Bribes, hookers, egos -- why FIFA scandal promises to be so much fun

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I like it that American sports fans still care more about a dozen or so under-inflated footballs than a multi-million dollar bribery scandal involving human rights violations, oppression and the unifying passion of the rest of the entire planet.

The Scripps National Spelling Bee?

Nope.

We’re talking about soccer, that other marathon competition that always seems to end in a confounding tie.

And how does a spelling bee end in a tie? A spelling bee shouldn’t end in tie until every word in the dictionary is exhausted and the last kid correctly spells zythum.

We’re two days into the exploding FIFA scandal and I’ve still yet to get a handle on the facts. 

With scandals like this, I generally don’t begin paying attention until the headlines start including the word, “Kinky.”

So to me the FIFA scandal is like your typical bachelor party: Things don’t start to get really interesting until somebody yells, “Here come the hookers!”

I understand the top FIFA officials are being charged with accepting bribes to award prestigious World Cup host privileges to Russia and Qatar, repressive nations with abysmal human right records.

Me, I become suspicious whenever I see any nation being selected for international honors and realize neither’s ever been a prize destination on “The Price is Right” Showcase Showdown.

Russia? Qatar?

What? Did North Korea miss a bribe deadline?

But I sense I’m about to become riveted by the scandal because stories have alerted me to the existence of a colorful scapegoat, one who coincidentally likes to boast he’s goat-like.

He’s Sepp Blatter.

I generally dislike anyone who calls themselves something like Sepp Blatter because their names seem like typos and alert readers think I’m being sloppy.

Blatter is the 79-year-old FIFA president.

He’s going to be fun to watch because he’s the kind of multi-millionaire who thinks he’s the pope, only if the pope were Hugh Hefner. It’s surprising to American sports fans, but he’s incredibly powerful and treated like a head of state around the world.

And he’s a cad.

He’s a former Swiss wedding singer and past president of the World Society of Friends of Suspenders.

His marriage history sounds like either a Charlie Sheen sitcom or Charlie Sheen’s marriage history. His first wife was a local girl who give him first a daughter and then a divorce.

His second marriage was to the daughter of his boss, then FIFA general secretary Helmut Kaiser. It was said the father-of-the-bride was so distraught he refused to attend the wedding and spent the next week weeping inconsolably.

To make matters worse, a few years after taking Kaiser’s daughter, the scoundrel Blatter took his job.

If there’s to be a Deep Throat emerging in FIFAgate, the smart money says it’s bound to be Kaiser.

His third wife was also 30 years his junior and listed “dolphin therapist” as her occupation. I wish I’d have known there were dolphin therapists before I decided to pursue a writing career. Dolphin therapy seems fun, easy and the “office” hours ensure your tan’ll never fade.

Plus, who the hell’s ever heard of a melancholy dolphin?

They, too, divorced and for the last few years Blatter’s been bragging he’s “married to futbol.”

So now instead of screwing comely dolphin therapists, he’s screwing everyone who cares about soccer.

He says he has no intention of resigning.

“I am a mountain goat that keeps going and going and going,” he says. “I cannot be stopped.”

So it’s going to be fun for even non-soccer fans to watch this scandal unfold.

I suspect we’re going to witness the spectacle of a former friend of suspenders being caught with his pants down.

It’ll be refreshing in a way to see a sports scandal that doesn’t involve balls being deliberately made smaller.

If there’s one thing Blatter and his cronies need not fear, it’s having tiny balls.

Related …

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Change Patriot name to Boston Corbetts

Florida: Tips on tipping

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“Use All The Crayons!” Tip no. 122:   Extravagantly overtip friendly, underpaid waitresses who often spend long days and nights away from small children to bring you a hot meal. At night when they go home and are soaking their aching feet, they say prayers asking God to bless people like you.

I’ve been doing this for years. If the breakfast costs $10, I’ll often leave a $5 and never less than the standard 20 percent.

I honestly don’t know if those waitresses go home and say prayers on my behalf or head straight to the mini-mart to buy cigarettes and lottery tickets.

