Thought for the day:Scott Hawthorne of Canyon...

Thought for the day:

Scott Hawthorne of Canyon Country wonders if the many striptease joints near Los Angeles International Airport are responsible for the “X” rating in LAX.

THE BAG LADY OF CONTEMPORARY ART: That’s one way Lowell Darling describes himself.

The lighthearted performance artist roams the streets of Hollywood looking for discarded outtakes of movies.

“I don’t go through any trash cans,” he said proudly. “Only streets and gutters.”

The weathering of the rejected film is a continuation of the creative process, as Darling sees it.

“It’s lying in the street and it gets run over by cars and smeared with mud and hit by the sun and the rain,” he said. “And it may come out looking like an old renaissance painting or something contemporary.”

Darling selects striking frames of film, enlarges them up and displays them as art pieces.

Three of his recovered gems can be seen at the “My Hollywood” art show at Gallery 258 in Beverly Hills. One, titled “Rock Hudson Watching His Career Turn Into Abstract Expressionism,” shows the actor gazing into a muddy sky.

More Darling works are on the way, too.

“I went up to this area and I found a lifetime’s worth of stuff all covered with dirt and mud,” he confided. “I found Whoopi Goldberg, Brad Pitt and that guy in ‘The Cable Guy’ [Jim Carrey]. I’m not going to tell you where it is because it’s a rich block.”

MAYBE HE COULD BLOW AWAY THE SMOG, TOO: Darling is a man of many interests. A few decades ago, he visited Needles, where he acupunctured the Earth in an effort to end the drought. After the 1971 Sylmar quake, he laced up the San Andreas Fault with rawhide at several points, hoping to prevent any further shakers.

And he ran for governor in 1978, receiving more than 60,000 votes in the Democratic primary.

“I got the drunk and nearsighted vote,” he theorized. “My name was right below Jerry Brown’s on the ballot.”

MUST BE A HECK OF A RECITAL: Lee Myers sent along a blurb from her church newsletter, which seems to include an inadvertent review of the choir (see accompanying).

JUNK MAIL CALL: It’s bad enough that unwanted letters and brochures clog the mailbox. But do they have to hurl insults, too? So asks Daniel Fink of L.A., who received a strange salutation from Pacific Bell (see excerpt).

WEIRD DUDS FOR DAD: Mobil Oil representatives asked 18,000 customers in Southern California to name the strangest Father’s Day gifts they had given or received. Some of the nominees:

* A 14-foot-long tie.

* Socks with a money zipper-pouch.

* Leather pants.

* Hubcaps.

* Ant farm.

* Two plane tickets to Las Vegas (one for Dad, one for his mother-in-law).

* Rogaine, the hair restorer.

* Nose-hair clippers (a ruder gift than Rogaine?).

* Musical underwear.

* A hamster (which arrived via FedEx).

* A belly dancer (Dad didn’t get to keep that present).

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A UCLA women’s crew bus was spotted with a painted slogan that said: “You Row, Girl.”