Life May Be Sweet for Fitness Guru, but His Daily Fare Isn’t

Well, Jack LaLanne’s birthday passed a couple of weeks ago, but he didn’t celebrate it by swimming 26 miles underwater from Catalina to Long Beach, as he’d promised.

Maybe it had something to do with the fact that the physical fitness guru is now 90 years old. Or maybe LaLanne, a wily promoter, is holding out for a better TV deal.

It’s not like him to pass up a birthday without performing a spectacular stunt. At 70, for instance, he swam more than a mile across Long Beach Harbor while pulling 70 boats carrying 70 people.

Of course, it’s also true that Elaine, his wife of 46 years, has vowed to divorce him if he tries the Catalina-Long Beach underwater route.

And she wasn’t at all reassured when he told her: “I can’t afford to die. It’ll wreck my image.”

Chasing LaLanne: I tried to reach him Thursday, but he was somewhere between New York and Cleveland making personal appearances, either on land or at sea.

While in Manhattan, he did pause long enough to declare, “I haven’t had dessert since 1929,” the New York Times said.

Talk about willpower. For starters, that means he has passed up his own birthday cake 75 times.

Turning to jogging (in a sense): The Beach Reporter said a witness observed someone with a “heavy build” running from a parked car with a broken window in Redondo Beach.

The fleeing man had apparently smashed the window with a large rock, then taken the victim’s purse. Officers noticed a person matching the suspect’s description about a block away at a Fatburger restaurant. The diner denied any involvement but, funny thing, officers observed that he was perspiring, as though he’d just had a brisk run.

He was arrested after the witness identified him and officers found “an ignition key from the victim’s vehicle wedged under the table” where he was dining.

More cop stuff? David S. of Los Angeles noticed an ad for what appears to be an undercover police quartet (see accompanying).

Dueling numbers: On one Nevada roadway, Harley Hudgens discovered it’s a gamble to figure out what the correct speed limit is (see photo).

This gasoline situation is getting unbelievable! Richard Mathews of Northridge and a couple of other readers spotted a station where gas is now more than $20 per gallon (see photo).

miscelLAny: Author Biff Mitchell is conducting an auction on EBay to see who will pay the most to be a character murdered in his next pot-boiler, “Murder by Burger.” The novel involves a number of people who mysteriously die at the dinner table. Alas, people have not responded hungrily to the offer. After one week, the high bid, as of Thursday afternoon, was $202.50. The winner, by the way, “gets to choose what they eat themselves to death with,” he said. I know LaLanne believes that a realistic plot would have dessert as the culprit.

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.