But I know I am blessed.

Let’s for now set aside the stuff about family, health, friends and Mario Lemieux owning the Pittsburgh Penguins and get straight to all the free shit.

Just last week we had 24 hours at The Breakers in Palm Beach. It’s fabulous.

It confuses me and flabbergasts the hell out of my family, but there are many travel industry professionals who regard having me as their guest as good for business.

In return, they expect me to write nice things about their venues in the hopes that my words are influential enough to lure more tourists through their landscaped gates.

Or maybe they’ve heard I’m a really great tipper.

I know this: I did nothing to diminish that reputation during my stay at The Breakers. I practically rained cash on the smiling staff.

I think it made them feel good. I know it did me.

I believe I have a karmic obligation to be an excessive tipper any time anyone bestows me with surprising kindness. 

Tipping the bellman a buck a bag is standard, as is a buck or two for anyone who holds the door for me without saying anything insulting about my tacky shirt. Five bucks for room service.

I dropped an extra $20 on Marlin, our Jamaican waiter, for sentimental reasons. The Breakers has a family Italian Restaurant that is near a supervised resort game room.

Marlin kept sliding the kids tokens from his stash, giving Val and I enough time to look soulfully into one another’s eyes and say, “And what did you say your name was again?”

And he was great. We had him sign and date the wine cork and it’s now in a basket with the others we take out to look at whenever we want to remember special meals.

We asked if he had kids. He did. Two. One is 6 and the other is 1 -- one week!

As we got up to leave, he assured me our hosts had already taken of him and I was under no further obligation. But I slid him an extra $20.

Looking back, I should have doubled that. He’d helped give us a special night and all I did was give him a twenty. Understanding you can never tip too much, I now realize I was a bit stingy.

I did a little better with our bungalow butler.

Having never heard of bungalow butlers, I figured I’d go my whole life without ever needing to tip one.

The Breakers changed that perception by giving us day use of one of their beach side bungalows. It features open-air private showers, food and drink amenities, and Crystal.

About 20 or so, she smilingly saw to our every need. She was great with the girls and made us feel right at home. We were there from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., seven magical hours. 

So what do you tip a bungalow butler?

I had no idea. I decided to ask around. I asked the kid at the host station. He had no idea. He furrowed his brow for a bit and then like an unsure contestant on “The Price is Right” took a wild guess and said, “Gee . . . $40?”

Then I went and asked the people who know everything: The Breakers concierges. 

I stumped them. One guessed $10, the other $20.

I tried to think of why I, an often impoverished man of meager means, am so adamant about tipping. I think it goes back to one afternoon at Jack’s Bar on Pittsburgh’s South Side.

I remember ordering two $2 beers and handing out a $10. Despite being swamped, I remember the bartender being friendly and smiling, looking like there’s no where else she’d rather be.

I told her to keep the change.

She lit up like a Christmas tree.

“Man,” she said, “you’re awesome!”

I’m sure she doesn’t remember me or that tip, but I’ll never forget how good I felt walking away from the bar after her cheerful declaration.

She was right. At least when it comes to tipping, I am awesome.

So, yeah, Crystal got $40.

Related . . .

• Jump hugs with dangerous drunks

• “Use All The Crayons!” a 10-star review

Making bad days better

One day after my daughter had a bad day, I started out having one of my own.

Understand, her day was way worse than mine. She’s 11 and must endure the daily repressions of compulsory primary education.

I’m 48, work above a tavern, and no one tells me what to do. More on that later.

She hadn’t felt well and a teacher had scolded her for being tardy with some classroom duties.

She came home, went straight to her room and closed the door. It was rare dark behavior from a girl so sunny her classmates call her “Smiley.”

Luckily, she has a Daddy who’ll move heaven and earth to make her feel better. Her mother was out last night with our youngest, the one so moody I’m convinced her classmates will call her “Stormy.”

So it was just me and Josie.

After about a half hour, I slid a note under her door: “Some days are diamonds. Some days are stones. Let’s talk if you feel like it.” It had crudely drawn smiley faces and frowns where they belonged.

