It’s like this, Doc. I’m your basic...

It’s like this, Doc. I’m your basic Beverly Hills neurosurgeon--$2.8-million mortgage, 500 SL in the garage, golf clubs shafted with high-modulus boron graphite. But for years now, I’ve led a secret life as a graffiti tagger. I sneak out at night and spray-paint “MD” on walls, freeway signs, bridge abutments--you name it. Cops and kids think it means something like Mad Dog 7-Trey Longo Crips, but sooner or later. . . . I must want to get caught. Huh, Doc?

Zo.

Look at these hands. The steadiest scalpel at Cedars, they call me. Sometimes, I don’t mind saying, I get pretty darn proud of my calligraphy. There’s a billboard just off I-5 south of Bakersfield . . . gives me goose bumps just to think of it. I was in the zone, Doc. In the Zen. And the thing is, I want to get credit for it. Even if it destroys me. But how do you tag a tag?

Hm.

I saw a Picasso exhibit once, and do you know what? It was just squiggles and blotches and half-finished clowns and women’s faces with eyes where their ears should have been. And I said to myself, “If this is art, then so’s the stuff I’m doing. Why should I try to hide it?”

Zo, zo.

Then I took a watercolor class, but it just wasn’t the same. I missed the thrill of illegality, the sweat under my trench coat, the heavy breathing, the smell of spray paint. . . . And I thought, “No, this is just a low-down, shameful addiction.” What do you think, Doc? What have I got?

Vot you got is doodling on your noodle.

Exactly! And then I heard of the Robert J. Leib Memorial Celebrity Art & Doodle Show at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Olympic Collection conference facility at 11301 W. Olympic Blvd., West Los Angeles. The 100 pieces of art on sale include three doodles by President Reagan, a drawing of Bart Simpson by cartoonist Matt Groening, a sketch of Batman by cartoonist Bob Kane, an original “Peanuts” strip by Charles Schulz and a self-portrait by Whoopi Goldberg. Proceeds benefit the Concern Foundation for Cancer Research. Tickets are $35. Information: (310) 476-4677.

Hmmmm.

And I thought, “This is my chance to gain respectability, to join my doodling peers.” So I jackhammered one of my best “MDs” off an underpass in Santa Monica--a 2-by-3-foot chunk of concrete. It’s right outside now, in the trunk of the Mercedes. Should I do it, Doc? Should I come out?

Can you stick a feather in your cap und call it macaroni?

Are you crazy, Doc? Feathers make me sneeze. And you know how many fat cells there are in every bite of pasta?

Then stay in medicine, my boy, und leave the doodling to Yankees who know how.