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Monday, October 29, 2001

Saturday night, live, Dennis Miller and his Hollywood player of a brother Jimmy ate at The Original. Yesterday brought a dining appearance at Danny's Parkview Pizza. Tonight, it's Primanti's.

The pencil-neck accountants back in ABC headquarters will never believe this expense report.

Hot dogs, subs and sammiches stuffed with french fries: maybe $50. Three nights in your hometahn: priceless.

"A half-hour in town, and I'm back at the Dirty O," the elder Miller (Dennis) said yesterday. "Had a dog. My brother and I stood where the Longines clock at Forbes Field used to be.

"I said to my brother, 'Can you believe we're back in the 'Burgh and I'm announcing football?' This is Timothy Leary stuff."

Explanation of Timothy Leary stuff to those who don't get Miller: A psychedelic-plant, consciousness-altering trip, man.

Wacky as it seems, the skinny guy who used to work the Point Park College rec room, the Giant Eagle deli counter in Kennedy and KDKA-TV returns for his first Pittsburgh performance in seven years. Sure, "Monday Night Football" is supposed to be about the game. Tonight, Steelers-Titans will certainly matter to those teams' followers. Yet too much of America will concern itself with the booth's resident comedian and lightning rod.

Too much of America just doesn't get Miller.

I'm with his detractors -- media critics and viewers on the couch -- on one point: Too much football analysis, too little comic relief. But the skinny guy from the rec room has a point here. This isn't "Monday Night Foofball."

"If I went 100-percent comedy, people would say, 'This isn't a comedy show. You don't take this seriously.' When I think I have it down to 50-50, I consider it a victory. I try to go pretty much down the middle.

"Are there weeks I screw it up? Or weeks where it doesn't fall the right way, where I don't get presented with something funny. Or weeks where the game's afoot and I would look like an intrusion? Yeah. I'd get whacked if I did [comedy all the time]. And I don't want to get whacked. It's a great gig. I'd like to do it for 30 years.

"I hear about [the unflattering media reviews]. You know what? If that's the price I pay for this job, sign me up. I'm a 47-year-old man; at some point, it's superfluous, isn't it? I've got the gig. I think I've got the best football job imaginable. Until I either have it for the long run or don't have it, I'm just enjoying the day. I have a blast. I just can't sully it by wondering what the guy in Eau Claire, Wis., thinks about me. I'll be honest: There are so many opinions on me ... I assume at some point ABC hired me to evoke opinion. Damn, I did that.

"I can remember reading these same exact stories when I took over 'Weekend Update' [on NBC's 'Saturday Night Live']. It's funny, I've had two jobs named after nights of the week, and they're like a big thing in the culture. Listen, it might be hard following ostensibly what Howard Cosell was doing years ago. It's a lot harder following Chevy Chase at the 'Weekend Update' desk. You talk about legends."

All right, that's 50 percent of the serious stuff. Now comes the other 50.

Wearing a blue NFL cap and a gray sweatshirt, Miller sat down yesterday at his Downtown hotel with WTAE's Andrew Stockey to tape a segment for the ABC affiliate's one-hour pregame show tonight. Then he sat down with the Post-Gazette. Some highlights from the interviews:

Saturday night at The Original, he looked up at a TV newscast and saw ... Don Cannon? Did somebody put Miller in a Wayback Machine, Mr. Peabody? "Don't tell me Paul Long is still doing this."

You can take the guy out of Castle Shannon, Oakland, Carrick, the Mexican War Streets and Keystone Oaks High School, but you cannot take him away from his Steelers. "Obviously, for me, this game's amplified, because it's my hometown. I missed my Steelers the last few years. Now they're back." But will he have to tread on the cautious side of broadcast bias? "I will to the extent where I won't have any pain-in-the-ass critics saying I'm not Edwin R. Murrow, cutting it down the middle. I grew up here, and I'm happy to see them back."

Heinz Field ketchup bottles? You bet he'll riff on them. "Is there a guy who they pay to stand up there and hit the back of those? That's basically a union job, right?"

Stockey asked about Miller's, uh, use of the language on his nine-year HBO show. Miller promptly delved into an explanation about enjoying the use of erudition along with profanity, invoking the F-bomb eight times on tape. "I went off just to hear the beeps. 'Beep, beep, beep.' People'll think a truck's backing up."

As for those arcane references, Miller will keep them coming. New York Giants guard Glenn Parker approached him just before last week's game and thanked him for a mention last year about a 12th century royal family, the Plantagenets. Sure, the artist Christo reference last year was too hip. And the explanation of Cris Carter dragging his feet like Neville Chamberlain: Well, Miller cannot appease everybody, especially the history-challenged.

"I'd say 99.99 percent of them are easily accessible." Indeed, you can look it up online on http://www.britannica.com/ "The Annotated Dennis Miller," which pleases Miller. "You know how hard it is to isolate yourself from the peloton in show business, to find some sort of monkey trick that people can attach to you? That's all I got. That's what I'm selling out there. It's not like I'm going to do [Montour High alumnus] Michael Keaton and become a great actor. It's not like I'm going to do David Hasselhoff and go sing in Scandanavia. This is my trick, babe. I'm selling it until they aren't buying it anymore."

Mayor Tom Murphy plans to present Miller with a key to the city, and Miller plans to use it. "I got to tell you, I'm going to use the key to the city, go around to various houses, open doors and take things I like. If you don't want me to do it, you shouldn't have given me the key."