EARLY TURKEY: The tobacco companies love gimmicks--return...

EARLY TURKEY: The tobacco companies love gimmicks--return pack coupons for free crystal, or even pool tables. Nonsmokers, alarmed at the high number of smoke-related cancer cases, are using gimmicks to fight back. . . . Today is the Great American Smokeout by the American Cancer Society. Students at eight schools here will scream in unison at precisely 11 a.m., to ask smokers to give up the habit for one day. . . . Another gimmick: Daly’s Fit & Fresh restaurants will give free turkey sandwiches--get it, cold turkey?--to those who turn in their cigarettes.

COMEBACK KID? John Seymour was once a Republican of power--Anaheim mayor, state senator, U.S. senator. But since losing his U.S. Senate seat in 1992 to Dianne Feinstein, he has remained a low-key business executive. He jokes: “Power is very fleeting. A checkout clerk in Ralphs recently asked me if I used to be a weather man on TV.” . . . Seymour plans self-deprecating humor when he gives the keynote address at the annual Buena Park Mayor’s Prayer Breakfast today at the Buena Park Hotel.

OH JOHNNIE: Remember when O.J. Simpson lawyer Johnnie Cochran told Los Angeles Times Magazine that his ex-wife, Barbara Cochran Berry, would confirm that he had never abused her? Berry says that printed statement prompted her to write a book about their stormy marriage--”Life After Johnnie Cochran”--in which she claims abuse aplenty. Berry tells details at a Balboa Bay Club luncheon in Newport Beach today. . . . One snippet: She calls him “the ex-husband from hell.”

ORANGE FUN? You’ve heard of art imitating life--how about art thumbing its nose at life? . . . Choreographer Susan Rose will unveil her latest work, titled “Orange County,” on Dec. 1 at Occidental College in Los Angeles. Rose says about it: “Dancers will juggle, trade, balance, sequester, greedily stockpile and eventually deplete a supply of oranges in a commentary on the incongruities of suburban life.”

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Cancer’s Spread

Orange County has the state’s third highest number of new lung and bronchus cancer cases in the latest five-year study:

COUNTY: CASES

1. Los Angeles: 21,725

2. San Diego: 7,381

3. Orange: 6,195

4. Riverside: 4,101

5. Alameda: 3,953

6. San Bernardino: 3,699

Source: Orange County Health Care Agency