Maybe--if it’s the flavored variety:”Would You Pay...

Maybe--if it’s the flavored variety:

“Would You Pay $250 for This Cup of Coffee?” asks a poster on the Red Line cars. That’s the amount you can be fined by the MTA for bringing food or beverages aboard. When we first saw it, though, we figured the $250 cup of coffee was a fund-raising appeal from President Clinton.

ALL DAVID, ALL THE TIME: No longer do you need to travel to a Forest Lawn Mortuary--let alone Florence, Italy--to see Michelangelo’s “David.” There are about two dozen copies in the frontyard of a residence in Hancock Park off 3rd Street. We couldn’t make contact with the owner to see if the exhibition was there for an indefinite run.

DISASTER-OF-THE-MONTH-CLUB SELECTIONS: “In a recent column, you listed several Los Angeles disaster books,” writes Thomas Travis of Palmdale. “Thank you. I hadn’t heard of some of them and will seek them out to add to my ‘End-of-L.A.’ collection. However, you missed some. . . .”

Travis mentions “Goodbye, California” (nuclear terrorists) and “The Great Los Angeles Fire” (an extortionist playing with matches), both of which are somewhat standard fare.

But he also reminded us of a truly ingenious novel, though one with a disaster scenario that strangely has never been made into a movie. It’s “The Great Los Angeles Blizzard,” by Thom Racina, about a snowstorm that buries L.A. in the year 1977. (It didn’t happen, incidentally.)

ALMOST INSPIRING ENOUGH TO MAKE US BUY SOME SWEATPANTS: Even if the runners in the L.A. Marathon don’t set any world records March 2, the event has inspired an entertaining billboard campaign. Our favorite lines:

* Just put one foot in front of the other 46,112 times.

* Now casting for the lead in a 2-hour, 11-minute chase scene.

* The poor man’s liposuction.

* Almost as exciting as the running scenes in “Baywatch.”

* Farther than running to Catalina but slightly easier.

* Hard to tell what’s worse. Finishing or not.

HOW ABOUT A PLANE THAT AMELIA EARHART WOULD BE PROUD TO FLY? A Hermosa Beach Porsche dealer describes one of its models as “a car that James Dean would be proud to drive.”

HE WON’T EVEN BUY THIS PAPER TO READ ABOUT HIMSELF: Chris Darryn’s Reseda-based Talk Show Guest Registry has signed up a new candidate for Oprah, Geraldo, etc.

He’s Roy Haynes, self-styled World’s Cheapest Man, recent winner in a tabloid newspaper’s “Turn In a Tightwad” contest.

Haynes is so cheap, Darryn says, that he “separates two-ply toilet paper rolls so he’ll end up with two one-ply rolls, squeezes restaurant packets of catsup into his own bottle, steals coins from fountains, and walks to a nearby bank every morning in order to get a free cup of morning coffee.”

Haynes’ wife, Lisa, says she has grown used to his “low-maintenance lifestyle” but still is occasionally surprised, as on the occasion her loving spouse treated her to a “birthday cruise”--the dinner part. “We left after the meal and before the ship sailed,” she recalled. “The meal was free.”

miscelLAny:

Memo to the World’s Cheapest Man--Both the “David” statues and the Marathon may be viewed for free from the sidewalk.