No Brains, but Great Hair
In today’s episode of “Stupid Driver Tricks,” Paul and Elizabeth Garino of Rancho Santa Margarita report they sighted a motorist who was proceeding merrily on his way with his head sticking out of his sun roof. Why? Apparently the gent, in a misguided gesture of energy conservation, was using the slipstream as a hair dryer. The Garinos said that when he brought his noggin back inside--still intact, luckily for him--he began styling his locks.
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AT LEAST HE WASN’T DRIVING: Is there anywhere in Southern California where someone hasn’t yakked into a cell phone?
Doug and Laurie Kerr of Irvine took a wild ride on the California Screamin’ roller coaster at Disney’s new park and afterward purchased a souvenir photo “of us with our hair plastered back from the hurricane winds.
“Not until I got home, and looked at the photograph closely,” Kerr continued, “did I notice the gentleman in the seat behind us. . . . He looks absolutely relaxed and in mid-sentence” (see photo).
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DESIGN FLAW: On a trip through Arizona, Sharon Underwood of Granada Hills came upon two signs that should be separated lest someone get the wrong idea (see photo).
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SURE, EVERYONE’S A KID AT HEART, BUT . . . : Dale Van Vlack of Pacific Palisades suspected that a passport form he was given was supposed to say “applicants of 13 years of age or younger” (see accompanying).
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A SWEET ENDING: Mike Hippler of Cypress tipped me to this police log item in the Los Alamitos News-Enterprise: “Some white powder given a girl was not any drugs, but ground up Pez candy because she recently got braces.”
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WHITT WAS A WIT: Longtime disc jockey Dick Whittinghill, who died recently at the age of 87, recounted many colorful tales of the radio world in his biography by the late Don Page.
Whittinghill, who bounced around at a few stations before settling in at KMPC from 1950 to 1979, was from a looser era, when sexual liaisons at work, for instance, weren’t uncommon. Nor was boozing.
He recalled that the owner of one station would take him out for martinis for lunch just before Whittinghill was supposed to begin his show. “In order to be a pro,” the owner solemnly told him, “you’ve got to go on the air, drinking.”
His big break was related to drinking--not his own, but that of a deejay at KMPC. Whittinghill replaced the jock, who was fired after he “got a real load on one day and climbed up onto the roof at KMPC and began hurling records (78s) all over Sunset Boulevard and hollering and screaming obscenities.”
Talk about a deejay spinning platters . . .
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IT WASN’T ALL RED HEARTS AND CHOCOLATES: Ever notice how many celebs seem to break up around Valentine’s Day? This year we had the Tom Cruise-Nicole Kidman and Ahmad-Phylicia Rashad marital splits and the end of the Puffy Combs-Jennifer Lopez romance. Hope you managed a smile this week, anyway.
miscelLAny:
You have to admire Channel 13’s wry sense of humor in one billboard advertising its coverage of next month’s L.A. Marathon. “Just what America needs,” the blurb says, “more reality television.”
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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.