Dentists Wouldn’t Endorse This Floss

Gene Walsh of Burbank took an Australian visitor to Dodger Stadium to see her first major league baseball game. “After enjoying her first Dodger Dog, and wanting something sweet,” he said, “she spied a vendor a couple of aisles away, and asked, ‘Would you please get me some fairy floss?’ ”

Dumbfounded, Walsh asked what fairy floss was.

“That’s fairy floss,” she said, pointing to the vendor’s rack of cotton candy.

This being a culturally conscious city, Walsh mentioned the Australian name to the vendor. The latter sighed, turned away and resumed shouting, “GET YERCOTTONCANDY.”

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THE NAME SOUNDS FAMILIAR BUT. . . . Eyeing a restaurant menu, Darryl Bolstad of Glendora wondered whether the Sherry Tempo drink was anything like the Shirley Temple concoction for kids (see accompanying).

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COMPANY LAYS L’EGG: Many years ago, football star Joe Namath starred in a pantyhose commercial. The product didn’t catch on with men but L’eggs still seems to be trying, as indicated by a letter to Joseph F. Farrar of South Pasadena (see accompanying). Although Farrar wants to look his best, he’s passing on the offer.

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THE BMOC COUNT: The 1998 Kaplan/Newsweek College Catalog has a section for prominent alumni of each school, but the guide didn’t seem to give it the old college try in researching some of the institutions. Here are the complete lists for some local schools:

Cal State Long Beach: No alumni mentioned.

Cal State Los Angeles: Author Joseph Wambaugh, astronaut Samuel Durrance, businessman Philip Quigley, police officer Mark Kroeker, tennis player Billie Jean King, teacher Jaime Escalante and actor Billy Barty.

Cal State Northridge: Singer Paula Abdul.

Occidental: None mentioned.

USC: O.J. Simpson (listed first and described only as “former NFL player”), basketball player Harold Miner, basketball coach Paul Westphal, movie director George Lucas, singer Marilyn Horne, architect Frank Gehry, astronaut Neil Armstrong.

UCLA: Basketball players Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Bill Walton.

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THE BMOC COUNT (VOLUME II): I’m not sure why Masters golf champion Mark O’Meara was omitted from the Cal State Long Beach roster, along with Rep. Dana (Surf’s Up!) Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) and a movie-maker named Spielberg.

Occidental could have been represented by football star/politician Jack Kemp, poet Robinson Jeffers, author Ernesto Galarza (“Barrio Boy”), film-maker Terry Gilliam (“Brazil”) and, of course, Channel 5 entertainment reporter Sam Rubin, who I believe has interviewed Sherry Tempo.

And UCLA? It gets just two famous alumni compared to Cal State L.A.’s seven? Hmmm. The Kaplan/Newsweek catalog could have mentioned, in addition to Walton and Abdul-Jabbar, athlete Jackie Robinson, actress Carol Burnett and Nobel Peace Prize winner Ralph Bunche.

But perhaps the guide’s authors are just big basketball fans.

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POSTAL HUMOR: Merv Kopp of Thousand Oaks received an application for a post office box, which said: “Completion of this form is voluntary; however, if this information is not provided, the applicant will be unable to use a box or receive caller service.”

What kind of a fairy-floss logic is that?

miscelLAny:

Talk of the Southland obtaining a pro football franchise raises the question of what the team would be called. I doubt that the organizers would adopt the name used by the L.A. team in the movie, “BASEketball.” It’s the L.A. Riots. Can we also rule out any team called the Raiders?

Steve Harvey can be reached by phone at (213) 237-7083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com and by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053.