Phutatorius

CBS. How may I direct your call?

"Yes, uh — can you put me in touch with whoever it is who is planning the Super Bowl halftime show?"

That would be Mr. ******. He's quite busy at the moment —

"Yeah. Fine. Whatever. I don't need the honcho. Just anyone who can tell me who's gonna be the super-secret surprise halftime show guest."

Sir, I don't think anyone with our organization is at liberty to divulge that information to people outside the loop —

"Because if it's gonna be Justin, or Christina, or Mandy, or Clay, or Trista, or Darva, or Ray Romano . . . it's probably gonna be Ray Romano — somebody from your network, isn't it?"

Sir, I am not privy to this information —

"If it's gonna be one of them, then I'd like to know. Because I'll get on a plane right now, load my pockets with cash, circle the stadium until I can scalp a ticket, and when Justin or Christina or Mandy or Clay or Trista or Darva or Ray Romano takes the stage I'm gonna scream like a schoolgirl. Like a schoolgirl, because I'll be able to tell people I was in the same room — a very big room, admittedly — with Justin or Christina or Mandy —"

Sir, you'll just have to wait until halftime tomorrow.

"Thing is, I'm not going to lift a finger if it's Britney or that awful Jessica Simpson, because they're just not talented. It would be a total waste of my time and money to go down there thinking it was going to be Justin or Christina or Mandy or whoever, and then I get Britney. It wouldn't be fair to spring that on me. Do you understand?"

Sir —

"You don't have to tell me who it is exactly. All I'm asking is for some confirmation that it's going to be Justin or Christina or Mandy or Ray Romano or one of those other people I forgot. Can't you do that? I don't see why you can't do that."

Sir, why don't I forward you to your PR Department? They might be best positioned to address your concerns.

"Oh boy, oh boy, I hope it's Ray Romano. He could do a duet with Puff Daddy. Or maybe dance the macarena — you know, the Forbidden Dance — with Janet Jackson. I think that would be brilliant. I just love that Ray Romano. Everyman comedy. You just look at him, and you smile. He opens his mouth, and you laugh. If it's Ray — ha ha ha, ho ho ho, I'm already laughing — I'm gonna scream like a schoolgirl. I tell you . . ."

Please hold.

Mark my words: Indians minor-league prospect Kazuhito Tadano will go down in history as one of the all-time great relief pitchers. He will also, apparently, go down on camera for money. WHOA! Stop the presses, Phutatorius. As the late, great Joe Strummer used to say, "start all over again . . ."

Indians minor-league prospect Kaz Tadano recently discussed his college-age appearance in a Japanese pornographic film, in which he performed a homosexual act. Predictably, Tadano embraced an age-old defense: "I was young, I needed the money, they told me they would shade my face out." As it turned out, by the time Tadano made himself eligible for the Japanese League draft — he was a projected first-round pick — the tabloid press had made damned sure none of the clubs would touch him. Hence his availability to my beloved Tribe at < $70K.

Tuesday's press conference probably cements Tadano's candidacy for the much coveted Best Modern Twist to the Old Adage About Killing the Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs. Ohio State tailback Maurice Clarett, a yearlong favorite for the award, has to be wondering what just hit him.

Nonetheless, what struck me about the press conference is that the Cleveland and national press have alike described Tadano's come-clean moment as an "apology." Which make me wonder, to whom does he feel he needs to make an apology? To the press, which is largely responsible for exiling him from his home country — and which is doing its best to make him miserable here? To the fans, some of whom might have to wrangle with the moral conflict of rooting for a hometown team with a confirmed sodomite (gasp!) in the bullpen? If anyone is hurting, it's Tadano himself, who pretty much had his life and career ruined over this.

Perhaps the apology was directed at the Yankee and Red Sox fans who will spend the months before Tadano's debuts at the Stadium and Fenway allocating 90% of their RAM to crafting clever insults to deliver from the bleachers, only to come up with nothing more intricate than the expected "TADANO SUCKS!" A lot of ears will be smoking in the Northeast, as the region's negligible creativity is tried and exhausted. For his part, Tadano promises not to take offense at the taunts of fans, as he says he won't understand their English. As I'm a student of the language, and I don't understand much of it myself, I believe him.

But really, what the guy did — while admittedly illegal in Japan — is constitutionally protected here in the States. Why should he have to apologize to America? Japan should apologize to him. If this is the trend, then the payoff will be regular press briefings at which young tennis stars throw themselves at the mercy of Middle America for their abortions. And I think that's just silly.

