Clever, These Hollywooders

Not
long ago a producer, director and writer drove to Santa Barbara for a
preview of their new movie. On the return trip, around 2 a.m., on a
lonely stretch of Highway 101, they ran out of gas. It can be
stipulated that it was a dark moment.

They started hiking and
came to a motel, roused the landlady, and asked if they could use the
phone. She was furious at being disturbed and said no, the phone was
only for the use of tenants.

Could they rent a room and then, as
tenants, use the phone? No, she said emphatically. They weren't going
to get around her by any such sneaky procedure.

THEY WALKED BACK to the car and finally flagged down a passing motorist who drove them to a gas station. Along toward dawn they got home.
   
Now,
when they're out around 2 a.m, usually at a party, they phone the motel
and when the landlady answers sleepily they say "Sorry, wrong number"
or even naughtier things.

One of them recently scored a
climactic triumph. He phoned her from Washington, D.C., and claims that
for a moment he had her convinced the White House was calling.

::

PAY NO attention to Bill Graydon,
the ad man. He claims he took a wrong turn at the open house of IBM's
new western headquarters on Wilshire Blvd. and came upon a technician
working on the open back panel of a huge computer. Was it a maze of
coils, wires, transistors, fuses and whatnot? Nope, just ants, millions
of them, adding, subtracting and eating holes in the punch cards.

"It's tough on the ants," Bill says, "but I guess you can't stop progress."

::

FOR NON-VOTERS
He who will not speak will find he's spoken for
By spokesmen who may make decisions he'll deplore.
-William Baffa

::

DEATH OF
Frank Lloyd Wright recalled to publicist Lee Pitt the time the
iconoclastic architect came to Houston and met the press in the much
ballyhooed Shamrock Hotel.

First question asked was, "Mr. Wright, I'd like to ask what you think of the design of this hotel?"

Wright glared at him and snapped, "Why?" and walked away. Shortest press conference Lee Pitt, then a reporter, ever covered.

::

TRAVELERS WHO cross the international dateline in the Pacific are inducted, in a gag ceremony, into the Ancient and Honorable Order of Shellbacks.

 Well,
the men who go under the polar regions in atomic submarines also have
an organization — the Ancient and Honorable Order of Blue Noses.
Robert E.Waddell, electronics mechanic at Autonetics here, who was
aboard the Skate when it was in the Arctic Circle for 35 days and under
the ice for 12 days, reports their noses are painted blue, theirmouths and throats sprayed with blue liquid and they are required to eat a blue meal. Vegetable coloring, let us hope.

Furthermore, those who go under the pole become members of the Polecats in an even more gruesome ceremony.

::

FROM GOV. Brown's Library Week proclamation: "We need to read in order to toughen
and make resilient the intellectual vigor with which we face our
problems; expand our mastery of the scientific revolution in which we
live; enlarge our understanding of the other peoples of the world;
renew our spiritual and cultural heritage; rededicate ourselves to the
ideals of a free society." And to escape television.

::

AT RANDOM —
People who weren't afraid of lung cancer say they'll quit cigarettes if
the 3-cent tax on them goes into effect … Russ Morgan, just returned
from a tour with his orchestra, reports a coffee shop in a small Texas
town had an item on its breakfast menu, "Three-minute eggs at your own
risk." He didn't order them … The Dodgers were rained out at Vero Beach, snowed out in their opener. Next spring, Les Wagner thinks, maybe they should stay home. We need the rain.