A Historic Meal Frozen in Time

Ice Age Bureau: The inventor of frozen TV dinners is finally being immortalized. Unfortunately, it isn’t with a statue in Washington, D.C., where we were hoping the government would stick a giant marble TV tray and Magnavox in front of Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial (we think he looks hungry up there).

Instead, on Tuesday, retired Swanson Foods executive Gerald Thomas will press his hands--and a metal frozen-food tray--into the cement outside Mann’s Chinese theater in Hollywood.

The event marks the 45th anniversary of the first frozen dinner, which sold for 98 cents and contained turkey, gravy, corn bread dressing, peas and a sweet potato dessert (this was apparently before they perfected that apple crisp junk).

Laughter Inflation Report: Now that the flood of cheap, plentiful Clinton-Lewinsky jokes has subsided, the price of comedy is rising. According to humor consultant Malcolm Kushner, the latest Cost of Laughing Index--which tracks the prices of 16 leading gag indicators--is up 3% over last year.

Kushner blames the jump on soaring prices for sitcom scripts (up from $11,891 to $12,248 per show) and singing telegrams involving dancing chickens ($75 an hour, a $10 increase from 1998).

Other indicators held steady or fell. A copy of Mad magazine is still $2.50. The price of a dozen rubber chickens dropped from $66 to $60.

Lunatic Fringe Bureau: A Dallas psychic says soul singer Marvin Gaye is getting ready to be reincarnated as a gospel musician whose backup singers will be the reincarnated souls of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. and Louis Armstrong.

Great Moments in History: Thirty-four years ago this month, astronaut John Young became the first human to eat a corned-beef sandwich in outer space.

Going Postal: A sampling of recent reader mail:

* Becky Barnes warned us that her daughter Melanie is a freshman at the Air Force Academy in Colorado and “the only thing she wants from home is Off-Kilter,” which she reads to other cadets, thus ensuring the eventual collapse of America’s military.

* Regarding our report on a Michigan college’s list of words and phrases that should be banned from the English language, Jim Crowley suggested adding the word “bond,” not as in James Bond but as in “Astronaut John Young once bonded with a corned-beef sandwich in zero gravity.” Our vote for most annoying phrase goes to “You go, girl.”

* In reaction to our last update on animals conspiring to overthrow the human race, Kathy Sullivan e-mailed to say she was bored senseless by the topic. Hmmm. Maybe we should give up on that subject--or maybe the real Kathy Sullivan was kidnapped by rebel poodles who wanted to use her AOL account to discourage further exposes.

Best Supermarket Tabloid Headline: “Giant Lizards Are Eating Kids Alive!” (Weekly World News)

With apologies to Kathy Sullivan.

Off-Kilter’s e-mail address is roy.rivenburg@latimes.com. Unpaid Informants: Wireless Flash News Service, Allie Borden, Martin Miller, Ann Harrison. Off-Kilter runs Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.