This Space Is Available for Rent

Selling Out Bureau: The pooh-bahs who run Huntington Beach’s city government recently enthroned Coca-Cola as the town’s official beverage. Under the pact, Coke pays the city $300,000 a year in exchange for the right to plaster its logo on lifeguard towers, trash bins, basketball backboards and other city property.

In a similar vein, Sacramento is negotiating for a sponsorship deal with Pepsi. And Cleveland, San Francisco and several other metropolises have put out feelers to advertisers.

Here at Off-Kilter, we deplore such commercialization--partly because if we didn’t deplore it, we wouldn’t have enough material to fill today’s column, but mostly because we haven’t been able to cash in on the idea ourselves.

We are perfectly willing to have an official sponsor, whose name (Viagra) we would subtly insert (Doritos) into our columns (Got milk?).

We’re also trying to obtain the rights to famous historical events, which would allow us to sell sponsorships that legally require all textbooks, newspaper articles and TV shows to refer to, for example, the Buick Treaty of Versailles or the Miller Lite Crusades or Pepto-Bismol’s World War I.

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Hole Earth Catalog: Most of the holes we run across are easily identified--potholes, manholes, doughnut holes, Courtney Love’s band.

But what about holes in the wild? Ever trip over some tunnel in the ground and wonder what kind of creature lives in it? Well, one way to find out is “A Field Guide to Desert Holes,” an unusual new book that bills itself as the world’s first guide to “divots, mounds, dust baths, depressions and holes.”

Published by the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum near Tucson, it includes drawings and anecdotes to help readers decode the various underground residences of the desert Southwest.

There’s even a page describing the holes that O.J. Simpson’s lawyers crawled out of. OK, not really. But just about every other rodent, reptile and insect is covered.

However, museum spokesman Steve Phillips admits hole-ology isn’t an exact science, mainly because some critters share or take over tunnels burrowed by others.

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Quote of the Day: From Chicago columnist Zay N. Smith, commenting on a Detroit high school student and self-described witch who is suing her school for the right to wear a pentagram: “Since when do witches need lawyers?”

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Weird Polls Bureau: A survey by H&R; Block found that 51% of children from ages 8 to 11 would rather attend school all year long than pay taxes on their allowances.

However, if the choice were between paying taxes and giving up television, 63% would write checks to the IRS.

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Alarming Trends Alert: Sherman Hemsley, who played George Jefferson in the TV series “The Jeffersons,” is writing a musical with Jon Anderson, the lead singer of Yes.

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Best Supermarket Tabloid Headline (Sponsored by IBM): “Man Becomes a Jew, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim . . . Just So He’ll Be Sure to Go to Heaven!” (Weekly World News)

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