ZIPpity-do-duh: A postal money maker (from 2008)

I've vowed to blog nearly every day unless I don't feel like it. I feel like it every day, really. I enjoy it. But today a friend's in town and we've scheduled an afternoon of South Side Pittsburgh debauchery and I have my priorities.

Still, I can't help but fret the day I do not blog will be the day President Obama or any of the congressional big shots read my blog for ideas on how to straighten out the messes routinely addressed here.

In case that happens today, here's a really good idea of mine from 2008.

I'm confident it could earn the federal government billions in revenues.

Too bad it hasn't earned me even a dime.

For the sake of mental convenience, I’m thinking of packing up the family, all our stuff and moving the whole shebang to Newton Falls, Ohio.

That way I could age into eventual muddle-mindedness in the town that has perhaps the easiest zip code to remember in the entire United States.

Yep, welcome to Newton Falls, pop. 4,892, zip 44444. I don’t think the town, about about 30 minutes west of the dormant smokestacks of Youngstown, gets the acclaim it deserves.

I’m in the midst of a comprehensive study about zip codes for pin heads. It’ll be four years ago in February we moved one mile from near Latrobe, Pa. 15696, to postally proper Latrobe, Pa. 15650, and I still occasionally find my password-cluttered mind stumbling over the difference. It has me wishing I lived someplace where my zip had some zing.

Some place like, say, Schenectady, N.Y. 12345. Of course then I’d forever have to be spelling Schenectady and that would never do.

We are a numerically obsessed nation that shells out precious dollars for vanity license plates and fret whenever the fickle phone company threatens to bump us from our familiar urban area codes to something less comforting.

For the good of the nation, it’s time we extend that obsession to the humble zip code. I think it’s time the government begin selling zip codes to communities that stand to profit from the postal panache.

Why, for instance, is Las Vegas 89123 -- a lousy hand of a fold ‘em number if ever there ever was one -- when it could contribute $1 million to the national cause by paying for the unused 77777? Just think how much publicity it would get from the news if it paid for those lucky numbers, instead of having the ones randomly assigned by faceless bureaucrats at the U.S.P.O.

(Trivial Aside: The father of the zip code is a postal employee named Robert Moon, who submitted the proposal for a “Zone Improvement Plan” back in 1944.)

It’s a sure money maker and many cities and towns could have contests trying to claim one of the many unused numbers still available. And there are plenty of them. The post office only uses 43,000 out of the 100,000 possible 5-digit combinations.

Many of the good and obvious ones are still gathering dust on the postal shelf. For instance, 44444 in Newton Falls is the only five-of-a-kind zipper in circulation.

According to my research, the lowest number in the system is Adjuntas, Puerto Rico, with 00601, which begs the questions: What happened to the first 600? Did someone think we’d someday annex Cuba and might need 00001 through 00600? The nosebleed award goes to Yukutat, Alaska, with 99589.

Bond, Colorado, appears to be perfectly insignificant to the rest of the world, but how much publicity could it gain if someone with a puckish sense of humor bestowed them the perfectly obvious 00007? Reporters from all over the country would descend on Bond with each new Bond movie to write reviews that would appear under headlines like “Bond on Bond,” or “Licensed to Deliver, Bond 00007.”

Same goes for Salem, Massachusetts, which labors under the clumsy postal designation 01970. Why not cash in on their witch-hunting history and brand the local post office with the mark of the postal beast, 00666?

My wife Val speculates stratospheric bidding between Houston and Cape Kennedy would launch over who most deserves the available countdown zip of 54321?

Little Rest, Massachusetts looks like a line of binary code with 01010 and is the lowest aggregate total of any zip code because there is no reverse 10101 in the system and nothing with four zeros and a single 1.

I could retire to Sunrise, Florida, with its full house zip code of 33322. That’d be easy to remember.

(Trivial Aside #2: Sunrise is a planned retirement community that was originally named Sunset. But developers quickly found out that creaky retirees don’t like being reminded that the sun is setting on their lives so they nominally swapped the astronomical actions and sales grew robust. Sometimes perception is everything).

