Pencil-Necked Voters and Blassie

After the election of former wrestler Jesse “the Body” Ventura as governor of Minnesota (Land of a Thousand Lakes), I phoned Classy Freddie Blassie to discuss his political career.

Blassie, the star villain at the Olympic Auditorium for more than a quarter-century, recalled when he won a write-in campaign.

“Back in the ‘50s, I think it was, the kids at some high school in L.A. voted me [student body] president,” said Blassie, 80, in his familiar gravelly voice.

He never took office, and now he can’t recall the name of the school, dismissing his supporters as “a bunch of ding-alings.” Same old Freddie.

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IT’S ALL GEEK TO HIM: One sidelight of Ventura’s victory was a Thursday op-ed piece in the New York Times that mistakenly declared it was another grappler, Gorgeous George, who “liked to call his detractors ‘pencil-necked geeks.’ ”

Blassie, who was the one who made the phrase famous (even recording a song, “Pencil-Necked Geek”), roared, “He [George] didn’t even know what that meant.”

Blassie said the idea for the insult came to him at a carnival. “I saw this sideshow where a guy was biting the heads off chickens and snakes,” he said. “What a geek, I thought. And he had a neck like a pencil. A pencil-necked geek.”

The rest, as the saying goes, was hysteria, if not history.

And what does Blassie think of Ventura?

“I used to be his manager,” Blassie growled. “That’s the reason he’s so successful. If he can be governor, I should be president.

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JUST SAY NEIGH: Nell Daffin of Malibu came across a weekly newspaper’s ad that was placed by someone seeking a caretaker for a clean-living horse (see accompanying).

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BAD CONNECTION, MCI: Normally, a warning from a company telling you to pay up or you’ll hear from a collection agency and / or an attorney would be unsettling. Not so for Jake Sheikh of Hawthorne, inasmuch as he owed $0.00, zero, zilch, nada (see accompanying). Sounds like the billing system has a hang-up somewhere.

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COMMUTER COOKIN’: Martha Barron had to write after the mention here of the book by two L.A. drivers, “Manifold Destiny--

The One, the Only Guide to Cooking on Your Car Engine.”

She recalled how “50 years ago, when my husband was a paint salesman in the small towns of Louisiana, we couldn’t stand to be apart, even though we had a 6-week-old baby. So we fixed up the old 1940 Buick to go traveling as a family.

“When we hit a town we would find a motel where I would stay, wash clothes, and sterilize bottles [one at a time] while my husband called on customers. The next morning I would make formula and fill the bottles while my husband took the washtub to fill with ice. The tub was loaded in the trunk with the formula on ice and we were off to another town.

“At first, we stopped at restaurants and asked them to heat the bottle, but my husband came up with an idea where we wouldn’t lose a lot of time. He figured out that if we laid the bottle on the manifold and drove one mile, the formula was just the right temperature when tested on the wrist.”

MiscelLAny:

In case you missed it, one of the Republican losers Tuesday was congressional hopeful Randy Hoffman, who had drawn the ire of USC by sending out campaign mailers bearing a Tommy Trojan logo and the words, “USC Alumni for a Stronger America.” Hoffman lost to incumbent Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks). Was this a preview of the UCLA-USC football game? Sherman is a UCLA grad. Final score of their congressional race: 58%-38%. The Bruin team may also score 58 points.

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Steve “The Journalist” Harvey can be reached by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com or phone at (213) 237-7083, and by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053.