Be Careful What You Wish For: TV Families Have Problems Too

Family Ties: Isn’t it sad when people vent their anger toward loved ones by wishing they could replace their current family with one from TV? They let their emotions get the better of them and blurt out something they later regret, such as, “I’d rather live with the Simpsons,” not realizing that Homer earns a paltry $34,360 a year and therefore they’d be happier in “The Jeffersons,” who have an income of $100,000.

Fortunately, Brookstone has made it possible to avoid such mistakes. The store recently commissioned a study on the salaries of famous TV dads.

Topping the list was Jed Clampett of “The Beverly Hillbillies,” who earns about $1.75 million a year--in 1999 dollars--from investing his $25 million oil fortune. The negatives of becoming a Clampett include Granny’s heavy-on-the-possums cooking and Elly May’s doughnuts.

Here are the pros and cons of being adopted by other TV dads:

* Darrin Stephens of “Bewitched,” $45,000 as an ad executive. Downside: Endora frequently turns you into a mule.

* Ward Cleaver of “Leave It to Beaver,” $48,800 as an accountant. Downside: Eddie Haskell.

* Mike Brady of “The Brady Bunch,” $45,400 as an architect. Upside: Living with Marcia (or with Greg, if you’re a girl). Downside: Public outrage over theme song being rewritten to include you.

* Philip Drummond of “Diff’rent Strokes,” $839,000 as a corporate chief executive. Downside: Most of the money goes toward your new siblings’ legal bills.

* Tim Taylor of “Home Improvement,” $233,000 as host of a popular cable show. Upside: hanging out with “Tool Time” girls.

* Clifford Huxtable of “The Cosby Show,” $200,000 as a New York obstetrician. Downside: Overdosing on Jell-O.

* Steve Douglas of “My Three Sons,” $62,262 as an aviation engineer. Downside: Possible bad karma from show being renamed “My Four Sons” or “My Three Sons and One Daughter.”

* Carl Winslow of “Family Matters,” $34,700 as a Chicago cop. Downside: Urkel.

* Andy Taylor of “The Andy Griffith Show,” $26,700 as a small-town sheriff. Downsides: Goober, Barney Fife, Floyd the barber, living in the shadow of older brother Ron Howard.

Obituary of the Week: From a paid death notice in the San Francisco Chronicle for David F. Stockman: “He will be sorely missed by his brother, his niece and his many friends, as well as several vodka distillers.”

Alarming Food Trends: In conjunction with the soon-to-be-released box office dud “Wild Wild West,” Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream Inc. has begun selling Wild Wild West Sundae ice cream, a mixture of vanilla and fudge with caramel-filled chocolate nuggets shaped like the 80-foot metal tarantula featured in the movie. Dreyer’s last film tie-in was Godzilla Vanilla ice cream.

Altruistic Dogs Bureau: More than 800 basset hounds took part in a charity walkathon last week that raised $50,000 for Michigan Basset Rescue.

Best Supermarket Tabloid Headline: Who would’ve guessed that Nazi Germany had a sense of humor? The Weekly World News, that’s who. The latest issue notes the passing of a World War II Nazi comedian known as the “funny bone of the Third Reich.”

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Unpaid Informants: Wireless Flash News Service, PR Newswire. Off-Kilter’s e-mail address is roy.rivenburg@latimes.com. Off-Kilter runs Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.