Skeleton crew:Wouldn’t you know it? Halloween is...

Skeleton crew:

Wouldn’t you know it? Halloween is just a couple weeks away and Nancy Smith has run out of human skeletons.

“They sell so fast,” marveled Smith, the owner of Necromance, a Melrose Avenue store that specializes in ghoulish items.

Where does she find human skeletons?

“Often,” she said, “it’s a doctor who has had it in his garage for years and his wife is sick of looking at it.”

Smith may be out of skeletons but she has plenty of human skulls, priced at $280 to $350. Why the difference in noggin rates?

“It depends on the number of teeth they have,” she explained. “These don’t have very many. I sold a skull with a full set a while back for $850.”

LIST OF THE DAY: Some other gift possibilities available at Necromance:

* Ostrich skull, $75.

* Cat skeleton mounted on wooden base, $720.

* Coyote skull, $24.

* Alligator skull, $70.

* Bone saw, $55.

* Bat preserved in bottle, $20.

* Rat skull, $20.

* Artery forceps, $5.

* Mink skull, $10.

* Muskrat skull, $6.

Alas, Smith reports she has sold out her supply of early century medical devices known as rib spreaders.

TELESCOPE TO THE STARS: Madonna’s going through a lot of changes. Not only does she have a new child, she has sold her house below Mulholland Drive. For a while, a telescope off Mulholland gave the singer’s red-and-yellow mansion second billing on its “Points of Interests” plate (see 1994 photo). When we checked out the vantage point the other day, her name had been removed from the metallic marquee.

THE MONSTEREY PARK MASH: Tilda De Wolfe received a notice from the county assessor’s office that, in addition to misspelling her name, seemed to rename her city in honor of Halloween (see accompanying).

PRESS RELEASES WE NEVER FINISH READING: “What do Michael J. Fox, the Pope, President Clinton and the King of Jordan all have in common?”

THE WONDERS OF SCIENCE: Shocking wasn’t it? We mean the study by UCLA’s Jules Stein Institute that found that major league baseball players have better vision than average folks. Researchers discovered that a baseball player who has to make a decision to swing at (and hit) a pitched ball coming at 100 mph must have “exceptional eyesight.”

The study took three years.

We hope that, next, researchers will look into another sport and investigate our theory that pro basketball players tend to be taller than members of the public.

SLASHING SENTIMENTS: Nina Murphy of Redondo Beach saw an ad for an album of “The Greatest Romantic Standards of All Time” by pianist Liz Story, including “Memories of You,” “In the Still of the Night” and “Mack the Knife.”

“Mack the Knife” a love song?

Perhaps to the folks at Necromance.

miscelLAny

A lawsuit brought by a man who said he was beaten by a security guard when he visited a punk band backstage at the Hollywood Palladium was recently settled. The name of the band: Violent Femmes.