How much would Philadelphia pay to liberate 01776 from North Sudbury, Mass? Philly is the birthplace of the greatest nation in the world. 01776 would be a constant mail reminder of that proud history. Why surrender it to North Sudbury which gave the nation what? Geographic balance to South Sudbury?

For as long as I live, I’ll never forget the phone number of a man who left a thriving dentistry practice to become a shepherd (long live National Enquirer!). I asked him the best way to get in touch for a story and he told me, “Just dial GOD-PISS.” That’s what his number, 463-7477, spelled. I would think something similar could be done with zip codes.

New York could claim the unused 27753 (APPLE), coffee mecca Seattle could splurge on BEANS (23267) and the beer makers in Milwaukee would doubtless bubble with enthusiasm at the opportunity to snatch SUDSY (78379) from Riviera, Texas.

(Trivial Aside #3: Trivial Aside would be a dandy name for this blog if I ever get tired of 8Days2Amish. In fact, it practically nails the sum accomplishments of what I’ve been doing my entire life).

These kinds of trivial matters fascinate and distract me. Apparently, it is a zip code of enthusiasm I share with few others. I’ve pitched this story to numerous magazines over the past year or so. Would you like to know how much interest I’ve gotten from discerning editors?

You guessed it.

Zip.

No. 1 party boy from America's No. 1 party school

It’s probably because of my years at Ohio University I drink responsibly whenever I should and irresponsibly whenever I can.

It’s a vast over-simplification to say, but the only thing I can recall learning with any clarity there from 1981-1985 was never mix Ouzo and beer. In the same glass.

We used to do that all the time and, guaranteed, whenever we did someone was bound to lose their pants.

You can’t spell bourbon or ouzo without OU.

It was a fountain of knowledge where I went to drink.

Those were some of the T-shirts they sold on campus when I was there. I still see variations of them when I go back once every year or so to see the old gang.

We fly or drive in from all over the country and get two or three rooms at the diviest hotel down near the Hocking River. In a town where big guys are called “Tiny,” the hotel on the lowest point in southeastern Ohio is called The Highlander.

Tell someone who attended most any other college a group of 40 somethings are going to go back to the university they all attended in the 1980s and many assume lecherous activities will ensue.

They think the guys will slip off their wedding rings and spend their nights chasing around the comely innocents.

This is wrong on multiple levels. First: I never met an innocent at OU, not to be confused, please, with Ohio State University in Columbus.

Second: most of us are too fatigued and too wise to chase anything anymore.

Third -- and this is key: there’s not a soul within a 50-mile radius more important to us than the dozen or so people clustered around those tables tilting from too many pitchers of beer.

It was after leaving Athens I began to understand games were for people who were inept at the art of conversation.

Why would you engage in any distraction that kept you from learning more about the people sitting right next to you?

Those were some of the things that crossed my mind when I learned Ohio University was named by the Princeton Review as the No. 1 Party School in America.

It’s a chicken and egg sort of question, but I didn’t go to Athens because it was a party school. But I did go there because at the time the Ohio drinking age was 18.

I learned later on -- surprise! -- it had a great school for journalism. Hey, I liked to journalize!

If anything exceeds its reputation for being a party school, it is its reputation for grooming dynamic journalists.

Media big shots Roger Ailes and Matt Lauer graduated from there. Legendary actor Paul Newman dropped out of there.

My academic achievements fall somewhere deep in the middle of that spectrum.

I remember when I went for one of my first post-graduate interviews. It was at the Nashville Banner. The managing editor, a fine southern gentleman, saw Ohio University on my resume and asked if that’s where Woody Hayes coached.

No, sir, that was Zero State in Columbus.

“How long were you on the school paper?” he asked.

One year, I told him.

“What’d you do the other three years, drink beer?”

Yes, sir.

“Good. I did it for four.”

In a world where crabby tight asses seem to make all the rules and then more rules regarding the original rules, convivial folk will always have a way of finding one another.

I got that job and it was instrumental in launching a career that has led me to friendships with some of the world’s most fascinating individuals.

Athens was where I became who I am.

So cheers, Ohio University. I’ve been under your influence for 30 years now.

And gloriously under the influence for many of those years.

And it’s all just been one hell of a good time.

Am I ready for some football? Nope

Our great national nightmare appears to be over and a downtrodden constituency will again receive just compensation.

