Okay, it doesn’t have quite the same ring as, “I AM SPARTACUS”, but there it is. We are what we are, it is what it is, God has put us where we should be. And I…

AM RICKY RICARDO. (You can almost hear the staccato/forte strum of a Flamenco guitar when you say it. Try it. I’ll wait for you. Hmm-hmm… hmmm… There! Splendid! We are together.)

Before I tell you this story, thank you for the letters from yesterday and always. I’m not much of a hugger, I guess, in real life. I am with the kids and — sporadically — my wife, but I’m not a casual grabber or hugger or shoulder-rubber. I like straight handshakes and the occasional hand on the shoulder, but I prefer the spare quality of the Jane Darwell-handwipe-on-the-apron in the beginning of “Grapes of Wrath.” (John Ford again, in a pitch-perfect image of American stoicism/love.)

Still: Thank you for the letters.

NOW. On to Ricardo 2.0. (The first softwar-ish joke I’ve ever made; I hope it was accurate, if not funny.)

My wife has been (as I now know) conspiring with her friend Kirsten in hiring men to change our home. I often marvel at how stupid husbands can be, or at least this one, and I have caught the two of them several times over the last few weeks like tenth graders smoking in the bathroom, talking furtively in this and that room and obviously planning something. They looked up each time with sickly grins (which still, somehow, didn’t make me suspicious — or suppress my fancy for Kirsten) and I — because I’m getting dumber every hour — didn’t think anything of it.

I now know better.

If I think it’s funny I’ll tell you in the next couple of columns (or weeks, here and there) about the new daily revelations in pleasant but non-English-speaking men I now see every day knocking something down. Not big things, just walls and doors. The only thing that separates me from them is that they seem to know what they’re about.

For just now, I’ll tell you that we’re getting a new TV downstairs. A large TV. A cabinet I admired was destroyed (I don’t think that’s too strong a word) today, and there’s a piece of spackled wall, and she told me she was getting a 52″ Toshiba Something-Or-Other. I don’t know if Giorgio Armani makes TV’s, but believe me, the price of this thing is up there with his work.

AND THAT PRICE IS NOTHING! Look, we’re doing fine, we make more or less, I get one part or I don’t, but I ought to be horse-whipped if I ever complain. I’m in that luckiest, perhaps, of actor-categories of “working actor”. I’m not kissing a lot of women in movies, I’m not above the title, as they say, but I work pretty steadily, and as I’ve often remarked, they apparently always need someone to be bald and annoying. (I have to tell you this image now, because it won’t come up again. I’ve said for years that acting salaries follow the Three Stooges: Moe slaps Larry, Larry turns around and slaps Curly, Curly turns around — and there’s no one left to slap. Drat! If only they knew the smoldering, eyebrow-arching passion I could convey, sort of like Valentino’s younger brother, Ira. Ah, well.)

So my wife got this $1800 TV and started saying, “No presents this year, I’ve told the kids, and we never go anywhere, and you don’t have to get anything for me, no birthday, no anniversary.”

Frankly, that price threw me, but I used all the astonishing techniques at my disposal to cover it. I thought TV’s were more in the four and five hundred dollar range, and they are, but she dangled the word “Football” and “HD” in front of me, and I said, “What about Mother’s Day? Am I off on that one, too?” And she said, “Dinner,” and I said, “Flowers,” and she said, “Done.” I know it’ll still be both, but what the heck.

And then I thought, W.W.R.D.: “What Would Ricky Do?”

And I had the best time. I did my best Cuban accent and yelled, “Eileeeeeeen…” (Like “Lucyyyyyyyyy”) “WHAT DID YOU DO? YOU HAVE TO TAKE IT BACK!”

I talked like him the rest of the day, to my manager in conference calls and the head-writer of “Ten Things”, who I’m pretty sure thinks I’ve lost my mind. That was about it. She laughed and I laughed, and the fellas working there laughed, but I don’t think their heart was in it, primarily because they didn’t know what I was saying. (Ironic, of course, because Desi had a Spanish accent and — oh, forget it.)

But I got to be Ricky for a day. I called a friend from the office, Dennis Dugan, a very funny director I’ve worked for. He’s on the Sony lot, and I remembered he said a year ago, “If you ever want a TV or something, let me know, because the Sony Store is open to all employees on the lot, and they give a 40% discount.” And left editing — life is so weird, isn’t it? — The guy’s editing, with three people there, but what’s more important than a new TV? And he gets up to say, “It’s right across the lot. I’ll take a look.” And he found a comparable 52″ model for two hundred dollars less.

“Don’t leave,” I said. “Ask the guy if it has an anti-glare thing. The one Eileen got has the anti-glare screen. I’m going to call her now.” And he said, “Look, don’t be stupid. Either way this goes, you’re going to get a big glare, either from her or the TV,” which made me laugh out loud, and I put him on hold and called her, and –

Oh, the heck with it. I thought it might be, you know, a thousand dollars cheaper, but there’s no free lunch is there, folks? On birthdays and anniversaries and such, and everything we’re skipping, it probably adds up to that.

Or is that just the stupid man (me) missing something? Too much to handle. It’s nighttime, and I think I’ll have another drink. Yes, that will be simpler…

What are our problems? Nothing. If you’re working, you’ll spend whatever you make anyway. If you’re not working, the next job is the only thing on your mind. No one with a thousand-room mansion is happier than you anyway, so what’s the point? We can afford a new TV, 90% of the TV’s folks get these days are far more expensive, I wouldn’t mind seeing John Wayne or Mark Sanchez in a big closeup, and in a million years, any money we save won’t really matter.

Most important: I got to be Ricky Ricardo for a day. Their marriage didn’t end well in real life, but on TV it will last forever, and in heaven they’re back together again, and every husband has the same accent: Just like him.

REMEMBER: IF YOU WALKED OUT OF BED TODAY AND YOUR WIFE GOT SOMETHING YOU COULD AFFORD BUT GAVE YOU THE CHANCE TO FUME LIKE A FAMOUS CHARACTER… FOLKS, THE WALL’S SPACKLED AND YOU’VE WON.