That diamonds and stones part is a memorable line from an old John Denver song I’ve otherwise forgotten.

It’s true.

I guess we need the contrast to appreciate the good days and shake our lethargies on the bad.

She came out and in two hours I found myself wishing she has what she considers a bad day once a month.

She baked some snickerdoodles and I cooked up a noodle and Italian clam sauce dish we both find tasty. She’s still open-minded enough to enjoy two uninterrupted hours of Bruce Springsteen on the satellite radio.

We talked about so much: her friends, her teachers, boys and we danced right up to the edge of what happens when boys she likes start liking her back.

In the background, we heard The Boss sing about the promised land, getting Mary pregnant and taking her down to the river, and the profanity-enlivened tale of what happens when the ragamuffin gunner is returning home like a hungry runaway.

It was just three hours of me realizing, wow, this is why I’m here. It was beautiful.

Now, here’s my bad day:

Near zero sleep last night. Got to the office intent on writing a blog post and found inspiration evasive.

Write about the sunken cruise liner? Too morbid.

The GOP debate? Too political.

The death of a 3,500-year-old tree? Too arboreal -- and I’ve vowed to avoid topics that subliminally include the word “bore” at the, ahem, root.

Know what I decided to do?

Screw it. I’d beaten my noggin against the wall long enough. This writer was writing this day off. I decided to head downstairs for lunch.

But it wasn’t going to be just my usual lunch. It was going to be a dangerous lunch.

I was going to skip the iced tea and have my first beer before The Price is Right showcase.

And I was going to sip suds and banish my isolation with an afternoon of camaraderie and laughter as soon as any of my friends walked in.

But on this down day none of my friends were there to cheer me up and Dave, the owner, was just busy enough that he didn’t have time to jabber.

So I had one beer and spent lunch reading the paper all by my lonesome and returned to my office wondering if my bad day would ever improve.

It did, and without any alcoholic assist.

Here’s what happened: I spent about an hour thinking about the little things I did last night to vanquish the sadness of someone who matters most.

And I turned a stone into a diamond.

Note: The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s “Cutting Edge” column on the Sunday Forum pages featured a mention of Eight Days To Amish, thus allowing me to revel in the irony that something with the word “Amish” in the title is considered cutting edge.

Reunited: TV and me

In the name of sound parenting, I’ve for 11 years espoused the conventional wisdom that watching too much TV is bad and will turn your mind to mush.

At least half that’s a lie. I think it’s the part about TV being bad.

I can’t be certain because I spent about 12 hours watching TV yesterday and I’m feeling really mush-minded.

Restricting my TV viewing while raising kids might be my greatest sacrifice. I certainly haven’t cut back on bar time or ever once during their existence applied for a real job so that must be it.

It is not insignificant.

I’ve loved TV, even bad TV, ever since “Speed Racer.”

I was raised on “Fantasy Island,” “Love Boat,” “Gilligan’s Island,” and can argue for hours about cast chemistry on “Three’s Company.” I can quote verbatim entire episodes of “Cheers,” “Coach,” and know precisely the moment to switch channels on a very special “Family Ties” episodes if I want to avoid tear shed.

I love “The Simpsons,” “The Twilight Zone,” “The Odd Couple,” and anything that includes “Newhart” in the title. I, of course, love the adult shows with profanity and gore galore. That means “True Blood,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” and the holy grail of it all, “The Sopranos.”

And I love sports. I grew up watching hours and hours of golf, football, baseball and hockey marathons. Heck, I’ve even watched hours and hours of actual marathons.

But with kids I watch TV the way other men look at porn. I feel shame if they bust me in the basement staring at “Seinfeld.”

That’s wrong. I was especially cranky at Christmas after surrendering the remote for four weeks of girly sweetness and holiday purity.

The only time I heard a really good profanity was when I said one outloud to the stupid dog.

I needed therapy.

It came courtesy of the NFL.

Because of schedule creep, the regular season concluded New Year’s Day, the traditional day for college bowl game extravaganzas and the NHL Winter Classic.

