I just received an evite to my high school’s 10-year reunion. It’s in August. With a little luck, and just the right break in the GED testing schedule, everyone I enrolled with freshman year will graduate in time for the party. Maybe.

As a result, I’ve been giving high school much thought lately. At odd moments I think of Tater Tots, floor hockey and model U.N assemblies, where the girl who wrote non-linear, non-rhyming poetry was always France. “To be French/To shudder/To laugh like neon daisy cupcakes on the moon/Vie France/Vie.”

My final verdict on public high school ten years later? Let’s just say I’ve developed the following definition: High school is the place where I was forced to sit still in small, windowless rooms filled with people I would never have chosen to associate with if not for Johnny Law. It was like prison, except with Glee Club.

Of course, high school wasn’t all bad. I made friends. I had a few good teachers. I learned that one should drink Mad Dog in moderation and never as a McNugget aperitif.

Most important, I learned not to trust any organization that has a “spirit coordinator” or “pep rallies.” Hitler and Stalin had spirit coordinators and pep rallies, and neither of them ever fielded a football team that took conference. Bottom line: gossamer paper and sparkle paint are the devil’s playthings.

So, how can we improve the high school experience? What can we do so that the smart and dumb are not penalized for lack of mediocrity? When will we learn that you can’t sparkle-paint over failing schools?

Thankfully, one state has an answer: strip clubs.

In Texas, the Gov. Rick Perry (R-Evil) wants to pay for schools by taxing every person who enters an adult entertainment facility $5.

Think about that. What does it say when the state relies on strip clubs in order for children to receive an education? What it says is that strip clubs are much more efficient than the state.

And that gives me an idea. Instead of taking money from strip clubs, which ultimately solves nothing, what if the governor ran his schools more like the financially sound strip club industry?

Before you flame me with e-mails regarding Operation Strip Club High School, hear me out. These are merely suggestions that would have given my high school experience a happier ending. They involve very little, if any, nudity.

Start with voluntary participation. Like patrons at a strip club, let high school students decide if they want to be there. If a student does not want to be in class, why force him _ and those around him _ to suffer? No teacher likes to shake her academic groove thing for a bored audience.

Next _ merit-based pay. Good strippers make major bank. Bad strippers serve drinks. The system works. In most schools, the best veteran teachers make as much as the worst veteran teachers. Shouldn’t some of those worst teachers be serving drinks?

Add a big, burly bouncer dude. Put four of his buddies inside with pool cues. Security problem? What security problem?

Rotate the talent. Bring in a headlining teacher now and then to reward the good students. Send a bored teacher to another district for a year. Everyone wins.

Open at 1 p.m. Close at 3 a.m. That’s the average teenager’s schedule. Why not?

I’m like you. I look forward to the day when our schools are so successful we need to have a bake sale to support the local strip club. But until that day comes, I say we put a two-drink minimum in the teacher’s lounge and see what happens.

(Originally published 4/28/04.)

Click here to read the previous column - “Guide to Finding Love.”

If you have a comment, e-mail me at joedonatellicolumn@gmail.com.

Everyone does this.

You’re listening to your friend, relative, parole officer _ whoever _ and you stop paying attention. This person might be your best friend since third grade. This person might be married to your sister. This person might be the only one keeping you from going to prison _ again.

Yet no matter how excited your friend is to tell you about the dream she had last night _ the one where her ex-boyfriend is run over by a train (“Does that mean anything?”) _ you can’t help but feel your involvement in the conversation is incidental. So you stop listening.

Your brain says, “That’s it. I’m shutting down all conscience thought. Put the flying toasters screensaver up. It’s nap time.”

Your mind actually tells itself not to think. This is like your dog saying, “It is inappropriate to lick my nether-regions when company is over. I shall wait.” Or like Christina Aguilera saying, “Many sex symbols attain their status through mystique, not fashion harlotry. Today I’ll wear a sweater.” These things just don’t happen.

By now the ex-boyfriend is a train conductor, and the train is skimming the ocean. (“Does that make him a Christ figure?”) You nod. You smile. You pretend to listen. And the moment you see a break in the conversation you look at your watch, frown and say: “Look at the time. I have to get home to make sure the furniture is still there. Bye.”

By the time your bottom has registered a victory on Operation Enduring Davenport, you’ve forgotten the conversation.

