"It's a hood. Just like the one they put over my head." - Kate, Lost

Pugsley suffers a “wardrobe malfunction” such that we are no longer allowed to broadcast Super® Bowl™ MCMLXXV® from Casa Wilder©. We will have beer Tostitos™, though.

As you can tell, I was busy saving the world from International Terrorists Who Actually Are Bluetooth Earpiece Wearing American Yuppies® and was unable to write Sunday’s column.

Actually, The Mrs. bought me the neatest present ever, on a lark when she was in her hometown Wal-Mart® in North Somenamelessmidwesternstate. It was a hooded sweatshirt.

As a rule, I don’t wear these all that often. The hoods tend to get in the way of my long, flowing locks of blonde hair, and not create the shadows I require to frame my chiseled visage. Okay, the real reason is, since I had the blue sweatshirt that I got in sixth grade that was exactly the same color as Spock’s tunic on Star Trek® (tiny bit of geek thrill), I just hadn’t gotten one. Pull over sweatshirts without hoods advertising the crappy football team I love? A zillion or so, and I wear them all the time.

The Mrs. got home and tossed the shirt to me.

“Is it mine?” I gasped, as breathlessly as someone being given the Heimlich© Maneuver by Britney Spears as she attempts, not to save me, but to get that Cheeto® I just ate.

“Yeah,” The Mrs. replied. “It’s for you.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I love you,” The Mrs. replied, accompanied by a chorus of ‘awww’s’ from our studio audience.

It was a black, hooded sweatshirt that had the logo of a fictional United States government agency, the Counter Terrorist Unit emblazoned on the right man-chest part (the Counter Terrorist Unit is not to be confused with the Terrorist Counter Unit, which is a group of rogue accountants that attempts to find and count the number of terrorists, including Rosie O’Donnell, and then, umm, well, report the number using Generally Accepted Accounting Principles©. Don’t even get me started on the Federal Incorrect Grammar Investigating Team).

On the back, in huge yellow letters ‘CTU’ is likewise emblazoned. Side note: I love to use ‘emblazoned.’ It makes me feel embiggened.

CTU, if you’re not in the know, is the fictional agency that Special Agent Jack Bauer works for on the show 23, er, 24. If you haven’t seen 24, the premise is that one Special Agent, in the course of 24 episodes that chronicle the hours of a single day, can:

Save the United States from Certain War,

Come Back from the Dead (and not the Grateful Dead, but no-heart (and not the band Heart) dead) not once, but twice,
Continually complain that “We don’t have time for that,”

Never, ever go to the bathroom (I know that you’re saving the world, dude, but everybody’s got to pee sometime),

Have his daughter chased by, most improbably, a cougar,

Have anyone he cares about fired, killed, or killed and then fired, or fired and then killed,

Overcome heroin addiction,

Kill and/or torture anyone, including old nuns, if they get in his way, and

Run around in a hooded sweatshirt that seemingly makes him invisible when he sneaks on an airplane, or, in general does anything that might arouse suspicion, but only if the hood is up. I plan on using this feature when I don’t want to take out the garbage.

Perhaps the best feature of the sweatshirt, however, is the mystical powers that it holds over people who have never seen or heard of 24. They look and read the title on the jacket, which implies that I work for (or at least have a blood relative who is willing to steal government stuff, and, really, don’t we all have that relative?) a super-cool government agency charged with doing Counter-Terroristy sorts of things, like sneaking around with my Invisible Hooded Sweatshirt powers.

Okay, Internet. It’s time for a true Internet confession. See, it’s been a while since I ran the forty in less than a minute or two, or nap somewhere after twenty. It’s been even longer since I was in the sort of shape I hope that anyone who works for a super-elite government agency charged with making sure that Yuppies with Bluetooth® Earpieces don’t blow up southern California is in.

But it’s still really, really awesome to walk into Taco Bell® wearing one of these suckers and watch how fast the eighteen year olds behind the counter snap to attention and make my darn Nachos Belgrande© (I think that they’re called Nachos Belgrade in Europe, because the Belgrande isn’t a recognized unit of measure – they have metric tacos over there). They even gave us extra cheese. It’s also really, really fun to walk around and see the service you get at a pharmacy. Heck, I think I could even jump over the counter, stab the clerk’s brother in the knee, and then exclaim “I’m running out of Claratin™.” I bet I could get a second box then. Well, truthfully, if I did that without the sweatshirt I could get the Claratin©, but the clerk wouldn’t thank me for the service to my country over her brother’s gagged sobs. See, I stabbed him in the knee, but I don’t like loud noises, so I gagged him first. They teach that in Counter Terrorism School.

The Mrs. and I love to watch 24 together. It’s one of our “must see and sometimes smirkingly mock” television shows. This was, darn her evil soul, a really cool, really neat, really thoughtful sort of “I love you” present, you know, the kind that I never manage to get for her.

Darn her.

Perhaps I’ll just wait until The Mrs. is asleep and bind her and torture her until she tells me what a neat, fun present would be to get her. I’ll use my hood, and she’ll never even know who it was, because that’s what true love does. Heck, I’d even stab her brother in the knee.