Maybe He’ll Just Eavesdrop

High school reunion committees asking companies for information about long-lost classmates receive little help from one employer--the CIA.

Doug Epstein, organizer of a get-together of Beverly Hills’ 1953 class, say she wrote the agency about a student-turned-spy and “the letter came back marked, ‘Not here.’ ”

The funny thing is, Epstein pointed out, the classmate’s “cover was blown in two different books about the CIA.”

The alumnus has never admitted a CIA connection. But he once gave an improbable account of what he did for the government. “He told someone else in our class that he was employed as the No. 2 limo driver at the U.S. Embassy in Bulgaria,” Epstein said.

FREEWAY ACCESSORY? More than once I’ve been tailgated by an 18-wheeler and thought how nice it would be if I could make the big rig . . . well, disappear. Hal Braun of Hollywood came upon a product whose name suggests it could give a truck the Ollie North/Fawn Hill treatment (see ad).

DROWNING IN NUMBERS: Art Detman Jr. of Pacific Palisades sent along a receipt from a carwash that seems to be taking him to the cleaners (see accompanying).

HMO--OH NO (CONT.): After Adele Baquet recounted how a Pasadena audience cheered when Helen Hunt cursed HMOs in the movie “As Good as It Gets,” Toni Jacobson wrote to report a similar reaction at a Puente Hills theater. “It was unbelievable,” Jacobson said.

And Robert Grenader wrote, “If Ms. Baquet was referring to the showing last Friday the 9th, then I initiated the clapping. Anybody who has ever had to go through the HMO grind to get a referral to a specialist would agree.”

I checked again with Baquet, but she was at a different showing.

“This HMO hatred is definitely a trend,” she added. “I have a friend who saw it three times and says that clapping erupted each time during that scene (although, as I told my friend, I’m not sure about the sanity of someone who sees the same movie three times in two days).”

Could an HMO help win an Oscar for Helen Hunt?

NINO OR NO NINO: I kidded the folks at Edison when they canceled an event at the new Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific because of the rain. So it’s only fair to report Edison promises that an unidentified “whale of a gift” will be presented to the aquarium Tuesday afternoon, “rain or shine.”

HEAR! HEAR! Just over 118 years ago, according to Paul Glover’s “Amazing Los Angeles History Calendar,” the L.A. Board of Education issued a rule forbidding “teachers to pull students’ ears.”

TEX HEX: Southern Californians who found their way into Texas Monthly magazine’s “1998 Bum Steer Awards” include:

* Slick Times, a San Diego-area company, which printed up fake “2-cent bills” bearing the picture of a grinning Ross Perot of “The Paranoid States of America” (serial number: IMAFOOLRU12?). The currency cost $1.75 for a set of 25 bills.

* Ted Giannoulas, the “Famous Chicken” mascot of San Diego, who was sued by Texas-based Lyons Partnership, the owners of the Barney character. The chicken allegedly “performed repeated skits in which he assaulted a character dressed to resemble the purple dinosaur.” Lyons characterized violations of its Barney trademark as “so un-Barneylike.”

Anyone got a Barney Shredder?

miscelLAny

OK, I like street performers--some street performers. Still, I admire the panhandler whom Saul Isler spotted on Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade. Standing apart from the musicians, etc., this street person held up a sign that said “No Talent.” An admission of his own deficiencies? Or a review of the performers?