That Orbiting Hotel? It’s Now Off the Map

A year ago it was revealed that Hilton Hotels planned to fly in space experts, including former astronauts, for a closed-door meeting to assess the feasibility of an orbiting hotel.

I called the Hilton’s Beverly Hills headquarters Monday to see how the project was going (my family wants to vacation somewhere new during the holidays).

Alas, Hilton spokeswoman Jeannie Datz said the Lunar Hilton was no longer “on our radar screen.” It was shoved aside when Hilton acquired Promus Hotel Corp., which owned 1,500 hotels (all on Earth). The assimilation of those hotels was taking all Hilton’s time, Datz said.

She declined to say when--or if--the meeting with space folks would take place but sounded skeptical about the proposition. (The Hilton received a lot of kidding about the concept in the news media.)

An orbiting hotel, she pointed out, would raise many questions.

“Who’s in charge up there?” she said. “Who do you report a crime to? What kind of activities are you going to do? What are you going to eat?”

Ah, yes, the room service problem.

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CELL PHONE OUTRAGE NO. 5,312: At a Starbucks, Barbara Joan Grubman of Woodland Hills was relieved when she had advanced almost to the front of the line.

“The woman ahead of me had just received her order, paid her money, received her change and was about to leave,” Grubman said.

“Then her cell phone rang. She answered it and asked the person on the other end if they would like anything from Starbucks. Naturally, they did and so I had to wait yet another turn while the faceless customer on the other end of the phone had his or her order filled.”

Hey, be happy it wasn’t a conference call.

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GOBBLE, GOBBLE: Until I noticed that the shot submitted by Jim Rosenberg of Van Nuys referred to hunting season in Wisconsin, I thought it was related to the registration of TV shows for the fall season (see photo).

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RUBBED THE WRONG WAY: The Broadway show “Cats” has closed after 7,485 performances, and I know of one guy who isn’t sorry. He had a brief, unexpected role in the musical the night he attended as a spectator. When the cast ran through the aisles during one number, a feline-clad actress stopped to rub his bald head with her paw. The audience roared. His chrome dome is on display, by the way, at the top left of this column.

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Steve Harvey can be reached at steve.harvey@latimes.com.