Sorry, hot wax isn’t included: Nothing can...

Sorry, hot wax isn’t included: Nothing can make up for the city’s refusal a couple of years ago to confer landmark status on that now-defunct carwash in Studio City. But at least Southern California’s car culture is being honored by I. Magnin. The company’s new “Black and Sheer” line features a “black jumpsuit with carwash panels.”

Asked to explain, Kathryn Griggs, a Magnin sales associate, said: “They are chiffon panels that flap when you walk--just like the flaps you see when you enter a carwash.”

Hold that elephant!”That isn’t what my press release said,” reported Karen Wolman of West Hollywood. She was referring to our Wednesday announcement about a city logo contest for Lesbian Visibility Week. We excerpted the blurb from the publication Planet Homo, which had mischievously changed the wording.

It turns out that the city will return entries if a “stamped, self-addressed envelope” is included. Not, as Planet Homo’s version said, a “stamped undressed elephant.”

And now he has the carwash panel blues: Orange County society figure Danny Hernandez, who was arrested the other day on suspicion of embezzling nearly $8 million from his Santa Fe Springs employer, owns a $200,000 Ferrari Testarossa with the vanity plate: 4 XSIV 1. That translates as “for excessive one.”

That vision thing: Robert Torres of Redondo Beach observes that if you can read the fine print in the accompanying ad--and you should--you probably don’t need the eye exam.

Braving enemy territory: The San Fernando chapter of Zero Population Growth meets tonight in Reseda at the Magic Years Nursery School.

Slick Willie special: Claudette Tenet, a women’s clothes store in Brentwood, has hung out a sign that says: “Clinton Tax Hike? Don’t Worry, Feb. 21-28, We’ll Pay Sales Tax.”

L.A. woebegone, our hometown: This week’s L.A. Business Journal contains dozens of display ads placed by regions trying to lure business away from the once-paradisiacal City of Angels. A sampling of the flowery blurbs:

* “Omaha has people talking. . . ..”

* “Ever heard of Round Rock, Tex.?”

* “Ways to profit in Jennings County (Ind.).”

* “In Plano (Tex.) you’re in good company.”

* “Why companies locate in Pueblo, Colo.”

* “Imagine . . . Rancho Cucamonga.”

And, even:

* “Glendale: Why aren’t you here?”

Yes, Glendale, Calif., our own sneaky neighbor.

Maybe there just aren’t enough candidates: Can’t you just feel the drama building in the mayor’s race? Well, neither can the Central City Assn. of L.A., apparently. The business group sent out a notice to the media saying, “We regret to inform you that the mayoral forum scheduled for Feb. 25, 1993, at 11:30, Hotel Inter-Continental, has been canceled due to lack of membership participation.”

This would never happen in Plano.

miscelLAny:

In “J. Edgar Hoover,” author Curt Gentry reveals that near the end of hoodlum Alvin (Creepy) Karpis’ 33-year-prison term, Karpis taught a young car thief named Charles Manson how to play the steel guitar.