May we recommend the Emergency Room Special?Woodruff...

May we recommend the Emergency Room Special?Woodruff Community Hospital in Long Beach promises that anyone who shows up in its emergency room will see a physician within 20 minutes or there’ll be no charge for the visit.

“People are busy and don’t want to have to wait an hour or more like they would at a bigger hospital,” reasoned Lisa Ciccanti, director of business development for the 96-bed facility.

Ciccanti said Woodruff, which handles about 15 to 25 ER cases a day, hasn’t had to award any freebies for tardy service since instituting the policy in September.

The rival Memorial Medical Center of Long Beach has no plans for a counter ad campaign.

“We see nearly 50,000 patients a year in our ER, and we’re one of the last remaining trauma centers in L.A. County,” said spokesman Ron Yukelson. “So it would be counterproductive for us to market our emergency services.”

We wonder, though, if some other hospital will attempt to one-up Woodruff on fast service. This being L.A., isn’t a drive-through emergency room inevitable?

A name any life insurance agent would envy: A sign put out by one State Farm agent in Newhall caught the attention of Kevin Buck of Canyon Country. Buck, you may notice, cleverly worked his own reflection into his photo.

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The Form Down Under: Colin Dangaard of Malibu says that on a flight back from Australia on Qantas, passengers were told:

“Ladies and gentlemen, the immigration authorities are very serious about the information handed them, so please be careful when filling out the ‘long form.’ ”

The passengers were warned that the form was confusing so they were advised to “start filling it out from the bottom and complete it in reverse. That way you will have a chance of ending up with the information on the right line.”

Slap another bureaucrat on the barbie, mate.

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Give us a couple of weeks to think it over: Wolcott’s stationery store on Spring Street advertises, “40% Off On All 1994 Calendars.”

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Milestones in tattooing: The December issue of International Tattoo Art contains a feature on the late Lee Roy Minugh, a legend in the business for more than half a century in the L.A. area.

Minugh first set up shop in the back of a Downtown bookstore, attracting passersby with an outside sign that proclaimed: “Tattooing in the rear.”

But he didn’t achieve national renown until the 1950s, when he appeared on Steve Allen’s popular TV show and decorated Allen’s arm. “Four little black dots I think it was,” Minugh later recalled. “Just so he could say he was tattooed.”

It was quite a breakthrough--though tattooists don’t like to use that term.

miscelLAny Hankook Elementary School, a Korean educational institution, is located in the Hancock Park area.