Your mind wisely pushes the useless information to the back of your brain where it rots with your sociology classes, the lyrics to “Hanging Tough” and any advice your dad has given you about leasing versus buying a car.

So anxious are you to resume the normal course of your life that you never stop to consider the totality of what just happened.

You’ve been robbed by a Time Burglar.

You might be wondering, what is a Time Burglar? Is it one who burgles watches and alarm clocks with AM/FM radios?

No. A Time Burglar is anyone who steals your precious time and leaves nothing of value behind. Cliff Clavin from “Cheers” was a Time Burglar. Others include George W. Bush, John Kerry and, well, just about anyone for whom saying something of interest is a career liability or intellectual impossibility.

Why bring it up?

Because there is no more destructive force in America right now than the Time Burglar.

You might say, “What about terrorists, serial murderers or the Colorado football program?”

To which I respond: They are all evil too, but we don’t invite the Taliban into our homes to watch basketball. We invite Time Burglars to dinner. We meet them for happy hour. We sit beside them at work.

And that is precisely the place a Time Burglar does the most damage _ work.

How many hours of productivity has the economy lost because Ted from marketing wants to give you a blow-by-blow of last night’s “Fear Factor?”

The average American worker makes $15.49 per hour. If my math is correct (and it should be _ I majored in journalism) that means that every four minutes you talk to a Time Burglar the economy loses around $1 in productivity. If all 139 million American workers lose just four minutes a day, that’s $695 million a week or $36.1 billion a year.

My advice?

For the economy’s sake _ and for your sanity’s sake _ the next time a Time Burglar begins stealing your time, walk away.

Odds are they will not notice.

(Originally published 2/17/04.)

Click here to read the previous column “I Just Called To Say I Love You.”

If you have a comment, e-mail me at joedonatellicolumn@gmail.com.

What is the best holiday?

It is a question that has plagued man since 23 BC, when Augustus Caesar declared the second Roman holiday – Aqueduct Day.

Aqueduct Day, like most Roman holidays to follow, revolved around drinking wine out of large jugs, yelling incoherently across large banquet halls and fondling women who were not your wife.

(The first Roman holiday was Drunken Fondling Day, which the Romans observed by gathering solemnly near the town aqueduct for a day of prayer and fasting.)

Young Roman scholars were known to sharpen their forensics skills by debating which holiday was the best.

Young Scholar 1: “I say it is Aqueduct Day. That is a day when a man can most enjoy being a man.”

To which Young Scholar 2 would retort: “Posh! You can have your (yawn) Aqueduct Day. Nothing sets a man’s loins ‘a tingling faster than even the driest utterance of the words Drunken Fondling Day.”

The debate was usually won by the young scholar whose father owned the most goats.

Scholar 1: “If I am so wrong, then how come my father owns such an exorbitant amount of goats? Could a man with such an ample head of goats possibly raise a fool?”

At this point, Scholar 2 would acquit himself and partake in an Orgy of Shame.

Flash forward to modern days. We are blessed with a cornucopia of holidays. We have so many holidays that a cornucopia is actually used in one of our holidays. Yet as far as I know, no one has ever properly answered the call of determining what is the best holiday. No one has had the courage or wit to end this age-old debate once and for all. With Halloween 2007 upon us, that is precisely what I intend to do.

(Above: You know it’s a type of copia, but which one? Correct answer: corn. It’s a cornucopia.)

In order to determine what is the best holiday, I needed a ranking system. Like the Romans, I demand science. So I ranked the major holidays on a scale of 1 to 10 in the following categories:

- Time off from work (10 for multiple days off work, 0 for none)
- Quality of party (10 for good party, 0 for no party)
- Deliciousness of food (10 for tasty treats, 0 for no treats)
- Travel (10 for no travel or fun travel, 0 for pain-in-the-ass travel)
- Sporting events (10 for good sporting events, 0 for no sporting events)
- Are there parades? I hate parades (10 for no parades, 0 for having any parades)

The following notable holidays did not make the cut: Martin Luther King Day, Columbus Day, Veterans Day, Presidents’ Day, Cinco de Mayo, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day – perhaps I will do a list of the worst holidays in February – religious holidays that are not Christmas, Flag Day, Arbor Day, Boxing Day (Observed) and that day when girls can ask boys to the school dance – Sadie Hawkins Day. (Oh curse you, Sadie Hawkins Day, harbinger of the 19th Amendment.)

