Blast from the past

I needed to interrupt the Ironcity hiatus to post these pictures. My sister Jessica, my cousin Hillary, and I had been hounding uncle Eddie to find these pictures for years. Finally, he found them this month.

Back in the day, my uncle Eddie knew the guy that was the head of security for some of the concerts around Pittsburgh. So at some point in the late 80s (I'm guessing 1988) we got backstage at the A.J. Palumbo Center to meet DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince... aka Some Guy We've All Forgotten About and Will Smith.

So here they are.   BOOYA!

Happy Holidays!



Mary and I have been pretty busy lately and will also be out of town soon. Hopefully more regular posting will resume here in mid January. So until then, I hope everyone's having a great holiday season and has a happy, booger-filled new year!


LATE BREAKING UPDATE -- Had to add a picture of our other cute little nephew as well...

A few great links I've come across lately

Battlestar Simpsons
(via BoingBoing)

and

100 Greatest Commercials of the 80s, part 1
100 Greatest Commercials of the 80s, part 2

Smells like global warming to me...

Well, that, or perhaps somebody cancelled December and replaced it with Second October. The last four or five days were already pretty mild, and now this:

Super awesome

Mary, Joe, and I went to the Pens/Caps game last night in DC (and met Peleg and his friend there). After watching the Caps score a shorthanded goal and take a 4-0 lead in the second period, I was on the verge of wanting to leave a Penguins game early for only the second time in my life. Of an estimated 80 or 90 Pens games attended since 1987 or 1988, there was only one other game I ever left early... and that was when a great mid 90s Penguins team completely failed to show up and was in the middle of getting blown out by a horrible Hartford Whalers team. The first 26 minutes of last night's game was almost that bad.

But then, as if someone flipped a light switch, the Pens turned it on. They rallied for three goals to close out the second period and a game-tying goal in the third. Then they won an overtime shootout for a 5-4 win. Malkin and Crosby each had a goal and an assist in the comeback victory and we got to watch the Capitals blow a 4-0 lead at home. It really doesn't get much better than that. As I put it last night, "The Caps had two points in the bag, but then one fell out."


UPDATE - It only just occurred to me now that Monday night was also the first time I saw Malkin and Crosby play together live -- Malkin missed the first game I went to this season and Crosby missed the second. Pretty cool how after the Pens gave up the big lead, the two got to play on the same line together for a while and they each scored a goal with an assist from the other during the comeback.

Serious story... hilarious picture

Kudos to whoever took this shot and to the CNN.com editor that threw it up on the website for this E. coli story:


Taco Hell -- DO NOT ENTER!!!

I used to hate the Browns

I also used to love hating the Browns. But this is getting ridiculous now. After last night's blowout, I was left with only two questions:

1) How have the 4-9 Browns even managed to win four games this year? They look terrible.

2) Is Cleveland the NFL's new Cincinnati?

When your running back puts up 223 yards and your team outgains the opponent 303 to 18 on the ground, as was the case last night, you're not in a rivalry... you're in the slaughter industry. In 2004 and 2005, we easily beat Cleveland in all four matchups including a 41-0 drubbing (in Cleveland) last December. And now this year, we embarrassed them with a 21 point fourth quarter comeback in Cleveland and a total ass whipping in Pittsburgh.

I'm still not ready to buy into the Steelers being a team on the road to respectability, though, until I see how they do this week in a road game against a Carolina team that's in the thick of the NFC wildcard hunt.

Thursday Afternoon Laughs (and football)

I guess posting funny Youtube clips is a pretty cheap form of "blogging," but that's all I've got time for right now.

This video is from Manchester, but hopefully they have things like this in London as well. If so, Mary and I will definitely look for them when we visit next month. Hopefully we get lucky and see some morons wrecking themselves.


("Managing Traffic for Efficiency and Hilarity" via
New York Magazine)


In less hilarious news, the Steelers play tonight without either of their starting wide receivers or either of their starting safeties. So their passing offense and passing defense could both be rendered ineffective if some other guys don't step up big time. On the other hand, I'm hoping it won't matter because we are playing the Browns at home. The Steelers are 29-6 in games against Cleveland played in Pittsburgh dating back to 1970 and are also 19-3 overall in the series dating back to 1993.

That's about as lopsided as things get in the NFL between two teams.


UPDATE - Make those records 30-6 and 20-3 now.

Football and pigs

Did you ever wonder why people sometimes refer to a football as the "pigskin?"

Some of us here at the office -- while working on a disgusting project involving the pork industry -- were talking about it and decided to look it up. Pretty gross.

And on a semi-related disturbing note, while searching through some documents on the pork project, we came across a reference to this ridiculous story (the client has business in Romania).