The perils of being the American President

The coincidental release of three movies in recent months has turned some movie marquees into political billboards poking fun at the current occupant of the White House. We already told you about the listing at a Westside complex that sounded like a tabloid story about Bill Clinton’s rumored love life:

WILD BILL

AMERICAN PRESIDENT

Now comes another marquee in Torrance, where a multiplex abbreviated two current movies on one line of a marquee. The result sounded like a reprise of the controversy over that one time Clinton smoked marijuana. It said:

AMER PRES EXHALE

ORDER IN THE COURTHOUSE? A colleague who has been assigned jury duty in Compton was taken aback by the notice, which seemed to indicate that the jury’s still out on the question of weapons inside the building (see accompanying).

THOSE SENSITIVE BUREAUCRATS: After reading our item about the city of Los Angeles accusing a deceased Lakewood woman of a parking violation, a Pacoima resident wrote with a somewhat similar tale.

Though the resident’s husband died two years ago, he recently received a letter from the IRS, informing him, “You may have to file a federal tax return this year.” It asked the dead man to fill out a form, stating whether he had sold his home in the last year, become self-employed, sold stocks or bonds, etc., etc.

Oddly enough, the IRS seems to have an inkling that the man is dead. It listed his middle name as DECD.

THEY’VE BEEN KNOWN TO BITE: Gayle Windman of Venice snapped a shot near a construction site in the marina, which is doing an admirable job to protect its wildlife (see photo).

SOME GUYS’LL DO ANYTHING TO MISS THE SUPER BOWL COMMERCIALS: The finalists in today’s “Mark & Brian What Would You Do for Super Bowl XXX Tickets Contest” held by KLOS-FM radio at the Olympic Velodrome in Dominguez Hills.:

* Jason Baker of Rancho Santa Margarita, who will “coat his body with fish food and jump into a tank of killer goldfish.”

* Mike Garcia of Bakersfield, who “will take his false eye out, swallow it, regurgitate it, put it back in his mouth to clean it,” then put it back in his eye socket.

* Brandon Kramer of Ontario, who will attempt to “lick a pig clean.”

* Bruce Smith of L.A., who “while hanging upside down by a rope in a straitjacket over a pool of jello, will attempt to escape before hitting the jello.”

* Mark Young of Montrose, who, “while wearing a pair of undersized Speedos and a football helmet, will pour pancake syrup over his body.” Then, “while in the Heisman Trophy pose, he will have buckets of black charcoal, raw fish, baked beans, cheese and feathers poured into the hopper of a tree grinder to be spewed over his syrup-coated body.”

All for the opportunity of being present at another Super Bowl rout.

A CAR WITH A SWEET THIEF: We spotted a license plate frame that said, “Just hand over the chocolate and nobody’ll get hurt.”

miscelLAny For a screening of “Cemetery Man,” the Pogachefsky Co., a public relations firm, sent out invitations that included pieces of gravel. Cemetery and gravel, get it? We can’t decide whether that’s even funnier than licking a pig clean.