Now a Police Chase Is Just a Beep Away

I don’t know about you, but nothing annoys me more than going out for the evening and finding out later that I missed a four-hour live police chase on television.

Now there’s a safeguard against this type of missed opportunity. Alan Frisbie tipped me off about the PursuitWatch Network (see accompanying).

For $9.99 per three-month term, the San Dimas-based company says it will notify you via your pager whenever TV helicopters are reporting one of those high- or low-speed freeway dramas.

“It’s like taking reality shows like Fox TV’s ‘Cops’ to the next level,” said founder Ken Kuwahara. “No one, not even the producers, knows what the ending will be.”

Like radio traffic reporters, PursuitWatch will rely on members for tips via a toll-free hotline or e-mail address. Any gawker who is the first to notify the company of a pursuit earns a $100 reward.

Which brings up an interesting question: How long will it be before a motorist fleeing the cops calls up PursuitWatch himself to collect the reward?

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MOVING INTO THE SLOW LANE: “Traffic Jam,” the talk radio show on KRLA-AM (1110), will interview the drivers of the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile on Saturday at 2. (I’d pay $100 to watch a Wienermobile in a freeway pursuit.)

Hosts Kenny Morse and Reed Berry are giving equal time to vegetarians, too. They’ll chat with the driver of the Veggie Mobile, which runs on vegetable oil. The exhaust of the latter, Morse says, “smells like French fries.” Hold the catsup.

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MEANWHILE, OVER ON THE SHOULDER: Robert Waguespack of Tujunga swears he saw a shivering, bare-chested hitchhiker wearing shorts, boots and a cowboy hat on the eastbound Simi Valley Freeway. Waguespack said the gent was holding a guitar and a sign that said, “Texas or Bust.” Normally, I’d be a might skeptical. But Waguespack said he called because the music man fit the general description of a guy I wrote about the other day--a touring guitarist who left me a message saying he was the Naked Cowboy.

Or maybe I’ve just been sniffing too much vegetable oil.

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UNCLEAR ON THE CONCEPT: Sarabeth Rothfeld of Woodland Hills noticed that a lecture on the problem of attention deficit disorder was scheduled to last from 6:45 to 9 p.m. Hey, let’s get on to the next item.

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SOME GUYS JUST CAN’T TELL A JOKE: So Daily Variety, among other publications, carried a wire service story that paraphrased entertainment mogul Michael Ovitz as saying he fell one credit short of graduating from UCLA. He brought the subject up because he has donated $25 million to the school.

The next day, though, the wire service ran a second story saying that Ovitz’s comment was a joke.

Well, Ovitz can put together deals but no one ever said he’s adept at one-liners. Anyway, he did graduate from UCLA--let’s get that straight. You never know when the poor guy might have to fill out a job application.

miscelLAny:

Comedian/actor Milton Berle, age 90, was the first big star of television. It’s hard to believe that there’s anyone in his generation unfamiliar with his work. But “The Box,” Jeff Kisseloff’s history of TV, tells of the time Berle was performing at a senior citizens center. Before taking the stage, he asked a lady in the front row, “Do you know who I am?” She responded: “No, but maybe the front desk can help you.”

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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 mail at Metro, L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053.