Spooky caravan: For the Los Angeles Hearse...

Spooky caravan: For the Los Angeles Hearse Society, Halloween is, of course, the social event of the season.

“We always have a party at a cemetery,” said spokeswoman Catrina Coffin (“that’s my stage name”), the proud owner of a 1968 burgundy hearse. “We sing songs like, ‘She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain in a Hearse.’ And we play make-believe games like, ‘Pin the Toe Tag on the Corpse.’ ”

The members belong to many professions and not all possess funeral vehicles.

“We have one woman who makes jewelry out of (animal) bones,” said Coffin, a singer and musician. “And we have one guy who doesn’t own a hearse, but he owns an entire cemetery and he lets us use it.”

Not that the members are satanists or anything. “We don’t do nasty things, like vandalizing graves,” Coffin emphasized. “We’re not devil worshipers. We’re nice people. I guess you’d say we’re just eccentrics. A lot of us have coffins in our hearses. I have one in my living room that I sleep in.”

More blood-curdling news: It’s another instance of an Eastern publication ignoring our fair town.

The October Harper’s Index contains these two entries:

“Number of the world’s 810 vampires who live in the United States, according to the Vampire Research Center: 550.

“Number who live in Romania: 3.” But Harper’s omits the stats on the city that is Numero Uno in vampires, according to Stephen Kaplan, director of that Elmhurst, N.Y., research center. So we’ll do the honors:

“Number who live in L.A.: 20.”

We hope to see that category on the next census.

Media plot against Perot?Ann Sherman James of West L.A. found a suspiciously funny juxtaposition in a recent television program listing in The Times (see excerpt).

And then there’s the Tin Pan Alley plot: Local performer Dorik Perman sent us the lyrics to his “Ross Around the Clock,” a ditty about a presidential candidate sung to the tune of the old Bill Haley hit.

Our favorite stanza goes:

When the clock strikes two and three and four,

The billionaire will spend some more!

We’re gonna Ross around the clock tonight,

Gonna Ross, Ross, Ross, ‘til broad daylight. . . .

Surely, some Yugos must still be available: In her campaign to unseat County Supervisor Deane Dana, Gordana Swanson has branded Dana’s $74,000, armor-plated, bulletproof limo a symbol of government waste. Dana could have avoided this problem. Garry South of L.A. points out that earlier this year Russia began selling off the ZIL limos of the Old Guard’s leaders for as little as $10,000 each.

When gloom and doom become hip: Sue Carlton of Arcadia found an Alhambra nightclub with a name that seems to parody the downbeat forecasts of the Nervous ‘90s.

A reason to go on living: There will be only eight more days of political commercials. But until then, go ahead and Ross around the clock.

miscelLAny:

With 200 certified plastic surgeons, L.A. ranks second in the nation in this category behind New York (207), according to the American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons.