Police Recruits Given Chance to Get Up Close and Personal

San Diego lives.

* The mandatory two-hour seminar for San Diego police recruits on dealing with the gay community is supposed to elicit discussion.

But discussion at a recent session got even more candid than usual.

The class, as always, began with the instructor asking how many in the group had ever known a gay person.

After some hesitancy, about half the recruits raised their hands. But, after the tally was taken, one recruit asked to speak.

“Everyone in this room knows a gay person,” he said earnestly. “I’m gay, and I think it’s time that I stop hiding that fact.”

At first, there was stunned silence among the cops-in-training. Which quickly gave away to supportive applause.

* Bowling for the bizarre.

A guy has to go to the restroom at Clairemont Bowl.

He walks in and sees a guy breaking a pool cue in half. You and I would exit immediately, right?

Not our guy. He’s really got to go. So he sprints to a stall and locks the door.

The pool-cue-breaker sees this as a kind of challenge. He begins uttering what the cops later refer to as “guttural” sounds.

He breaks down the door and begins whacking the seated fellow with the broken cue. Noise, gouging and much confusion reign.

Cops arrive with a cop dog. The pool-cue-breaker grabs the cop dog and flings it back at the cops.

The cop dog makes another lunge. The pool-cue-breaker bites the cop dog before being subdued.

A cop then begins having chest pains and is taken to a nearby intensive care unit. The pool-cue-breaker babbles explanations that are more babble than explanation.

The cop dog takes the rest of the night off. The guy who only wanted to use the toilet begins to wonder what the hell kind of city this is.

Good question.

Eliminating the Fat

It says here.

* San Diego bumper sticker: “Congress Needs Liposuction.”

* Charles Thomas, former Harvard professor and now president of San Diego’s Helicon Foundation, has been unable to get a big-name science journal to publish his letter asserting that the link between HIV and AIDS has not been proven.

But he has just gotten a favorable notice in a lengthy article (“Fatal Distraction”) in the rock ‘n’ roll/youth culture magazine Spin. (Published by Penthouse’s Bob Guccione.)

The article buys Thomas’ argument that federal grants backing the HIV thesis are leading researchers to waste time on a dead end.

* Now scouting for San Diego locations: the makers of Sylvester Stallone’s next movie, “Demolition Man.” Filming to start in September.

It’s the story of a futuristic world split asunder by a mega-earthquake along the San Andreas Fault. A subterranean city then wars with a topside city.

The producers are conferring on sites and other matters with the San Diego Film Commission (nee the Motion Picture & Television Bureau).

* More movies: The Film Commission reported to the City Council on Thursday that movie companies will have spent $20 million in San Diego County this fiscal year, up from $14 million the previous year.

* Name it and claim it.

Still trying to dispel the negative overtones of the label Southeast San Diego, City Councilman George Stevens is holding an informal plebiscite to find a new name.

Among the options: South City East, Southeastern City, Southeast East.

* A San Diego-based humanitarian group called Pacific Rim Connection next week will fly an 8-ton load of medical supplies, food and nutritional supplements to Vladivostok and the interior republics.

The group wants to improve the health of women and children, including making birth control more accessible.

Plans for future planeloads include crates of condoms.

A Kiss Is Just a Kiss

Vanity plate in Rancho San Diego: PUKR UP.