It’s a Bull Market for Mayonnaise

Pamplona, USA: A mayonnaise manufacturer sent 10 bulls stampeding down Wall Street on Monday in what we hope is just the tip of the weirdness iceberg for 1999. The bulls were cheered on by humans dressed as giant containers of Hellmann’s mayonnaise, Skippy peanut butter, Mazola oil and other Bestfoods products.

Journalism’s Greatest Hits: Our editor recently let us out of our cage for a day so we could speak to a press club near San Diego. (Don’t worry, we were heavily sedated and accompanied by a sharpshooter in case things went awry.)

The talk seemed to go well (insofar as the audience didn’t rise up as one and try to kill us), and afterward, member Hal Steward showed us a collection of great opening sentences from newspaper articles. Here are two, both from stories about the man who kidnapped and killed the Lindbergh baby:

* “The state of New Jersey, which spent $1.2 million to capture and convict Bruno Richard Hauptmann, executed him tonight with a penny’s worth of electricity.”

* “Bruno Richard Hauptmann walked into the Trenton State Prison death house today and sat down in the only unoccupied chair in the room.”

The leads were written by Harry Ferguson and Quentin Reynolds, respectively.

To Steward’s list, we might add a recent first sentence from movie critic Renee Downing of the Arizona Daily Star: “ ‘John Carpenter’s Vampires’ sucks.”

Politics 1999: Will the election of wrestler Jesse “The Body” Ventura as governor of Minnesota inspire other oddball candidacies? Apparently so. In Indiana, an Elvis impersonator has announced a possible run for state senator.

Mr. Amy Grant?: Singer Gary Chapman must be wondering about his identity. In the wake of an announcement that he and pop diva Amy Grant are splitting after 16 years of marriage, one newspaper did a story on whether conservative Christian music stores would continue to sell Grant’s records, but made no mention of the fate of Chapman’s albums. And USA Today ran a photo of Chapman--except it was Steven Curtis Chapman, another gospel singer.

Of course, it could’ve been worse. They could have run a photo of Mark David Chapman.

Kaitlyn Overdose Ahead: The most popular baby names in 1998 were Kaitlyn and Michael, according to https://www.babycenter.com.Runners-up were Emily, Sarah (No. 1 in 1997), Hannah and Ashley for girls and Jacob, Matthew, Nicholas and Joshua for guys.

Alarming Trends Department: Nightclubs in Dallas are promoting “karaoke soap opera” nights, in which customers stand up and mouth the words to their favorite daytime soap scenes.

Best Supermarket Tabloid Headline: “Thousands Are Selling Their Kidneys, Bone Marrow and Other Spare Organs for Big Bucks! ‘I Bought a $290,000 Home--and It Only Cost Me an Arm and a Leg!’ ” (Weekly World News)

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