Oh, and Tadano also wants it known that he is straight. This marks the sport's second public declaration of heterosexuality in this century, and it will no doubt bring great relief to the less-than-progressive clubhouses in professional baseball.

For my part (and because I can't resist one more pun), I hope that the hard-throwing and fabulously talented Tadano, now that he knows what terrible reputational consequences can flow from it, will redouble his commitment not to let any man past first base. Particularly in the late innings of a close game.

Tried the new Diet Coke with Lime yesterday. My verdict? Stomachable while still cold, which places it certainly a step above its Lemon Equivalent, which even after its alleged 2004 flavor overhaul tastes like carbonated furniture polish. But let's be clear: it does not remotely taste like Diet Coke flavored with lime juice.

That in itself is not a problem for me. I grew up on artificial flavors and have no general objection to them. It doesn't bother me, for example, that what was consistently represented to me — and what I came to recognize and accept — as "grape" flavoring in Popsicles, bubble gum, Fun Dip (oh, Lik-m-Aid, would that adults could enjoy your product with dignity!) bore no resemblance in taste to the fruit, white or red, of the same name.

What kills me here is not a failure of flavor semiotics, but a failure of flavor per se. In November the Wife and I had Coca-Cola Light al Limon in Brazil. That product differed from what Coca-Cola is foisting on U.S. markets in two respects: first, it actually tasted like Coca Light infused with lime juice, and second and more important, it was good. Likewise, in Europe — or at least England — Coke, Inc. has for years marketed a squeeze-of-lemon cola formula that tastes a hundred times better than the Coke-and-Pledge cocktail they're serving up Stateside. What gives?

Nowhere on the Net can I find even a recognition of — much less an explanation for — these discrepancies. If I remember right, it was Coca-Cola who ran the singsong ad, "I'd like to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony." Well, it might help the cause if we were all drinking the same soft drinks.

And until that perfect harmony among nations is reached, we're supposed to have the best of everything here in America. That, so I hear, is what we get in exchange for having everyone else in the world hate us and try to blow us up. So why, in the name of citrus-twinged cola products, are we not getting the good stuff here?

It's about time I came clean. I am a ninja assassin. There, I've said it. I don't see what the big deal is. And to be honest, I'm not half-bad at it, so I think I have a fighting chance to survive when the Old Master sends his hotheads from Ninja Central Command after me. Bring 'em on, Sensei.

The whole oath of secrecy really is kind of absurd, when you think about it. Oooh, aren't we special, we're members of a secret society. Let's practice our stupid ritual handshake and light a bunch of candles . . . Here's a password for you, Sensei: LAME! All these years of training, the abuses I endured to turn my body into a weapon, and my mind into a committed killer — and I'm not even allowed to talk about it at parties? I mean, what's in it for me? I get to sneak around Cambridge twirling numchucks at raccoons between assignments? Whoop-de-do.

Screw it. I can throw a stick of room-temperature butter through a watermelon and embed it in dry wall. I know a whole bunch of people who I think would like to see that trick, and I'm inviting them all over for a demonstration tonight over margaritas and Jello casserole. And who knows? If I feel like it, I may well just open up my foot locker and show them my collection of knives, swords, and poison darts.

Here's a big middle-finger to you, Sensei — you don't take a guy as far as you did and then hold him back. I'm telling the world: I am one bad-ass Japanese stealth assassin, and I've got a Hollywood agent on the other line says he can get me a gig in a food-processor ad. Won't the folks at Cuisinart be surprised when I outchop, outdice, outmince the electric competition? The sky is the limit for a man with my talent and ambition. I'm gonna be famous, Sensei. So kiss my butt.

Quick hits today, to get the ball rolling again:

• I thought I was the originator of a great newsworthy pun — "Between Iraq and a Hard Place" — but Google says otherwise. I was closer with "Dems' Fighting Words," with only the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee getting there first. Still, with 322 million native English speakers in this world, and half of them it seems working for The Economist's Clever Headline Department, finding a virgin pun is increasingly an uphill battle. I'm almost moved to quit the medium entirely.

• I think it would be a great social experiment to name identical twins Echinacea and Euthanasia, just to see what would happen to them.

• Overheard in the Oval Office during Howard Dean's post-Iowa Caucus rant: "Wow. He can just reel off the names of all those states like that?" Dubya then called for an atlas so he could personally verify that Dean was not making any up. Think he's feeling the heat now?

• Popeye turns 75 on Saturday, apparently. This is a testament to the freeze-in-time quality of animation (or is it the spinach?), because I don't think he ever looked a day under 85.

