Job-Seeker Ends Up in the Bright Lights

The importance of identity.

* Glen Stutts, 30, associate publisher of the San Diego Gay & Lesbian Times, was invited to do a taped interview at KNSD (Channel 39) for the show “San Diego Headliners.”

But he was a bit late getting to the station Tuesday.

By the time he arrived, the microphones were in place, studio lights ablaze and taping was about to begin.

Still, imagine Stutts’ surprise when he found a 20-ish fellow sitting on the set opposite the show’s host, Tim Chelling, claiming to be Glen Stutts, associate publisher of the San Diego Gay & Lesbian Times.

Confusion, confusion.

The ersatz Stutts was hustled off and asked to explain. He (tearfully) mumbled something about how he had just been in the station’s lobby looking for a job when a producer came out and assumed he was Stutts.

“It was a classic case of the deer-in-the-headlights,” Chelling says. “This poor kid just panicked and was more afraid to say ‘I’m not Glen Stutts’ than he was to go along with it.”

Stutts (the real one) says the incident left him a little unnerved for the interview: “I was still a little preoccupied with the impostor.”

The interview--with Stutts and Boy Scout leader Ronald Brundage discussing/debating the recent dismissal of a gay Scout leader--airs at 8 a.m. Sunday.

As for the impostor/frightened deer, he was last seen exiting into the warm night air of Kearny Mesa. Left without saying whether he still hopes for a career in television.

* (Type)casting.

An open audition for “Tainted Blood,” a made-for-TV movie to be filmed in San Diego, is set for 10 a.m. Saturday at Samuel Warren & Associates in Hillcrest.

Among the character types being sought are “farm-town-looking extras.”

Casting director Samuel Warren explains: “We need La Mesa country-sheriff-types or guys who look like they came from El Cajon before it got too populated. The type of guys who listen to KSON and have gun racks.”

P.S. The movie may need extras, but it’s already (tentatively) got a star: Raquel Welch.

From Fleas to Fashion

Words from the front (and back).

* Today’s lesson in cultural sensitivity comes from USA Today:

“Like a sweaty Chihuahua fending off fleas, Tijuana, Mexico, a funky playground, is trying to shake its image as a bacchanalian border town.”

* Elle, the New York-based magazine that specializes in fashion and women’s issues, is including a section on Nancy Hoover Hunter in a story on (fashionable) women involved in financial flim-flammery.

* Fax machines at City Hall have been receiving Nazi hate literature sent from somewhere in San Diego.

City Clerk Charles Abdelnour gave “this garbage” to the city’s Human Relations Commission.

* A headline in the student newspaper summing up the budget mess at San Diego State: “Looks Like Somebody Screwed Up Around Here.”

* Showing good form for a good cause.

Marla Maples is among the celebrities who’ve donated autographed jeans for an Alzheimer’s Assn. auction Sunday at Horton Plaza’s Doubletree Hotel.

* San Diego bumper sticker: “Make Welfare as Hard to Get as a Building Permit.”

Ambush Averted

Congressional candidate Tony Valencia thought he had found a great way to embarrass his Democratic opponent, Bob Filner, in front of Latino voters, a sizable bloc in the 50th Congressional District.

When the two were scheduled Wednesday to address the Mexican/American Business and Professional Club, Valencia planned to confront Filner in Spanish.

The stratagem was to demonstrate that Filner has not followed through on a political promise some years ago to learn Spanish.

But the Filner camp sent word at the last minute that the councilman/candidate had a scheduling conflict. The Valencia camp suspects Filner got advance word of the planned linguistic ambush.

In any event, Filner sent a surrogate: Council-campaign aide Francisco Estrada, whose Spanish is perfecto.