Filed under: Ohio, Pittsburgh, Sports | Tags: college football, pixburke, whoo-hoo
We’re not done with college football yet.
I’ve been able to see a few pretty good games since Ohio State’s regular season ended a couple weeks ago — Texas and Texas A&M was insane — and we’ve even got a couple that matter to us going on this weekend.
I’m watching OU and Central play for the MAC title tonight — OU’s down at halftime, but a bowl bid is all but certain. And tomorrow morning, we have one more tailgate for the season, outside Heinz Field prior to the Pitt-Cincinnati game.
I think everyone is expecting the Ohio family to be cheering for the Ohio team tomorrow … and everyone would be wrong. My parents’ irritation with UC goes back to a series of basketball games between Oscar Robertson’s Bearcats and the Buckeyes of Lucas and Havlicek. For me, the annoyance stems mostly from this football and the irritating claim that Cincy was the best college football program in the state this year.
We have a low-key kind of tailgate planned, but we’ll still be doing what we do on autumn Saturday mornings. And I’m curious to see how a pro football town does when it comes to tailgating for a pretty important — and sold out — college game.
Perhaps the best part about tomorrow’s game? It’s going to be 25 degrees when we arrive at Heinz Field — and because it’s not an Ohio State game, I don’t have to wear shorts.
Ahhh. Balmy.
Filed under: Food and Drink, Pittsburgh, Social Media, Sports, Uncategorized | Tags: even more sports, grumpy old guy, pixburke, yinzteam, yum
Saturday was a day of two distinct halves, split by a two-hour nap and a handful of Advil.
Part one: Yinz Bowl.
The day dawned crisp and cool, an ideal canvass for the gridiron warriors who would battle that day…
OK, that’s enough. We had a slightly smaller group of participants for Yinz Bowl II — offset by actual spectators this time around — and we didn’t get any of the ladies to play this year, as Mrs. Crappy was at work, AAA and CPG were both not yet home from Thanksgiving travel and Mindbling had something mindblingy to take care of.
Thus, “Flackle” drifted away from “Flag” and a little more towards “Tackle,” meaning the protocal seemed to be to tackle the ballcarrier and then pull his flag. That’s not a bad thing, but it definitely meant I was suffering more at the end of the game than I might have been otherwise. It also served to perhaps underscore the age differential between me and everyone else (although Scott and Woy are closer than they might like to admit). Rob shot the second half of the game — you can see his Flickr gallery here — and a couple of the pics illustrate the difference pretty clearly.
Speed.
Gravity.
Anyway. I had a few receptions, one carry, a couple tackles and a pulled groin. And I apparently dinged Shireman, catching him on the chin with a shoulder while I turned around after making a catch. Next year, Jim, I suggest hitting me somewhere where there is more padding.
I also served as chief trainer for the group, administering medicine — as captured by Abby — to those who needed it afterwards.
Like, say, me.
It’s three days later, and I’m mostly recovered. I’m walking without a limp and the pain in my shoulder is gone; my ribs are still a little achy when I cough, though.
Part two: Make Room for Kids at Las Velas.
Our friend Ginny kicked off her effort to raise $10,000 to install a game room at Children’s Hospital on Saturday night with a benefit party at Las Velas, her husband’s restaurant. I don’t really need an excuse to avail myself of a Las Velas margarita or 12, but this seemed like a good opportunity to have some fun and help out a cause we wanted to get behind.
There were a few Yinz Bowl players limping around the restaurant — and then there was TV’s Jim Lokay, who shook off whatever aches and pains he was experiencing to engage in a Mariachi and margarita-fueled dance-off with Tall Kathy. I promised Jim I wouldn’t post the video I shot, but one little picture couldn’t hurt, right?
Even without the Dance of the Pittsburgh Broadcasting Stars, the night was fabulous. After circulating and sucking down some tequila, we — Mrs. Crappy and me, Redpenmama, AAA and Chachi, who were joined after a while by the Shiremans — set up at a table and grazed our way through an excellent dinner — and more tequila. We all were able to set aside whatever pressures we regularly face and relax, and we laughed our way through the evening. I regularly have fun with all you people, but I’m having a hard time remembering a night that seemed quite as good as that one. I hope we can do it again soon.
And we — meaning everyone who showed up at Las Velas on Saturday — did good. Ginny said the restaurant’s donation to the Make Room for Kids drive is upwards of $500. If you didn’t get a chance to come out on Saturday, you can still donate via the PayPal link at Ginny’s site.
Postscript.
Football that didn’t kill me. Drinks and dinner with great friends to benefit a great cause. I need to figure out a way to do this every Saturday.
Filed under: I Have No Idea, Pittsburgh, Sports | Tags: even more sports, grumpy old guy, i'm an idiot, nablopomo, pixburke, whoo-hoo
Rather than celebrating the successful completion of NaBloPoMo (Woooo 35 posts in 30 days!), I’m going observe this end by starting something new.
Something that’s going to make me insane, and is possibly stupid, but still.
