Boy, George: Fifteen years ago, Audrey Franklyn...

Boy, George: Fifteen years ago, Audrey Franklyn bought a cut-rate baby parrot at a going out of business sale in West Hollywood.

“The birds at this pet shop were all very expensive, but they said I could have George for $150,” she recalled. “They warned me he was a loner, a real mean male. Someone else had bought him and brought him back.”

So George lived alone, and uneventfully, with Franklyn until the Twin Temblors struck the other day. “George started to act strange,” she said. “And then I found two eggs in his cage. Imagine, after all those years!”

George, needless to say, has been re-christened Georgie Girl.

Ornithologist Kimball Garrett said it isn’t unusual for a solitary female bird to go that long without laying eggs. “Usually,” he said, “they need some sort of social stimulus, such as the presence of other birds.”

But Garrett did question whether the quakes played a part in the egg laying.

Whatever, Franklyn remains amazed over Georgie. “I was sure he was a male because he’d whistle the way that men whistle at women,” she said. “On the other hand, he does scat like Ella Fitzgerald. I mean, she. “

Did you hear the one about . . . An urban folk tale making the rounds involves an airline employee with the last name of Gay. In one version, he’s a USAir employee. “It’s been in two or three newspapers,” said USAir spokesman Dave Shipley, who has been unable to verify whether the incident actually happened.

Gay, the story goes, boarded a flight in Southern California as a non-paying passenger, only to find that his assigned seat was occupied. So he took another. But the plane was overbooked and non-paying passengers were asked to leave.

An attendant stopped at the seat originally assigned to Gay and asked the occupant, “Are you Gay?” When the startled man nodded, the agent said, “Then you’ll have to get off the plane.”

Seeing what was happening, Gay arose and said, no, he was Gay and should therefore exit.

At which point a young man seated nearby jumped to his feet and angrily declared, “I’m gay, too! They can’t kick us all off!”

Prices slashed--all decaf double espressos must go!Pay Less drugstore, a discount emporium in Beverly Hills, boasts a cappuccino bar.

Talk about hot weather: No, the temperature has never risen so high here that traffic cops had to resort to wearing bathing suits. The accompanying photo, taken in Long Beach in the 1930s, was staged by Chamber of Commerce officials. The Los Angeles Central Library has a collection of such shots, which were mailed to the East to promote tourism. The ingenue in the photo is not identified (at least, we assume she’s an ingenue). Where have all the ingenues gone, anyway?

A way with words: Lois Willows of Beverly Hills heard a local TV newscaster say that a man who had received the transplanted liver of a baboon was doing better but “wasn’t out of the woods yet.”

miscelLAny:

When the dilapidated, 55-year-old Hollywood sign was replaced in 1978, several celebrities pitched in to purchase the present sign. Among the biggest donors were Alice Cooper, Hugh Hefner, Gene Autry and Andy Williams, each of whom contributed the cost of constructing one letter ($27,777.77).