Underground movie:Don’t you just love how television...

Underground movie:

Don’t you just love how television stations arrange their schedules to capitalize on current events? No sooner did the giant sinkhole develop on Hollywood Boulevard than NBC showed the film “Journey to the Center of the Earth.”

SOUNDS LIKE A TROJAN PRANK: Alamo Rent-a-Car has a service on the Internet in which it tells tourists how to reach various colleges from Los Angeles International Airport. But it deserves a failing grade for its directions to Malibu’s Pepperdine University. Motorists are told to go north on Pacific Coast Highway to Sunset Boulevard, then “turn right. Go 9.0 miles. Your destination is on the right.”

What? That satellite of Pepperdine in Westwood?

THROW ANOTHER BACH ON THE BARBIE!Susanne Shapiro of L.A. writes that she placed an ad with GTE that was supposed to begin “Concerts to Go. Baroque and classical.”

But, she discovered to her horror, “GTE managed to replace the word baroque with . . .”

Well, check the accompanying excerpt.

No wonder Shapiro is steamed up.

THE NATIVES ARE PEACEFUL, TOO: Santa Catalina Island is 22 1/2 miles from Long Beach--not 26, as the 1950s song lyrics have it. (Maybe the writers were using Alamo Rent-a-Car directions.) Whatever, it ain’t too far from the mainland. Still, it evidently seems a world apart to some potential visitors.

Wayne Griffin, executive director of the island’s Chamber of Commerce, says he regularly hears these weird questions from callers:

* “Do I need a passport?”

* “What type of currency do you use?”

* “Is there water on the other side of the island?”

* “Is it true that you don’t have to pay taxes?”

And, oh yes, let’s not forget Griffin’s favorite: “How far from the beach is the water?”

BUSINESS ISN’T THAT BAD: Tara Prescott points out that the marquee for the Fox Theater near Pepperdine--excuse us, UCLA--proudly notes the theater’s geographic allocation. But the place name took on an eerie meaning some weeks ago when the Fox showed a certain horror movie.

Suddenly, the marquee said:

WESTWOOD VILLAGE.

VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED.

BURNS AND NOSTRADAMUS: Elliot Zwiebach recently caught an old “Burns and Allen” radio episode on KNX in which “Gracie volunteers George to be injected with an experimental serum to see if it would allow a person to live to the age of 100.”

Is any of that serum left?

By the way, that wasn’t the only time the series was prescient, either.

There was also the episode, Zwiebach recalls, where everyone laughed because George’s neighbor, Harry Morton, had a crackpot scheme to develop a new product.

Frozen yogurt.

Wonder if they’ve heard about it on Catalina?

miscelLAny Chester Collins read that Dodger pitchers Hideo Nomo and Ismael Valdes have become best friends, though Nomo speaks only Japanese and Valdes speaks only Spanish. So what would their common language be? “Pitchin’ English, I guess,” Collins said.