Mind if I light up 38 times?Out...

Mind if I light up 38 times?Out of the tobacco mist, we’ve detected a split among smokers in L.A.

It appeared in the form of a letter from Rick Hacker of Sherman Oaks, author of “The Ultimate Pipe Book.” Hacker had read our item on “Counterblaste to Tobacco,” a 389-year-old tract against smoking by King James I of England.

Although he can’t fully endorse the king’s position, Hacker wants to make it clear that “most of us (pipe smokers) abhor cigarettes.”

In defense of his own habit, Hacker says the only felon he can think of who smoked a pipe was former Atty. Gen. John Mitchell. The roster of pipe smoking luminaries, on the other hand, ranges from Albert Einstein to L.A.’s Jim Purol, an occasional holder of Guinness world records.

Purol, notes Hacker, set the “world record for smoking the most pipes simultaneously, having managed to cram 38 briars into his mouth at one time.” And he was thoughtful enough not to accomplish the feat in a restaurant.

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It’s better to receive: Janet Hassler sent along today’s featured flyer, sent out by a company that is just too darn polite to turn down tips.

List of the Day: Strange but true facts about the song, “Louie Louie,” from the new book of the same name by Dave Marsh. The ditty about a lovesick Jamaican sailor was written in 1956 by Richard Berry, an alumnus of Jefferson High, and has been recorded more than 1,200 times.

* Berry’s inspiration was a song called “El Loco Cha Cha,” which he heard at the Harmony Park Ballroom in Anaheim.

* The Kingsmen’s incomprehensible version of “Louie Louie” became a hit in 1963 after Boston deejay Arnie (Woo Woo) Ginsburg introduced it as “The Worst Record of the Week.”

* It was the official song of the Leukemia Society of America for two years.

* A resolution was introduced in the Washington state Senate in 1985 to make “Louie Louie” the state song. The Senate passed it; the House gonged it.

* In the late ‘70s, the song inspired a wine cooler called Louie Louie, which was soon pulled off the market for copyright reasons.

* The FBI, using sophisticated equipment, investigated its allegedly subversive lyrics (backward and forward) for two years. The agency concluded in a 250-page report that the song was “unintelligible at any speed.”

There’s more but me gotta go.

We don’t want to be the one to tell you but . . . Spotted near the checkout counter of a soon-to-be-defunct Builder’s Emporium store in Montrose was a stand containing questionnaires that said: “Tell us how we’re doing.”

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Copycat panhandlers?”Why Lie? I Need a Beer,” said the sign of the moocher who was standing near the 210 Freeway in Pasadena.

We’d like to think he’s a reader of Only in L.A.--we ran a photo of a different gent holding a similarly worded sign in Colton the other day.

But readers have also told of seeing the same plea on placards in Pacific Palisades, Santa Monica and Anaheim. And the descriptions of the self-advertisers sound different in at least four of the cases.

If the slogan becomes any more popular it’ll be just a matter of time before it shows up in a TV beer ad during a football game. Only it will no doubt be held by a coyly smiling, bikini-clad woman.

miscelLAny:

One of the classes offered by the Long Beach Parks and Recreation Department is “Law Enforcement Spanish.”