The battle between the Great Snail Festival...

The battle between the Great Snail Festival and the Pasadena Pizza Expo for the hearts and stomachs of Southern Californians is heating up.

After it was reported here that the Pizza Expo is set for April 1--the last day of the City of Industry’s gastropod salute--a suspicious snail festival staffer wrote that he had unsuccessfully contacted several Pasadena agencies for information about the competition.

“Is it possible that the April 1 date . . . indicates that the Pizza Expo is a hoax?” he asked.

Baloney, responded the Pizza purveyors. They admitted to some initial “confusion” over where to obtain information about the event, but reiterated that it is for charity and is sponsored by the Boys Clubs of Pasadena.

Undaunted, the City of Industry challenged Pasadena to come up with “anything to match our Raspberry-flavored snail caviar or snail jerky.”

Pasadena said it will field an impressive menu, including “California pizza by the Crocodile Cafe.”

Actually, crocodile pizza by the California Cafe might be more interesting.

Many firms are besieged by junk fax, ads sent via facsimile machine. Public radio’s KCRW-FM is accepting pledge faxes during its subscription drive. Said spokeswoman Sarah Spitz: “One of our subscribers called it a ‘plax.’ ”

L.A. has its critics, but Jewel Simon of Ventura isn’t among them.

While visiting here, she lost her wallet near the airport. And “you can appreciate my fears and frustrations with my credit cards, etc . . . ,” she writes.

But the next day, “my telephone rang and a man by the name of Ortiz Ortega told me he had found my wallet. He is a maintenance man for Avis rental cars. My granddaughter offered Ortiz a reward, which he refused. . . .

“Happy new year to Ortiz and Los Angeles.”

Giants in our midst . . .

One became a golfer off the San Diego Freeway in Carson. One became a gas station attendant on 3rd Street in East Los Angeles. And one became a lumberjack outside a hardware store on Long Beach Boulevard in Long Beach.

Note that, in the accompanying photos, they have identical poses. Even the clothes they wear are eerily similar.

And no wonder. Look at the faces.

They’re triplets, separated at birth.

Elvis-Head Sightings (cont.):

A spokesman for the Mississippi Rose Parade Committee says that the latest group to show an interest in the temporarily out-of-work, floral noggin of The King is. . . .

The Mardi Gras Parade Committee.

In announcing the end of the controversy over the correct wording of Santa Monica’s most famous song--”When Veronica Plays Her Harmonica on the Pier at Santa Monica”--we innocently mentioned that the flip side of one recording of same contained a song with the Woody Woodpecker lyric, “Eh-Eh-Eh-Eh-Eh-Eh.”

After presumably crooning the line themselves (and not too loudly), Haskell Collier of Whittier and Robin Gregg of the Pacific Press International News Agency concluded that our version is too long.

Woodpecker actually warbles:

“Eh-Eh-Eh-Eh-Eh.”

Ah.