Sounds great or less filling?A Battle of...

Sounds great or less filling?

A Battle of the Lites broke out Friday over the plans of KEDG-FM to start calling itself K-LITE as part of its switch from rock to soft music.

KGIL-FM, which says it’s the one and only K-LITE in the dog-eat-dog world of easy listening, filed suit in federal court to muffle K-EDGE. Alphabet soup fans will recall that KIQQ-FM used to be K-LITE before it went heavy, switching to a rock format on KQLZ-FM.

Rendering the issue especially confusing is the trend among stations these days to use catch phrases such as “K-LITE” to describe themselves, while revealing their real call letters only once an hour, as the law requires.

The lite fight is the second recent radio spat here.

A federal judge last week ordered KFI-AM to stop using the words “Talk Radio” after KABC-AM filed suit. KABC claims to have invented the phrase in 1972--and uttered it more than 560,000 times since then.

So it goes in Los Angeles, home of Tort Radio.

Even if Hef hasn’t invited you over to the Mansion lately, you can come close to duplicating the thrill. Through the miracles of modern technology, a pinball machine that uses the voice of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner has been developed.

“Hi, I’m Hef,” it says when a player drops a quarter into the machine, which is designed to resemble the Playboy Mansion. “Champagne?” it asks when the ball drops on a picture of the bubbly. “You look beautiful,” it says at another point.

When the ball drops out of play, the voice calls out a fitting farewell:

“Ciao, baby.”

Hollywood resident Avrum Dansky received a campaign flyer in the mail this week, urging him to vote for City Council candidate Bernie Lohr-Schmidt. Only problem was that Lohr-Schmidt lost in the primary to incumbent Michael Woo on April 11. Dansky, a Los Angeles Times employee, said: “Maybe he (Lohr-Schmidt) is looking ahead to the next election.”

A nonprofit, Los Angeles-based group that sponsors baseball games between Nicaraguan and local teams calls itself Bats Not Bombs. The group, which also raises money for sports equipment for the embattled Central American nation, breaks donors down into such categories as “heavy hitter” ($100), “reliever” ($25) and “coach” (less than $25) in its advertising pitches.

You may recall that Century City magazine, in its inaugural issue, wrote an open letter to transplanted businessman Ronald Reagan, asking what it called “the ultimate Century City business question: Do you or do you not validate parking?”

Reagan later invited writer Lawrence Kohn over for what Kohn called “a perfectly charming” chat.

Since the magazine (despite its name) is based in Calabasas, Kohn had to drive over to see the ex-President. The writer admits he couldn’t bring himself to repeat the question in person to Reagan.

“But when I left, I asked his receptionist if she would validate,” Kohn said. “She stared at me for a moment, and then shook her head no.”