That meant those games were held Monday when the kids were in school.

Hallelujah! A Christmas miracle only 358 shopping days until Christmas!

It started at noon. Val wisely DVRs “The Price is Right,” essential viewing in any day of great TV.

It’s the “Gone With The Wind” of game shows. And Drew Carey surpasses Bob Barker as host. He’s added humorous flourishes that Barker, as great as he was, just couldn’t pull off.

For instance, this week is celebrity guest week. So in addition to the regular features and those gorgeous models viewers were treated to . . . Snoop Dogg!

It was such uproarious fun watching him advise contestants on the price of things like Rice-a-Roni that Val and I were chagrined we didn’t have a big bag of pot handy to get high, something I’m sure millions of other underemployed loafers instinctively did.

Then Val graciously handed me the remote and for the next eight hours (the last four spent solo in the comfortable basement), I watched sports. The NHL Winter Classic is becoming one of the year’s great events and I didn’t miss a minute.

Then I began a round-robin flip fest between bowl games and an NBC sports special about the 1972 hockey Summit Series between Canada and the old Soviet Union.

It was like I completely checked out on my parenting duties. And it was good.

It started to dawn on me that yesterday was maybe one of the best days of my life when both kids zonked out by 9 p.m. without either of us administering any narcotics. They just fell asleep.

And Val and I settled in for three hours of what seems destined to become one of the best shows we’ve ever seen.

It is “Breaking Bad.”

She’d checked out the first season from the library with neither of us having much hope we’d have a chance to dive in.

Within ten minutes we were as engrossed as if we’d been watching for three seasons. We watched till midnight.

We have 43 episodes to catch up on and I can’t wait.

I’m too mush-minded a man to predict what this year will bring, but I know this much:

It’s going to be good.

I’m turning the TV on and it’s returning the favor.

A sexy ode to Heinz 57 Ketchup

So I had this news clip on my desk for about the last three months. I’d pick it up and look at it again and again. It seemed too trivial to indulge with a full post, yet too fascinating to dispense with a tweet.

But I can’t shake its import. I must share.

Here goes: Heinz ketchup travels at .028 miles per hour.

I can only assume that’s in the passing lane in front of me with its blinker on.

If it goes any faster than that, it’s deemed unworthy of Heinz and told to take a hike -- or do whatever fast ketchup does when it’s asked to depart the ketchup plant.

This is what I call a brain barnacle. A power sprayer couldn’t now nudge the nugget off my noodle.

I’ll remember ketchup is slower than slugs (.03 mph) long after I’ve forgotten birthdays, anniversaries and any obligations to people foolish enough to have lent me loot.

We in Western Pennsylvania have a visceral kinship to heirloom Heinz. It’s in our blood which, given the dynamics of the condiment, may explain why Pittsburgh still seems 25 years behind hip places like Nashville and Austin.

I guess I bring this up now because my wife and I witnessed Dave the bar owner orchestrate what’s always seemed like sexual intercourse between two identical bottles of Heinz Ketchup.

It was lunch last week and Val and I were sitting at the bar watching “The Price Is Right” Showcase when Dave began distracting us by carefully mating two bottles together in what I guess was some sort of missionary position. Or maybe that description’s misleading.

Perhaps it would be more accurate to call it Heinz 69.

It was like watching one of those nature programs where they show a mare being artificially inseminated.

The top bottle was mounted upside down above the recipient. There’s even an implement conceived for the job. Identical saddles link the two to ensure a successful coupling.

It’s a little white plastic thingy. Dave told us its name, but it didn’t stick. I know it wasn’t something catchy like “The Ketchup Ketchdown!”

The bottom saddle has a little two-inch wiggle post that goes up into the opening of the upper bottle to allow Dave to give natural gravity a poking assist.

Can you see why I was thinking sex not Showcase?

Like any busy restaurant owner, it’s something Dave’s probably done a thousand times, but I was disappointed at how clinically he went about it.

There were no introductions. No coaxing. No romance.

