If Your Valentine Is Your Heart’s Perspiration . . .

The Southland’s obsession with fitness inspires some strange products. Marta Carroll of Burbank noticed an ad apparently aimed at lovers who exercise together (see accompanying).

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ENOUGH TO MAKE A LAWYER SWEAT: “Life is challenging enough,” wrote Norman Freed. “Then you try to park your car.” He sent a picture taken at the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica that is worth a thousand words--and contains nearly that many.

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HEY, DAD, CAN I BORROW THE SKATEBOARD TONIGHT? After spotting a notice in a local weekly, Gail Fisher of Whittier could only ask, “Are dads really getting that much younger?” (see accompanying).

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BEFORE THEY BECAME MAKE-BELIEVE: It was mentioned here that Agent Scully, the alien hunter on TV’s “X Files,” was named in honor of Dodger broadcaster Vin Scully by the show’s creator.

Some other fictional personages, with their real-life roots:

--Dan Tanna, TV detective of the 1980s: after West Hollywood restaurateur Dan Tana.

--Fred Sanford, TV junkman of the 1970s: The real last name of star Redd Foxx was Sanford.

--Sgt. Bilko, TV con man of the 1950s: after L.A. Angels slugger Steve Bilko.

--Rowdy title character of movie “The Big Lebowksi” (1998): after Jeffrey Lebowski, assistant attorney general of Minnesota--and old classmate of the movie’s creators, the Coen brothers

And then there’s the case of horrific Freddy Krueger of “A Nightmare on Elm Street” (1984). In the book, “Reel Gags,” Bill Givens says the word is that writer-director Wes Craven named the creature “after a kid who bullied him in school.”

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TODAY’S PLATE: Jeff Bliss of Newbury Park spotted a car in a Pepperdine University lot with the license plate: YU IODDA.

I know someone’s going to write and complain that, “Anyone could have guessed that license plate. Why don’t you give us a TOUGH one?”

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IF THAT ISN’T A POKE IN THE EYE: Oh, OK. The license plate message honors the famous Three Stooges’ threat, usually aimed at Larry or Curly by temperamental Moe: “Why, you . . . I oughta!”

Even Freddy Krueger would think twice about tangling with Moe.

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OF BEER (AND SHAVING) FOAM: Joe Jost’s, the 75-year-old purveyor of hot dogs, beer and pickled eggs in Long Beach, was recently given a civic preservation award.

For its building, not the eggs.

Jost’s is such an institution on Anaheim Street that it has put together a videotape of its history ($15) as a charitable fund-raiser. Included is a scene from “The Bodyguard” (1992), with Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston, one of several movies filmed there.

The place began as a barbershop. After Prohibition ended in 1932, Jost also began serving beer, meaning customers could get a haircut as well as the hair of the dog. Then the state barber’s commission informed Jost that beer and razor blades didn’t mix.

So, said Cathleen Buck, wife of the current owner, “Out went the barber chairs.”

miscelLAny:

In L.A. for a speech, former Clinton Cabinet member Robert Reich predicted on KFWB radio that Al Gore would be the Democrats’ presidential nominee in 2000, with Hillary Clinton as his running mate. That way, Reich quipped, Democrats could simply turn their 1996 bumper stickers upside down.

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 carrier pigeon at L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053.