Gizmogate scandal: No sooner did we name...

Gizmogate scandal: No sooner did we name Andy Zeff the winner of our What-Is-This-Gizmo? contest than we heard from Guy Webb, who had actually phoned The Times with the correct answer 20 minutes before Zeff--at 5:10 a.m.

Webb also correctly identified the mystery device in our photo as an air raid siren dating from World War II. “I remember that era because I’m one of the first baby boomers,” he said. “My parents tell me that I was conceived on Dec. 7, 1941.”

Problem is, we’d already sent the grand prize, an Elvis-Meets-Nixon T-shirt, to Zeff. Fortunately, a new freebie--a Frederick’s of Hollywood calendar--arrived in our mail Friday. So we’re declaring Webb a co-winner and sending him Misses January-December, 1993, all of whom are wearing something other than T-shirts.

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Siren call: Speaking of the air raid alarms, L.A. city Firefighter Vince Marzo has a special reason for remembering that they were tested on the last Friday of every month at 10 a.m.

“When I was a rookie fireman, the guys told me to go up and clean the siren at our station,” he recalled. “It was a Friday, around 9:50 in the morning. When that thing went off in my ear, I felt like my head was rolling down the street.

“To this day I think I’m a little hard of hearing because of that siren.”

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Hat’s off: In a November article on L.A. architecture, Sunset Magazine published an old photo of the Original Brown Derby restaurant and commented: “The Pacific Brim’s largest brown derby may have departed for the great haberdashery in the sky, but the idea that buildings can steal the show by assuming the shapes of other things is alive and well.”

Well, it’s true that the Wilshire Boulevard landmark went out of business a decade ago. But the hat didn’t literally disappear. Blown by the winds of change, it landed on the second floor of a mini-mall around the corner on Alexandria Avenue. There it crowns Namuhana, a Korean cafe.

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Here’s one the supermarket tabloids missed: An L.A. Reader ad headlined “Starship Emblem Pin” urges all to don their “green light of welcome” during “the arrival of Starships of Light from the Interplanetary Confederation in 2001.”

Earth, in case you hadn’t heard, has been invited to join the 33-planet confederation. Your space brothers will be so touched if you purchase the pin. You, meanwhile, will be touched $21.95.

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We’d recommend against staying overnight: A sign seen at an L.A. hospital said: “Eighth Floor Skilled Nursing 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.”

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And that includes parking: After Disney boss Michael Eisner cashed in his stock options for $197.5 million to avoid anticipated tax hikes, Jay Leno of the “Tonight Show” observed: “That’s enough money for a family of four to go to Disneyland every day for a week !”

miscelLAny:

Gen. Thaddeus Kosciuszko, for whom a two-block-long street was named in downtown L.A., was a Polish-born immigrant who became a hero as a patriot in the Revolutionary War.