It’s this kind of deep thinking that convinces me I should have become a Heinz Ketchup timer.

It’d give me a lot of time to encourage ketchup it’s in its best interest to just slow down and take it easy, words of wisdom I frequently share with people I see spanking ketchup bottoms with a ferocity that would get them tossed in jail if they ever tried it with their moronic children.

I’d like to be the guy there with a stop watch scolding ketchup that’s racing along at 1 mph, “Whoa, man! What do you think you are, salsa?”

Like so many of the political leaders I admire, Heinz Ketchup is tolerant of same sex relationships and intolerant of Type A personalities who’d use shifty means to race ahead of the rest of us.

It’s the only condiment I’d vote for it if only it would let me.

Alas, Heinz Ketchup will never run.

Undercover Boss -- me!

I remember seeing the first “Undercover Boss” promos and thinking, gee, what a novel idea. I’d love to watch a show where the CEO is revealed to be a moron and emerges with a new respect for working stiffs.

And, of course, I haven’t watched even a minute of it. I watch enough mind-deadening TV that I don’t need to pump more reality sewage into the swamp -- and that sounds like the premise for “Undercover Mob Boss.”

Yet, I remain charmed by the concept and think how much fun it would be to have a role in the show.

Since I work alone, can’t afford to hire anyone and even coke-headed producers wouldn’t dream of putting a show like that on the air, I spent yesterday pretending I was the Undercover Boss of myself.

I auditioned the 23 or so distinct voices in my head and allowed one of them to step forward into the boss role to survey what I do, how difficult it is, and gain a new appreciation for the peon employee.

That’d be me.

Undercover Boss: “Morning! I’m here to work with you.”

Me: Welcome aboard. I’m prepared to share with you all my secrets. Ask me anything.

U.B.: “Let me start by saying how handsome you are.”


Me: "And let me start by saying what a fantastic start you're off to, my brown-nosing little friend!

Camera pans to a sign on the door that says, “All Guys Welcome! My Door is Always Open, My Toilet Seat is Always Up,” as I let him in to the shabby little office right above my favorite bar.

U.B.: “Quite an office you have here.”

Me: It’s like a little clubhouse. I told my wife a few years ago I wanted a ‘Bob Dylan Theme Time Radio’ poster for my birthday. She said, ‘What, are you still in the eighth grade?’ I told her no, but my office is.

Camera flash summarizes the first three hours of the morning with clips of me tossing wadded up pieces of scrap paper into a 5-foot high waste paper basket nailed to the wall 12-feet from my desk. The ones that miss, about 50-percent, I then thud chip into a lower waste basket with my pitching wedge (camera shows startled diners in the bar below spilling hot soup in their laps as the jarring noise sparks alarm).

U.B.: “Do you ever do any work here?”

Me: Not really. I try to avoid things that make me sweat or cause my brain to hurt.

The show segues to a shots of me expertly juggling three bean bags and swapping punch lines from movies like “SlapShot!” “Hot Fuzz,” and “Zombieland” with old friends on the speaker phone. The iPod blasts a lively playlist of Delbert McClinton, Todd Snider, Joe Ely and Kris Kristofferson.

U.B. “I packed a lunch. Do we eat here in the office?”

Me: Rarely. I spend so much time deep inside my own head, I really need to get out and see people. The isolation is the worst part of the job. So about once a day I pretend someone’s phoned in a bomb threat and I dash downstairs to the bar for safety and suds. Let’s pretend that right now so we can get good seats in time for the Showcase.

Cameras cut to me and the U.B. sitting on bar stools getting ready to ridicule goofy contestant bids on “The Price is Right.” After Drew Carey announces the winner to the Showcase Showdown and the comely supermodels wave the show to commercial, we watch the local news and return upstairs.

U.B.: “What’s the biggest misconception about how you work?”

Me: “That I’m drunk all the time. I joke about it a lot, but it’s surprising and a little disappointing how often I’m sober. But I perpetuate the myth so others can have vicarious fun.

