It sits in your home office or game room… 50-plus lurking pounds of heavy metal, (Dude! Rawk Aht! What? Oh, sorry… go on…) plastic and other stuff that really shouldn’t go to a landfill, right below a gargantuan monitor that is so old it occasionally picks up transmissions from the 1939 World’s Fair, and a keyboard that when typed on makes a sound like gunfire clacking up in the hollow and you just know that the Hatfields and The McCoys are a-gonna tussle agin’.
Look, it’s not doing you or anybody else any good right now – you’ve long-since upgraded to the Quad-Processor 1.21 jigawatt monstrosity that will let you buy tasteful clothing with incredible ease, allow you to IM with your no-good layabout friends (OMG! STFU!), and even, perhaps, get some friggin’ work done every once in a while. Your new monitor is one of those fancy-pants LCD types which you could hang on a wall and lift with one hand. So the silicon behemoth collects dust, like some long-forgotten relic of a bygone age.
What to do, what to do… You can’t bury it in the back yard, because you know you’ll lie awake at night slowly going mad, the ticking of it’s internal processor clock like some modern-day tell-tale heart reminding you that burying all those chemicals in the ground just ain’t right. You tried to pawn it off on the neighborhood kids and they just chuckled at you, speeding away on their skateboards, listening to “Panic! At The Disco” on their iPod Nanos. Hell, even your mom turned her nose up at it, and she still can’t quite grasp the whole “cut-and-paste foolishness”, bless her heart…
So donate it to Goodwill Industries of Pittsburgh. This Saturday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Heinz Field, in Alco Parking Lot #2, you can donate all of your old computer equipment. This is a new program, a partnership between Goodwill and Dell Computers, and they’re doing a Good Thingâ„¢. They’ll even clean your hard drive to Department of Defense standards for free, saving you $20 that day only! Hell, you don’t even need to get out of your car.
They’re going to refurbish any computers that are in decent shape and resell them to raise money for local Goodwill programs. Any computers that can’t be refurbished, or are simply too old will be salvaged for any valuable parts and then disposed of properly, diverting up to 2.1 million pounds of waste from area landfills. The whole program will help up to 100 of your fellow Pittsburghers transition from welfare to work.
So, those are good reasons to do it right there. But wait, there’s more… (Isn’t there always?)
Steelers Quarterback and all-around good human Charlie Batch (See: All the good work he’s done for kids in his hometown of Homestead and throughout the area) is slated to be there helping out from 10-11 a.m. You can register for prizes including a flat-panel tv and gift cards, get a tax write-off for next year, free up some space in your house, and most importantly, drive away knowing that just by dropping off your old, unwanted computer, you helped aht in Pittsburgh. Think Globally, Act Locally… n’at.
This event is sponsored by Goodwill, Dell Computers, City of Pittsburgh’s Pittsburgh Partnership and Allegheny County.
Let’s do our Drinking For A Cause early this week and hit the benefit for Adagio Health, who have a program that does breast and cervical cancer screening for unisured women in western PA. Andrew Stockey is the MC, but I don’t think that means he’ll drop any phat rhymes. Or maybe he will… I met him once, he seemed like a really cool guy, about the right age to, like me, know almost every word to Rapper’s Delight. Well, maybe after enough $2 well drinks and domestic bottles he and I can bust into a little King Of Rock and we’ll gently remind everyone in attendance that there is none higher, and sucker mc’s should call us Squire… Who knows?
Ok, I think I’m ok… All right… It’s a bar crawl all over the North Side. Bar crawls are like the Holy Grail of drinking, but, like the guy that melted at the end of the Indiana Jones movie, you must choose wisely. One of those choices is a cab. Otherwise, you melt or something. Another important choice is not to blow yourself out at the first bar. DO NOT blast a couple shots at the first place you go to while shouting “WOO-HOO!!! This is gonna be AWESOME!”, cause you will NOT enjoy places 3 through 7 nor will you end up awesome. Trust me on this.
Well, ok, at least Goldblum’s in it, and he’s got a free pass for life, basically, just for being in the insanely awesome flick “
Really, there’s not enough Aqua Net in the world to do this show justice… But try, I will. It’s a homecoming of sorts for Poison frontman Bret Michaels (nee Bret Michael Sychak), as the Butler native headlines a show of two HUGE 80s hair metal bands. Cinderella got short-changed by a lot of folks, but they’re musically one of the better bands in the whole genre (or “zhon-durr” as a former coworker of mine used to say, that always went over well in client meetings, right up there with using “irregardless” without a trace of irony). The heat index out in Burgettstown is going to jump by about 15 degrees from the Bic lighters held aloft when Poison busts out “Every Rose”, so make sure you keep hydrated. Remember, though – Every bad boy’s got a soft side, at least accoring to the commercial for “Metal Ballads” or whatever that compilation disc was called, so don’t get all judgmental if the guy next to you in his mid-30s tears up, just a little, of course… Just a little…
So this is a screening of the movie, but it’s a sing-a-long version, which I think means there’ll be, I dunno, subtitles up somewhere. So it’s kinda like karaoke without the drunks. That’s probably a good thing for a family event. My singing at karaoke is something quite atrocious, and when I sing loud enough, I always sound precocious. Luckily, the crowd at Del’s is pretty forgiving. The Byham’s probably pretty much the same, except, y’know… not boozin’ it up.
Put on your red shoes (or moon boots) and dance the blues. This is hosted by MTV’s Susie Castillo, and one of the judges is Franco Harris. FRANCO HARRIS! This is an all ages event, and a dance party open to everyone will follow the competition. Sweet.
What’s a Saturday in Pittsburgh without fireworks? I’ll tell ya what it is, it’s a waste of bloody time, is what it is. This thing actually kicks off at 7 in the blessed AM with a fishing tournament, but the bands don’t start until 3ish. Trisha Yearwood is the headliner, which means she plays right before the fireworks start, but local country rockers and Big Ben favorites the Povertyneck Hillbillies take the stage at 5:30.
“Jam band Suvivors” and local legends return as part of their Summer tour. They do a great live show, and a homecoming should be even better, cause, y’know, their parents’ll probably be there, and you always try harder if mom’s watching.