Venice Was Made for This Guitarist

Now for a Naked Cowboy update. The gentleman using that title has been sighted in Chattanooga, Tenn., on CNN Headline News.

(Only in L.A. scooped again!)

You may recall that the scantily clad musician phoned your columnist to announce that he was in town but left a garbled beeper number.

Next he was spotted hitchhiking on the Simi Valley Freeway.

On CNN, says Jackson Henry of Torrance, the cowboy was interviewed “in front of a restaurant dressed only in boots, skimpy briefs [a bit redundant] and a cowboy hat.

“Oh. He also had a guitar.”

Yup, that’s the Naked Cowboy.

Henry said the buckskin-less one disclosed that “he had performed on Venice Beach and had a CD for sale.”

I suspect he’ll always be better known for his BVDs than his CDs.

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CHEW ON THIS: So how do you convert the former Packard Grill Diner in Highland Park to a dental clinic?

Simple.

Just add teeth to the sign.

This transformation stands in contrast to the dentist who took over the former Penguin Cafe in Santa Monica and adopted the eatery’s toothless mascot (see photos).

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LAWYER IN THE MAKING: Mary Rynders of Glendale overheard this exchange in the self-service dining area of the California Science Center in Exposition Park:

Boy, pointing to toppings for ice cream: “Dad, what are those sprinkles?”

Father: “They’re for sundaes. But we’re having lunch now.”

Boy: “But it is Sunday.”

Father: “You’ve got a point there.”

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LOOKING BEYOND SUNDAY: On the subject of unusual forecasts, Ben Starr writes that it was comic Steve Allen, portraying a weatherman on his old TV show, who first predicted that it would be muggy early in the week . . . followed by Toogy, Weggy and Thurgy.

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HUMOR COVER-UP: Longtime television personality Jack Narz couldn’t help but smile over the discussion here of Xerox’s demand that the world stop using its company name as a synonym for photocopying.

“In the 1950s, I was the announcer on the ‘Tennessee Ernie Ford’ radio show on CBS,” he said. “One day Ernie and I were talking about the size of women’s bathing suits and one of us said they were ‘about as big as a Band-Aid.’ ”

Foul! Johnson & Johnson’s lawyers wrote that Narz and Ford should have said that women’s bathing suits were “about as big as a Johnson & Johnson Band-Aid.”

Said Narz: “Somehow takes the punch out of a fairly funny comparison, don’t you think?”

I agree, though I’m not sure what the Naked Cowboy would say.

miscelLAny:

This was on comic David Letterman’s “Top 10 Ways the NBA Can Get Its Fans Back” list: If the fans don’t buy tickets, the Lakers’ Shaquille O’Neal will make another movie.

That’s funny, Letterman. Just don’t knock Shaq’s rap singing.

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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 carrier pigeon at Metro, L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053.