Eerie Scene With Tyson at Museum

You may recall that after boxer Mike Tyson gnawed on the ear of rival Evander Holyfield, the Hollywood Wax Museum moved its Tyson figure into a cell with Hannibal Lecter, the cannibalistic character in the movie “Silence of the Lambs.”

Well the other day, a limo pulled up to the museum and out stepped Tyson, his wife, two children and a bodyguard. They went inside, viewed the scene for a few moments, and then left. The next day, Tyson returned by himself to study the display some more.

“He just bought his admission and went in like anyone else,” said publicist Dale Olson. “He didn’t say anything and no one talked to him. I don’t think I’d want to be the one who said, ‘Hey, Mike, what do you think of this?’ ”

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OLD MONEY: Robert Bahn and Maurice Samson each sent in photos of a sign at a local hospital that said “New Doctors Lot.”

They thought the sign curious. I think it’s there for an obvious reason. The older doctors obviously don’t want their Jaguars and Mercedes-Benzes to be seen in the same lot alongside the newer doctors’ modest Toyotas and Hondas.

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FLY THE X-RATED SKIES (CONT.): I mentioned the other day that Joe Eisaman was seeing his wife off on a flight out of LAX when he noticed a copy of Penthouse magazine in the pilot’s cabin. Eisaman, armed with a camera, took a photo for Only in L.A. (I figure the guys at the controls blamed the automatic pilot for bringing in the publication.)

Now, Paul Lighthill of Palm Springs jokes that “readers may well have drawn an incorrect conclusion.”

He explains: “If those two pilots are anything like my pilot friends, then they have wives who are much more jealous of airplanes than they are of unknown naked bimbos in a magazine. After all, we have our hands on the planes three, sometimes four, days of the week, which is considerably more than we have them on our wives.”

Thus, Lighthill adds, “To reduce marital strife, many of us have taken to hiding our airplane magazines inside copies of Playboy, Penthouse, etc., both to throw the little woman off the trail, so to speak, and so that we will appear (to her, at least) to be ‘normal men.’ ”

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PAYBACK TIME: I forgot to note it was Michael Cavanaugh who walked into an L.A. eatery and found the trivia quiz with the question: “True or false: Samuel Adams, the patriot who led the Boston Teat (sic) Party, was a brewer.”

I’m usually careful to credit readers whose items are, after all, the mother’s milk of this column.

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WAY BEYOND HANDICAPPED PARKING: Just to get you in the mood for Halloween, Nancy Heflin-Garofalo of North Hollywood snapped a shot of some signs in a vehicle that Dracula would appreciate. (see photo)

Which reminds us that the post office also seems to be in a ghoulish mood with its issuance of a “Classic Movie Monsters” series. The new stamps honor Bela Lugosi as “Dracula,” Boris Karloff as both “Frankenstein” and “The Mummy,” Lon Chaney as “The Phantom of the Opera” and Lon Chaney Jr. as “The Wolf Man.”

Film--and sports--buffs may recall the all-time matchup in “Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man” (1943), in which Lugosi substituted in the Karloff role as the Monster. Karloff had suffered a training camp injury, as I recall. Lugosi tangled with Chaney (Wolf Man) in a slugfest that was the least gentlemanly I ever saw, until Tyson vs. Holyfield.

miscelLAny:

Amid the hubbub over the IRS, KNX newsman Bob McCormick points out that the form you fill out to claim that unjust IRS rulings are ruining your business or life (or both) is . . . the 911. An IRS source told McCormick that the form number was chosen as a sort of inside joke.