Off-Kilter

Drive-Thru Restaurants: If you’re like us, which we hope you’re not for the sake of the planet, you’re beginning to think that even microwave ovens take too long to cook stuff. Fortunately, a new recipe book called “Manifold Destiny” (Villard) now makes it possible to cook and drive at the same time.

According to co-writer Bill Scheller, all you have to do is triple-wrap your food in aluminum foil, tie it to your car’s exhaust manifold, take a little spin and voila: “Cruise Control Pork Tenderloin” or “Hyundai Halibut with Fennel.”

The book says you can grill fish with just 55 miles of driving or cook a medium-rare steak in 100 miles. Also, the best car for cooking is a 1988 Toyota Camry because it has enough nooks and crannies to heat a three-course meal for three people.

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Repent Now!: The end is near. A few days ago, we told you that a worldwide animal conspiracy to overthrow humans had apparently arrived on U.S. shores. The evidence was a berserk chimpanzee that attacked several people and a police car in West Covina. We were hoping it was just an isolated incident, but we were wrong. Very wrong.

Off-Kilter has just learned that on Sept. 6, the 30th anniversary of the release of “Planet of the Apes,” zoos in Los Angeles, Miami and 17 other U.S. cities will show this dangerous movie to their captive gorillas, chimps and orangutans. No doubt it will light the fuse of a furious simian uprising.

If you still don’t believe us, consider the frighteningly prophetic lyrics of a Monkees song that was released about the same time as the first “Planet of the Apes” film: “Hey, hey we’re the monkeys. You never know where we’ll be found. So you better get ready, we may come to your town.”

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Lunatic Fringe Department: A Bigfoot researcher in Portland, Ore., says Sasquatch’s favorite foods are Spam, raw onions, apples and Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes.

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Snooty Fashion Quote of the Week: From designer Barbara Bui, who is selling T-shirts and pants in hermetically sealed, vacuum-packed plastic pouches: “The clinical presentation symbolizes the purity of the product while preserving a sense of elegance and Zen feeling to our urban environment.”

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Evelyn Wood Helper: As a courtesy to those of you who know speed-reading, here is a special condensed version of today’s Off-Kilter:

The . . . aluminum foil . . . voila . . . Spam . . . apes . . . topless . . . cake.

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Best Supermarket Tabloid Headline: “Topless Dancer Suffocates in Cake She Was Supposed to Jump Out Of!” (Weekly World News)

That’s one of the drawbacks to those new hermetically sealed, vacuum-packed, bachelor-party cakes. On the other hand, when all goes well, the clinical presentation symbolizes the purity of the dancer while preserving a Zen feeling for the bachelor-party environment.

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* Roy Rivenburg can be reached by e-mail at roy.rivenburg@latimes.com. Or write him (preferably before the animal uprising) at the Los Angeles Times, Life & Style, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053.

Unpaid Informants: Wireless Flash News Service, AMC movie channel, New York magazine