Temporary Anger Cuts Slur in TV Ad Off Air Permanently
Of mixed messages and corn dogs.
* Normally, Betsy Rice doesn’t get mad at television.
But, when she saw a commercial that she felt mocked her industry, she went ballistic.
She called SkyTel in Washington, the folks who provide a nationwide 800-number message service, and told them their commercial defamed the temporary worker business.
The commercial shows a harried traveler calling his office for messages and getting some dizzy receptionist who gets flustered and forgets everything, and then pleads ignorance: “I’m just a temp.”
“The commercial just outraged me,” Rice said. “The message was that temps don’t know what they’re doing.”
Rice is human resources director for TOPS, Total Personnel Service, a San Diego firm that provides 800 to 1,700 workers weekly in San Diego.
Also complaining to SkyTel: a honcho from the National Assn. of Temporary Services, the temp business trade association in Alexandria, Va.
Result: SkyTel is modifying the copy.
In the new commercial, the receptionist is just as ditzy but now she says: “Sorry, this is not my usual job.”
* You may remember the standoff between Sluggo’s, the gourmet hot dog stand, and the operators of the University Towne Centre shopping mall.
It started when Sluggo’s impresario Norman Lebovitz added corn dogs to his menu. UTC bosses said that violated Sluggo’s lease and threatened eviction.
Lebovitz responded that a corn dog is just a hot dog in drag and nobody was going to tell him about hot dogs. So sue me, he said.
Now, a face-saving compromise has been arranged.
Sluggo’s has dropped corn dogs, leaving Hot Dog on a Stick with the exclusive corn dog franchise at UTC’s Food Pavilion. In return, UTC will not beef about Sluggo’s adding lemonade and breakfast fare.
Mark Ashton, UTC manager, is happy. He says it was important that the lease provisions be enforced:
“Otherwise we’d have 16 vendors selling hot dogs.”
Lebovitz is happy. Before the settlement, he was selling only about three corn dogs a day.
Now he’s selling about 100 hot chocolates a day, and the Sluggo pancakes, well, they’re selling like pancakes.
Team’s Fund-Raiser Dries Up
‘Tis the season.
* The Crawford High School Wrestling Booster Club is looking for monetary donations to replace aging uniforms and equipment.
Many of the uniforms are older than the wrestlers; blue and red have become gray and orange. The wrestling mat has worn thin.
“What really we’re looking for are people who care about an inner-city magnet school,” says booster clubber Donald Sada. The club’s goal is $1,500.
Besides asking for donations, fund-raisers are planned.
But the club’s main fund-raising activity, a car wash, has been ruled out. The drought, you see.
* Singer Jack Jones and Mandi Rutherford, 8, of Poway, the 1992 Easter Seal Child, will light the Christmas tree at the Hotel del Coronado tonight, 6 p.m.
* Name floating as a possible candidate for 3rd District supervisor: Bob Simmons, law professor at University of San Diego and losing congressional candidate in 1984.
* Rick Dyer, Oceanside video game innovator (“Hologram Time Traveler,” “Dragon’s Lair”), and Four Square Productions (“Killer Tomatoes”) are planning a joint video game-video movie release next Halloween.
A horror film. Watch the movie at home, play the game at the arcade.
Four Square partners are John DeBello and Assemblyman Steve Peace (D-Chula Vista).
Hollywood South
The balcony is not closed.
The recession is chilling other businesses, but the San Diego Motion Picture & Television Bureau is still managing to lure big-spending film projects.
A dozen projects will be filming in San Diego in January, including “Mr. Jones,” starring Richard Gere and Lena Olin and directed by Stephen Frears (“Dangerous Liaisons”); “Plan of Attack,” a CBS movie with Loni Anderson, and an unnamed ABC movie.
Plus continued filming of the weekly “Silk Stalkings.”
How important are film projects to the local economy? “K-9,” the cop-and-dog movie with Jim Belushi, spent $3,199,340 locally during 61 days of filming.
