Mr. Gutfeld thinks he can find his audience through television and the stage. He will be working with the Endeavor Agency in Los Angeles to translate Stuff features into the sort of thing lad culture will watch after a few rounds of Grand Theft Auto III and reruns of ''The Simpsons.'' He wants to make a theater production from the dialogue of the Bathroom Tapes feature, which he sees as a kind of ''Vagina Monologues'' for a male audience.

''It could be huge,'' Mr. Gutfeld said.

Mr. Gutfeld said that his former magazine, and to some degree his life, takes its comic energy from the juxtaposition of the comfortable and familiar with the dark and disturbing. For example, the magazine's always puzzling last page typically features a close-up photo of a cute stuffed animal with a depraved line of text like ''Please kill me.'' Mr. Gutfeld said that joke is emblematic of his world view.

''Weird on weird doesn't work,'' he said. ''Weird on boring -- now that works.''

If Mr. Gutfeld annoyed himself out of his editor's post, it would only be in keeping with a lifetime of laddish behavior and resulting expulsions. He was kicked out of grade school in San Mateo, Calif., he says, for lighting firecrackers in class. When he was fired as editor of Men's Health in 2000, he managed to sneak a few dark lines into the letter from the editor of his last issue. ''I've just been fired from this job -- and I never saw it coming,'' he wrote. ''Dangerous ideas can instill a little fear -- and when you scare your boss, you're gone.'' The magazine's publisher stopped the presses part-way through the print run to excise Mr. Gutfeld's musings.

Since his first big job in publishing, as the editor of Men's Health, Mr. Gutfeld has had difficulty separating his life from his work. Back then, he said, he woke up at 5 a.m. and did sit-ups by the hundreds, in an effort to maintain a perfect washboard stomach.

''My abs had abs,'' he said.

When he was an editor at Prevention, a magazine for older Americans, he said he led stretch-band classes for the elderly, to better understand his readership. He said it wasn't him. ''After, I would sneak back to my room and drink Scotch and chain smoke Marlboros,'' he said.

At Stuff, Mr. Gutfeld settled into the persona of a seedy, hard-drinking gadfly, maintaining satellite offices at the Bellevue and an even dingier Midtown haunt called Siberia. He harassed his professional rivals, and kept the gags coming. Mr. Gutfeld wore a bear-skin rug -- complete with the taxidermic teeth and tongue -- to a fashion show, and bragged that no one seemed to know whether it was a serious fashion statement or a gag. Though Stuff is crammed with photos of young models in bikinis, Mr. Gutfeld said his quest to be funny keeps him ''inside my own head.'' He said he hasn't had much luck with women.