• The Year of the Monkey begins today, so I'll be handing over the keyboard to Bobo . . . Wait. Wait just a minute. Bobo here is a chimp. I didn't want a chimp. I wanted a monkey. I specifically asked for a ringtailed monkey. Otherwise it doesn't work. Right? Jesus. You know, that's it right there — I've had it. You're all fired. All of you. Leave now, before I call Security.

Except for you, Bobo: you can stay, provided you run around the corner right now and get me a Diet Coke.

I have, quite by accident, stumbled across Wife Kryptonite. If at any point during the day I find myself cornered — with the Wife on the high moral ground and myself squarely in her sights in the lowlands — I resort to a talismanic five-word sentence:

Wo-man, geets to makin' pies.

It's an absolute stunner, totally freezes her in her tracks, and it buys me time to think up a more suitable defense or, when none is available — as occurs all too often — it gives me a minute to run to safety. Like most mantras, results may vary considerably in accordance with subtle modulations in delivery. That is, you have to be careful to say it just right. You do not, for example, want the Wife to take you literally. By no means should your utterance of "geets to makin' pies" give the impression that you actually want the pies. The point of the exercise is instead to evoke the very husband that the Wife does not have — and could well have, if it were not for you — in order that she might better accept you and your own lesser bevy of defects. An exaggerated accent is appropriate, delivered in the voice of a toothless mountaineer, if you can muster it.

Geets to makin' pies, wo-man. Try it. I guarantee five to ten seconds of stunned silence, and you should be able to lock yourself into the bathroom in that amount of time. If she snaps back that she wants a divorce, well, it's because you didn't say it right. But you might give it one last shot when she serves you with the papers. Put them dockerments down, wo-man, and geets to makin' pies! After the tearful reconciliation, renewal of vows, and shared dessert (ordered in, of course), you can thank Dr. Phutatorius for this Best Medicine.

DISCLAIMER: the above was published without the prior review and approval of the Author's Wife and is subject to hasty and aggressive editing as necessary to alleviate discord in the aforementioned Author's household.

There is an abandoned portable toilet (see attached photo) sitting on the River Street Bridge three blocks from my apartment. I say "abandoned" because it has been there for weeks and is not, so far as I can tell, affiliated with any current road construction project. Months ago there was a work crew doing God-knows-what to the intersection of River and Memorial Drive, but that was summer. January now, and this portable toilet is just sitting there — one idea is that it might be for public use, but I don't think it's possible to get inside it, settled, out, then back in your car during a single traffic-light cycle.

It is also possible that the toilet, its self-esteem at rock bottom after years of prostitution to construction workers, is on the bridge contemplating a jump. Airport-John of Fitchburg, Mass.: come pick up your runaway latrine — before it's too late.

Here's hoping the Italian Bocce Federation (FIB) spends 2004 cracking down on the proliferation of nonstandard equipment through American sporting-goods stores.

Last summer's cookouts were overflowing with bastardized kits. Too often I was boxed into defending Italian-American honor with what were essentially painted croquet balls. Though it seemed a feeble excuse to the uninitiated, it really is difficult to reproduce your game with a ball that weighs half of what you're accustomed to throwing.

I'm not sure how the Powers That Be in bocce can, out of one side of their mouths, argue that some form of lawn-bowling be admitted as an Olympic medal-sport, while at the same time allowing Franklin and Sportcraft to continue to market their cut-rate lines of "Recreation" balls. Then again, when USBF tournament rules authorize officials to restrict the "volo shot" — only the most exciting throw in the sport — for "safety considerations," you can see how these corruptions happen.

Anyway, here is a cheat sheet for all of you who are planning barbecues in '04:
(1) Genuine wooden balls are few and far between these days (even in Italy), but a nice polyurethane or phenolic set won't kill you.
(2) A 113-mm ball is tournament grade, and you really shouldn't go any lower than 100.
(3) Look for an FIB certification on the box, because USBF isn't good enough anymore. Not after taking the stance that it did on the volo.
(4) Any set you find with four colors is screaming to be left on the shelf at Modell's.

Capish?

It's time for a humbled Phutatorius to extract foot from mouth and frame his deepest apologies to the Daimler Chrysler Corporation. I had spent much of the past six months insisting to anyone who would listen that the "legendary" status of the HEMI engine, so wildly touted in Dodge's recent ad campaign, was wholly fabricated. That is, who are they kidding? There was no HEMI legend until about five minutes ago, when Dodge mobilized a troop of fat, mid-30s, sausage-grilling heart-of-America male commercial actors to gush about it. For my part, I had never heard of the "legendary" HEMI before I saw the ad campaign's thirty-second flagship promo — you know, the one with the drive-thru window worker lapsing into girl-and-truck fantasies upon hearing a customer's affirmation that yes, that's a HEMI humming under the hood of his Dodge Ram.

