The Jury Is Out on Jerry Springer

A television show being held in contempt by a courthouse?

It has happened in Long Beach, where Charlie Nicholas noticed that the TV set in the waiting room for potential jurors sports a handwritten sign about a certain rowdy talk show.

“Effective 6-25-98,” it says, “Jerry Springer can no longer be viewed in jury service.”

Without going into details, Helen Alaniz, the district jury coordinator, said that she issued the edict because some spectators “didn’t look upon the content (of the rowdy program) favorably.”

Wonder if Springer will, uh, fight the ban?

*

A WAVEY SIGHTING NEAR THE BEACH: Ever have that feeling that things are unraveling? Well, you won’t be surprised then by the snapshot that Richard Korngute took in Santa Monica (see photo).

*

EVERYONE’S A CRITIC: “Armageddon” has been a disappointment at the box office, which isn’t, of course, the end of the world for the Burbank-based Walt Disney Co. Still you could imagine studio officials wincing when President Clinton declared in a recent speech that the “real heroes” this summer “are not up in space fighting asteroids” but fighting fires in Florida.

*

MIXED-UP GREENS: In an L.A. market, Peter and Elizabeth Rich of Bel-Air purchased some lettuce seeds that came from Italy--with translated directions that are Greek to me (see accompanying).

*

FOR THE BIRDS: Dave Kenney says that a mockingbird in his Palos Verdes Estates neighborhood “has the ring of a telephone down pat. I can’t count the number of times that stupid bird has sent me rushing inside, thinking someone was calling me on the . . . wait a minute--who’s the stupid one here?”

*

L.A. MILESTONES: Ten years ago Sunday, The Times reported that a man drove off with a California Highway Patrol car that had been parked on a shoulder of the Santa Monica Freeway while an officer was writing a citation.

The man, later spotted behind the wheel in Sun Valley, told arresting officers, “that he was God and could drive any car he so wished.”

Despite that declaration, officers said he was a transient--not a movie director.

*

HARD TO DIGEST: As I mentioned Friday, Jim Heimann’s new book, “May I Take Your Order?” looks at menus during the years 1920-1960.

So it doesn’t include the menu discussed in a hilarious scene in “The Studio,” John Gregory Dunne’s 1968 book about 20th Century Fox. The studio commissary’s menu in 1967 offered dishes named after 20th Century movies of that era.

“We’ve got a nice ‘Valley of the Dolls’ salad,” a waitress told John Bottomly, a Massachusetts prosecutor working as an advisor on the movie “The Boston Strangler.”

Bottomly read from the menu out loud: ‘ “A Guide to the Married Man’ Casserole.’ ‘Flim Flam’ Hamburger. ‘Two for the Road’ fruit salad.”

Then he remarked: “I don’t see a ‘Boston Strangler’ dish.”

*

REMEMBERING OLLIE: Speaking of celebrity-inspired plates, Adele Baquet noticed that a restaurant in Arcadia advertises a “Hardy Lunch Special.” She figures it’s a nice tribute to Laurel’s comedy partner.

miscelLAny:

A new Winston cigarettes billboard on the Long Beach Freeway says: “Finally a butt worth kissing.” Every bit as eloquent as something you’d hear on Jerry Springer.

*

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.