Just whine, baby:Did you hear what happened...

Just whine, baby:

Did you hear what happened to our former L.A. Raiders? Seventeen high school football players were suspended for stealing engraved nameplates from the Raiders’ new locker room after a prep game at the Oakland Coliseum. A spokeswoman for the stadium said, “We’re very disappointed” that the kids “were so inconsiderate of other people’s property.”

Hey, excuse us, but the Raiders are the team whose symbol is a buccaneer (with a patch over one eye) backed by two swords. And whose owner’s motto is, “Just win, baby.” No doubt the kids’ bit of plundering was just their way of paying tribute to their piratical heroes.

NOTHING HIGHFALUTIN HERE: More and more, it seems to us, companies are making outrageous claims about their products. Such and such is “the greatest.” Or it’s “No. 1.” Or “world famous.” How refreshing, then, to find an L.A. toy company with a more modest approach (see photo).

NO POSTER BOY FOR IMPORTS: Car and Driver magazine includes among its “losers” of 1995, “British actor Hugh Grant, 34, for conferring upon a white 1995 BMW 325i last June the same, ah, luster that Tonya Harding and A.C. Cowlings conferred upon Ford trucks a year earlier.”

The publication also poked fun at the Oxnard City Council “for approving a plan to allow advertising on the side of the city’s police cruisers. A local newspaper [suggested] that cruisers could now carry Taco Bell’s slogan, ‘Make a run for the border.’ ”

A Car and Driver reader added: “WonderBra could sponsor some of the smaller busts.”

GETTING EVEN: Students grade their own schools in “The Insider’s Guide to the Colleges, 1996,” edited by the Yale Daily News. Some examples:

* A joke among students at ever-growing UC Irvine is that the initials UCI stand for “Under Construction Indefinitely.”

* One UCLA student said that his school “has more parking places than Los Angeles Airport, and there is still a problem.”

* A Caltech undergrad, asked about a typical weekend evening on that campus, replied, “You must be kidding me! We study!”

* Occidental is so lacking in “national name recognition [that] one sophomore told of being asked in jest, ‘Is that a dental school?’ ”

* The student parking lots at USC, said one student, resemble “a German car dealership.”

IT’S NO $4.2-MILLION BOOK CONTRACT, BUT . . . : Allan Park, the limousine driver who picked up O.J. Simpson the night of the Nicole Simpson-Ronald Goldman murders, has been honored by a Maplewood, N.J., group: the International Forum of Alans. The group, made up of individuals with that surname (or a variant spelling), praised Park’s performance on the witness stand. We’re waiting to see if an objection is raised by another honoree of the group, Alan Dershowitz, Simpson defense attorney No. 8. Or was he No. 9?

WHAT COULD THE KID TEACH?Marina Martinez found an ad placed by someone seeking an extremely young instructor (see excerpt). For a course in “beginning potty training?” she asks.

miscelLAny:

The fastest speed recorded while standing on a skateboard is 55.43 mph, achieved by Roger Hickey in San Dimas in 1990, according to the 1995 Guinness Book of World Records. We suspect he would have gone faster if it weren’t for the 55-mph speed limit.