3 Musicians Get Too Much Exposure

Stephanie Howard of Valencia spotted this item in a local newspaper’s police log: “An incident of indecent exposure was reported at 4:02 p.m. Monday. Deputies found three naked men playing saxophones on the California Institute of the Arts hillside.”

Indecent exposure?

Sounds like a work of conceptual art to me.

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COLD PROPERTY: The various plans to renovate the L.A. Coliseum mount into the tens of millions of dollars. All but forgotten is the fact that the stadium was appraised at just $350 when an L.A. version of “Monopoly” was issued several years ago (see accompanying). Of course, that was during the real estate slump.

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CASH BUSINESS: Steve Kipnis of West Hollywood writes, “I found this on the windshield. Finally, a business that admits to laundering money!” (see accompanying).

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FAST GETAWAYS? Margaret Souder of Crestline saw an ad for a type of market that evidently offers such items as police chase videos (see accompanying).

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NEEDLE POINT: Some of the eye-catching business names listed in the local section of Action Publishing’s Tattoo Directory, 1999:

* Red Hot Tattoo, Arcadia

* Inflictions Body Art Studio, Covina

* Magic Island Creations (Mitchell the Mask-Man), Hermosa Beach

* Trigger Happy Tattoo, La Habra, and

* Cliff Cadaver Body Piercing, Studio City

And, if you happen to feel the urge to have your body decorated while you’re on the road, here are some regional studios with provocative names:

Dirty Doug Tattooing, Raleigh, N.C.; Psycho Clown Tattoo, Fort Worth, Texas; Squirrelly’s Skin Art, Mansfield, Ohio; and Thrill Vulture Tattooing, Westerville, Ohio.

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GAMBLERS WHO THOUGHT THE FORCE WAS WITH THEM: Jody Fox, my Tijuana bureau chief, informs me that before the new “Star Wars” opening, the Agua Caliente Racetrack posted an overs-and-unders betting line of $115 million on the film’s projected box office take for the first five days.

In other words, you could have bet that it would either be more or less than $115 million. Anyway, the “unders” won--the take was $105 million.

This type of wager is more common for football games, at which the “overs” bettor will cheer wildly for both teams to score while the “unders” bettor roots for neither to score.

One wonders if those who wagered on the “Star Wars” take were out in the malls exhorting people to attend or stay away.

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STATIC FROM THE FAMILY: Gene “Bean” Baxter of KROQ-FM (106.7) recalled on Don Barrett’s laradio.com World Wide Web site that his father initially advised him not to go into the broadcasting biz, pointing out that the nomadic life of a disc jockey was not an easy one. Baxter persevered, though, and was eventually hired for a weekend slot on a station in Rockville, Md.

On his first day, he was answering the request lines when he recognized his father’s voice.

“I felt sure he was calling to congratulate me for sticking to my dreams,” Baxter said. And, indeed, the elder Baxter began by admitting, “Son, I was wrong about this radio thing.” Then the father added, “I forgot that now that you are on the air, I can just flip a switch to turn you off.”

miscelLAny:

Entertainer Phil Proctor overheard an interview with a visiting Frenchman who coined a term, “the California Stretch,” to describe the position one must assume when holding a drink inside a bar and a cigarette outside the bar at the same time to conform to recently passed state laws. It’s really awkward if you’re also trying to hold a leaf blower.

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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.