Where do talk show guests come from?When...
Where do talk show guests come from?
When we chatted with Christopher Darryn of Reseda last year, he was just starting his National Talk Show Guest Registry. For $3 a month, he’ll enroll you in a computer bank and advertise your availability to Geraldo and Oprah and the rest of them. Darryn now has more than 1,800 clients, including these recent additions:
* Barry Conrad, a professional ghost-buster from Studio City, who took part in what he calls the “San Pedro Haunting” of 1989. (We must have been on vacation when it happened.) He said he helped evict some poltergeists who were so vicious that they attempted to hang one of his colleagues.
* Ron Chappell of Miami, who is a expert on the “elongated second toes of the rich and famous,” many of whom were Hollywood celebrities, including Marilyn Monroe. Those blessed with big second toes, Chappell claims, have more sex appeal.
* Rick Rosner of Encino, who has one of the highest IQs in the nation and is the only person “to take an IQ test naked and in public as a stripper.” We weren’t there, so have no information on his second toes.
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After schlocks: One post-quake fax now rumbling through the Southland purports to show a list of “magnitudes by ZIP code . . . provided by Caltech.” But this is no Kate Hutton production. It’s a hoax.
“Usually things like this die down,” said Caltech spokesman Jay Aller. “But not this one. We first saw it before Valentine’s Day. It must have some sort of appeal.”
Although some of the numbers seem plausible, Aller noted that, according to the list, his father survived the Big One in Reseda--a 9.4 quake. “Obviously, if you were hit by a 9.4 quake you wouldn’t still have a house,” he said.
Caltech has received numerous calls about the list from businesses, especially real estate brokers. “We’ve also heard from Universal Studios and Disney,” Aller said. “Even FEMA called.”
Most of the callers were “pretty suspicious,” Aller added, except for one resident in the Newhall area.
“He was really upset,” Aller said, “because some of the worst shaking was out there and his ZIP code wasn’t on it.”
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Pre-shakes: They’re still coming in, those clues that a quake was near. A few days before it struck, Everett Fong saw a church marquee in Torrance that said: “This is your last chance to pray before the freeway.”
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Vanity tectonic plates: It’s also sort of eerie that the February issue of Car & Driver magazine went to press before the quake with a segment on memorable vanity plates, including 5 12 PM. If that one doesn’t ring a bell, or an alarm, it’s probably because you’re a Southern Californian. The plate refers to the time of the 1989 Loma Prieta (sometimes called the World Series) quake.
Locally, Anthony Higdon thought he had a ready-made Official Quake License Plate--at least until Caltech went and upped the magnitude to 6.8. Higdon’s plate, which refers to a family trip along a famous route, says: WE DID 66.
miscelLAny:
Caffeine, published by Hot Water Press in Woodland Hills, is a new poetry magazine that also offers “An Existential Guide to the Coffeehouses of Los Angeles.” Most eye-catching name is the Grassy Knoll, a Silver Lake joint that has a small theater called the Book Depository.
