Off-Kilter

Frivolous Lawsuit of the Week: A British family living in a 250-year-old stone cottage is suing the former owner for not revealing that the place was haunted. Can they prove the existence of ghosts in court? Maybe. Exhibit A is a signed affidavit from their exorcist.

A Hair-Raising Experiment: Attention Clairol: A Los Angeles journalist has gone undercover to test the theory that blonds have more fun. In the April issue of Jane magazine, writer Sue Carpenter describes what happened when she tried four hair colors in four weeks--black, red, blond and pink dreadlocks. The results: black hair attracted “ill-kempt Europeans and the elderly”; bleached blond locks drew stares from “frat boys and men in the midst of midlife crises”; red hair struck out completely (although Carpenter concedes the cut was bad); and pink dreadlocks--”which were the color and texture of cotton candy”--caused mothers to “pull their children closer when I came into view.” The kids were fascinated with the pink hair, Carpenter says, but “none laughed or smiled. They immediately recognized me for what I was: a scary clown.”

Best Opening Paragraph: We are continually amazed at the back flips that some journalists do when asked to explain the declining readership of American newspapers. The simple truth is that most papers are deadly dull. Colorful, humorous, gutsy writing has been replaced with ponderous, lifeless blather barely suitable for use in college term papers.

So when someone breaks out of the mold, it’s worth noting. Today’s award goes to the Internet news service https://www.tabloid.net, for transforming some romance gossip from Time magazine’s 75th anniversary party into an amusing tale that began: “Dr. Jack Kevorkian, who makes ends meet by periodically euthanizing human beings in a VW microbus, stunned the most powerful men on earth this week when he publicly cuddled a scrumptious tart.”

A Watched Dog Never Boils: A North Carolina woman who baby-sits canines, cats and chinchillas was awarded the “Nobel Prize of professional pet-sitting,” according to Wireless Flash News Service. Susan Baker was named Pet Sitter of the Year in conjunction with International Pet Sitters Week, which was last week.

Speaking of which, we don’t mean to discriminate against other March holidays. This is also National Frozen Food Month, National Pothole Month, National On-Hold Month, National Cataract Awareness Month, National Kidney Month, Ethics Awareness Month (not available in Washington, D.C.), Return Borrowed Books Month and National Peanut Month.

Best Supermarket Tabloid Tall Tale: If you always thought Liberace was “a limp-wristed sissy,” think again, says the Weekly World News. “In real life, the fancy-pants pianist was a muscle-bound macho man--and one of the roughest, toughest CIA spies who ever lived.” Apparently, he pretended to be gay to throw off enemy agents. This might be a revelation to some readers, but we weren’t surprised. A few years ago, the Weekly World News revealed that Liberace was pumping iron and chasing women in the afterlife--and had challenged John Wayne to a fistfight in heaven “in a fit of jealousy over Natalie Wood.”

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* Roy Rivenburg can be reached by e-mail at roy.rivenburg@latimes.com.

Contributor: Premiere Radio, Chicago Sun-Times, https://www.tabloid net