It's time to start your preparations for this year's Super Bowl -- tune-up the set, get the supply of chips and beer, hide the expensive Scotch. Oh, and so you're not caught with your pants down during the halftime flush, watch this video by Mike Ditka, legendary coach of the Chicago Bears.

Halftime flush? No one knows for sure the exact numbers here, but Ditka (and his copywriters) are talking something like ninety million toilets jumping into action after the first half of the big game. To clear that many heads requires all the water that flows over Niagara Falls in seven minutes. But not all of us live that close to the Falls, which means it's the busiest day of the year for the Roto-Rooter man.

Ditka's infomercial is brought to us by Scott as part of their Halftime Flush promotion. They think they have the tissue we need to minimize the chance of those dreaded back-to-back penalties: "roughing the shitter" and "holding." Their true aim here is to pimp their paper's ability to dissolve "four times faster than the leading brand;" and they're so confident in their paper's ability to split lickity-split that they offer ten suggested uses for the plunger you'll never need again. I smell a future lawsuit here.

(Also interesting on their site: flush ringtones and sound files.)

My only memorable Super Bowl incident happened two years ago. When my turn came during halftime, I hustled to the only reliable shitter in the house. It flushed fine. When I came back the guys seemed surprisingly perky, so I asked them what I'd missed. Pat said, "Maybe nothing. But tell me: would you rather have a #2 in the can, or a boob on the tube?" I'd fucking missed Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction.

So don't you be a Roto-Rooter statistic this Super Bowl Sunday. Check your system, including your plunger. And place it right beside the toilet on game day. Finally, try to do your business early, during the appropriately-named two-minute warning.