Pinning Blame for Bad Movies and Other Missteps on the Boys in Blue

LAPD Blues: We hate to steal any thunder from our fellow reporters, but we’re tired of waiting for them to tell us how this LAPD scandal will unfold. So we fired up Caltech’s new turbocharged time machine (which goes 0 to 60 years in eight seconds) and sent Off-Kilter’s time-traveling journalist into the future to get the full story. As it turns out, the scandal is far worse than anyone had imagined.

“This is no longer just a simple matter of officers selling cocaine, shooting unarmed suspects and framing people,” Police Chief Bernard Parks will admit in mid-November. “We now have reason to believe that LAPD officers also helped write the screenplay to ‘Waterworld’ and may even have developed the dance steps for the macarena.

“In addition, we’re investigating reports that members of an elite anti-gang unit violated the public trust by coming up with the idea for those stupid ‘My Child Is an Honor Student’ bumper stickers. Needless to say, everyone involved has been suspended without pay, and the FBI has joined our investigation.”

Parks will then acknowledge that the corruption case is the worst LAPD scandal since 1971, when rogue officers killed 64 people and then staged the Sylmar earthquake to cover up their actions.

Michelin Man Fashions: From the “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” bureau, a Vermont inventor has figured out a novel way to prevent senior citizens from breaking bones when they take a spill: underwear air bags.

Carl Clark, who also devised the first air bags for Lockheed Martin in the 1960s, says his emergency underwear has a sensor that automatically inflates two cushions around the wearer’s hips when it detects the person starting to fall.

Think of it as a whoopee cushion using its power for good instead of evil.

Physical Fitness Update: Karaoke singing of “We Are the World” burns 20.7 calories, whereas singing “Stand by Me” consumes just 6.6 calories, according to Entertainment Weekly.

Whale2K Bureau: Sea World has begun referring to the year 2000 as “the Shamu-llennium.”

Alarming Culinary Trends: A London bakery for dogs is selling biscuits shaped like a mailman’s leg, reports the Sun newspaper.

Road Hazard Department: People behind the wheel in sport-utility vehicles are 50% more likely to blabber on cell phones while driving than people in other cars, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Off-Kilter Almanac: The record for most people stuffed into a Volkswagen Beetle was set in March by 20 members of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, according to “Guinness World Records 2000.” Also, people stuffed into Beetles are 50% less likely to use cell phones than people stuffed into SUVs.

Weird Polls Division: French junior high school students voted Pablo Picasso as artist of the century, followed by Leonardo DiCaprio and Celine Dion.

Best Supermarket Tabloid Headline: “Meet the World’s Only Bible-Reading Cat! She Can Paw Through the Good Book and Find Any Passage on Request!” (Weekly World News)

Unpaid Informants: Wireless Flash News Service, San Francisco Chronicle, PR Newswire, Baird Jones, Chicago Sun-Times. E-mail Off-Kilter at roy.rivenburg@latimes.com. Off-Kilter runs Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.