Our First Year’s Highs and Lows

Anniversary Special: Do not adjust your bifocals. We interrupt today’s Wide World of Weird column to bring you some highlights from Off-Kilter’s first year:

Too Much Information Department: Memo to Jim Messina: Go to church right now and thank God that you no longer sing with Kenny Loggins. Because he is a major freak. In an aptly titled book, “The Unimaginable Life,” Loggins and his second wife, Julia (whom he met when she was hired to give him a high colonic), share more than we ever wanted to know about their love life, including the time Julia made a quilt from her old panties, T-shirts and camisoles. The book also describes how she gave birth to their daughter while Loggins sang a tune called “Birth Energy” with a 25-woman choir that repeatedly chanted, “I am opening, I am opening up.”

Uh, we are throwing, we are throwing up.

Helter-Skelter Spice: Charles Manson has reportedly offered to take a lethal injection if he can meet the Spice Girls. This proves he’s crazy. A sane person would want the lethal injection before meeting the Spice Girls.

Digital Birds Bureau: A Washington author predicts that homing pigeons will soon replace telephones to ensure the privacy of messages. That’s fine, but only if the birds are equipped with modern features, such as Pigeon ID (which tells you where the pigeon came from so you can screen out salesmen), Pigeon Waiting (so you don’t miss any incoming birds), Conference Pigeoning (to send or receive messages from several birds at the same time) and Emergency Roadside Pigeons (for when you break down on the freeway).

Valuable Fingers Bureau: Movie reviewer Roger Ebert has trademarked his right thumb. This gives us an idea for trademarking one of our fingers--one that would bring us untold wealth if people had to pay a royalty every time it was used.

Cowboys and Aliens: Willie Nelson told a magazine that his brain is able to pick up radio waves from “somewhere in the universe,” which is how he gets his songs. Needless to say, we’re terrified. For starters, what if the extraterrestrials find out Nelson is plagiarizing their music and destroy the entire planet in retaliation?

Jurassic Cereal Department: Quaker instant oatmeal now comes in a “Dinosaur Eggs” version that hatches miniature stegosauruses and triceratops when hot water is added.

We don’t want to alarm any youngsters reading this, but the baby dinosaurs are real and they will grow inside your stomach and eat their way out in the middle of the night.

Mailbag Bureau: Reader response to Off-Kilter’s first year has been gratifying, especially the notes that say we are “an atrocity,” “exceedingly insensitive” and “lame.” We must concede that’s a pretty accurate description of the column.

Best Supermarket Tabloid Headline of the Year: “Teens Sniffing Human Ashes to Get High! Warning: Someone May Be Snorting Your Grandmother!” (Weekly World News)

Roy Rivenburg’s e-mail address is roy.rivenburg@latimes.com. Off-Kilter runs Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Wide World of Weird returns next Sunday.