One Olive or Two? Countdown to the Martini of the Millennium

Auld Lang Syne 2000: The famous lighted ball that drops at Times Square every New Year’s Eve is finally getting some competition. San Francisco’s St. Francis Hotel plans to usher in the year 2000 with a huge lighted olive that will plunge 32 stories into a massive electronic martini glass.

The hotel will also launch fireworks from its roof and is offering a special “millennium suite” for just $99,000 (which might sound expensive, but it also includes free dance lessons).

Naturally, we hope other cities will follow San Francisco’s lead. For example, Leisure World could drop a giant Viagra pill, and Seattle could throw Barney the dinosaur off the Space Needle. But beyond that, we’re stumped for ideas, so we’re going to make this a contest.

Send us your humorous suggestions for how other cities or nations can ring in the new millennium. Include your name, address and telephone (well, not the actual phone, just the number) and enter via fax, (213) 237-4712, e-mail (see address at end of column), or letter to Roy Rivenburg’s Off-Kilter, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053. Deadline is June 30. All entries become property of The Times.

Also tell us your prize preferences from the following list: a complete set of McDonald’s new Teenie Beanie Babies; a “Star Trek” computer mouse (with “authentic phaser sounds”); Weekly World News shirts or mugs; assorted CDs (your choice of frog noises, Teletubbies or greatest hits of the past 2,000 years); a kit to make chewing gum; a Muhammad Ali action figure; cookbooks; various games (sports trivia, regular trivia, Don’t Make Me Laugh, or Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus); a poster outlining the history of classical music (from Carissimi Publications); bendable Jack in the Box figures; a Hot Wheels car (attention publicists: start sending us real cars); the new Magic School Bus CD-ROM; or a special edition Mr. Potato Head.

Rockefeller Pillows: We’re glad that world poverty has finally been eradicated, because otherwise we’d feel guilty about buying the new $2,300 pillow from the Company Store--and even more guilty about using it for a pillow fight.

The custom-made head cushions are stuffed with rare eider duck down, which comes from the abandoned nests of an arctic bird. A brochure says the “sinfully luxurious” pillow will “romance you to sleep.”

Then again, you might lie awake all night thinking about what a dolt you are for spending $2,300 on a glorified bag of duck feathers.

Charge Card Arms Race: How does a credit card distinguish itself from the pack? Usually by being named after a precious metal. Originally, gold cards had the most prestige, then platinum. The latest entry to clutter our mailbox is titanium. What could possibly be next?

Probably plutonium or kryptonite, but we’re holding out for an eider duck down card.

Best Supermarket Tabloid Headline: “Abe Lincoln’s Corpse Revived! Doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Center Stun the World! Civil War President Kept Alive for 95 Seconds!” (Weekly World News)

According to WWN, the only words he uttered were, “Gentlemen, where am I?” We were hoping he would’ve asked: “How did the play end?”

Unpaid Informants: San Francisco Chronicle. Off-Kilter’s e-mail address is roy.rivenburg@latimes.com. Off-Kilter runs Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.