Was Diller Socked for Service Fees?

So media mogul Barry Diller acquired Ticketmaster in a stock deal worth about $400 million. I’m guessing that the base price was $360 million, plus an additional $40 million for postage and handling.

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THOSE SENSITIVE COMPUTERS . . . : Kuniko Sato’s husband, George, was the target of a credit card solicitation from Wells Fargo shortly after he died in 1973. His widow said she “crossed out the name George and wrote ‘deceased’ over it.”

Twenty-five years later, the late Mr. Sato received a cheery note from Capital One Bank, congratulating him on his “excellent financial performance” and offering him a VISA Platinum card (see excerpt).

Kuniko Sato’s reaction: “Amazing.”

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GIVE THEM ALL A HAND: In our last episode, you’ll recall, we had learned that actor Ted Cassidy played both the butler Lurch and the disembodied hand Thing in TV’s “The Addams Family.” But the question arose: Who portrayed Thing when the hand and Lurch were on camera at the same time?

“My uncle Buzzie Green, a burlesque emcee and comedian around town for years, was a stand-in double for Cassidy,” said Ben Green. “He was friends with Jackie Coogan (the Fester character in the show) and Jackie got him the job. When Lurch was in a scene and the hand was also present, my uncle was the hand.”

Mike Chambers, however, complicated the matter by e-mailing from Australia. After reading this column online, he declared that Richard Edlund, later an Oscar winner in the field of special effects, also played Thing.

Then there was a fax from Steve Alpert, asserting that in some episodes of the TV show, “Thing is a right hand and in others, it’s a left hand.”

I think this is a matter for the LAPD’s fingerprint lab.

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A LITTLE SENSITIVITY, PUH-LEESE: Rich Roberts forwarded a press release from the state Department of Fish and Game, which was headlined: “Hunter Education Class Targets Women.”

Sounds more like a fraternity project.

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L.A. DISASTER BOOK OF THE MONTH CLUB: This month’s selection is “I Am Legend,” by Richard Matheson, a 1954 classic about a Gardena resident beset by vampires. The bloodsucker problem also spills over into Inglewood.

The futuristic story (later made into the movie “Omega Man”) is set in the 1970s, by the way. So the scenario obviously did not come true--unless you consider the vampires metaphors for the gambling casinos that set up in Gardena.

While the book has a lot of gore, it takes a philosophical view of the problem, as in this observation: “The vampire may foster quickened heartbeats and levitated hair. But is he worse than the parent who gave to society a neurotic child who became a politician?”

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MILESTONES: On this day in 1986, a group of 20 crystal ball gazers gathered to picket the Long Beach City Council for alleged discrimination against their profession. What the fortune-tellers failed to foresee was that the council had decided the day before to cancel the session for lack of a quorum.

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ACRONYMS ARE US: Regarding my mention of FLAB--First Los Angeles Bank--Lillian Birrell of Santa Barbara wonders if that institution will be constricted by BOA.

miscelLAny:

Neil Dixon of Venice sent along a photo of a handwritten notice behind a Westchester business that warned passersby not to urinate in the area (it used different words). The notice was accompanied by a drawing of a pair of scissors. The spirit of Lorena Bobbitt lives!

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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.