coffee with absolutley NO cream sugar or fancyass crap and there was a piece of rebar that was stuck in there.
Without a doubt the best shrine- in fact when I pass a way I want someone to leave just a picture of Chucks shrine as my shrine. Dont need all this flower stuff, matter fact I want my stone to say "WIP"=Work In Peace. Theres no time for lazabouts- the afterlife is just a fancy way of saying overtime and when people pass away they should act like theyve been there before even though literally no one who's alive has.
Of course I was here not just to tour the Steel City, but also to see the greatest intertainer of our time perform. Its a hardhat and workboots town but I needed to go Pittsburgh formal on a special occaision so I traded in my blue collar for a blacktie and my constructon vest for a 3-piece suit and made my way on in.
Terry Bradshaw is what they call in Pittsburgh "A Lambert of all trades." The man can sing dance, tell jokes, forget his train of thought, win championships, and make out with Jay Leno all in one lifetime. He was putting on a live 90 minute show called "Americas Favorite Dumb Blonde" at a casino in Gods country 30 mins outside Pittsburgh in Washington, Pennsylvania. They named the town after George Washington because your max bet at the Casino is a one dollar bill and most of the people who go there voted for him. Serously I like to have some fun with it and say that the only thing thats stealing more retired peoples money then The Meadows Casino and Racetrack is Obamacare.
Terry had promissed a evening of singing, jokes-telling, pigskin-tossing, and good old fashion fun so I downed a dozen Iron Citys and arrived at the casino about 30 mins before Bradshaw was scheduled to go on. The only thing Bradshaws been on time for in his life is taking a dump so its no suprise he went on a good half hour late but that gave me time to mix and mingle.
I sat next to a great guy Ill call him "Kip" because honestly that was probly his name. Kip got very comfortable with me,, so much so that within a minute of meeting him he mentoned a story about "this colored guy" who he sat next to for 6 years at Three Rivers Stadium. He never happen to catch his neighbors name though over those 6 years no biggie. Anyhoo this fella use to be real good at heckling and they had seats at the 40 yd line right down on the vistor sideline. Apparently one time this wellspoken clean articulate neighbor of Kips was yelling at Joe Namath and Broadway Joe finally turned around, walked up to the stands, got in his face and said, "Well what the fuck are you going to do about it?" Right in his face!!!! and they never saw that guy again probly lost his season tickets for mouthing of so much.
Now its no secret that Im not a fan of the Rooney rule but honestly this crowd could of used some affirmative acton just so I could of felt more comfortable laughing at some goodnatured not-really-racist jokes. There were about 3000 people there and I didnt see more then a dozen people who were under the age of 50 or not White.
Funny thing about Pittburgh casino concerts- there outside and they grossly underestimate the size of the average football fan attendee. These were tiny folding chairs thtat were tied to each other by zipties for some reason so you couldnt even move them away from each other to get some elbow/personal smell room.
This is not good when your buddy to your right is a 275 lb bearded fella with transiton lenses, camo cargos and velcros. We became close friends and just kindve whispered "no homo" to each other once every couple minutes, just to be safe.
"Americas Favorite Dumb Blonde" (I guess when they named it they forgot about Hillary!) is a performence in 4 quaters so eat your heart out LeBron. The show starts with one of his "I-Qties" dressed up as a slutty replacement ref explaning some football terms that some of the nonfootball fans might not get but lets be honest here how many people who arent football fans are playing $50-$100 to let Terry Bradshaw talk to them for 90 minutes? Never the less it was a good excuse to see a refree that I wouldnt mind screwing me over on a Sunday for a change!!!
Terrys first showtune was a gospeltype number called "Going Deep" and let me tell you what Terry Bradshaw can sing. I truley think Terry has the potential to collect the worlds first SBEGOT= (Superbowl, Emmy, Grammy, Overtime football game). Sorry for the bad video but I dont own a camera. Plus I wasnt sposed to even take pictures or anything.
But Terrys really got a outstanding voice if you cant tell from that video or dont want to beleve me watch this one from 1976:
Of course Terry had to adress the elephant in the room (Lynn Swan is a Republican!!) No Im just kidding of course,, he needed to menton the passing of Chuck Noll. We were all going to get through this tough night together and laughter can sometimes be the best medicine (wonder if maybe the leagues concusson panel should consider putting a Larry Cable Guy DVD on every sideline for when players get a concussion) so the show must go on. There was certainly a bit of a somber feeling to the evening at this point. But being the consumate entertainer that he is, Terry would go on to leave us wetting ourselves with the Pittsburgh hat trick of sweat, pee, and spilled beer.
Here are some of the high lights:
-Terry grew up poor. His Mama made his clothes and his Paw Paw told him that it should never be about the money. Thats why Terry says he never had a contract dispute- this got a huge ovation from me.
