The Next Best Thing to Going on a Dream Date With Elvis

Elvis is here, the two George B.’s--Bush and Burns--and Liz is in a tizzy because no one can find the Pope.

You know, the fellow with two first names, a man adored by millions. Wouldn’t such a popular, clean-cut kind of guy be any girl’s idea of a dream date?

“ Everyone would like to go out with the Pope,” Marilyn is purring. “I think he’d be a pretty safe date, don’t you?”

Has safe sex in the ‘90s come to this?

Nah. It’s just the kickoff for Celebrity Dream Date--a look-alike dating service where your dream of going out with a real, live superstar can come true.

Sort of. “You can’t date a celebrity,” says dating maven and Liz Taylor look-alike Carole Reed of Irvine, batting her baby violets. “Why not the next best thing?”

Like a sort of celebrity. Someone like George Burns--OK, Al Majer, if you insist--who is running around the Las Brisas restaurant in Laguna Beach, waving a wad of sort of cash.

“You should see the ladies who just attacked him a few minutes ago,” Reed chirps.

“I gave them a million-dollar bill,” George says, clutching a fortune in Xeroxes, “and I said, ‘Don’t spend it, or we’ll all be in trouble.’ ”

Reed beams. “People have dreams of wanting to date these people,” she says proudly.

Maybe so, but only in a town that long ago found its fortune in mirages, where what’s fake and what’s real can be unnervingly interchangeable. Reed discovered some clients from her regular look-alike detail sort of wanted to date her--it was Liz they were after, but Reed rated higher on the proximity meter. She figured there was gold in them thar fantasies.

They could impress their friends with a star on their arm.

Almost.

Or gift them, like one of the half a dozen clients who’ve contacted Reed since she started Dream Date a month ago. He’s hiring a more-or-less Ann-Margret to surprise an Ann-Margret fan.

And so, on this balmy day, Reed has summoned a gaggle of look-alikes to help her promote her brave new world of double dating. Brother, can you spare $300? Then you, too, can wile away a couple of hours with a Dutch Indonesian Billy Crystal or a Linda Evans-like gal who goes by the name of Jan. Just Jan. “I’m like Cher. I’ve had too many last names.” Or choose any of Reed’s 200-odd look-alikes. Limo and dinner are extra, but if you’re dating Elvis, you could be in luck.

“I had dinner with one lady, and all she wanted me to do was sing to her,” says Elvis. “We had peanut butter-and-banana sandwiches and jelly doughnuts for dessert.”

Elvis’ faves.

“She insisted on it.”

Natch.

The Elvis of the moment is also known as Eddie Powers, 30, whose personal brand of Kingness is “early Vegas Elvis--I’m talking 1969-’70.” Apparently, the dating market is fairly hot for Early Vegas Elvis.

Elvis: “You’d be surprised.”

Reed: “They do not believe Elvis is dead, first of all, and because Elvis looks so much like him. . . .”

Or vice versa.

”. . . when he performs on stage, they throw him their bras.”

Elvis beams. “I have every brand.”

Of course, the average person doesn’t have $300 to throw around on any old Elvis. Needless to say, Reed expects to draw the clientele for her dating service from among “corporate chairmen, all sorts of executives who don’t have time to find a partner to go with them to corporate functions.”

The kind of corporate functions that, say, Dolly Parton would attend.

But remember, no funny stuff.

Elvis: “It’s a fantasy type thing.”

Dolly (a.k.a. Charlene Rose): “And if something else were to come out of it. . . . “

Reed: “It won’t be on Carole’s time. Everything here is strictly platonic. . . . I have a limousine service that will take my women to the public place, and pick them up. The gentlemen will be screened by a security agency to make sure they are who they say they are.”

Of course, Reed realizes that some people might have trouble separating fact from fiction. “I did a photo shoot for Star magazine and this lady (at the shoot) totally freaked out. Your mind plays tricks on you.”

But Marilyn isn’t even the eensy-weensiest bit worried.

“I’m going for my second-degree black belt in tae kwon do,” Marilyn/Gigi St. John, 49, says sweetly.

A few of the pseudo-celebs are married, but hey.

Reed steps in to lend this interviewer a helping hand.

“The dream dates will be strictly platonic,” Reed says to Judy Califano, 41, who’s married to quasi-John Belushi, “so she wants to know what you think .”

“I wouldn’t mind,” Califano says brightly.

“You’re not going to kiss the person,” Dolly offers helpfully.

“Do you hear that?” Califano says, smiling at her look-alike husband, Guy. “Are you listening?”

And if the clients are married?

“That’s their problem,” Reed says.

The kickoff turns out to be a symphony of symmetry--not only do the restaurant grounds abound in pseudo-celebs, but there’s also a mock dream date with a phony client.

A mustachioed gentleman who probably only looks like himself arrives. “This is our gentleman who requested a dream date with Dolly Parton,” Reed announces, introducing him as John Leon.

“She’s beautiful, and they won’t let me get through to Dolly,” he says.

More to the point, for dream dating purposes, he turns out to be a friend of Reed’s. His “date” consists of a stroll by the ocean with Liz and Dolly that must have stretched as much as, oh, 30 feet or so.

“Heaven,” Leon trills, “I’m in heaven.”

One day in the not-too-distant future, Kathy Morgan, a 32-year-old mortgage loan officer from Dana Point, will have her own piece of heaven. She will put down some real, live money so she can go shopping with a Tom Selleck-like person on Rodeo Drive.

“He’s a hunk,” Morgan moons. “I can imagine myself actually being out with him. And it’s fun to get attention from other people. Of course, he’s not really Tom Selleck, and I’m going to know that, I’m sure.

“But then how would I know that? I’ve never met Tom Selleck.”