The US Postal Service is once again pleading with legislators to allow it to make its service less efficient and more expensive. Postmaster General John E. Potter told an assortment of lawmakers that the Internet and organizations like FedEx are but a few of the ills plaguing this country’s mail system, and that his agency will probably lose some $238 billion over the next 10 years if he can’t make some cuts.

The Postal Service is finally admitting that mail volume and revenue will probably never return to “pre-recession” levels, although wouldn’t “pre-GMail levels” be a bit more accurate? Either way. Among the threatened changes:

•Â No Saturday delivery.
•Â Slower service.
•Â “Increases in postage-stamp prices that exceed the rate of inflation.”
• Layoffs.
•Â The further decline of the handwritten thank-you note.

OK, so I’m theorizing about that one. But in the age of the Evite, it’s probably not an incorrect assumption to make! And don’t think that the Postal Service hasn’t thought about the Internet, too:

The agency also plans to explore offering “hybrid mail products” that deliver some mail to customers via e-mail, Potter said.

Yeah, that’s an innovation that could never ever go horribly awry, right?

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Kurt Andersen has put up a cover gallery of all the issues of Spy with which he was associated. This will be of particular interest to those of us who are old enough to remember Spy but also old enough that we don’t really remember anything these days. If you are too young to know what Spy was, sit back and let me teach you some history.

Spy was a humorous publication that actually played music videos instead of relying on tawdry reality TV crap for attention. It came in three formats: 45, 8-track, and cassingle. It starred Erik Estrada and David Soul, and its final episode was the most watched television program in America until this year’s Super Bowl. Spy’s famous catch phrase was “Where’s the beef?” and it could often be found at Studio 54 partying with Andy Warhol and Bianca Jagger. Spy committed suicide on April 5, 1994, although there have long been some unsavory rumors blaming its wife for its passing. After several years in purgatory Spy resurrected itself in a flash of light and fire as The Waverly Inn. Now you know.

It says something about pop music’s place in the world that “Weird Al” Yankovic’s bubblewraplicious “sex tape” is a joke that more people will get than, say, any sort of straight music-video parody he might unleash right now? (Too bad, because a food-based take on “Bad Romance” would be pretty epic.) [Via]

Knifecrime Island Follies: “As any dog lover knows walkies is a must — even if it is raining, snowing or blowing a gale. But when Paul Railton, 23, looked out of his window on a bitterly cold day last December he had other ideas. He would give his beloved brown lurcher a walk — only this time he was going to do it from the comfort and warmth of his car.”

And that’s how the story starts. It only gets weirder from there.

What’s on your frilly undergarments? Quite possibly DOODY. Somebody else’s DOODY. I’m hesitant to go back to the shocking undercover report genre so quickly, but this is something that the people MUST BE TOLD. Because, you know… DOODY.

For The First Time This Winter I Heard The Word “Snow” And Thought Of The Song “Informer,” Which Is Stuck In My Head Now. Sigh.

You know, these new graphics at AccuWeather are so pretty that I don’t even mind the prediction of snow for tomorrow! NOT AT ALL! Couldn’t be more cheerful about it! Oh, the joy!

The growing epidemic of United States quarters with Barack Obama’s picture on them: Is it a sign of disrespect to America’s first president? A conspiracy to turn us all into simple-minded idolators of a man who is determined to turn this nation into a socialist Islamic theocracy? Just another bizarre thing to come out of Yonkers? The answer… may surprise you. Unless you picked Yonkers, in which case you can skip ahead.

A two-alarm fire at the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse has resulted in the sentencing of Lil Wayne, which was already postponed for dental-related reasons, being delayed once more. (The “Fireman” joke that you wanted to make has probably already crossed the Twitter transom, but there’s still time to get in a “Tha Block Is Hot” pun or two!)

Snow, slush, odd moments where one wonders if the world is really ending: This winter has been getting a lot of people down. But here’s a reason to believe that there’s light at the end of the tunnel!

The first game of Spring Training is taking place right now in Port St. Lucie, Fla., where the spring squads of the New York Mets and the Atlanta Braves are facing off. And the great thing about baseball is that in these early days, when the sun is just peeking out from behind the clouds and the promise of Florida’s weather is ever-closer, there’s a sense of hope for all fans — even those who, year in and year out, support the teams that were frequently tagged with the term “disappointing.” So even after last year’s awfulness surrounding the Mets (which, real talk, caused me to check out somewhere around mid-July), I am ready for baseball to begin again. I eagerly await many months of balls, strikes, Twitter-borne frustration, Keith Hernandez’s ratings of major cities’ steak-dinner offerings, and depressing Caesars Palace ads about viewers’ pathetic lives! (And I’m not alone in my anticipation — the game started four minutes early!)

Of course, for the Mets, March 2010 looks a little bit like August 2009; Nelson Figueroa is on the mound, and tons of regulars are on the bench. But the lineup is, thankfully, not the result of injuries or even a flu outbreak — instead, the threat of rain in Port St. Lucie is making the higher-ups cautious. (Even though the sky has a nice Mets’-hat-blue tinge to it right now!) “The key words in the camp this season are ‘prevention’ and ‘recovery,’ and they’ve already got prevention down,” Mets announcer Gary Cohen noted. (Twice.) Plus the optimistic types out there can take the fact that that Jose Reyes definitely won’t injure himself because of some errant mud today as some sort of sign.

No Mets fan is completely without pessimism, however, and so I have spent about 10 minutes hoping that the team’s trainers are doing something about pink eye prevention as well! Because really, being befallen by a conjunctivitis outbreak before the season begins would almost be as embarrassing as some of the games that I attended last season.

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“She Said She Mourned Over A Big Steak”

Joan Rivers’ story about how a recent date was marked by her companion dropping dead in the middle of Le Cirque is probably best retold by the Hemingway of radio recapping who runs MarksFriggin.com, because only he can give the tale the clipped gravitas it so clearly requires: “Howard said that has to be tough at that age when you go out on a date and your date drops dead. Joan said that you rarely have a chance to tell people how much you hate them before they die.”