Dead Celebrity Biz Not So Lively Now

Grave Line Tours has come to a dead stop.

“We’re hearse-less,” says a telephone recording at its Hollywood office.

The company, which once took tourists to the sites of movie-land tragedies, says it plans to try a “new angle” now that it has arisen from its “lengthy rest in peace.” It will publish materials for “do-it-yourself” tours.

“You’ll direct your own cortege,” the recording enthuses.

The company said its Web site is “almost ready” and offers a fax number for interested parties.

I tried to dig up more information but the recording says, “Ignore the beep, because we ignore the messages.”

MOVING ON TO DEAD SPORTS: As part of this column’s special college edition, we offer the T-shirt proudly sold on the Pepperdine campus last football season (see photo). It’s timely every year. The school hasn’t fielded a football team since 1963.

CASES OF PLATE ENVY? No sooner had I mentioned UCLA’s eight-game winning streak against USC in football than Jay Olins spotted a Bruin’s license plate that celebrates this feat:

BTSC8X.

Trojan-haters are easy to spot on the freeway. License plates on the DMV’s Web site also include BOOUSC, BEATUSC, H8SUSC, HATESSC and IHATE SC.

BRUIN FANS WILL LOVE THIS ONE: Robert Wynne noticed something odd about the Western edition of U.S. News & World Report’s college rankings issue. The cover lists “Colleges in Your Area” but omits USC. As well as Pepperdine.

WE’RE NO. 25! WE’RE NO. 25! In case you had a bet, Caltech was ranked the top university in the nation by U.S. News & World Report, UCLA was 25th and UC San Diego 32nd. USC was No. 42, while Pepperdine was lumped into the 50-100 class (no, football strength was not one of the criteria considered).

STILL ON THE SPORTS BEAT: Spotting the bearded bruiser in a Long Beach State ad, Bob Padgett of Manhattan Beach commented, “If that’s a player on the women’s volleyball team, the NCAA should investigate.” (See accompanying.)

OLD HAT LAWS: Some early-century customs at USC, as noted on a history marker at the school’s Alumni Park:

* Only juniors and seniors were “allowed to wear corduroy trousers.”

* Freshman males were expected “to wear special hats.”

* First-year women students were “forbidden to wear hats on campus and were required to wear green armbands above the elbows of their left arms.”

* Freshmen were forbidden to smoke on campus.

* Violators of the above customs risked being seized by upperclassmen and dunked “in the ‘duck pond,’ which was sometimes a murky pool, sometimes a large vat filled with water.”

RAH! BURP! Some substitute mascots that would be more appropriate for local schools, as suggested in “The Insider’s Guide to the Colleges” by the staff of the Yale Daily News.

* UC Irvine: “A med school application.”

* UC San Diego: “A bikini.”

* Pepperdine: “God.”

* Redlands: “A bottle of beer.”

And for USC? The guide said ambiguously, “The Trojan is a great mascot.”

miscelLAny:

U.S. News & World Report notes that one of the most famous Rose Bowl scores was “Caltech 38, MIT 9,” in 1984. Not that the two schools were playing each other; UCLA and Illinois were the real opponents. But Caltech students rigged the scoreboard during the game. Hey, that raises a question: What if Caltech also rigged the college rankings of U.S. News & World Report?