Smile, you hockey pucks: Tired of those...

Smile, you hockey pucks: Tired of those family photos where everyone seems to wear the expression of a jailed murder suspect? Polaroid thinks it has the solution with its Talking OneStep, a camera that contains three prerecorded jokes as well as a chip that allows you to manufacture your own one-liners.

The OneStep, which will go on the market next month for about $40, tells a joke when you depress the shutter halfway. Once you have the desirable facial expression, you snap the picture.

The prerecorded jokes, which were performed by three L.A. comedians, are:

* “Cheese for me, cheese for you, everybody say chees-aroo.”

* “Oh, smile, you funny person.”

* “I want you say a heh-heh.”

No chuckle guarantee accompanies the jokes. And, to preserve what’s left of those comics’ careers, we will not divulge their identities.

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Stop the presses!It’s popular to attack the media these days--literally so, in fiction. Among the characters bumped off in “Kiss the Girls,” a best-selling potboiler by James Patterson, is a writer for the L.A. Times. We were relieved to discover it wasn’t the humor columnist. But we did experience a slight chill in an unrelated scene in which the murderer tries to pick up a flashy blonde in a Melrose boutique. She encourages his attentions with some flirtatious remarks, then insults him and drives off with her real lover, a red-haired woman.

An FBI agent, who has the scene under surveillance, quips: “She set him up. Isn’t that beautiful? Only in L.A.”

Hey, watch it.

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List of the Day: “Hamburger Heaven,” by Jeffrey Tennyson, contains numerous McFactoids about the Southland’s most famous burger factory. Some examples:

* The first food stand opened by the founders of McDonald’s was a drive-in “featuring fresh O.J. and hot dogs near a racetrack in Arcadia” in 1937.

* Richard and Maurice McDonald opened their first hamburger stand, which was serviced by carhops, in San Bernardino in 1940.

* In 1948, the brothers eliminated the carhops there and put up a sign announcing “America’s first drive-in hamburger bar.” Impatient customers, not realizing they had to serve themselves, would at first “park their cars in the lot, honk, and wait for a carhop that never came.”

* In 1953, the first Golden Arches architecture appeared. Richard McDonald later said that one architect “asked me if I had a nightmare prior to hatching the idea.”

* When mascot Ronald McDonald made his first public appearance in 1963, he was portrayed by TV weather personality Willard Scott. Does Bryant Gumbel know this?

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Westside woes: The night before the Simpson jury tour, Suzanne Rothlisberger of Long Beach came upon a Brentwood status report from a fellow America OnLine subscriber. “Mezzaluna is packed,” the message said, “and my yoga studio warned me to come extra early (Sunday) for parking.”

miscelLAny The 15th annual Razzie awards, honoring the worst in show business, has found a new home--the El Rey Theater on Wilshire Boulevard. Founder John Wilson, a movie publicist, said there’ll be a nostalgic twist to his parody of the Oscars, which will be held March 26. In 1980, the El Rey showed “Blue Lagoon,” for which Brooke Shields won a Worst Actress Razzie. Ms. Shields is not expected to attend this year’s Razzies.