It's my favorite time of the year: Spring is around the corner, hockey is in a pre-playoff frenzy, and the most consistently exciting event of the year is about to tip off.
I'm talking, of course, about March Madness. Luckily for you, the NCAA selection committee has not convened at the time of this writing, so I'm precluded from adding to the already ubiquitous and overly self-important March Madness preview articles.
And on some level, it doesn't really matter which teams are favored or which conference got jobbed. We'll watch no matter who is playing. We watch because most of us like seeing a little school take down a big one. We watch because school spirit is infectious. And despite the fact that I live in one of the great sports cities in America, I watch to see what other folks are doing.
In fact, while I'm very rarely envious of another area's sports mojo, this year I covet the atmosphere surrounding the University of Tennessee basketball programs. Both of them.
We all know about Pat Summitt, the greatest women's college basketball coach of all time. (I think she's in the gender-blind team photo of best college basketball coaches, period.) But with the gregarious and self-deprecating Bruce Pearl breathing life into a previously inert men's program, they've got a good thing going down there in Tennessee. And I'm not just talking about win/loss records.
At the end of January, Pearl showed up with a group of his players to cheer on the women Volunteers in their game against No. 1-ranked Duke. Pearl himself was shirtless, chest and face painted; he was the "V" in "Go Vols."
A month later, the Grande Dame of the women's game returned the favor. Summitt showed up for the men's showdown with last year's national champion -- and top-10-ranked rival -- the Florida Gators. Summitt was clad in a cheerleader costume and feathered hat, leading the crowd in singing "Rocky Top," the traditional Tennessee fight song. She even got atop the cheerleader pyramid.
Tennessee won in a shocker ... which just goes to show that you can never underestimate the power of Pat.
Taken together, these may be my all-time favorite moments in college basketball history. Summitt's support for the men has lent them some of the legitimacy and gravitas they've lacked for so long. And Pearl's sense of showmanship brought out a side of Pat Summitt that nobody had ever seen publicly.
I'm not hoping for a copy-cat moment from Pitt's coaches, Jamie Dixon and Agnus Berenato. (Although Dixon would probably look better than Pearl sans shirt ... and Agnus is bound to have a more melodious singing voice than Summitt.) But the men's and women's programs can feed off each other, building excitement for both.
Just as importantly, the coaches here, like those in Tennessee, are both good folks. Having spoken to Berenato, she's accessible and ebullient. As for Dixon, all he's done is reach 100 wins in four seasons. Only 14 other coaches in NCAA Division I basketball history have reached 100 wins faster. He did it in only 126 games, despite playing with team rosters that lacked any pure shooters or potential NBA'ers other than Aaron Gray this year.
In the current heady sports climate, it's easy to forget that Pitt's teams were both regularly on the outside looking in at this time of year. But the men are now a mortal lock for the tourney every year, and the women are going for the first time since God was young. The Petersen Events Center plays host to the first two rounds of the women's tourney on March 18 and 20. And I've decided to enjoy the ride this year.
I won't be disappointed no matter what: If both Berenato's and Dixon's squads stumble, I've got the lyrics to "Rocky Top" downloaded.
Henry Redd Uppington’s career as a Pittsburgh superhero was over before it started | News | Pittsburgh | Pittsburgh City Paper
"Pittsburgh, unlike Gotham, evidently has no place for a superhero, only the weathered images of the idea of a superhero."
"Do you know who Henry Redd Uppington is?" I beseech, as I cautiously loiter in front of First Lutheran Church on Grant Street near a garbage receptacle that bears his chiseled image. I query several passersby, but no one says "yes." It’s as though he never existed.
Yet, in the heart of Downtown Pittsburgh, where there is a trash can, there is the creased, abraded and sooted image of Henry, and I need to know what happened to him.
The fictitious warrior against waste was created in 2011 as a part of a marketing campaign designed to encourage clean streets and support the work of the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership’s Clean Team. They commissioned Henry as a superhero specialist who focused on eradicating the tobacco confetti and lipstick-stained Lucky Strike leftovers that lined our fair city’s streets. His name was an obvious homage to the "redding up" that those of us in Pittsburgh are so fond of doing.
Unfortunately, his lore was a little less-than-heroic. "He wears a cape, and a tool belt filled with cleaning supplies," reported the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review at the time. The PDP also called for submissions to rename this threat to city-sullying scofflaws. That’s because he was given only a "Joe Citizen" placeholder name, "Henry Redd Uppington." The lucky person who invented the perfect superhero moniker for mild-mannered Henry would receive an iPod Touch and other prizes.
