Earth Day is approaching, but let’s not...

Earth Day is approaching, but let’s not forget the Face on Mars.

That was the plea of a picketer Friday outside the Pasadena-based Planetary Society, a grass-roots group of scientists searching for evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence.

The protester told the society’s director, Lou Friedman, that he’s upset that there has been no formal investigation of a Martian mountain that resembles a face in some photos. The issue isn’t new. One book even theorizes that The Face is evidence of another civilization.

Friedman compares the controversy to “one of those pseudo-scientific things that comes up every few years--ancient astronauts, the Bermuda Triangle and so on.”

NASA agrees, likening the mug to “the Man in the Moon.”

The picketer was particularly incensed by a remark on the subject that appeared in The Times last month. Told by an interviewer that one supermarket tabloid compared The Face to that of Pee Wee Herman, Planetary Society official Tim Lynch cracked:

“I think it looks more like Elvis.”

Him again.

Speaking of spacey singers . . .

Tom Waits, who is suing Frito-Lay for allegedly imitating his voice in a commercial, testified in L.A. Friday that Frito’s performer copied “the way I approach a phrase, the way I wait before I start a phrase . . . the hair on my voice . . . scars in the same place.”

Lincoln National Bank and other “Lincoln” firms have been forced to constantly remind the public that they are in no way involved in a scandal involving a certain bankrupt thrift. Tom Bratter of Palms wonders if grade school teachers will begin saying of Abraham Lincoln: “He was the 16th President of the United States and he was in no way connected with scandal-plagued Lincoln Savings & Loan.”

A local image specialist for the auto industry recalled in this space the other day that in the movie “Used Cars,” a car salesman puts a $100 bill on the end of a fish line and casts it onto the car lot across the street to lure customers away.

A reader writes to say, with some irritation, that it was only a $10 bill.

Question: Was the $100 figure an insult or a compliment for the salesman?

This is the 108th anniversary of the telephone in L.A. (Actually, it was a couple of days ago, but we had the fact on hold.)

Telephone stress wasn’t long in developing, evidently.

Early directories implored users in that pre-dialing era to give operators the number--not the person--desired, so as to avoid “MUCH FRICTION AND ANNOYANCE.”

miscelLAny:

A report from the city Transportation Department discloses that 3,400 people have more than 20 unpaid parking tickets issued by the city.