And No Drooling in the Lobby, Please

During a visit to the Norwalk Animal Hospital, Marie Anderson noticed a sign in the lobby that said: “Doctor will be with you in a minute. Sit. Stay.”

Pretty cheeky warning for pet owners, if you ask me. But at least there was no sign cautioning visitors to try to roll over and play dead when it comes time to pay the bill.

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NEWT, HEEL! Kenneth Starr changed his mind about being dean of the Pepperdine Law School--can you imagine how sedate the faculty parties would have been?--but Jean Utley of Burbank wonders if the university is employing the services of another nationally known conservative. She came upon a reference to “NEWT” in a Pepperdine newsletter (see accompanying).

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S & L’S CLEAN UP: Jim Steven of North Hollywood noticed that one phone directory has a dry-cleaning establishment included in the listing for savings & loans (see accompanying). Of course, laundering is not unknown among S & L officials.

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EISNER MEETS MR. BIG: Media scandals have been common of late and I regret to say that another one has been revealed in Disney boss Michael Eisner’s new autobiography. Eisner recalled that one of his first jobs was as a “weekend traffic researcher” for New York radio station WNBC in 1964.

“On my first Saturday,” Eisner continued, “my boss sat me down in front of a radio and gave me a form to fill out. ‘Listen to the traffic reports on the other radio stations and write them down,’ he said. “Every 15 minutes I was to hand my finding to Big Wilson, the morning deejay. In short, my job was to borrow traffic reports from rival stations.”

Eisner--perhaps sensing that NBC would some day be a rival of Disney-owned ABC--says that in order to “break up the monotony I began writing up imaginary names for streets where alleged accidents had occurred, often using the names of past girlfriends.”

I’m sure Eisner’s account is accurate. But I’d like to hear Big Wilson’s side too.

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DUH! AWARDS: The latest citation for bizarre safety instructions is issued by Superior Court Judge Judy Chirlin, who noticed this warning on her new blow-dryer: “Never use while sleeping.” Chirlin wrote to this column: “I’ve heard of people walking in their sleep and talking in their sleep, but I’ve never heard of people blow-drying in their sleep!” Of course, this is L.A.

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BIRTH OF A NEW CITY: A news release out of New York said that the winners of the 1998 “Singing in the Shower” contest at the House of Blues were Kate, Brittany and Joel-Steven Hammond, whose hometown was identified as “Placenta.”

Please! That’s Placentia.

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HARBOR LIGHTS: Unimpressed by my research into little known colleges, Marcia Gold expressed shock that I had made no mention of “that lovely little UC campus tucked away in the beautiful Harbor area of the South Bay--the popular University of California at Wilmington!” AKA Harbor College.

Another nickname for the school, she says, is “Slough U.” Slough, in this case, means “a hollow full of soft, deep mud.” And it rhymes with “slew,” which is appropriate in a cinematic sense. For Gold points out that Harbor was the proud site for the filming of the TV movie, “The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom.”

miscelLAny:

An article about the discovery of a whale fossil near Diamond Ranch High School prompted wise-guy columnist David Allen of the Ontario-based Daily Bulletin to write:

“It’s only a matter of time before a Pomona entrepreneur launches whale-watching tours.”

I see a “Baywatch” spinoff in the future too.

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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.