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The Doctor Said It Was Something the Patient Had to Get Off His Chest

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In a doctor’s waiting room the other day, Fran Roberts ran into Long Beach character Ski Demski and said I should ask him about his latest project: a phone directory that’s impossible to lose.

Demski, a frequent candidate for local office and owner of the world’s biggest flag (505 feet long), explained to me that he got the idea because he has a heart condition.

I visited his house, where he bared his chest to reveal the tattooed words, “In case of emergency.”

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Beneath that, Demski, age 71, had the phone numbers of three of his doctors tattooed, as well as his blood type (B negative).

Alas, Demski added that during a recent exam, his cardiologist, Dr. Alan Hermer, looked at his chest and said: “I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you have my phone number wrong.”

Hermer, it turned out, had stopped using that number. No problem. Demski had a new number tattooed beneath. And the outdated one? He had the artist draw a red line through it.

Wacky wheels: And now for this column’s first annual Really Rare Car Show (see accompanying), comprising such treasures as:

* A Subaru that predated the Model-T Ford (Bob Trounson of Sierra Madre)

* A one-of-a-kind Thunderbird (submitted by Charles Rollins of Corona).

* Acura’s secret attempt to make a Volkswagen clone (Hong Trinh of Pasadena)

And, finally:

* A Dodge pickup truck that is only a few inches long (Ula Pendleton of West L.A.).

He knew from Shinola: Mentions here of broadcast bloopers prompted TV veteran Jack Narz to write: “In the early ‘50s, I was the announcer on the ‘Bob Crosby Show’ on CBS-TV.

“Once each week, when coming back from a station break, Bob would ask the studio audience to be extra quiet because ‘Jack has a special announcement to make, and we all want to make sure that he doesn’t goof.’ Then he and the Modernaires and the entire cast and crew would stand in a circle around me with their hands held in the air with fingers crossed while I read: ‘And now back to the “Bob Crosby Show,” brought to you by General Foods--makers of Rit and Shinola.’

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“Followed,” Narz added, “by wild applause and shouting from audience, cast and crew after a blooper-free reading” of the dye and shoe-polish names.

Which partly explains why he went on to have a long career in television.

miscelLAny: The police log of the Seal Beach Sun said “a resident reported people were shooting air guns at each other and filming it.”

The participants “turned out to be from a church, filming for a sermon.”

Of the gunfire-and-brimstone type, evidently.

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