The devil, he says:Two years ago, a...

The devil, he says:

Two years ago, a young man dressed as the devil was arrested on a shoulder of the Santa Monica Freeway after motorists reported he was shaking his pitchfork at them.

He was actually John Geary, a UCLA student filming an art project for his graduate thesis. He phoned the other day to say he’s looking for a gallery to exhibit his project.

Geary revealed that his devil appeared along several roadways.

“Sometimes I’d give hand signals to the drivers, like a baseball manager,” he said. “Cryptic stuff I just made up. I spanked myself. I did a chicken walk. I ate berries. Once I picked up trash on the side of the freeway with my pitchfork. . . . “

RAISING HECK: Geary’s work, a spoof on the sightings of Bigfoot, etc., was intended to make people “perceive they had seen the devil and then deal with it.”

And what was the reaction of drivers to the roadside Lucifer?

“I was flashed by some women in one car,” Geary said. “I was chased by another driver. A lot of people honked and yelled. And I was arrested.”

Santa Monica authorities let him off without a fine when he promised the devil wouldn’t show his horns in that city again.

Geary hadn’t planned on being arrested because he wanted his character to be an enigma. “I wanted it to become a part of folklore,” he said. “I was hoping someone would take a shaky film of it, maybe sell it to a TV show. . . . “

FOOD ALERT: OK, Thanksgiving and Christmas are in sight, and our two photos are a reminder to eat sensibly this holiday season. Judi Birnberg took a photo of the Shun Fat supermarket. (Who cares if the name actually translates as “prosperous”?) And Valerie Pearson of Arcadia found what could be the next step in the regulation of personal dining habits. The photo was taken in Sandwich, Mass.

IT’S NO CONSPIRACY, ROSS! The Reform Party presidential ticket on the California ballot has no chance of being elected. That’s because, as John Boal of Burbank points out, Perot’s running mate on the ballot is incorrectly listed as James Campbell. The ballot was printed while Campbell was still a provisional choice. Perot, of course, later settled on someone else. Boal adds: “We all knows that it’s, uh . . . what’s his name?”

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Regarding our list of unsuitable cinematic mothers and fathers, Bernard Webber points out that in the 1959 movie, “North by Northwest” 55-year-old Jessie Royce Landis played the mother of 55-year-old Cary Grant. And John Snetsinger adds that in the 1963 movie, “Bye Bye Birdie,” 38-year-old Maureen Stapleton played the mother of 38-year-old Dick Van Dyke. Mama mia!