He Wasn’t Thinking of Jerry Springer

An inventor named Philo T. Farnsworth was working on his creation when police raided his apartment on New Hampshire Avenue in Los Angeles. Neighbors who had seen Farnsworth’s tubes and copper wires thought he was making a whiskey still. Actually, he was inventing a machine we now call television.

The year was 1926. Although he patented the invention, Farnsworth was soon squeezed out of the picture by RCA and largely forgotten. So there’s some justice in the fact that Time magazine, in its current issue, has included Farnsworth among the 100 most influential scientists and thinkers of the century.

The magazine points out that Farnsworth was a pioneer in the field of TV criticism, too.

When commercial programming began, his son Kent said, Farnsworth’s reaction was: “There’s nothing on it worthwhile, and we’re not going to watch it in this household.”

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DINING GUIDE FOR THE ADVENTUROUS: Today’s selections (see accompanying) include eggs prepared “ant style” (what? carried to the table by 10,000 waiters?), some really tough meat (spotted by Rod Casper), and a place where you can get your clothes or your consciousness altered (snapped by Alan Frisbie).

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FASHION CRISIS: In their book “Dates From Hell,” authors Victoria Jackson and Mike Harris tell the story of an Angeleno named Bob who claimed to have had a memorable experience after answering a singles ad.

He received a call back from the woman, who told him she was attracted to men who wore crisp white shirts and tight, starched blue jeans. She asked Bob to dress accordingly and wait for her in a certain bar. She said he’d recognize her when she appeared.

So, at the appointed time, Bob took his seat at the bar. As he looked slowly around he saw an alarming sight: five other solitary men at the bar dressed like he was.

In the wall-length mirror behind the bar, he saw a woman approaching--a woman attractive enough, the authors said, to have a role on TV’s “Baywatch.”

She studied the blue jean crew from behind. She came near Bob, tapped the shoulder of the man next to him, and said, “You.”

Bob--and the other rejects--watched in the mirror as the two left.

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PRE-MONICA: Ten years ago today, The Times reported that a special guest star at a Ventura auction would be Jessica Hahn. Surely you haven’t forgotten her in the wake of all the more recent scandals? True, Hahn wasn’t as big as Monica, but the disclosure of her sexual encounter with televangelist Jim Bakker back then did bring down his ministry.

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A BIT OF VALLEY HISTORY: A reference here to Al Jennings, the Old West bank robber who later portrayed a bank robber in the movies, brought this note from Bruce Clemens:

“In the late ‘40s, Al Jennings lived on Hatteras Street in Tarzana, between the elementary school and my house. Almost every day when we were walking home from school he’d be sitting on an old chair in his frontyard. We’d stop and get a story or two about his adventures, toss a rock into the abandoned ‘haunted’ house a couple of doors down, head on home and raid the refrigerator. Those were the days when Hopalong Cassidy, Tom Mix, etc., were the big heroes. Mr. Jennings was such a nice old guy he almost made us root for the black hats in the Saturday movie serials.”

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EYE-CATCHING BILLBOARD: “Tomorrow you could be driving on the wrong side of the road,” the sign says. It’s not a warning against drunk driving. It’s an ad by a New Zealand airline.

miscelLAny:

I wrote the other that day “Route 66” was the only song I know that mentioned Barstow. Well, Dave Schulps says that Chuck Berry’s “California” also salutes Barstow. “It also mentions Needles, possibly a first,” Schulps added. “Unless you count ‘Needles and Pins.’ ”

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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 L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053.