Everywhere You Look, There’s Santa--Early
Already we’ve got competing Santa Clauses in our shopping malls and competing Santa Clauses telling telephone tales, and we haven’t even had a chance to enjoy our Thanksgiving turkey. First comes an anguished press release from Grossmont Center, complaining that Santas are overworked. “The accusations are directed to other shopping centers in San Diego who are bringing Santa down . . . up to 10 days before Thanksgiving,” the release says. The Grossmont retailers are “allowing Santa an extra week’s sleep.”
Of course, we know that he’s not sleeping at all. He’s working the phones.
If your child wants to listen to Santa on the phone, he’s got at least two choices, thanks to Ma Bell’s “enterprise” phone prefix, 976, which allows businesses to play prerecorded messages for profit. Every time you dial it, you’ll be charged something on your next phone bill.
There is, for instance, the 976-8300 Santa. On Monday, he told youngsters the reason we hang stockings on the fireplace mantle is (no, not to dry them out) so he knows we’re asleep and it’s safe to do his thing. A cute service, this storytelling Santa, and every 90-second gig will cost you $2. He invites children to call back in the afternoon--and on Monday we did, only to hear the same story again. So, make it $4--and don’t let your kids get hold of this number or it’ll break your Christmas savings club if they get hooked.
That may be a reason to dial the 976-5656 Santa. This Santa comes at only 50 cents a call. Ho ho ho! On Monday, he talked about the colors of Christmas. Today, he’ll discuss the story behind the Advent wreath.
Behind this service is a company called Com, a group of enterprising North County businessmen who bought the local rights to a national Santa telestory franchise.
After Christmas, says Joe Conti, they’ll offer other telephone services, such as daily horoscopes, daily jokes, a hot line for current disease information, and maybe uplifting, spiritual messages and the latest on comparative automobile insurance rates.
But first there’s Christmas to get through. The Christmas Eve message has Santa flying over California, spotting your home and admonishing the caller to get to bed and fall asleep in a hurry. (Just don’t call him at 2 in the afternoon.)
Obviously, Santa has a cellular sleigh phone.
No Extra Reading
James Hinkle is a San Diego State University professor of English who, in his class syllabus, warns his students: “Do not read the Daily Aztec in class. It is rude, it bothers me, and I will ask you to leave.”
Or perhaps he won’t ask you to leave.
One of his former students, Beth Wallace, is suing Hinkle in El Cajon Municipal Court, alleging that he threw a book at her when he caught her reading the campus newspaper during one of his lectures.
The suit alleges that Wallace was hit in the face by the book and suffered distress and humiliation. She hasn’t returned to school, her attorney said.
Hinkle, for his part, doesn’t want to discuss the case but doesn’t, on the other hand, deny what he already has told a Daily Aztec reporter. The paper quoted him as saying: “My aim was too good. . . . When I threw that book, I didn’t know if it was man, woman or mule behind that Daily Aztec. What she was doing was rude, and my response was rude.”
For the record, the class was Introduction to Literature; Hinkle said the book was a paperback edition of William Faulkner’s “The Hamlet.”
Field Trip to Fashion
On the subject of campus life, the question of how to dress for a college field trip is especially pertinent if you’re going to enroll in Palomar College’s Family and Consumer Science Course No. 25.
The course is actually a 14-day “World of Fashion” study-tour of London, Paris and Milan, including visits with internationally renowned fashion designers, a Paris fashion show, a tour of the costume museum in Bath, England, and visits with retailers, manufacturers and fashion predictors.
The trip, which costs $2,095, is in June. Deadline for reservations is Dec. 18. Time to start losing weight is now.
Enjoying a Tenting Trip
A group of Japanese businessmen who got the bug to visit the United States spent an hour or so Monday in front of a 17-unit apartment building on 38th Street in San Diego, talking excitedly and taking lots of pictures as it was covered with a huge red-and-white tent so it could be fumigated for termites.
This was a tour group of Japanese businessmen in the pest control business, who are spending nine days in San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego, watching how Americans deal with bugs for bucks.
Jim Ogle, president of Lloyd Pest Control, said the group was interested in American marketing techniques and choice of termiticides--two areas in which American pest control outfits are ahead of their Japanese counterparts.
Take pride, America!