I admit it — I was all-too-ready to dismiss the HEMI buzz as one more marketing insult, in a class with the "STAN'S WORLD FAMOUS HOT DOGS: COME TO OUR GRAND OPENING!" sign I saw on a refurbished Taco Bell building a few years ago in my hometown. And a friend of mine, whom I consulted on this point, seemed to be in agreement, but as you can see, his area of expertise is no more related to the automotive industry than mine is.

Three more HEMI-peppered Dodge ads during Sunday's NFL Divisional Playoff telecasts lit a fire under me, and I went to do some research on the subject. As it turns out, a filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office affirms that Daimler Chrysler (or its predecessor in interest) has been using the HEMI mark on automobile engines since 1966.

I am therefore now willing to concede that Dodge's HEMI engine has been in existence long enough to be "legendary." That said, I am still unsure that the HEMI's performance over the years has earned it the status of legend among American males. I intend to settle the matter with a survey of the crowd at my next NASCAR race. So we'll talk at the Hell-Freezes-Over 500.

Fact-checking for the Book sent me in some strange directions the other day. For starters, I had written that a character was "built like a .22 slug," by which I meant to indicate, short, squat, and solid. It occurred to me, however, that I had never seen a .22 slug, and preliminary Internet research had me questioning whether there really was such a thing.

At any rate, there followed a good half hour's excavation of the World Wide Web's gun culture — with Google as my Vergilian tour guide of this Internet hell — in a fruitless search for a .jpeg of the elusive .22 slug before I finally gave up trying and moved on.

I got stuck again about an hour later, as I came across a passage in the last chapter in which a sports talk radio personality complains about the performance of former Cleveland Indians second baseman, Carlos Baerga. The date of this outburst is June 19, 1996, and for the sake of historical accuracy I was determined to find out Baerga's batting average for the Tribe as of that date. The logical source for such an inquiry would be the Society for American Baseball Research. Of course, when I typed in the "sabr.com" URL I was directed to a site maintained by "The Sabr Foundation," a nonprofit group dedicated to promoting the interests of Islam. A blurb in the corner of the Sabr site redirects baseball fans to "sabr.org."

Given the current political climate, anyone monitoring my IP address will be alarmed, no doubt, by the apparent nexus of interests — ammo and Islam — that these hapless online forays suggest. And whether or not the FBI took sufficient notice of my Net travels to open a file on me, I feel I must extend the sincerest of apologies to The Sabr Foundation, a group that seems innocent enough in its mission but could well see its assets frozen by the end of the week — all because some wacko named Phutatorius landed hard on its website after browsing online guns & ammo emporia.

I can only speculate as to how feds are synthesizing the inquiries I put to Jeeves earlier in the morning — e.g., (1) whether Gila monsters have eyelids, and (2) what was the seating capacity of a 1988 Chevelle — into their profile of me. But honestly, folks, I was fact-checking the Book in every instance. The whole thing is just a misunderstanding.

So right now I don't want to hear about how hard the Soviets made it for Solzhenitsyn.

More quick hits:

• It appears that right-wing movers and shakers are lobbying to get Reagan's head on the dime. I've got a better idea: leave FDR where he is, and put Nixon on the flipside. That way we have a bipartisan coin and no dispute about which side is "Tails."

• This just in: A Plague of Mad Cows prompts desperate Bush Administration officials to sacrifice 450 male calves to their vengeful Old Testament God.

• Commie Talk: If you want to know how class calcification happens, check out upscale toymaker Playmobil's MRI machine playset. Then remember how your aspirations were shaped by the limbless (polio-stricken?) figures on hand-me-down Fisher Price and Playskool farms. Dunno if you remember Playskool's cross-promotion with McDonald's, but red-hot Mad Ave gossip says Playmobil is in talks with Four Seasons on a similar project.

• And from the "I Knew He Was Gonna Write About This" Department: A man named Jason Alexander tries to see how many checks he can write in two days. Somewhere off in Syndication Limbo, George Costanza is in Jerry's apartment saying, "Why didn't I think of that?"

• It remains a mystery to me why, with the twenty-first century in the state it's in, the HeadUpYourAss.com domain remains unregistered.

