Off-Kilter

Alarming Trends Department: A boxed set of Liberace videos--featuring a pop-up cardboard Liberace dancing across piano keys--will be released by Rhino Records on Oct. 20.

Weird Polls Department: In a new workplace survey by Maxim magazine, 22% of employees said their bosses could be replaced by a hamster and nobody would notice.

Deja Vu Bureau: You’ve probably heard of past-life regression, in which a person is supposedly hypnotized and taken back into previous lives. Well, we recently underwent past-column regression, in which a hypnotist transported us into previous columns. But it didn’t quite work, so we opened some reader mail instead:

* Several of you were irked by our report on a debate over whether Princess Diana’s soul is in heaven, hell or purgatory. “That wasn’t very funny,” said one. It wasn’t meant to be. Although we do aim for humor when possible, Off-Kilter’s main goal is to present quirky or unusual news and topics of conversation.

Other readers criticized the professor at Dallas Theological Seminary who said a Bible passage about heaven’s streets being paved with gold shouldn’t be taken literally because the metal tarnishes. In fact, gold doesn’t tarnish, said Bonnie Schmidt, Walter Hopmans and Fred Catiller. And Ann Harrison suggested that the Bible is literal and that heaven’s roadside cleanup crew “will now consist of Dallas seminary professors.”

Off-Kilter deeply regrets publishing inappropriate remarks about the construction of heaven’s transportation system. Although our words were legally accurate, we misled people, even our editor. But it’s time to move on. Our nation has been distracted by this matter for too long. We intend to reclaim our column.

* Meanwhile, in response to our item on a new fifth-grade history book that spends 33 lines on Franklin D. Roosevelt and nearly two pages on Cal Ripken Jr., we heard from USC professor Rod McKenzie about another dumbed-down school book. More than 10 years ago, he ran across a fourth-grade text that mentioned just two of America’s first six presidents--Washington and Jefferson--and listed Madison simply as the husband of Dolly. But the book did feature substantial pieces on Molly Pitcher (a woman), Crispus Attucks (an African American man) and Jacob Grunebaum (a Jewish merchant at the time of the Revolution). “I’ve often wondered what would have happened if they had included other special-interest groups, such as Hispanic or Asian colonists,” McKenzie wrote. “Would they have still had room for Washington or Jefferson?”

As for the Ripken issue, publisher Houghton Mifflin says FDR got short shrift because the book focuses on pre-1900 history. The part about Ripken is a “literary excerpt” designed to “capture the imagination of students so they can make a connection between their life and history.” Sorry, Houghton, but baseball is not real history. It’s sports history.

Best Supermarket Tabloid Headline: “Teen Hacks Mom to Death With Hatchet Because She Killed the Toad He Licked to Get High!” (Weekly World News)

The teen’s behavior was inappropriate, but it’s now a private matter between him, his toad and their God. It’s time to move on.

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

Unpaid Informants: Wireless Flash News Service