Rent-a-Hobo.That’s the theme of a new series...

Rent-a-Hobo.

That’s the theme of a new series of Survival Workshops that will be offered “today’s sheltered generation,” the L.A.-based National Hobo Assn. has announced.

“Hobos are survival specialists, living off the land, surviving long, cold, boxcar rides over the hump and other tests of the will,” points out the NHA’s leader, who goes by the nom de rail , Capt. Cook.

In a message to its members, the Hobo Times expressed the hope that the workshops would at least raise enough money to pay their costs, “including travel expenses.”

It added: “Unless you come by boxcar.”

Every once in awhile, someone asks Milt Larsen about the whereabouts of the Queen Minny.

It was Larsen who engineered the hoisting of the 50-foot, 2-ton model of an Italian ocean liner onto the roof of his four-story Variety Arts Center in 1980. There it sat, like an apparition, floating above motorists and pedestrians on Figueroa Street.

Larsen found the vessel at an auction held by MGM Studios, where it had been used on miniature sets for “Luxury Liner” and other movies.

The Minny was the ideal hood ornament for Larsen’s show-biz museum, which consisted of such artifacts as Eddie Cantor’s joke file, W.C. Fields items and Jimmy Durante’s breakaway piano (constructed so that Durante could destroy it nightly).

Alas, the Variety Arts Center shut down last year. He put the memorabilia in storage--he’s considering new sites now--and received offers from Cleveland and Las Vegas for the boat.

“When we moved, we told the new owners that we’d send a crane over and get the boat,” Larsen said. “But there was some misunderstanding, and the contractors demolished it. It’s unbelievable that someone would do that.”

Unlike Durante’s piano, the Queen Minny can’t be put back together.

Sue Souveroff of Woodland Hills forwarded the notice for the bankruptcy hearing of Mike Glickman, once the San Fernando Valley’s biggest real estate broker.

Commented Souveroff, a former agent with Glickman: “A lot of creditors and almost 1,800 agents came unraveled when Glickman blithely walked away from his obligations, but I didn’t know he had the power to undo the United States!”

In the spirit of Rideshare Week, we offer this from our Whatever-Happened-to-This-Invention? file:

“The Clifford Cigar Windshield is a new article that . . . will appeal to all motorists who are cigar smokers,” said the Auto Club’s Touring Topics magazine 75 years ago.

“It is made of asbestos tissue that fits firmly over the end of a cigar so . . . no sparks or ashes are liberated to blow in the eyes or over the clothes of other occupants of the automobile.”

The New York-L.A. flight was delayed for 2 1/2 hours the other evening at a stopover in Kansas City while the passengers remained on board. One woman was upset because she would miss her connecting flight to New Zealand, while a businessman said he’d miss an important meeting. But several passengers said the reason they were miffed was they’d be missing the season opener of TV’s “Twin Peaks.”

Not that they’d have found out who did in the lovely Laura Palmer.

Bilingual sign of the times, in the back window of a sedan parked downtown on Beaudry Avenue:

“Nothing in car. Very poor man. Rich bank owns car. No radio. No hay nada aqui (There is nothing here).”

miscelLAny:

The 67-year-old domed mausoleum at Angeles Abbey Memorial Park in Compton is a copy of the Taj Mahal.