-Terrys family was so poor they used a outhouse. And when Terry got too lazy to make the walk outside hed pee through his bedroom window screen and make a mess in the house, which made me think of how Farve would of avoided the splash back by sticking it right through IMO.
-Terry use to wipe his butt with the Sears and Roebuck catalog in his out house except for the bra page which he used to j/o to. Him and Franco Harris use to talk about j/oing to the Sears Calendar alot, that was a very popular theme of conversation in the Steelers lockerroom. One time Franco tried to pay $50 for Terrys old catalog in the 70s so HE could j/o to it again and Terry wouldnt sell.
-Terry went to Lousisana Tech which was a very small school where he said "We had to use our one and only mule for Drivers Ed AND Sex educaton!!!!" so I guess Terry fucked a hybrid farm animal or whatever.
-Terry was a backup to Phil Robertson from Duck Dynasty (whose name got a huge round've applause) at Louisiana Tech and old Phil use to go Duck Hunting almost every day. Phil would go hunting before practice and would show up in Tshirts stained with blood and guts all over it blazing a path for future football players like Aaron Hernandez.
-Terry likes to joke about how many times hes been married (A LOT.) He made at leased 10 jokes about how he likes to get divorced each one funnier then the last and on one I could of swore I saw Rick Santorum even admitting that its time to stop discrimnating against divorced people getting remarried because this guys funny as heck.
-Terry says "God Dang!" alot. But it sounds more like "Gut Dang!" which is a better way to say it I think
-Terry made fun of Peyton Manning pretty good:
-Like I said before Terrys definitley not gay because hes been married to so many women. But he went of on how handsome Tom Brady was and it was a real hoot:
-Terry Bradshaw fell in love with a girl and he licked her stomach because he liked girls so much he wanted to taste them so he literally kept licking her stomach. He made a point of talkig about how he loved licking her stomach- Im taking notes here furously picking up a few tricks for next time I find a girl wholl have sex to me.
-He teased Mel Blount for going to a all black school. Terry dosent think he would of been good enough to get on the field at a HBCU but he said that maybe could of been the punter because punters are genrerally the White guy.
When he was filming "Failure to Launch" he had a nude scene but didnt realise that he had to cover up lil' Terry since the camera was only going to be on his butt. They gave him three options of what size of a flesh color sock he needed to put over his ding dong. The large small and medium were all to big so he took the medium to try and look cool in front of the wardrobe people (veteran move) and just taped it to himself so it wouldnt fall off.
-When he blew out his elbow he had some one bring in a Myna bird that had spirituatl powers to heal his arm for some reason. The bird pooped on him and didnt help at all. Usualy if theres a bird that shits himself out of fear and ruins the career of a Pennsylvania QB we just call it Todd Pinkston.
-Terrys not happy that his daughters marrying a kicker
I stood up on my own 2 hind legs and begged to get at the microphone during the Q&A but I was just sitting to far away to get a mic but you just know he would of thought that yes, Joe Flacco is a Elite Quarterback.
Bradshaws show was honestly very funny specially when he goofed on himself. Terrys not going to win any spelling bees any time soon, but the telling that came out of this guy was unreal. He has a honestly good voice and people forget that he put out a country album back in the day. Nowdays your more likely to see a QB singing about Phillys then Fillys, more likely to be singing about smoking grass then bailing hay, more likely to be rapping then roping. For a old Steeler this guy was a real Cowboy folks. The whole evening felt like I was in 1978 and every one was just having worryfree unprotected football laughter sex with each other.
Terry told great old storys about how Chuck Noll told him they were going to draft Franco Harris and win all them Superbowls, and it turns out Noll went out and drafted 4 Hall of Famers that year which I dont care what you say thats allmost as good as throwing a no-hitter on LSD.
Bradshaw cried a few times talking about Noll, and so did every one else. The people of Pittburgh are legitmatley in debt to the years of happiness that Chuck Noll gave them as sports fans which is not somthing that every one else is lucky enough to experience (I'm looking your way Browns fans). I didnt grow up watching the Steelers but rather just admiring there mentality and toughness and I even teared up when Bradshaw took a brake from his show and just threw a foot ball back and forth with Harris and the two of them were choking up talkjing about there coach.
Terrys goodbye was touching with the old timer trying to get through his lyrics without crying to much, which he wasnt able to do. There wasnt a dry eye in the house folks it was like the end of a Sasha Grey movie.
The most touching part of the evening came when Terry was talking bout how fortunate he was to of only played for one coach as a pro. Chucks no longer with us- so Bradshaws Highschool coach has passed, his college coach has passed, and his only NFL coach is passed. Now Terry doesn't have a coach anymore, and for the first time in his life, I bet he wishes there was some one else there to call his plays for him.