Coroner’s Office Finds Its Niche

Now you can have something in common with your favorite dead celebrity: a toe tag. And you don’t have to be deceased.

Scott Carrier, the public information officer for the L.A. County coroner’s office, has begun a side business selling the inscribed tags on plaques (see photo). Price: $19.95 for either the gold-tone or silver-tone varieties.

Carrier said he came up with the idea because he had received so many requests for such gag gifts from retiring law enforcement personnel. He received permission from his superiors to market them, though he was told they would have to be labeled “Unofficial Toe Tag.”

He noted that his wife has a gift-basket shop, adding, “Some of our friends have said we should form a business called Baskets and Caskets.”

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YOUR TOES AT RISK: I hope you’re not foolhardy enough to go out shopping this weekend unless you saw Friday night’s heavily promoted segment on KABC TV’s news: “Escalator Dangers.” Yes, it’s sweeps time again.

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DIAL-A-LANGUAGE: Callers to multicultural Fairfax High in L.A. hear a recording that says:

“If you would like to hear this message in English, please stay on the line. For Spanish, press 3. For Russian, press 4. For Korean, press 5.”

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AND, FOR FRENCH . . .: It looks as though Wilshire Boulevard’s Miracle Mile has become le Mile (see photo). Wonder if that has been reported on Harry Shearer’s radio program, “Le Show”?

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ROUTE AIDE?: On the Pasadena Freeway, George Alexander saw a truck with the sign “CPR Trucking” on its side. Added Alexander: “Fortunately, there were no accidents on the freeway and there was no need for CPR.”

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POTATO HUGGERS: You may have heard of the Beverly Hills ballot proposal to make the city’s furriers display warning tags that say, “This product is made with fur from animals that may have been killed by electrocution, gassing, neck-breaking, poisoning,” etc., etc.

A hastily formed group, People for the Ethical Treatment of Plants, took the issue one step further and demanded that explanatory “labels be put on every dead tree, plant, fruit and vegetable in Beverly Hills.”

For example, it said, a “Louis XIV chair must carry a label, ‘Made from trees ruthlessly chopped down by French peasants with dull machetes.’ Mashed potatoes at Kate Mantilini’s must be marked, ‘Smashed to death with a Cuisinart.’ ”

miscelLAny:

In his book, “The Top 10 of Everything 1998,” Russell Ash says the longest place name in the United States is El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de la Porciuncula. You can call it L.A.

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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 dog sled at L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053.