I’m talking about NFL commissioners earning $1 a year.

That was Roger Goodell’s grand gesture when he and the NFL owners locked out the players 4 1/2 months ago.

It was one of the oddest PR moves in labor history. He said he’d stop taking his $10 million salary and instead take just a buck.

My first thought was, “Gadzooks, he’ll have to work eight years before he can hope to afford a warm domestic beer at an NFL stadium.”

In a league that couldn’t figure out how to divvy up $9 billion in revenues, he was trying to show solidarity with, well, who?

Billionaire owners? Millionaire players?

Those were the two parties who declared the negotiations resulted in a win-win.

From Sports Illustrated’s Peter King: “No one in the NFL will be eating on the cheap now, especially with the players getting a hefty 55 percent of all network TV money -- which could reach $8 billion in 2014. Imagine that: The players’ share of the TV revenue that year will likely be more than the total league revenue of $5 billion 15 years earlier. The nation is recovering from the worst recession since the Great Depression. This new deal proves the NFL is immune to it.”

Well, hold on, Mr. King.

It’s not with me, and I assume it won’t be with fellow rationals.

I’ve had it. For the first time in almost 30 years, I won’t be attending any games this year and I intend to wean myself off my Sunday fix.

When owners and players say the agreement means both won, it can only mean one thing:

The fans lose.

It’s gone unmentioned in nearly all the news reports, but one of the major issues instigating the owner lockout was the NFL desire to extend the regular season from 16 to 18 games.

The reason according to Goodell? It’s what the fans want.

He said fans like me, a second generation Pittsburgh Steeler season ticket holder, were tired of paying $85 per seat for two meaningless pre-season games.

He was right.

I made the local news in 2009 when I was arrested for trying to “scalp” $300 worth of Steeler pre-season tickets to an undercover cop for $200. The actual “crime” was selling tickets without a $300 vendor’s license.

It was a situation that would have had even an absurdist like Kafka slapping his head in disbelief.

Every single poll said a lop-sided majority of fans didn’t want more regular season games. We wanted fewer pre-season games or the same number of pre-season games for something like half price.

But that sensible solution would have sliced into greedy owner profits.

So one of the alleged main reasons for starting the lockout -- fans upset over paying for tickets no one wants -- has gone unaddressed. Guaranteed, in five years the tickets for those meaningless games will be $100 each.

Heinz Field in Pittsburgh, a taxpayer financed stadium, opened in 2001. My ticket for the inaugural game was $46. Those tickets have in 10 years nearly doubled in price.

Attendance at regular season games will continue to erode as fans choose to stay home and watch infuriatingly officiated games on HD. TV black-outs will rise along with pay-per-view football via NFL Network.

Illicit off-field behavior by renegade players will likely only worsen with added income.

The new labor deal runs through 2021.

Each year the players will be making more. Each year the owners will be wanting more.

Where do you think that’s going to come from?

Who’s to say?

But this much I know: if it’s ever going to come from regular guys like me, we won’t have enough left over to pay Roger Goodell’s saintly salary from the past four months.

This needless lockout didn’t cook the goose that lays the NFL’s golden eggs.

But by doing nothing to address growing fan disgruntlement, it puts it in the pot.

Santorum's right: Man marrying dogs in Wisc!

I guess I owe Rick Santorum an apology. I was among those who ridiculed him in 2003 for saying gay marriage would lead to man-on-dog sex and other bestial recreations.

The outraged gay community responded with a subversive lexicological campaign so vicious I dare not repeat it here (just google “santorum.")

But lo and behold, it is in fact happening.

Man is marrying dogs in Wisconsin!

And not just any man.

It’s Elvis!

Let me clear that up. Dogs are marrying other dogs and an Elvis impersonator is presiding over the puppy nuptials.

It’s all part of the silliness at the Wisconsin State Fair, a veritable corny-copia of wacky events, competitions and homespun entertainment sure to appeal to anyone that’s ever dreamed of trying their luck at some cow plop bingo.

“It’s going to be a lot of fun,” says state fair spokeswoman Kristen Chuckel. “It’s pure Vegas. Elvis will marry the couple and sing to them. There will be champagne bowls, formal attire, doggie-maids and doggie-men. There will be special dog tags and the pups will get doggie bone bouquets.”

