Pittsburgh Dad Review
Due to circumstances outside of his control, a twenty-nine year old Justin Halpern was forced to move back home with his San Diego parents in 2009. His father Sam had a colorful way of expressing himself, and Justin soon created a Twitter account in order to share those comments on a daily basis with a small group of friends. That group, however, grew into the thousands, hundreds-of-thousands and even millions as Shit My Dad Says became an Internet Age phenomenon. Halpern received book offers in the aftermath and CBS even produced a one-season television sitcom based on the Twitter feed with the more politically-correct sounding name $#*! My Dad Says.
Justin Halpern is not the only one who had an outspoken father while growing up, as well as a childhood that can be looked upon with both nostalgia and humor. On the opposite side of the continent from San Diego is Pittsburgh, for instance, and while the two cities may have dissimilar historical backgrounds and even cultural mentalities, there is not much difference between California and Pennsylvania when it comes to parents and their children—an observation that the webseries Pittsburgh Dad ultimately proves.
“Every year they come in the house, and they eat as much candy, cookies, drink as much pop as they can, get all nice and bonkers, and then like to play a little game called ‘Which one of us can break something first?’” the Pittsburgh Dad (Curt Wootton) complains in regards to the kids who attend Thanksgiving dinner at his house. While maybe not as flamboyant as Sam Halpern’s observation of a sugar-filled youth—“One Snickers bar, and you’re running around like your asshole is on fire”—it still demonstrates that fathers rant about such topics regardless of which side of the country they reside in.
Pittsburgh is not San Diego, however, and Pittsburgh Dad co-creators Christopher Preksta and Curt Wootton have instilled their paternal figure with the working class persona of a city which often contains the communal aspects of large town rather than major metropolis. Native Pittsburghers also have their own unique dialect and way of speaking. The word “downtown,” for instance, is annunciated “dahntahn” and the suburb of East Liberty is more often known as S’Liberty. The likes of Coke and Pepsi, meanwhile, are called “pop” instead of soda, the local professional football team is the Stillers, a jerk is a jagoff and pretty much everyone is referred to as “yinz.”
“I don’t know how they do things dahn in Baltimore, but around here we take care of our yards,” the Pittsburgh Dad tells an unseen neighbor in one episode of the webseries. He then adds to himself, “These kids better pick up these toys or I’m running them over with the lawn mower.”
Just as Justin Halpern was reduced to 140 characters when sharing his father’s comments on Twitter, Christopher Preksta and Curt Wootton have kept Pittsburgh Dad equally short with each installment lasting anywhere from forty to ninety seconds in length. A brief musical introduction brings to mind such classic sitcoms of the 1970’s like All in the Family, while a laugh-track adds to the nostalgic nature of the production.
And nostalgia is ultimately what Pittsburgh Dad is all about. Christopher Preksta and Curt Wootton have worked together on two previous webseries—Captain Blasto and The Mercury Men—with Preksta serving as writer/director and Wootton as actor. It was while filming The Mercury Men that Pittsburgh Dad was born, with Curt Wootton entertaining the cast and crew between takes with humorous soliloquies based on his own father. It was only afterwards that Preksta and Wootton decided to film these short outbursts and post them on YouTube.
“When you hear him say the things he says, you’re transported to a time when you were a kid and things were a little simpler,” Curt Wootton explained to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in December 2011 in regards to his character. “Those were great times growing up in Pittsburgh and surrounding areas.” Both current and former residents of the city apparently agree, as thousands of followers have posted their own thoughts and childhood quotes on the Pittsburgh Dad Facebook page, many of which have served as inspiration for episodes of the webseries.
Childhood nostalgia isn’t just for Pittsburghers, however, and just as one does not have to be raised in San Diego to be entertained by the short words-of-wisdom offered by Justin Halpern’s father, the same holds true for Pittsburgh Dad. The city may still retain its working-class roots but has developed into a technological hotbed during the Twenty First Century nonetheless. Pittsburgh has also been at the forefront in the rise of online video as an entertainment medium. Christopher Preksta’s first webseries, Captain Blasto, was a nominee during the first Streamy Awards in 2009, while The Mercury Men was “picked up” by the SyFy Channel for viewing on their website.
Pittsburgher Justin Kownacki, meanwhile, was a pioneer in the webseries medium when he launched Something to Be Desired in 2003. STBD ran for six seasons on the World Wide Web and spawned a spinoff webseries in 2011 entitled The Baristas. Justine Ezarik, aka iJustine, began producing her own online shorts in Pittsburgh shortly thereafter and was one of five finalists in 2006 for the Yahoo! Talent Show competition. In August 2007, she filmed “300-Page iPhone Bill,” a comic take on the initial billing problems the much-hyped iPhone experienced—the clip was subsequently viewed more than three million times in ten days, garnering the attention of the mass media and making iJustine an “instant” Internet star.
“We’ll see where it takes us,” Christopher Preksta told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in regards to Pittsburgh Dad. “Is it truly a regional thing or are there enough ex-Pittsburghers nationally to keep driving this? And we are thrilled to see if that character and style is funny enough for non-Pittsburghers to watch as well.”
Given the universality of a child’s often offbeat relationship with their father, the nostalgia of youth and Pittsburgh’s growing reputation as more than just a steel town, Christopher Preksta and Pittsburgh Dad should have nothing to worry about.
Anthony Letizia (December 19, 2011)
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