The afternoon work session is a virtual rerun of the morning fun enlivened by a segment where I show the U.B. how I prank bar patrons in the parking lot by pushing my car’s remote panic horn button the instant they slam their car doors. Hiding behind the curtains, we both crack up at their muddle-headed confusion.

U.B.: “Well, after watching you work, I think you’ve earned a little bar time.”

Me: What a splendid idea! I think you’re going to work out fine here, kid!

The U.B.’s voice over concludes the show: “He doesn’t earn enough money to warrant a raise, but I can’t fire his lazy ass ‘cause he’s good for morale. He’s worked for me for nearly 20 years and still have no idea how the hell he does it.”

The picture fades to black after the camera pans across the stoic faces of the bar regulars looking on in disturbed silence as me and my imaginary U.B. yuk it up in the corner.

The phrase “Another day, another dollar,” would fit perfectly if you just subtract the part about the dollar.

Winter's over; Keith heads south

I yesterday bestowed upon a truly great man an insight that nearly moved him to tears.

He’s Keith. Like me, he’s a regular at the corner tavern where we go for giggles and boredom-bashing inebriations.

Other than that, we have little in common. He’s on my Mt. Rushmore of great personal friends because he volunteered and served with distinction during the Vietnam War. I admire anyone who fulfills that noble sort of duty.

I elevate Keith above even those honorable men and women because after he’d finished serving in the special forces he immediately volunteered for two years in the Peace Corp.

“I’d seen and done so much destruction in the war, that I wanted to do my part to restore some balance to the world,” he says.

So in the prime of his life, while bubble-headed young men like the one I was destined to become were making merry on riotous college campuses in the ‘70s, Keith was swatting mosquitos and installing sewer systems in poverty-stricken hamlets throughout Central America.

He does everything with an infectious joy that makes watching “The Price Is Right” with him over lunch as entertaining as attending any professional sporting event.

And he acts like he doesn’t mind that I always ask, and I always do, if his daughter, a FBI crime tech at the Quantico HQ, ever sits around and sings to the Disney melody, “Someday my prints will come!”

So, truly, this is a great man.

He told us the other day that after a year he’d sold his house and would be joining his wife in the home on the North Carolina golf course they bought last year. He’d been commuting every two weeks or so to house tend and tie up loose ends at a local company he’d over the course of a satisfying career helped build into a global powerhouse.

People have said how much they’re going to miss him and that they hope he returns often.

But it was left to me to freeze him with a statement so profound that this great man gasped.

“Do you realize,” I said, “that you’ll probably never have to shovel snow again for as long as you live?”

If I hadn’t said it in the sort of bar where people still make Brokeback Mountain jokes, I think he would have kissed me.

Keith’s a visionary man. He can envision things like world peace, lunar agriculture and the Pittsburgh Pirates being competitive (well, maybe not that last one).

But after the most miserable winter any of us can remember, I don’t think anyone can envision a future without snow.

Even this late into March, I still obsessively check the five day forecast and am stunned to see 60 degree temperatures and no indication that yet another monster storm is going close the schools, make roads impassable and maroon me 1.1 miles away from the bar I need the way worms do dirt.

For the first time in my life, I can honestly sympathize with what post-traumatic stress victims go through. The brutality of the past three months has me feeling mentally defective in ways that cannot be healthy.

I saw the snow shovel leaning in the corner of the garage the other day and it looked so forlorn that I began to pity it. For three months, I was as emotionally attached to it as many people are to their iPhones.

I’d pick it up three or four times a day and used it to heave so much snow that my lower lumbar still throbs. I don’t know if the pain will ever go away and am pondering chiropractic remedies.

That ergonomically designed green shovel was my Tonto. Together we waged so many heroic battles that I was seized by an irresistible urge: I grabbed the shovel with both hands and ran out into the driveway and started shouting profanities at the heavens.

It was just like old times.

I haven’t asked what Keith, that great humanitarian/warrior/vicarious Price is Right contestant, is going to do with his shovel.

But after this winter, I think I’ll be buried with mine.

I just pray to the God we both serve it doesn’t happen in eight months under another 106 inches of snow.