Hair to the Chief
President Clinton’s Beverly Hills economic stimulus package--which involved hiring one of the town’s $200-a-trim hair stylists to cut his locks inside Air Force One while the jet sat on the tarmac at Los Angeles International Airport--raises a few questions.
Among them: How can anyone pay $200 for a haircut? Why doesn’t his hair stylist, Cristophe, have a last name? More important, what is a hair stylist doing with a personal publicist?
In any event, in case Clinton is considering spreading the wealth around the Southern California area in the future, here is what the $200 spent in the Hair Force One incident can buy:
* 105 Big Mac hamburgers at a McDonald’s in the San Fernando Valley.
* 12 copies of a Fleetwood Mac greatest hits compact disc at Tower Records on Sunset Boulevard.
* 33 regular haircuts at Hector’s Barber Shop in Paramount.
Coming From Rukeyser Inc.
General Motors has one. So does General Electric. So does AT&T.;
And now so does . . . Louis Rukeyser.
In July, Union Planters Bank in Memphis will premiere a Gold MasterCard called “Louis Rukeyser’s Wall Street Club Card.”
The no-fee, low-interest card is being made available only to subscribers of a newsletter written by the host of the PBS investment program “Wall Street Week.”
Rukeyser introduced the newsletter last year, noting, among other things in his subscription sales pitch, that he grosses at least $1 million a year in speaking fees, that he has a “flair for fashion” that regularly lands him on best-dressed lists and that he was the first person before age 30 to eat at every three-star restaurant in France.
A spokeswoman for Union Planters Bank says current plans call for the card to show Rukeyser’s name, but it is unlikely that it will show his face.
Celebrity credit cards are nothing new for Memphis, where a savings and loan there once offered an Elvis credit card.
No doubt that card allowed its users to live like a King.
Environmentally Incorrect
We couldn’t help but notice that one of the top air pollution penalties levied recently by the South Air Quality Management District was a $1,000 fine against a Pacoima recycling facility.
The charge: depositing dirt on a public roadway.
The name of the company: Clean World Disposal and Recycling.
Briefly . . .
A Walt Disney Co. official, seeking to debunk persistent talk that Disney will build a theme park in country music hot spot Branson, Mo., says the rumors “are as frequent and common as Elvis sightings, and just as reliable.” . . . Sign spotted on a clothing and furniture store near Beverly Hills: “Upscale Resale.” . . . Bet You Didn’t Know Department: The U.S. Lawn Mower Racing Assn. just celebrated its first anniversary. . . . Newest infomercial star: Pia Zadora, who is pitching a 150-minute compact disc set of recordings called “Pia, The Platinum Collection” in late-night commercial programs.
