“Professor Charles W. Mulford returned from a recent day’s skiing in Vail to find an invitation to a wine-and-cheese party at a nearby inn. It turned out he was the guest of honor. The owner and lodgers were keen to chat about his latest book, ‘The Financial Numbers Game: Detecting Creative Accounting Practices,’ writes Cassell Bryan Low in today’s Wall Street Journal.

“As if that weren’t scintillating enough, somebody handed him a copy of Tyco International Ltd.’s latest annual report so he could dissect it for the crowd.”

” ‘There is a hipness’ to accounting now, says Mr. Mulford, a 50-year-old professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. ‘You would think it would be the other way, where it had been tainted somehow.’ “

“Long the butt of ‘bean-counter’ jokes, accountants seemed poised to endure even worse after Enron Corp. collapsed and its accounting firm, Arthur Andersen LLP, was indicted. But the whiff of scandal seems to have made the green eyeshade just a little sexy. Accounting experts are pitching books and turning into the life of the party. A movie about an accountant even won an Oscar on Sunday.”

“Suddenly, there’s a new breed of jokes. ‘Being an accountant gives him that extra aura of danger,’ says one woman to another in a bar, in a Jack Ziegler cartoon in the March 11 issue of the New Yorker magazine. On the online auction site Ebay, Arthur Andersen memorabilia for sale includes a branded sports bottle with this pitch from the would-be seller: ‘something to keep you cool, whether you are sweating in front of a Congressional investigative panel or running a high-paced shredding department.’ “

“David Zion, an accounting specialist at Bear Stearns Cos., says he was taken aback when, over cake and balloons at his daughter Amber’s birthday party, another father sidled up to him to chit-chat about the effect of accounting scandals on the stock market.”

” ‘I was, like, “What?” ‘ says Mr. Zion. At a pottery-painting party for four-year olds, ‘accounting is just not a subject that tends to pop up.’ “

“His colleague Janet Pegg says, ‘You used to go to parties and when people asked about your job, no one was interested. Now you’re the star.’ “

” ‘We’ve never been so popular,’ adds Robert Willens, an accounting analyst at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., who says he’s been so overwhelmed by calls to appear on television that he now knows how ‘rock stars and athletes feel.’ “