Translation of Sky-High Beverage Request Brings New Meaning to ‘Brewski’

On a recent airline flight, Jolene Collins of Tujunga was seated next to a Japanese man who appeared to speak no English.

When a flight attendant asked him if he would like a drink, he appeared confused. So, Collins helpfully said to him, “Coffee, Coca-Cola, 7-Up?”

The man thanked Collins in Japanese, turned to the attendant and said one word:

“Beer.”

What if you wear a wig? I read where Daniel Arap Moi, the 77-year-old president of Kenya, groused that he has been called an “old man because of my gray hair.” In that case, he added, “my age-mates who also have gray hair should quit politics.”

Which reminded me of a haven for such folks, found by Judy Carr of Santa Monica (see photo).

Actually, Graying & Balding is a company that produces videos and commercials.

Short-shrift for some customers: Follicly challenged folks would have no trouble qualifying for the discount spotted by Ann Walts of West L.A. (see accompanying).

Woman with a past: Just when you thought my series on Bullwinkle and Rocky was coming to an end--it has now gone on longer than the cartoon series itself did--Melanie Onofrio Haug contributed another chapter.

In her amusing new book, “Hollywood Impressions,” Haug includes a photo of the rotating Vegas billboard on Sunset Boulevard that was spoofed by the Bullwinkle and Rocky statue in the late 1950s (see photos).

While the moose (and friend) survive on Sunset, the showgirl is gone. She’s probably dealing blackjack somewhere.

Does anyone really come from Hollywood? Haug’s book is a memoir of growing up in Tinseltown in the 1960s and 1970s, which was like growing up anywhere else, unless you count experiences such as these:

* Having classmates at Hollywood High who cut classes to keep appointments with voice coaches or to work as backup singers at recording studios.

* Taking a job as a teenager at a hosiery on Hollywood Boulevard where one of her first sales was a glittering pair of pasties. She didn’t know what pasties were, so the customer--a man, naturally--had to point them out for her in the display window. (“I was a tap dancer not a fan dancer,” Haug said.)

* Landing another job as a teenager for a doctor on Hollywood Boulevard “who specialized in hormone replacement therapy for transvestites who, I suspect, were contemplating sex change operations. . . . The ‘girls,’ as they wished to be called, loved to chitchat with me.” I guess Hollywood isn’t quite Anytown, USA, after all.

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Steve Harvey can be reached at by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st St., L.A., 90012.