Explosive Recipe For Controversy

As you may have read, former Symbionese Liberation Army fugitive Sara Jane Olson canceled a plan to discuss her artichoke dip recipe on a Pasadena radio show because she feared that she would be violating a court-imposed gag order.

Reader Art Griffin quipped that the dip must be pretty bad if the court was worried that people would gag on it.

Actually, Olson, who faces charges that she was involved in planting pipe bombs under police cars a quarter-century ago, was forbidden to grant interviews at the time of the show.

The dip tips are in her new cookbook, “Serving Time: America’s Most Wanted Recipes,” which she wrote to help finance her defense.

Kitty Felde of KPCC-FM (89.3), the host of the “Air Talk” show on which Olson was to appear, says the cancellation has had one unforeseen effect.

“I’ve been inundated with recipes for artichoke dip,” Felde said.

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IN OTHER FOOD NEWS: Michele Hart and JoJo D’Amore of West Hollywood found a menu item that would seem appropriate for this hot spell (see accompanying).

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“YES” MARKS THE SPOT: A few weeks ago I mentioned a patient who was advised by his doctor to take a felt pen and write “Yes” on the shoulder that was to be operated upon and “No” on the other one.

Well, Mark Scott of Chino Hills recently had elbow surgery and this pre-op procedure was actually in the printed instructions from his doctor (see accompanying).

Scott did as he was told--even though his operation was at a hospital in Las Vegas. He joked that the precaution was hardly necessary because the odds were already 50-50 that the correct elbow would be operated upon--pretty good odds in that city.

(He went home a winner.)

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COVERING EVERY POSSIBILITY: Carol Ahearn came upon a building in San Juan Capistrano that housed three businesses and observed, “If two don’t work, the third will” (see photo).

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TO LIVE AND DRIVE IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA: Retired engineer Alan Nestlinger, who commuted by bus from Dana Point to the Santa Ana Civic Center for 10 years, had plenty of time to study the bizarre rituals of motorists from his window.

Two of his most vivid memories:

* “A driver balancing a plate of bacon and eggs on the steering wheel, eating with a fork.”

* “A bearded driver of a well-worn Volkswagen van with painted peace symbols and a ‘Question Authority’ bumper sticker vigorously playing a saxophone.”

* And, yes, he saw one X-rated scene, during which one of the participants looked up and smiled at Nestlinger. That episode will be more fully explained in my next book, “The Best of the Unexpurgated Only in L.A.”

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USC FAN ADVISORY: Phil Proctor of Beverly Hills spotted this license plate frame:

“UCLA BRUINS . . . Don’t Brake For Trojans.”

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HI YO PLUNGER! Art Vinsel of San Pedro noticed that there’s a South Bay plumbing company called the Lone Drainer and Pronto.

miscelLAny:

The laradio.com Internet site reports that when Mark Wallengren of radio station KOST-FM (103.5) declared that the best place for a single guy to meet a woman was a Laundromat, his co-host Kim Amidon retorted: “I don’t want to marry anyone who doesn’t own their own machine.”

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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LATIMES, Ext. 77083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st St., L.A., 90012 and by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com.