Everywhere I go, people are complimenting me on my socks. Why, just the other day, the man at the DMV window, usually sullen and uninspired in his work, told me that he'd been admiring my socks all the way through the winding line. His interest in my socks was enough to get me extra-special treatment: he took five photos of me for my license renewal and allowed me to choose from the set, to ensure I had a picture I approved on my photo ID. "I want to honor the socks," he kept saying. "Where did you get them?"

The thing is, Joe DMV could only see the three inches of navy-blue cotton-polyester blend between my leg cuff and my shoe. The real beauty of my socks is in the toe: double reinforced stitching in the signature golden weave of GoldToe Incorporated. Now if you're anything like me, you've spent half your life stumbling down the sidewalk with your finger in your shoe, trying to work your toes back in through the holes in your sock. Get yourself a pair of GoldToes, and those days are over.

GoldToe's patented toe-stitching makes their socks the most durable foot-warmers in the business. My big toes aren't the longest you'll ever see, but when I have a good-sized nail growing on one, it can cut through a sock like a hot knife through butter. But not GoldToes. The proof is in the pudding: the year I won the Managua Marathon — 1992, I think it was — I did an experiment. I went into the race with a GoldToe athletic tube sock on one foot, and a competitor's sock on the other. When I crossed the finish line I had a three-toe hole in the Brand X sock (with blisters to match), but the GoldToe covered the 26.2 miles with only a hint of fraying along the crest of the big toe. That's durability, people.

And did I say that the women just love them, too? Long ago, the Wife took to heart an article in Cosmopolitan that insisted a man who makes love with his socks on was not fit to marry — that it was a sign of laziness. Who would have thought that, years later, the good people at GoldToe would have changed her mind? But it has. "Those socks really show off your muscular calves," she will tell me. "Leave 'em on, Phutsie baby, and come to bed." All this on a Tuesday night, too!

And the clincher for me is that you can get GoldToes pretty much anywhere. Any clothing store worth its salt will carry a GoldToe line in its Hosiery Department. So get in your car, drive down to your Mall, and get yourself a drawerful of GoldToes. Don't wait — slip a pair on in the store — from now on, you walk with confidence. From now on, you walk with the GoldToe Glow. The world is your oyster, and there's an "R" in the month.

Tell them Phutatorius sent you.

It was a grim New Year's Eve in the offices of Phutatorius & Co., as word got round quickly that I had fired my longtime food taster earlier in the afternoon. Even now the coffee room and cubicles are bustling with rumors that I canned Malachi because of his reluctance to work the holiday, or that the firing was about downsizing, part of some grand layoff scheme to send a leaner, meaner operation into the New Year. The truth is that these stressful times drove a wedge between Malachi and me, and we just could not go on this way.

But before I get into those gory details, I would like to say that I owe Malachi Redmond my life, several times over. Malachi joined my security staff in December 1985. For eighteen years he put himself on the line tasting my food — every meal, every snack, every new tube of toothpaste. I cannot count the number of times Malachi took a hit for me — I can say that he took in enough trace amounts of poison to warrant four liver transplants. He may not have the most sensitive tongue in the business, but he never turned away a plate untested, even when Le Cirque's pastry chef wrote DIE PHUTATORIUS DIE on my soufflé in strawberry sauce.

Our mutually rewarding relationship took a turn for the worse with this latest Orange Alert: last week the government forwarded intelligence to us suggesting that Islamic fundamentalist terror groups might target Internet personalities for assassination. The forwarded "chatter" had Malachi — God bless him! — overly concerned. His usual practice was simply to spot-check my food intake: take one bite of steak, one spooled fork of pasta, one green bean. But now that we have credible threats, he said, that's not good enough. What's to stop them from poisoning just one of the French fries, croutons, or broccoli florets on your plate? He demanded that I submit every self-contained food unit to him for pre-tasting until Homeland Security scaled the threat level back to yellow. Before I knew it he was in the cupboards, sampling each of the stacked Pringles, taking rabbit bites out of every Frosted Mini-Wheat in the box.

Malachi's obsessive micro-level food testing made the holidays very difficult for me. I was left with three alternatives: (1) adopt a strict quasi-liquid diet of chicken broth, creamed corn, and puddings; (2) fire Malachi; or (3) sit and wait through an excruciating process by which an increasingly paranoid employee painstakingly disentangled and tried every strand of fettucini in my mother's alfredo dinner before passing off the plate to me. I know he was proceeding on the best of intentions, but as our Great and Wise Government Officials so often tell us from their underground bunkers, You have to live your life. It was clear that the pressure was getting to Malachi, and he had to go. I have awarded his long term of service with a $50,000 contract buyout and six-week Club Med vacation package. Here's hoping he comes back to town refreshed and ready to make a new start.