Will Presidential Passions Scorch the Screen in ‘Requiem for a Heavy Date’?

Did Kenneth Starr know about this? In an issue of Back Stage West, Jeff Bass of Hollywood noticed a casting call for a love story involving an ex-president and an ear-chomping boxer (see accompanying). Unclear whether the story is based on fact.

Cal State Lame: My Signal Hill correspondent, Val Rodriguez, forwarded an obituary about a fellow L.A. State grad who had a devilish sense of humor.

As student body president of the school (now Cal State L.A.), Harry Hooper came up with the idea of the school’s original mascot name, Los Diablos.

“He thought it would be humorous to have sports teams be the Diablos from the City of Angels,” his daughter Kathy told the Long Beach Press-Telegram.

Alas, the name was changed to the dull Golden Eagles a few years ago because some saw satanic connections with Diablos.

Hooper said at the time: “It’s too bad people try to find evil where there isn’t any.”

Guide to Adventurous Dining: While in Australia, Deloris St. John of Laguna Niguel came upon some mystery meat (see accompanying).

Speaking of being bugged: Larry Wayne of Irvine saw a flier from a sullen housekeeping crew (see accompanying).

USC football--shhh! In years past, USC has advertised its football team on freeway billboards with swaggering messages such as: “More Blood Than an Episode of ‘ER.’ ” The problem is that the team invariably went on to suffer a disappointing season, making the billboards seem ridiculous.

This year, KMPC-AM (1540) is broadcasting the Trojans’ games, and the radio station is taking no chances with its promos. I saw a billboard that said, in huge letters: “Trojan Games Heard Here.”

Even the most rabid UCLA fan would have trouble finding fault with that!

A rumor frozen in time: In an article on longevity proponents in My Generation, an AARP magazine, author Peg Tyre shoots down an urban folk tale about Walt Disney.

Tyre writes that although there’s a company in Scottsdale, Ariz., that will freeze your body “in the hope that a future generation will thaw you out,” Disney is not there.

“Contrary to popular myth,” she writes, Disney “was no pioneer” in the field of cryonics and was, in fact, cremated in 1966.

Not that L.A. has been inactive in the immortality game. Tyre cites the Extropy Institute of Southern California, which preaches that “our lives [should be] extended by having tiny robots [called ‘nanobots’] injected into our veins.”

Extropy also holds that if you contract a terminal disease, you can live on forever by having “your personality uploaded onto a computer.”

But can you survive a hard-drive crash?

miscelLAny: Andy MacDonald of San Diego holds the world record for longest jump on a skateboard (56 feet, 10 3/4 inches), as I read in Dig magazine.

Yes, Dig (“attitude you can read”). Did you ever stop to consider the lengths your 55-year-old columnist goes to in order to find items for you?

*

Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LA-TIMES, 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.