Company Uses Its Heart, Not Its Head

On Tuesday, Vanda Krefft received an e-mail blurb that began: “It’s almost Valentine’s Day. Are you still looking for that perfect someone? Is that perfect someone the type that might run a ‘personals’ ad in the classifieds?�

Sure, the e-mail was three days late. But, as Krefft points out, consider the source--the e-mail was sent by a company called Dummies Daily.

FROM DUMMIES TO . . . : Susan Falbo of Valencia saw the words “Block heads back on campaign trail� in a local newspaper, and wasn’t surprised one bit (see excerpt). Election time is approaching so, naturally, the dolts are out making their promises. OK, maybe “block heads� should have been one word.

GREAT VIEW: The Venice branch of the TBWA Chiat/Day ad agency is moving to Playa del Rey, meaning that its well-known building, with the 3-story-high binoculars (see photo), will be available for lease. But who would be an appropriate tenant? I’d nominate the Audubon Society. Or a Neighborhood Watch group. The Internal Revenue Service? OK, I’ll stop.

ANNALS IN FREEWAY LITERATURE: No wonder so many writers live out here. “Duel,� the 1971 Dennis Weaver movie about a driver pursued by a maniacal diesel truck driver, was inspired by an incident in L.A.

Richard Matheson, who wrote the screenplay, said the idea came to him, bizarrely enough, the day President Kennedy was assassinated.

In the book “Dark Thoughts on Writing,� Matheson recounted how he and fellow writer Jerry Sohl broke off a game of golf when they heard the news.

“So we were driving home through the San Fernando Valley,� Matheson said, “when a truck began tailgating us through this narrow pass. And really tailgating us--to a point where Jerry had to speed up and pull over to the side of the road, spinning around and raising dust and everything. And on top of Kennedy’s assassination, to have this happen, we were, like, screaming out the window at this guy.�

But, Matheson added, “being a true writer, as soon as the car came to a halt and the dust came down, I borrowed an envelope off of him and wrote down the story idea.�

CRIME AND PECS: I couldn’t help but think of the ad campaign of one Portland, Ore., gym when I read a story in The Times about plans by California prison officials to prohibit inmates from weightlifting. The Oregon gym’s get-in-shape pitch warned: “1.5 million convicts have nothing better to do than work out all day. Are you prepared for their parole?� The ad’s tag line said: “And you thought they were writing their prison memoirs.�

TITANIC REVELATIONS! Chris Majeska of Alta Loma sent along a page from Boating magazine, which carried this item about the movie “Titanic�:

“Boaters who saw that mega-budget flick snickered when the helmsman of the doomed ship swung the wheel to port as a fellow shipmate cried, ‘Turn hard to starboard!’ Now we really know why it sank.�

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I would have thought that in this day and age the following use of language, spotted by Max Backer of Harbor City, would not be tolerated. But, no, some very politically incorrect folks are evidently still operating out there. The Tennessee hotel where Backer stayed listed among its conveniences an “ironing broad.�

Steve Harvey can be reached by phone at (213) 237-7083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by e-mail at [email protected] and by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053.