TIKI Barber is going nuts.
Pistachio, to be exact.
The former Giants running back-turned-NBC correspondent is about to make another sweet career move - he's having an ice- cream flavor named after him.
Tiki-tacchio, a vanilla ice cream with mini-M&Ms, chocolate fudge, dark chocolate chunks and pistachios, will make its debut tomorrow at Last Licks, a small but growing sports-themed ice cream parlor opening its first Manhattan store Monday, at 93rd Street and 2nd Avenue.
Steve Costello, who manages the six-store chain, said there are plans to expand distribution of the Barber family favorite flavor to grocery stores and beyond in the near future.
The manager said Tiki, his wife and kids decided on the ingredients and that there was quite a bit of tinkering done to get it just right.
Last Licks, owned by Brandon Steiner, the sports-memorabilia titan, has in-store baseball dugouts to add to the sporting flavor of the chain. It also gives inventive, sports-themed names to its other flavors. Richard Wilner
No Horses
Fears are mounting that the famous Budweiser Clydesdale horses - massive beasts used to pull the Anheuser-Busch camion on ceremonial occasions - could be the first to get pink slips if InBev, the giant Belgian brewer, succeeds with its $46 billion bid for the US beer maker.
Clydesdales have been synonymous with Anheuser-Busch since the 1930s, and the Clydesdale Breeders of the USA, the breed's official member organization, relies on the brewer as its biggest commercial supporter.
But Inbev is renowned for making sweeping cuts once it subsumes its rivals, with extraneous marketing budgets and other non-core projects the first to go.
Cathy Behn, secretary of the 129-year-old Clydesdale Breeders of the USA, fears that the historic ties between the horses and Budweiser may not survive the proposed InBev takeover. "It would be devastating on personal, historical and financial levels to the Clydesdale breed in the United States if InBev decided to cut its ties with us," she said.
James Poole looks after Anheuser Busch's teams of Clydesdales but has been forbidden from talking about the InBev deal or the future of the Budweiser horses.
The breed has its own show every four years in Madison, Wis. A-B provided about $500,000 worth of support and a large part of the advertising and marketing for last year's event.
Gwendoline Ornigg, a spokeswoman for InBev in Belgium, said that the question of keeping or eliminating the famous horses was "not relevant" to the brewing giant's $46 billion bid. James Doran
Say what?
After Yahoo! and Google signed a search-ad agreement, Microsoft has been working hard to scuttle the deal, arguing that it's bad for competition.
Apparently, the message isn't getting through to all Microsoft employees.
Last week, Matt Greitzer, vice president of search marketing for Avenue A/Razorfish, the ad firm Microsoft acquired with its $6 billion purchase of aQuantive, contradicted his corporate parent when he told Bloomberg News that Google-Yahoo! deal "is going to be good news for advertisers."
Well, quicker than you can say "Sorry Mr. Ballmer, I'll try to think before I speak to the media in the future," Greitzer appears to have had a change of heart. In a follow- up Bloomberg story, Greitzer said the Google- Yahoo! partnership "is going to be good news for advertisers in some respects," he said, but added, "ultimately it will reduce choice and likely increase prices for many advertisers."
Greitzer didn't return an e-mail seeking comment. A Microsoft spokeswoman also declined to comment. Holly M. Sanders