I found out about it as I was researching a story about oddball state fair stunts and competitions -- outhouse racing, butter Space Shuttles, cricket spittin’ contests, etc.

Of course, I’ll feature the doggie weddings because it’s the perfect example of silly fair fun. Bravo.

But I was curious from a personal standpoint.

I have a dog I’d like to marry off.

But I suspect he’s gay. And I’ve been reluctant to broach the subject with the cheerful spokesperson out of fear she might laugh at me.

And who wants to be laughed at by a woman named Chuckel?

Being the parent of a dog I suspect is gay is a challenge for any traditional parent.

I had one other dog that -- and I know this is politically incorrect to say -- was perfectly “normal.”

Yep, Casey liked the bitches, and please don’t let that urban-sounding phrasing confuse you into thinking Casey was a rapper.

He was a sweet and beautiful Golden Retriever with zero street cred.

But he was all boy. He loved to screw and did so with gusto, neighborhood dogs and their owners’ legs right up until outpatient surgery rendered it a physical impossibility.

Snickers isn’t like that at all. He’s part pug, part chihuahua, a parental pairing that sounds like the screwball premise for some canine rom-com.

He’s a purse puppie, the kind Paris Hilton uses as a fashion accessory.

He’s 1 year old and I still mistakenly refer to him with female pronouns. I can’t believe we’re the same gender.

French poodles could bully lunch money from Snickers.

That I suspect he’s gay couldn’t possibly change my feelings for him. I’m sure I’d still despise him if he were as mucho as the Old Spice dude.

And he’s high-strung and yippy. He’s entered an infuriating shoe-chewing phase, ruining one of my church loafers after he pried open to door to the closet.

Casey wasn’t like that at all.

Casey was the kind of dog you’d enjoy lounging in front of warm fires.

Snickers doesn’t lounge in front of warm fires. He starts them.

So I want him out of the house.

But has the Wisconsin legislature approved gay canine weddings?

Should gay dogs in Wisconsin be afforded the same rights as gay humans in New York and other states?

Of course, the point is moot until Snickers can come to grips with his own sexual orientation. He needs to take a good long look at himself in the mirror, the one on back of the bedroom door that goes clear down to the floor.

I suspect he’ll finally admit he’s gay and might flourish elsewhere.

He won’t be the first being to come out of the closet.

He’ll just be the first to do so with one of my loafers in his mouth.

Parking lot pervert? Nope. Just me

I guess I can’t blame her for thinking the worst. I was sitting alone in the parking lot outside the bar with the windows rolled down. I had to keep wiping my forehead with my arm to keep the sweat from dripping on my keyboard.

My face, I’m sure, bore the pained expression it gets whenever I’m trying to muster what Moe calls “real thinkin’.”

“You’re not doin' something dirty, are you?”

She works in the kitchen at the bar that’s just beneath my internet-free office on the second floor.

It’s a question that deserves a lie. I’m sure if I said, “Why, yes!” she might have shucked her apron and dove in through the passenger window for a lewd little siesta.

But, man, was it hot, too uncomfortable to instigate a sticky scandal.

I haven’t had WiFi in the office for about two years now. But I can pick up a stray signal if I park beside the dumpsters out in the parking lot.

So I go out there after lunch to check e-mails and see if there’s been a titanic lurch toward my forlorn blog’s popularity (in three years, it’s never happened once).

It’s odd having an office above a working man’s bar. Many of my friends there drive trucks or work in factories. Many of them can not fathom someone earning a living writing stories.

Heck, my wife can’t fathom it either. I have trouble believing it myself.

It’s not easy. I tell people I’m working basically for beer money.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not seeking pity. In fact, it’s kind of a boast.

I drink a lot of beer and they don’t give the suds away for free. Working for beer money is far superior to working for peanuts (those’ll cost you here, too).

I figure about 51 percent of the people in the bar like me because I have a sunny disposition, buy the occasional round and finally stopped trying to impress everyone by conducting loud, make-believe cell phone conversations with imaginary sources like pretend Bill Clinton and pretend Mike Tomlin.

Get busted for that once and, geez, they never let you forget it.

