Mom Just Wouldn’t Duck This One

Take Your Mother to Work Day?

Don Barrett’s laradio.com Web site ran this yarn from disc jockey Rich Capparela:

“Mom was visiting from New York and had joined me in the studio to tend to her knitting while I did my shift,” said Capparela, who was then with KFAC.

“During one break, I started in about my best-picture Oscar picks, which were obviously tongue-in-cheek (to all but one person) and included ‘Hollywood Vice Squad,’ ‘Iron Eagle,’ ‘Cobra’ and ‘Transformers--The Movie.’ ”

“As I paused to deliver the punch line--that my pick for best picture was . . . ‘Howard the Duck’--mother interrupted during the silence with, ‘Platoon’? It was quite audible over the air. I stammered, ‘Ah, um. No, mom. Not really. I, um . . . oh heck, folks. Meet my mom!’ She complied with a demure, ‘Hello, out there,’ and I quickly went to music.”

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THANKS--BUT I’VE ALREADY BEEN SPRAYED: Libby Lent of Pasadena saw an ad that made her wonder if pet owners have to strip for their examination (see accompanying).

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TALK ABOUT LOW-CALORIE OFFERINGS: If the warm weather puts you in mind of ice cream, Jay Berman of Manhattan Beach cautions that the Krazy Kone shop in Montebello won’t help you (see photo). It’s a former ice cream parlor turned clothing shop.

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LITERARY EL LAY: Arthur Purcell notes that in the 1965 mystery “A Deadly Shade of Gold,” author John MacDonald calls L.A. “the world’s biggest third-class city.”

Not only that, the potboiler--part of MacDonald’s Travis McGee series--says L.A.’s night life is composed of “local cats, in the restless middle 20s, overdressed and slightly stoned, trying to look as if they hadn’t spent their week in insurance agencies, department stores, dental labs and office buildings.”

Or newspaper offices, in my case.

Alas, the book is hopelessly outdated now. As Purcell put it, “You know this is pure fiction when McGee finds most of the people he’s looking for by getting their addresses out of the phone book!”

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USA TODAY GOES FOR THE JUGULAR (ITS OWN): You can’t accuse usually mild-mannered USA Today of pulling any punches in a background piece on CBS-TV executive Steve Friedman.

“Friedman was the architect of USA Today’s television version,” USA Today wrote, “a daily news and entertainment program in the late ‘80s that came to be known as one of the colossal bombs in syndicated TV history.”

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L.A. MILESTONES: Sunday marks the 19th anniversary of the first (and last) Burbank Film Festival, which consisted of one movie, “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes,” generally acknowledged as one of the 10 worst films ever.

Organized by the Burbank Civic Pride Committee to capitalize on jokes about the city, the event included a fashion contest in which Carol Sanchez and Jo-Ann Bullerdick won as best entry (tomato and tomato worm, respectively). The fountain at City Hall spouted red-dyed water.

And the Burbank Choral Club gave a tender rendition of the film’s title song, which included these lyrics:

I know I’m going to miss her;

A tomato ate my sister;

Sacramento fell today;

They’re marching in to San Jose;

Tomatoes are on their way.

miscelLAny:

The only presidential candidate who says he has contacted extraterrestrials is Allen Michael of the Santa-Rosa based Utopian Synthesis Party. Michael says he was kidnapped by space aliens and taken aboard a spaceship while painting a billboard in Long Beach in 1947.

His press release neglects to say what happened next. I’m not talking about what happened aboard the spaceship. I wonder if anyone finished the billboard.

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Steve Harvey can be reached by phone at (213) 237-7083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com and by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053.