Some educators and parents have condemned youthful...

Some educators and parents have condemned youthful Bart Simpson, controversial subject of those “Underachiever” T-shirts. So it came as something of a surprise the other day when a Loyola Marymount University announcement said that Simpson would deliver the school’s commencement address.

The press release disclosed that Bart, the cartoon son on TV’s “The Simpsons,” would “receive an honorary junior high school diploma” because “he symbolizes everything this University is all about.”

Hold that mortarboard.

The press release was not the work of the university, but of Loyola student Brian Gurwitz, who pasted the school letterhead on a fake release and sent out 200 copies.

“I wanted to find a humorous way to protest the fact that there was going to be no commencement speaker,” said Gurwitz, a member of the student Senate. “There were rumors that a Cabinet official was going to be the speaker but had changed his mind, so the university decided to go without one.”

The hoax spurred debate on the subject, and the university finally announced that Loyola basketball coach Paul Westhead would speak at Saturday’s commencement.

Gurwitz, incidentally, will be among those achievers graduating.

“That’s why I was able to do this (hoax),” he admitted.

It could be the next Civil Service position: Trash cop.

A consultant to the county has completed a “Feasibility Study for a Uniform Recycling Program” that includes a recommendation for such a class of officers. Their duties would be to “randomly select a floor or section and check who is actively recycling by looking in individual trash bins at the end of the day.”

While several publishers continue negotiations with us for the rights to “The Golden Treasury of Malathion Poems,” we are now planning a second volume, “The Malathion Song Book.”

Randy Larscheid of Westwood contributed three ditties, including “Clean Acres” (sung to the tune of “Green Acres”):

Californy is the place to be.

L.A. living is the life for me.

Smog spreading out so far and wide.

Spray malathion--just watch us run and hide.

Soon to be available on cassette or CD.

Two years ago to the day, followers of the 16th-Century French seer Nostradamus predicted that disaster would strike L.A.

They were correct.

The disaster was a Caltrans promotion designed to encourage car-pooling.

Guest star Rick Dees, the KIIS radio disc jockey, stationed himself on an overpass of the Ventura Freeway, offering $100 prizes to the driver of any passing vehicle that he described on the air--if the driver exited and reported to the deejay’s mobile unit.

Money-hungry drivers were observed cutting across several lanes to get to Dees. Traffic was gridlocked for 15 miles.

How could Nostradamus have known?

In the L.A. Tall Tales Contest sponsored by Toastmasters International in San Pedro, Ivan Gerson recounted how he fell down a cavern into hell after an earthquake and stumbled upon a weight-loss seminar being taught by Elvis Presley. Gerson finished third. Maybe one of the judges found the story plausible.

MiscelLAny:

The Original Pantry Cafe, which is open 24 hours a day, claims never to have been without a customer during its 66-year history. Even when it moved to Figueroa Street several years ago, meals were served at its old and new locations simultaneously.