Then there’s about 47 percent who merely tolerate my company. They don’t like me. They don’t dislike me. They show me no warmth. They pay me no mind. They barely acknowledge I exist.

I guess, for them, that sort of makes me their bar wife.

That’s perfectly fine with me. Many of these men are probably packing heat and being ignored these days is safer than being noticed.

That leaves the two percent, 1 percent of which just was trying to discreetly peek into my car to detect if I was wearing pants.

We’re friendly but she has no idea what to make of me, and all she knows about computers is perverts use them to do dirty things in parking lots.

Maybe I should get a telecommunications sign to put on the side of my Saturn. Maybe then people wouldn’t think it’s odd for me to sit in there in the parking lot typing away while everyone else is working.

Or maybe I should try and find a job.

But getting a job sounds like, well, a lot of work.

I’d guess I’d rather just keep scraping by and hoping something good some day falls into my lap.

Doin’ something dirty?

Just about every time my fingers hit the keyboard.

Where have you gone, Ross Perot?

It pains the academic in me to realize the best way to educate a forgetful America on the folly of the Tea Party simpletons is to urge them to seek a classic 1992 clip from Saturday Night Live.

It may have been the most uproarious skit the show’s ever done. It features the late Phil Hartman (oh, how I miss him!) and Dana Carvey.

Hartman played Bill Clinton and Carvey incumbent President George H.W. Bush.

But Carvey had double duty. Through split-screen chicanery, he also played a man who at the time surpassed even the current Tea Party in political impact and sound-bite stupidity.

That would be H. Ross Perot.

If you’ve become fired with political passions in just the past two years it probably means two things: One, you’re a Tea Party Patriot convinced you have all the answers; and, two, you’ve likely never heard of Perot.

And that’s a pity.

Just five months prior to the ’92 presidential election, he was leading in the polls over both Bush and Clinton.

The Texan became a self-made billionaire through founding Electronic Data Systems. And he oversaw a daring a rescue mission of two hostage employees from Iran in 1979, an operation that became the basis for Ken Follett’s “On Wings of Eagles,” a best-seller and eventual miniseries.

He was one of the most admired men in America.

Then he made a crucial tactical error.

He opened his mouth. And America learned the only thing more entertaining than hearing Carvey lampoon him was hearing Perot speak for himself.

He was folksy. He got $5 haircuts. He talked about going to Washington to clean out the barn and giant sucking sound we’d hear if we elected anyone but him.

He just made it all sound so simple.

And he wasn’t interested in compromise and would mercilessly ridiculed as elitist anyone who disagreed with him. He made his operatives sign loyalty oaths.

Any of this starting to sound familiar?

I remember one presidential debate in which Perot -- I swear to God -- held up a poster of an outline of Arkansas with the silhouette of a chicken dominating the entire state.

He was saying if we elected Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton president we’d all wind up plucking chickens.

To quote Secret Agent Maxwell Smart, “Missed it by that much!”

Clinton took over a sluggish economy, raised taxes on the rich (Perot, to his credit, was perfectly okay with this), and launched one of the greatest job-creating economies the world has ever seen. It was eight years of peace, prosperity and all that other stuff.

He left office in 2000 with a balanced budget augmented by a $230 billion surplus. Economically, his presidency was such a success it’s surprising the Republicans haven’t tried claim him as one of their own.

But what happened to Perot?

It’s like he rode that giant chicken into the sunset never to be heard from again.

His near complete disappearance from public life is incredible.

At 81, he has a net worth of $3.4 billion and Forbes ranks him the 99th richest man in America.

Yet the man who once had all the answers today refuses to address any of the questions.

John McCain, who as much as any man alive helped conceive the Tea Party, yesterday on the floor of the U.S. Senate denounced them as “hobbits” inhabiting a “bizarro” world where they are “deceiving” their constituents.

The few grownups that remain in the Republican Party look feckless and scared in the face of the Frankenstein monster they raised up on birther hysteria, anti-tax mania and the demonization of the government they view the way the rest of us view the Taliban.

Yes, America, just as that Moses of the Tea Party warned, there is indeed a giant sucking sound.

And it’s becoming increasingly clear as to the identity of the ones who suck the most.