Odds & Ends Around the Valley

Cutup Columbo

It was 13 years ago and Michael Pasternak needed a costume for a Halloween party. The television-detective “Columbo” happened to be on the cover of TV Guide that week.

“I discovered I could do the character’s voice and look,” said Pasternak, a Woodland Hills actor and writer.

Ever since, he has been earning a living by performing his rumpled detective shtick --complete with trench coat, cigar and notebook--at business conventions and private parties. For a fee, he wanders unannounced into the middle of such affairs.

“I say, ‘Does anyone here have any jumper cables? I don’t mean to bother,’ ” Pasternak said in an authentic-sounding Columbo voice. After this opening, the actor bumbles around for a moment, starts to leave and then utters the famous line: “Excuse me . . . one more thing.”

What follows is a “This is Your Life” routine, as Pasternak tells funny and embarrassing anecdotes about party guests (such tidbits are provided by the person who hires him). Pasternak won’t reveal how much money he gets paid for appearances, but he did say that the work suits him well.

“I don’t have to shave and I don’t have to dry clean.”

Practical Romance

A soon-to-be married couple recently walked into Franklin’s True Value Hardware in Woodland Hills and asked if they could register there for wedding gifts. Instead of china and crystal, the couple wanted such items as a rake, shovel and garage-door opener.

The request was not extraordinary. The Chicago Tribune reports of a hardware store in Woodstock, Ill., where 13 couples registered in May. “You might as well have people buy you what you want, instead of getting five toasters,” said Janette Hess in the Tribune article.

Alas, the Valley couple who thought likewise did not get their wish.

“We told them, ‘No,’ ” said a clerk at the Woodland Hills hardware store. “We just aren’t set up to do that sort of thing.”

Is there no place left for romance?

No Nintendo

They don’t call this city “Television Land” for nothing . . .

About six months ago, a Chicago-based company came out with a gadget that allows parents to put a lock on their children’s Nintendo video-game console.

Tom Lowe says he invented Homework First after listening to his neighbors complain about how much time their children spent in front of the television set battling electronic dragons and driving on video race tracks.

“Some of these kids are up at midnight playing video games,” Lowe says.

The $16 combination lock--a simple, U-shaped design that blocks the game-cartridge door--has been endorsed by the Council for Children’s Television and Media. And, Lowe says he has sold 30,000 of the devices nationwide.

But, according to an official at Toys R Us, the only local outlet for Homework First, only 66 have sold in Los Angeles.

Flag Waving

It’s been a very good year for people who sell American flags.

According to various flag and banner shops around the Valley, business started picking up dramatically last year about this time.

“People started buying a lot because the flag-burning issue was big in the news,” said Marte Jones, the manager of AAA Flag and Banner in Sherman Oaks.

The recent congressional vote on a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning spurred business again. In addition, sales always pick up around the Fourth of July.

“We usually sell one or two flags a day,” Jones said. “When it gets close to the Fourth, we sell five to 10 a day or more.”