All Aboard! Next Stop: A New Face

What type of contest would really catch the attention of Californians?

Well, Amtrak is holding a drawing in which the grand prize will be “$5,000 toward a face lift.”

Billboards advertising the give-away carry such startling messages as “Your face could stop a train.”

(Just what you want to read while mired in a traffic jam.)

To qualify for the knife, you need only be an adult resident of California.

No photos are necessary. And you don’t have to climb aboard a choo-choo.

You can apply at a train station or online (https://www.winafacelift.com) for a chance to win your new mug or assorted other prizes from South Coast Plaza and Universal Studios.

The contest is a promo for Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner--”We’ve got a whole new train, you can win a whole new you.”

It’s replacing the old San Diegan line, much to the dismay of reader Miles Post.

“That name (San Diegan) has some history and is not as much of a tongue-twister as Pacific Surfliner,” Post commented.

The change is sort of a slap in the face of San Diego too. Of course, it’s difficult to feel sorry for a city that recently graced L.A. with billboards that said, “Don’t Hate Us Because We’re Beautiful.”

SPEAKING OF INCREDIBLE OFFERS . . . Dan Fink of L.A. sent along a pizza company’s notice of “Free Jobs” (see accompanying).

You mean the employee doesn’t have to pay the company to work there?

Now there’s a switch.

NO JOKES ABOUT CRASH COURSES: Charles Mulholland of Encino came upon a traffic school bearing one of the most famous names in the annals of transportation (see photo).

REVISIONIST HISTORY: Imagine the poor tourist who comes to L.A. and sees the signs ringing the 27-floor building with a pyramid-crowned tower at Civic Center (see photo).

No matter what the guidebooks say, the joint ain’t City Hall.

No, City Hall is “located across the street on the east side of Main Street.”

There it is--an 18-story, rectangular white tower, hardly an architectural monument.

You’d think that, out of respect, the signs would say that the building will once again become City Hall after it has undergone a face lift of sorts.

TEMPER, TEMPER: After reading the urban folk tale here about the gray-haired woman who purposely plows into the car of a young smart-aleck who cut her off, Tom Greene was reminded of a story with a Hollywood twist.

This one involved Oscar-winning writer William Goldman (“Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” etc.) who was at a meeting with some empty-headed studio folks who were giving him dumb suggestions about a screenplay he’d written.

Finally, Goldman stood up and supposedly growled a line somewhat similar to the punch line uttered by the gray-haired driver: “I’m too old and too rich for this.” Goldman stomped out.

Of course, he didn’t crash into anyone.

FURTHER PROOF THAT NEW YORKERS ARE JUST CRAZY ABOUT L.A.: “The Professor and the Madman” by Simon Winchester is a book about W. C. Minor, an inmate in an insane asylum in England who contributed thousands of definitions to the first Oxford English Dictionary by mail (the editors didn’t learn of his status for many years).

Now it’s time for the new OED. And the New York Times took the occasion to level a sly dig at L.A.

The newspaper said that one of the biggest contributors of the new tome is Stuart Y. Silverstein, an author and attorney. The story noted that Silverstein “does not live in a mental hospital. (He lives in Los Angeles).”

miscelLAny:

The news that the six stars of the NBC sitcom “Friends” signed two-year contracts paying them about $44 million each reminded me of one of my favorite bumper stickers:

“Friends Don’t Let Friends Watch ‘Friends.’ ”

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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.