Off-Kilter

Proof the Cold War Is Over: A 7-foot-tall pickle is touring American military bases as part of a weird publicity stunt by the Heinz pickle company. The colossal cucumber, dubbed Pvt. Pickle, is scheduled to march through 100 domestic and overseas bases during the next three months, handing out pickle coupons and pickle pins in his role as the nation’s “first mascot for military families.” According to Heinz, the Godzilla-sized gherkin is a dill.

Odd Polls Department: We don’t know which is stranger, the questions that people get asked or the answers they give, but here are the latest surveys:

* 8% of secretaries said they’d rather eat dirt than have lunch with the boss on Secretaries Day (which is Wednesday), according to a survey by Present Perfect Gift Consultants.

* Actor John Goodman is considered Hollywood’s hottest hefty hunk by staffers of Good Housekeeping magazine. He edged out overfed “Today Show” weatherman Al Roker and actor Paul Sorvino.

* A majority of teenage boys wish Celine Dion had gone down with the Titanic, according to a survey by React magazine.

* KLAC announcer Phil Hulett’s latest “stupid question of the month” survey asked, “If you were guaranteed not to get caught, would you lead police on a high-speed chase?” Results: 85% of men said yes, versus 39% of women. Hulett’s previous online survey asked for Barbie toy ideas. Suggestions included Pin~ata Barbie, Crash-Test Barbie, Microwave Barbie and Pirate Barbie. We would have voted for Giant 7-Foot-Tall Pickled Barbie, but we missed the deadline.

Best Supermarket Tabloid Story: We must have stepped into some kind of parallel universe last week, one where everything is the opposite of our usual world. Clue No. 1 was a commercial we saw for ABC’s “20/20,” ostensibly a serious journalism program, that said:

“Can you be a lesbian and be in love with a man? This woman says she’s just that--and it’s making some lesbians really mad.”

It sounded more like an ad for Jerry Springer, which would be fine if it meant “20/20” would now feature brawls in which someone breaks a chair over the head of pseudo-newsman Hugh Downs.

Then things got stranger. We picked up a copy of the Globe supermarket tabloid and found this headline: “Psychic Who Talks to Dead Is a Phony!” A tabloid debunking a psychic? Something must be wrong with this picture. But sure enough, the Globe was hammering best-selling author James Van Praagh--whom we recently nicknamed James Van Fraad--as “little more than a con man.”

Allow us to mention a few points the Globe missed. Van Fraad claims he contacts dead spirits by tuning into the “high-frequency vibrations” of their “molecules.” However, as Newsweek recently noted, “molecules are precisely what is [buried] when people die.” Newsweek also detailed Van Fraad’s lousy accuracy rate and “ludicrous” descriptions of the afterlife. For example, he claims heaven is home not only to dead racehorses but also an afterworld racetrack, although the spirits who attend don’t place bets. And, on Larry King, Van Fraad declared that spirits don’t eat food or have sex, then moments later told a caller her departed mother was now able to dine again and was even cooking for other spirits.

latimes.com.

Contributors: Wireless Flash News Service, Skeptic magazine

* Roy Rivenburg can be reached by e-mail at roy.rivenburg@latimes.com