Flicks Make a Big Splash, But Don’t Let Your Rubber Ducky Make Waves

Two in the deep end, please. Or: Did I just see Siskel and Ebert in an inner tube?

I am in the mood. I am in the water.

I am at The Plunge in Mission Beach on Saturday night watching “Jaws” with several hundred other giddy people resting on assorted flotation devices: tubes, mattresses, Chinese dragon-looking things, lawn chairs kept afloat by pontoons, a Navy life raft, you name it.

It’s a chlorinated “Rocky Horror Picture Show,” participatory movie-watching, an aquatic auteur. It works best if you already know the dialogue.

A large cheer goes up when the lights go off and the shark chomps his first victim. The crowd is tossing a rubbery gag-all novelty, a severed hand.

It’s that kind of crowd.

Welcome to Dive-In Movie time, once a month. A chance to get entertained and pruney for $5.

Last month: “Creature from the Black Lagoon” (in 3-D). Next month, “Alien,” and in August, “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.”

There are three lifeguards circling the huge pool, plus a fourth underwater with scuba gear and a miner’s light. No popcorn in the pool, no booze anywhere, and no dunking or skylarking (sure).

It’s mostly a giggle for the teen-age and college set, but there are also families and even a few seniors. Some people wore phony shark noses.

One woman says she came in hopes that television would send a mini-cam (she wasn’t disappointed). One fellow wears his beeper (kept dry in a plastic bag).

“I’m on call tonight,” he explains. A true San Diegan.

It’s a one-trick pony, to be sure, but an interesting trick and an interesting pony. The Plunge is steamy and exotic.

Under cover of darkness, the crowd improvises.

One young couple drifts off to rehearse the love scene from “Blue Lagoon.” I think of paddling closer to get a (journalistic) look but I stop.

I don’t want to make waves.

Impressions Aren’t What They Seem

It says here.

* That was then, this is now.

When a budget crunch threatened the San Diego city attorney’s domestic violence unit, the city’s Advisory Board on Women sent pleading letters to the City Council.

The only council member to write back was Bob Filner:

“I completely agree with you--and will do everything possible to see that city funding is available to continue the work of these programs.”

Advisory board chairwoman Maria Velasquez was so impressed with Filner’s letter, dated June 11, that she read it aloud at last week’s board meeting.

At virtually the same moment elsewhere in City Hall, Filner was joining with Abbe Wolfsheimer as the only no votes to a budget plan for the city attorney.

Among other things, the plan will continue funding for the domestic violence unit.

* Just say No.

The Municipal Employees Assn., which represents 3,500 public employees in San Diego, is the latest victim of the “killer-tattoo” hoax.

The latest MEA bulletin devotes the front page to a skull-and-crossbones warning about stick-on tattoos, laced with LSD, supposedly being peddled to kids:

“A young child could happen upon these and have a fatal ‘trip.’ These drugs are known to react very quickly and some are laced with strychnine.”

Drug cops say the tattoo scare is a groundless rumor being spread by chain-letter.

Some People Get Their Turn

Names and dates.

* Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dianne Feinstein meets this morning at City Hall with Mayor Maureen O’Connor to be briefed on San Diego issues: crime, sewage, state funding and The Merger.

* The district attorney has rejected a request from the Society of Professional Journalists to investigate the seizing of a Vista Press photographer’s camera by a sheriff’s deputy at a fatal shooting.

* Monica Higgins, 37, a San Diego firefighter since 1978, has been named deputy fire chief for fire prevention. That also makes her fire marshal.

San Diego’s first woman deputy chief/marshal.