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Oh, rats: Well, Lakewood High student David...

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Oh, rats: Well, Lakewood High student David Coher and his performing rodent failed to qualify for the prestigious Stupid Pet Tricks segment of the David Letterman show. The duo lost out to three other acts, including an iguana that eats popcorn while standing on its hind legs.

However, Coher’s rat, Champagne, did successfully perform its stunt of crawling into Coher’s mouth to remove a bit of food. And the Letterman show has invited them back in July to audition again.

The duo pulled off another stunt en route to the New York tryout--sneaking Champagne past airport security. Coher wasn’t sure he was going to make it on the flight out. “I had put him in my inside pocket,” he said, “but he started crawling all over my shoulder while they were waving the metal detector over me.”

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A lone danger?Lawrence Mak of Burbank offers another version of the origin of Kemo Sabe, Tonto’s nickname for the Masked Man.

As Mak heard it, Tonto had fallen ill and returned to his village to recuperate. When the Lone Ranger visited, he noticed a corral full of handsome ponies. Wanting a closer look, he asked the tribal chief if could enter the corral.

“Yes,” the chief replied. “But be careful not to step in the Kemo Sabe.”

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Stamp out the pledge drive!That’s the promise of radio’s KLON-FM, the jazz station in Long Beach.

Now for the fine print.

The station will drop its scheduled on-the-air fund-raiser if listeners mail in $300,000 by March 24 .

Membership manager Tammy Nobles acknowledged that many fans get the blues when KLON broadcasts fund-raisers. At the same time, she said that the station still has “a long way to go” to reach $300,000 since making its anti-pledge pledge nine days ago.

And if the mail-in campaign falls short? “We start our drive (on the air) at 8 p.m. March 24,” she said firmly.

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Dos Angeles: We mentioned the other day that most of the 4,687 plaster angels left in public places around L.A. by performance artist Jill D’Agnencia had disappeared through the efforts of devilish passersby or suspicious security guards and janitors.

So it was reassuring to hear from Katharina Smith that “at Emerson Unitarian Church in Cangoa Park, we proudly display our two angels.”

They can be seen “in the windows of the two trailers we currently inhabit, our building having been terminally damaged by the earthquake.”

Let’s hope the pink seraphs protect L.A. against a repeat of Jan. 17, 1994.

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A fine mess: A colleague reports the sad news that someone has apparently stolen the plaque on the outdoor stairway in Silver Lake that played a prominent role in “The Music Box,” Laurel & Hardy’s Academy Award-winning movie of 1932. As punishment, the thief should be forced to duplicate Stan and Ollie’s assignment of pushing a piano up the concrete stairway’s 100-odd steps.

And take a few cream pies in the face in the process.

miscelLAny More and more, we notice billboards that should only be brought out at 11 p.m., after the kids have gone to bed. For instance, the latest blast of talk-radio station KFI-AM against KABC-AM, the Dodgers’ radio station, goes like this: “We have balls. They have strikes.”

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