QUOTE OF THE WEEK: You won’t see...

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: You won’t see Tom Waits (who’ll be in town Saturday for three days at the Wiltern) hawking beer or motorbikes--he thinks it’s tacky for popsters to become pitchmen. Still, when asked recently what kind of commercial offers he’s had, the scruffy singer--with tongue solidly in cheek--improvised a few possibilities.

“Well, they wanted me to be the spokesman for American Airlines--they wanted to show me in the cockpit as a reliable pilot in the friendly skies. There would be this huge closeup of my face--I’m kind of smiling, with bad teeth--as we take off over the skyline and the plane turns upside down.”

Waits said he’d also been asked to endorse “women’s hair removal stuff” as well as moisturizers. “They wanted me for the whole line of Lancome products. In fact, they wanted me to be the Lancome man.”