The following 10 made the cut. They’re the best of the best. If they were F-14 pilots, I wouldn’t believe that I was sending them to Miramar. I wouldn’t believe I was giving them their dream shot, sending them up against the best. I wouldn’t believe that I was sending these 10 characters to Top Gun.

The 10 Best Holidays

10. St. Patrick’s Day
I’m half-Irish. I should love St. Patrick’s Day. I’m ashamed to say it. I don’t. But I have a good reason why. It’s amateur hour at the bar. You can expect to experience the following things at any Irish pub on March 17: the dudes outnumber the ladies 5-to-1, some asshole will spill beer on you and look at you like you’re the asshole, you will almost be involved in a fistfight with a guy wearing nine layers of shirts (I have no idea why he has so many shirts of varying sleeve lengths, he just does), you will stand the whole time because you cannot get a table, the bathrooms will be covered in two inches of shit-sludge and it’s a given that you will see someone pee on, or in, something that is not meant to be peed on, or in.

Hey, I like to “party.” I like to “have a good time.” I have been known to “drink until I tried to tackle a parked Winnebago.” The bottom line is that when the mommies and daddies are partying, it’s no fun to have the kiddies around.

I challenge someone to prove me wrong. I am still waiting to have a great St. Patrick’s Day. I will change my tune and amend these rankings the year that happens.

What I am saying is, someone, please, buy me drinks next St. Patrick’s Day.

9. New Year’s Eve
See St. Patrick’s Day. On the plus side, this was a great holiday in college when you hadn’t seen your friends in a month and the first day you’re all back together after winter break is New Year’s Fucking Eve. Good times (NOD OFF INTO THE DISTANCE), good times. Also, New Year’s Eve scores a perfect 10 in the Sporting Event category because it’s the height of the college football season and when the calendar aligns favorably you have the first round of the NFL playoffs.

Let us never speak of the parade.

8. The Feast of the Assumption
This is a GREAT holiday. Cleveland’s Little Italy neighborhood celebrates the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary every Aug. 15 with a four-day long street fair. The whole city turns out. Your best friends are there. Your old friends are there. You meet new friends there. This was the only holiday that scored a pair of perfect 10s for Deliciousness of food and Quality of party. (I know this one probably wouldn’t be on your list, but I can’t live in a world in which New Year’s Eve and St. Patrick’s Day are ranked higher than the Feast.) The only downer – and this is a serious negative – is that not all races, creeds and sexual orientations feel welcome at the Feast. The last few years I went it seemed to be getting better. But I haven’t been back in a long time. I can only hope that more people feel welcome at what is, block-for-block, Cleveland’s best holiday party of the year.

7. Halloween
I thought Halloween would be ranked higher. It scored perfect 10s on Quality of Party, Travel and I hate parades. But it lost points on Time off from work and Sporting events.

Overall, I like Halloween. It’s made for kids, but adults can enjoy it too.

I also like it because I went to Ohio University, which is home to a huge annual Halloween Party. You see things in Athens, Ohio on Halloween weekend that you will never see anywhere else. First, there is always a rumor of some sort of massacre that is set to occur at midnight on Court Street. That adds a nice edge to all the drinking and drug use. It’s not unusual to see Jesus hugging Satan in the middle of the street while hundreds of people cheer. One time I even saw Ronald McDonald walk into the Wendy’s on Court Street and yell “Don’t eat this shit! It will kill you.” And everyone who was eating Wendy’s hamburgers cheered.

Halloween is one of the many reasons my alma mater is consistently ranked among the top 10 party schools in the nation. (During job interviews I am always glad I live so far west of the Mississippi.)

6. Labor Day
This one is ranked higher than I thought it would be. The reason it did so well is that it’s a no-fuss holiday, which I like. You don’t have to travel. There are no annoying parades. Hamburgers generally make an appearance. It also marks the start of fall, which is my favorite season, if for no other reason than that is when my birthday is and it is when school starts and me being a big nerd, I liked school. Also, I can wear white after Labor Day and feel like a king-hell rebel. (West Coast people have no idea what I’m talking about when I say that.)

