Suites for These Sweeties? No Way

Valentine’s Day Bureau: Love is in the air. Or maybe it’s just a swarm of gnats, we’re not sure. Anyway, it’s time for our annual Valentine’s Day weird romance roundup.

We begin with the latest Thrifty Car Rental honeymoon-from-hell contest. This year’s winners were Melanie and Bernie Sinclair, who spent their first night of holy matrimony at the home of his aunt in West Virginia, where they feasted on freshly shot squirrel, and then retired to the honeymoon suite--a snake-infested shack with no running water and a collapsed outhouse.

Runners-up included:

* Paul and Leah Lusk, whose romantic jaunt to Nevada fizzled when their car flipped over and was submerged in flood waters. Paul bumped his head and lost the ability to recognize his bride or remember that he just got married.

* Allan and Skylar Stone of Oklahoma, who made a romantic getaway to Cozumel, where Allan promptly ran out of cash and had to hock his wedding ring for $25 to pay a cab driver.

Romantic Gaffes Alert: Here at Off-Kilter, we get so many letters from readers who are dating Russians and Polynesians that we decided to publish a special section of romance tips for the culturally impaired.

Tip No. 1: Don’t give teddy bears to Russians for Valentine’s Day. According to Berlitz international culture expert Dean Foster, bears are a sign of aggression in Russian culture. Then again, maybe your Soviet sweetie is into that sort of thing.

Tip No. 2: Never mail a greeting card to a Brazilian. It’s considered insincere. Foster advises delivering the card in person, with a gift attached. Recommended gift for 1999: a new economy.

Tip No. 3: Flowers are a poor choice for a Polynesian sweetheart, who is more likely to view the gesture as a sign of thanks than a sign of love. Especially when she finds out you’ve been cheating with some Brazilian floozy to whom you gave an IMF bailout of $2.2 billion.

We also get lots of mail from people dating space aliens, but the Berlitz guy didn’t have any advice on that.

Weird Polls Bureau: The latest valentine-related surveys are in. Here are the pertinent findings:

* When American men were asked which celebrity they’d most like to share a pint of Haagen-Dazs ice cream with Feb. 14, 2% said Martha Stewart.

* In Portugal, 21% of those surveyed regret the day they met their first love. The figure jumps to 98% when narrowed down to couples who honeymooned at Bernie Sinclair’s aunt’s home in West Virginia.

Best Supermarket Tabloid Story: “Men Who Marry Ugly Women Live 12 Years Longer Than Those Who Don’t, Says Yale Study” (Weekly World News).

According to WWN, men with gorgeous wives are so worried about losing their woman to another man that they go out of their way to please her, often by doing stressful chores around the house. In contrast, when a man with a homely spouse is asked to take out the trash, “he can just sit on the couch and say, ‘Do it yourself.’ ” According to researchers, “This response, when done repeatedly, can add years to his life.”

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Roy Rivenburg’s e-mail address is roy.rivenburg@latimes.com. Unpaid Informants: Wireless Flash News Service. Off-Kilter runs Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.