Y’all are accustomed to hearing me grumble about being the old guy. It’s mostly something I like to joke about, but there are times — like the two days following Yinz Bowl and the accompanying aches and pains — when it’s pretty apparent to me that I am an old guy, trying to keep up with friends who are, in general, much, much younger.
For a fat old guy, I’m fairly healthy. But I’ve got all kinds of fun things in my family history — diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease among them — that tell me I need to take some steps to ensure I’m going to be around for a while. I’ve been lucky, because that stuff hasn’t been a problem for me yet, but as I’m carrying around 50 or 60 more pound than I need to be, it’s probably just a matter of time before it does.
So. I’m going to run. Specifically, I’m going to run in — and finish — the half-marathon portion of the Pittsburgh Marathon on May 2.
(Oh, god, I can’t believe I just typed that.)
I won’t be alone. Mrs. Crappy, who used to run in several 5Ks a year, is going to join me; half veterans Fred and Ethel are going to run Pittsburgh as well, and HP and DD — who have finished all kinds of crazy shit like century bike rides and triathalons as part of a Cleveland-based Team In Training group — are going to do the same in the Cleveland Marathon two weeks later (slackers).
I was, at one time, good at this. As part of the Army’s physical training tests, each soldier is required to complete a two-mile run within an age-based time frame. I was 23 when I finished basic training, and was required to finish the run in 16:36; I don’t recall the exact time, but I know it just over 13 minutes. And while I’ve never been a fan of running, at that point it wasn’t hard — and almost enjoyable.
Of course, this time I don’t have a drill sergeant screaming at me. And my hips, knees and ankles are all 20 years older than they were during that idyllic summer at Fort Knox. But I do have a goal, and I definitely have a reason to not only train for a single event but make some changes that will sustain me for years to come.
Uncle Crappy (the blog) will not turn into a running blog, and I won’t be starting a separate site to chronicle all the stuff that happens between now and May 2. But, once a week or so, I’ll be sure to bitch about update yinz guys on our progress as we work towards being able to run 13.1 miles without dying.
That last thing seems like a reasonable goal, right? Right?
Filed under: Social Media | Tags: history, internet fun, nablopomo, whoo-hoo
Sonofabitch. I missed the birthday of Uncle Crappy.
Six years ago yesterday, I wrote the first post for Uncle Crappy, while I was working a night shift at the paper and waiting for some weather to hit Pittsburgh so I could write what was likely the first weather story of that winter (Fun fact — while I’ve changed desks three times since that night, I’m still using the same crappy Dell I was using six years ago. I might be better off with a typewriter.). I’m going to blame my oversight on the YinzBowl, the subsequent convalescence/napping and our night at the Make Room For Kids fundraiser at Las Velas, all of which I’ll recap in a day or two.
And while I’m proud to have kept Uncle Crappy (the blog) alive for six years, perhaps a more important date to celebrate would be February 9, 2005 — the day I sent out the email to nearly everyone I knew about this blog, which for the preceeding 15 months had existed without their knowledge.
With one exception. A couple weeks prior to that email, HP had not only discovered Uncle Crappy — a completely random find while she was Googling Juan’s business — but had read the entire thing on her way to figuring out that she knew the author. HP told the story in detail a week or so ago, and credits me with getting her started. Reading that, my friends, is an honor I can’t adequately describe.
But I owe her as well. For the first 15 months I was writing here, I was writing almost exclusively for myself. No one knew about Uncle Crappy, and I was terrified to tell anyone about it. I knew there were a few people reading, and I got maybe a dozen comments in that time, but this was largely a one-way deal. But once HP found the blog, read everything and said she actually enjoyed it, I found the courage to tell everyone else about what I had been doing here.
And that’s where Uncle Crappy (the blog) really began, boys and girls. It’s kept me in touch with old friends around the country (and around the world), it’s netted me new friends — some of whom I still haven’t actually met — and it’s served as my entree into the Pittsburgh group, which, as I’ve said over and over and over, is about the best group of people I could hope to find anywhere (notwithstanding the few of them who tried to kill me while playing football Saturday morning and then shared our pain over margaritas Saturday night).
Thanks to all of you, of course, for making Uncle Crappy — the blog and the person — what it is six years later. And special thanks to HP, who led Uncle Crappy out of the darkness in 2005 — without you, I might still be typing to myself.
- – -
Flickr photo: “I’ve got the six,” by Myxi.
Filed under: Pittsburgh, Sports | Tags: even more sports, nablopomo, whoo-hoo, yinzteam
One of the most fun days I had last year was on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, when we played in the first ever Yinz Bowl. This morning’s game — the second iteration of what promises to be our annual flackle football game — promises to be just as good.
A couple things to keep in mind:
It’s going to be chilly. Everyone thought I was kind of nuts for wearing shorts to last year’s game, but the day turned out to be pretty nice. As you can see, the folks at Accuweather think it’ll be in the mid-30s when we’re getting started — so we’re still talking about perfect shorts weather. (I might — might — wear gloves this time, though…)
Also: I’m a year older than I was for the inaugural game. I’m not worried about it, though — a couple extra (handfuls of) Advil, and I’ll be fine.