5. Memorial Day
Memorial Day is the unofficial first day of summer. That is a great thing to celebrate. Like Labor Day, grilled meats are guaranteed to make an appearance. Unlike Labor Day, at least for me, Memorial Day has generally involved traveling. But it’s the good kind of traveling, the type where you go somewhere fun and half the fun is getting there. I have spent many a Memorial Day in North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Great scenery. Great friends. Lots of laughs. And they have liquor stores there that you can drive through. You pull in. You pop your trunk. Someone puts beer in your car. You drive away. Whoever devised such a genius scheme needs to be put in charge of our nation’s airports, post offices and women’s bathrooms at sports arenas.

4. Independence Day
The 4th of July has all of the best parts of Labor Day and Memorial Day. It also has fireworks and perfect weather. Advantage: 4th of July.

2. Christmas
2. The Super Bowl
We have a tie. I tallied the scores and Christmas and the Super Bowl came in dead even. Both of these holidays are close to perfect. I like Christmas because it means family and presents and a great meal and lots of laughs. The late-night church ceremony is beautiful, with candles and a choir. The travel home is even bearable because you can listen to Christmas songs on your iPod on the flight. While you may or may not be religious, having a day of the year in which we celebrate being nice to each other is a pretty good thing too.

The Super Bowl is the quintessential American holiday. From humble beginnings, it rose to become a very important day of the year. The party is good. The food is good. No travel. No parades. It has a great sporting event. It has gambling, which as The Simpsons taught us makes “a good thing even better.” If we were given a day off for the Super Bowl – and I think a certain President McCain would probably do just that – it would have been the top holiday.

That particular honor falls to…

1. Thanksgiving
This is the best holiday of the year. It’s a day of family and friends and eating and football (both playing and watching), and although it is marred by a ridiculous parade, it is strong enough to overcome such a serious tarnish and take No. 1. If you have a great extended family – and I am lucky enough to have such a family – this is a wonderful day for catching up and telling stories and quoting the same movie quotes you’ve been quoting with your cousins for the last 10 years. I also like the whole idea of giving thanks for our abundance by eating in abundance. There is something very American about that. It’s perfect.

If you can’t get back home every year – and that is the reality for many of us – it’s also a great day to spend with friends and family in your adopted hometowns.

I love the freak Thanksgiving traditions – the bird and the date. The United States is the only country in the world that celebrates a major holiday by paying solemn tribute to a walking bird. Admit it. If Canada did that, we’d mock it relentlessly. Nice walking bird, eh? What’s the matter, Canada? Couldn’t find a fish that jumped out of the water and onto a plate of lemons and tartar sauce?

Then there’s the date. It’s roving. Thanksgiving is the fourth Thursday of November, but the actual date changes from year to year. We don’t celebrate enough roving in this country. I’m glad we have Thanksgiving to put roving squarely in the public conscience.

Thanksgiving also comes with a hidden bonus. Everyone you went to high school and/or college with is usually in town that Wednesday night. And they’re all at the bar. For my money, it’s the best drinking night of the year.

The best drinking night, that is, until Congress finally recognizes American Aqueduct Day. And for the sake of men with wives, let us hope they do, and soon.

To read Joe’s previous column “Robots Cannot Love” click here.

I know everyone is down on Republican Sen. Sam Brownback, mainly because he dropped out of the race in October and is no longer a candidate, but I still think he could surprise some people.

Also, keep an eye out for a Tancredo Surge.

My Cleveland Browns can still make the AFC playoffs if:

- The Tennessee Titans lose to the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday

The Browns will not make the playoffs if:

- The Browns beat the San Francisco 49ers and the Titans win or tie on Sunday

The Browns will most definitely make the playoffs if:

- Titans coach Jeff Fisher’s beard attains full consciousness and overtakes him in a battle supreme for control of the coach’s body

The Browns will not make the playoffs if:

- Quarterback Derek Anderson is shrunken to the size of a dust mite by some type of dark wizard

The Browns can still make the playoffs if:

- Titans cornerback Pacman Jones shoots the entire Titans linebacking corps at a strip club

The Browns will not make the playoffs if:

- Browns coach Romeo Crennel is dropped into the pit of Sarlacc in Tatooine’s Dune Sea

The Browns will assuredly make the playoffs if:

- The Browns receive points for how fucking bad-ass Jim Brown looks in his Angry Black Guy Hat

(Above: Angriest blackest hat ever)

The Browns will not make the playoffs if:

- The Indianapolis Colts rest Peyton Manning and start seldom-used backup quarterback Helen Hunt

(Above: What she lacks in quarterbacking skills she makes up for in appearing in sitcoms that are not watchable)