Tiger Woods and His Iron Gut

In the April edition of Golf Digest, you can match yourself against the feats of Tiger Woods in a dozen offbeat categories, including the amateur sport of taco consumption.

Woods, who grew up in Cypress, recalled a gorging duel with a classmate.

“It was a $5 bet right before a high school match,” he said. “He ate 12. I ate 14.”

Who knows? Maybe some day Woods’ll open his own chain of taco eateries, Tiger Bell.

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GUIDE FOR ADVENTUROUS DRIVERS: I mean the ones in cars, not on golf courses.

Malvin Wald of Sherman Oaks saw a “break” offer from a garage that led him to ask, “Is it a chop shop?” Alan Dougherty of Mission Viejo found a “free” brake inspection that costs a pretty penny. Scott Hinkle of Rancho Palos Verdes noticed an air-conditioning special that included a check for really, really big pools of fluid. And J. Rasmussen of Claremont discovered an Auto Club map with a 1767 copyright. I bet the Santa Ana Freeway was clogged back then too (see accompanying).

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WORSHIPING WEIRDNESS: USA Today published a list of “10 great places for oddball exhibits,” including Minneapolis (Museum of Questionable Medical Devices), Worcester, Mass., (The American Sanitary Plumbing Museum) and Old Lyme, Conn. (The Nut Museum).

I’m shocked that the Southland accounted for only two: the Museum of Death in Hollywood, which has a dandy collection of electric chairs and other execution devices, and the Museum of Jurassic Technology, which has artwork on pinheads but no dinosaurs.

Sad to say that the Liberace Museum in Las Vegas, which made the list, could have been an L.A. shrine. In the early 1970s, the entertainer actually opened a museum in his home overlooking the Sunset Strip, charging $5.90 per person (the proceeds went to charity). But the neighbors complained of traffic jams.

Palm Springs and Milwaukee also discouraged efforts to establish Liberace museums. Milwaukee? Surely you knew that was his hometown.

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UNCLEAR ON THE CONCEPT: In his cyber column, entertainer Phil Proctor of Beverly Hills reports a friend’s son went into a jewelry shop to buy a small gold crucifix for a girlfriend. The counter person asked: “Do you want the plain one or the one with the little man on it?”

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TEN YEARS AGO: Six offices of the Department of Water and Power that were furnishing bottled water to their employees reverted to tap water after admitting they had made an “administrative error,” a spokeswoman said. Seems the agency had just spent $500,000 on an advertising campaign to persuade people to drink from their taps.

A seventh office that was using bottled water said it wouldn’t be able to switch back to the tap stuff for a while, because it was having “a problem with the plumbing.”

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ANNALS OF WEIRD CRIMES: In its “Police Log,” the Los Alamitos News-Enterprise reported this call from a Cypress resident: “March 9, 2:56 a.m.: A woman heard something break in her kitchen, then a ‘rushing’ noise that she thought might be her gas line, but which was her pet rat chewing through the dishwasher hose.”

If that were my pet rat, I’d donate it to the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices.

miscelLAny:

Patience Tekulsky--I would have printed anything from her to get that name into the newspaper--wants to thank the Department of Motor Vehicles for inadvertently sending her a vanity plate.

It reads: 4JSF931.

“You might ask what is so special about this one since I received it at random for my just-purchased new car,” said Patience Tekulsky (I just wanted to say the name one more time). “Well, look again . . . 4JSF931: For Just A Sexy Female Born in 1931.”

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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, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053 and by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com.