Sons of Invention

When Jungmee Kim told her 7-year-old son, James, that he was going on “The Tonight Show,” she asked him if he knew who Jay Leno was.

“Oh, mom,” he said. “He’s the guy with all the gray hair. He kinda looks like President Clinton but he’s funnier.”

James, a second-grader at Tustin Memorial Academy, and Oliver Sulek, 11, a fifth-grader at Deerfield Elementary School in Irvine, will demonstrate their respective inventions during an appearance on “The Tonight Show” this evening on NBC.

The two whiz kids were among more than 300 young inventors from local elementary and junior high schools who gathered at Irvine Valley College last month for the 11th annual Astounding Inventions of the Future fair.

James invented the Toilet Seat Lifter, while Oliver dreamed up the Scratch-a-Matic, a mechanical cat scratcher.

“I just got really, really tired of my sister always complaining about me not putting the seat down,” James sighed. “So, this idea popped right into my head one day. It has a pedal like those pedals at the bottom of trash cans. You just step on it and the seat pops up, and then goes back down.”

James’ mother said he is already exhibiting signs of being a true entrepreneur.

“We’ve been talking about getting a patent on his invention and marketing it,” she said.

“And James immediately said that he should get 95% of any profits because it was his idea.”

Oliver said that everyone is telling him that he’s “brilliant” for inventing the Scratch-a-Matic. “Well, I am pretty proud of myself,” he said. “I like my cat, Fuzzball, but I was getting tired of petting and scratching her all the time. And after I thought of my idea, I looked around pet stores but didn’t see anything like it. So, I just invented it.”

The Kim and Sulek families both have been burning up the phone lines this week, making calls to Chicago, Florida, Michigan, New York, Texas, Hawaii and Canada to urge relatives and friends to tune in to the show.

While the adults are excited about their sons’ television debuts alongside famous guests like singer Lyle Lovett, both boys appear to be more excited about traveling in limousines to “The Tonight Show.”

“The producers told us that they are sending a limousine to take us to the taping,” Stan Sulek said. “And when I told Oliver, the first thing he wanted to know was whether the limo had Nintendo. He keeps talking about the limo.”

Ditto for James, who told his mother that he isn’t at all nervous about meeting Leno.

“He told me, ‘Mom, he’s always nice to kids,’ ” she said.