Cream? Sugar? Sledgehammer? When John Marshall’s “Monument...

Cream? Sugar? Sledgehammer? When John Marshall’s “Monument of the Unknown Government Employee” opened in the City Hall rotunda last week, several government employees made their anger known.

“They’ve been pretty passionate,” said one worker in the Cultural Affairs Department. “Many of them are asking where they can send written complaints.”

Marshall is puzzled about the uproar over his exhibit, which consists of a generic man with a briefcase atop an archway. Beneath the archway, a coffee pot sits nobly on a pedestal.

“Maybe some of them (complainers) are spending too much time hovering around the coffee machine,” theorized Marshall, who says “Monument” was merely intended to make workers re-examine their roles.

As a peace overture of sorts, he’ll plug in his monument Friday night and serve free java at a reception for the public in the rotunda. “It will be gourmet stuff,” the artist promised.

Marshall hopes to build a full-scale version of the “Unknown Employee” and put it on permanent display in Washington.

“I tried to get Folger’s to sponsor it, but they wouldn’t,” he said with a trace of bitterness. “No sense of humor.”

Mind if I smoke 154 cigarettes?In his curious annual observance of the Great American Smokeout, comic Jim Mouth of Whittier will attempt to break his own world record for most cigarettes smoked simultaneously (153) today in Hollywood.

“Jim is trying to show teen-agers the absurd side of smoking--that it’s not cool,” said Kathy Hanis of the Guinness Museum, where Mouth will open wide at 11 a.m..

Unfortunately for Mouth, the Guinness book no longer lists such accomplishments because the authors don’t want to encourage unhealthy events.

Mouth, by the way, hinted that he might have political ambitions, noting: “Neither Mr. Clinton or me inhale.”

Life’s a beach: As the accompanying Nov. 10 sales receipt shows, Sav-on obviously believes that Southern California is the land of the endless summer.

The man Diogenes was searching for: “One of our members, Eric Shaw, died earlier this year,” says Louis Mraz, president of the Mt. Washington Assn. “His wife found a little purse in his effects. It had $42 in cash and $3.35 in change inside, along with some bingo materials.”

Shaw, it turned out, had run the group’s charity game in the 1970s. When bingo was discontinued, he placed the $45.35 in leftover proceeds in safekeeping until the game was resumed. It never was.

Mraz said the money will be used to plant a tree in Shaw’s memory in a local park.