Stars Get the Message to Rally to Their Medium

Listen to Shirley MacLaine, who knows a great deal about these things, talk about Adele Tinning:

“Then I remembered that I had visited a spiritual medium who contacted disembodied spiritual guides through a table that tipped and leaned and moved. . . . She lives in San Diego, is about 79 years old, is as kindly as anyone I’ve ever known, and quite simply has incredible mediumistic talent.”

MacLaine is apparently among thousands of people in the past 40 years who have gone to Tinning’s bungalow in North Park to sit at her kitchen table and ask her help in contacting the dead.

The actress and veteran psychic traveler mentioned Tinning in her 1987 book, “It’s All in the Playing.”

Although Tinning has refused publicity or payment, she has attracted a loyal following in both San Diego and Hollywood. She is said to have distributed 105,000 copies of her book, “God’s Way of Life.”

“If you’re into metaphysics, she’s a household word--she’s the mother ship,” said Tovar, a San Diego native and Beverly Hills hairdresser to the stars.

But even metaphysicians get old, and now Tinning is 82 and suffering from hypertension and a mild stroke. Her husband, a San Diego firefighter, died seven years ago.

Her friends, including a show business contingent, are planning a fund-raiser Saturday at the Omni Hotel downtown to help Tinning pay for nursing care.

MacLaine has yet to RSVP. The same for singer Patti Page, who sang at Tinning’s birthday party. But dancer Ann Miller has sent something for the auction.

Mime Robert Shields and actors Dennis Weaver and Rick Hurst (“The Dukes of Hazzard”) have promised to appear. So have the singing Del Rubio sisters, 64-year-old triplets who are popular on the New Age circuit, a loose confederation of healers, channelers and others.

Samantha Khury of Escondido is helping organize the fund-raiser. She says Tinning helped contact her late mother.

“You don’t forget a thing like that,” Khury said.

Romantic Fax

The fax revolution continues.

San Diego-based Single magazine will now send you personal ads (“Well-groomed male seeks female for golf, discussion of Spinoza and space travel . . . “) before they are published.

For $99 a year, you can get a fax every Friday. Just in time to find a date for the weekend.

Sarcasm Calling

When the San Diego City Council on Tuesday discussed a flap over the bids for an expensive new phone system, the clash was part political, part ecclesiastic.

Mayoral chief of staff Ben Dillingham, speaking on behalf of vacationing Mayor Maureen O’Connor, accused Councilman Ron Roberts of advocating “meddling,” “folly” and “mischief” by seeking to have the council review the bidding process.

Dillingham said no amount of review would help a certain losing bidder get a higher rating.

“If so, it would be a miracle of resurrection such as has not been seen in 2,000 years,” he said.

Roberts, taken aback by the proxy attack, said he wouldn’t respond to “sarcasm with respect to any resurrections, especially ones that I honestly believe in.”

Of the Gray and the Green

Federal Judge Rudi Brewster likes to dispense a little advice with his justice.

Take the case of Joseph Gonzalez, who admitted robbing a Chula Vista bank of $6,298 in January. Gonzalez jumped over the counter and waved a gun to get the tellers’ attention; he was arrested hours later after depositing a chunk of cash in a credit union account.

“You’re too old to engage in bank robbery,” Brewster told Gonzalez this week. “You should leave that to the younger people. You could hurt yourself jumping up on counters like that.”

Gonzalez, 62, nodded. He’ll be a little older before he next sees the outside world: Brewster sentenced him to 30 months in federal prison.