Because a T-Shirt Is So Old Hat

It was a real treat when, upon leaving the Los Feliz Theater after a screening of “Ed Wood,” we happened upon a stack of papers in the lobby with photocopies of the actual death certificates of Wood and the pathos-inducing Bela Lugosi.

Upon closer examination, we found this to be the work of Hollywood’s ghoulish guides, Grave Line Tours. “We thought it would be kind of cool,” says Greg Smith, Grave Line’s owner.

Smith, who’s also been distributing Houdini death certificates, points out that these documents are available to anyone who wants to take the trip to the County Registrar and, er, dig them up.

“I loved the movie so much, I thought it would be nice for the theater and nice for us . . . and a sleazy way to advertise, I guess.”

Simple Tastes: On our busy round of recent costume parties, while we found most of the ubiquitous Simpson trial-inspired outfits to be tedious, uninspired and scarcely worth a mention, we do award a Social Climes accolade to one clever minimalist we ran into at a Hollywood party. At first, this reveler appeared to be costumeless, until we spied a small, rectangular badge on his jacket: “Juror.”

Enough’s Enough: “Pulp Fiction” is taking up a lot of bandwidth in cyberspace. On the Internet’s Quentin Tarantino fan newsgroup (he’s one of a handful of directors to be awarded such an on-line honor), the flurry of messages--numbering in the hundreds--following the film’s opening have yet to die down.

Not since Zapruder has a film been so thoroughly deconstructed and significance attached to the most seemingly banal details.

At least one ‘netter thought that it had all gone too far. “Do you really believe that QT filled every scene or line of dialogue of his movie with some hidden meaning or homage to some other film?” he posted. “Give it up. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”