JUST DUCKY: After the media beating Disney...

JUST DUCKY: After the media beating Disney took over its Euro Disney Resort and Virginia theme park projects, the Burbank brigade could use some good reviews. They get one in the current New Yorker, as the literary, high-brow weekly offers a lengthy and glowing assessment of the Mighty Ducks’ performance on the ice and their marketing wizardry off it. . . . But Disney did take one hit: The Iceman, the ill-fated team mascot that lasted all of one game in Anaheim, was blasted in the piece as a “major dork-o-rama.”

PAST DUE: South Africa’s most prominent playwright, Athol Fugard, says he’s thinking about a trip to Costa Mesa for the revival of his latest work at South Coast Repertory. (OC LIVE!) “Playland” opens Friday and runs through Feb. 27. . . . While the county’s only professional resident company has done three other Fugard plays, he has never shown up. “I owe them,” admits Fugard, who revolutionized South African theater decades ago by putting blacks and whites on the same stage.

D.C. CONNECTION: Irvine PR man Bob Nelson caught some flak from fellow Republicans when he broke ranks to support Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, but it has paid off. First he helped on the Clinton transition, and now he’s been named to an economic panel that advises the President and Congress on U.S. competitiveness abroad. . . . The only drawback, he says: often “nightmarish” FBI background checks on such issues as domestic help. “It’s just irritating. I can sure appreciate Bobby Inman’s feelings.”

NO YOLKING MATTER: If you like your eggs soft-boiled or sunny side up, beware: the County Health Care Agency last year received 91 reports of salmonella enteritidis . . . . The disease comes from eating under-cooked, infected eggs. The county’s Dr. Hildy Meyers says such incidents, transmitted from infected hens, are increasing steadily. Symptoms: fever, diarrhea and nausea.