The PDP fastened 150 cigarette urns onto existing city refuse cans as part of this campaign. And then the image of the caped and leotarded Henry — the superhero-without-a-superhero-name — was slapped onto each urn. In hindsight (and you’ll see why this is a great pun in just a second), Henry was for all intents the poster hero for proper cigarette butt disposal, and opening the floodgates to a rechristening was probably not the wisest maneuver: "Buttman." "Henry Redd Buttington." "Bluntman." You get the idea. Never mind it was already confusing that "Redd Uppington" already rang like a genuine, Pittsburgh, filth-slayer, superhero name.
Diana Nelson-Jones wrote a story for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and described his character in a manner that may have also foreboded his doom: "... he has that typical lantern-jawed, thick-thighed Aryan thing going on ..." adding that he looked like he could "dropkick you into Fayette County if you threw a cigarette butt." Nelson-Jones clearly touched a nerve — no one wants to be dropkicked into Fayette County.
In my tireless search for this caped crusader of litter crimes, I contacted Joe Wos, the erstwhile former director of The Toonseum, who helped to create the backstory for Henry. He relayed only a tale of intrigue without any real answers. After mentioning that he and Henry had never been seen together at the same time, he ended abruptly: "That is all I can tell you without revealing too much of the story."
"The ledger of classified Pittsburgh facts — passed down to every mayor and kept in my secret stairwell — says he went to clean up the B-25 lost in the Mon and was never seen again. Luckily, we’ve had an army of other litter-battling volunteers to replace him."
In reality, Henry has languished on city streets since 2011, as though he is waiting for a P1 bus that never comes. He still lacks a superhero name and public appearances by the costumed sentinel of sanitation have never materialized. Henry has gone up in smoke, both figuratively and literally. Leigh White, PDP’s vice president of marketing and communications, offers this explanation: "Like all marketing campaigns, there are some that are more successful than others."
Pittsburgh, unlike Gotham, evidently has no place for a superhero, only the weathered images of the idea of a superhero, forever in limbo, and stuck with only a civilian name.
In some ways, Henry has become nothing more than the litter that he was dreamt up to keep off our streets. Did Henry exist, or was he nothing more than a Zen koan? Who is a superhero without a superhero name?
It is Henry’s grim fate to be the failed avenger of tidiness. In Pittsburgh, the real heroes are thousands of volunteers, whether they are working with the PDP, scout groups or neighborhood organizations. What a great gift to live in a city where a cleaning crime fighter isn’t actually necessary. This is the truth I accept.
While we may never know exactly what happened to Henry, I do know this: In Pittsburgh, superheroes never die. Their advertising campaign posters just slowly fade away.
Democrats and liberals can't do much to change the nation's political profile until the 2006 elections. What to do with all that downtime?
Drinking Liberally, a grass-roots organization that calls itself an "informal, inclusive weekly Democratic drinking club," finds the answer in a pint glass. Founded in May 2003 in New York City, the group is quickly spreading across the country, with 33 chapters based in Madison, Wis., and other college towns, conservative outposts such as Houston, liberal cities like San Francisco and Portland -- and now Pittsburgh.
On Jan. 4, the Pittsburgh Drinking Liberally chapter will hold its first meeting at 7 p.m. at Finnegan's Wake on the North Side.
Pittsburgh chapter organizer John Tadler says the group's first meeting will be "pretty informal" (Robert's Rules of Ordering, anyone?) and will mostly focus on getting to meet whomever else shows up. He hopes the weekly meetings will lead to solid friendships based on shared progressive values and networking opportunities. "I hope some really good ideas about advancing the local region will come out, or ideas to revitalize Pittsburgh," says Tadler, of Emsworth.
The opportunity to chat about politics with like-minded citizens currently attracts at least 50 weekly regulars to Rudy's, the home base of Drinking Liberally's New York chapter. "People can make friendships that can turn into political participation, or donations," says national co-founder and organizer Justin Krebs. He says members fund the group out of their own pockets, selling T-shirts and pins to cover expenses -- which may or may not include the sip of Southern Comfort Krebs enjoyed while being interviewed at a chapter meeting.
The group's only rules: Pick a regular time and place to meet, charge no admission fee, don't invite other groups or Democratic campaigns to present anything at meetings, and drink responsibly.
What about potential members who can't even be Drinking Legally? Krebs reports that offshoots for the under-21 crowd are springing up across the country. In California cities, Spending Liberally monitors campaign contributions by major corporations for shoppers hoping to "punish corporations that make the government work against the public interest." In Austin, Texas, Reading Liberally gives literary liberals a chance to discuss political books. Enthuses Krebs: "It's people's ingenuity and ideas making things happen."