The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 52

E4 MONDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1998 LOS ANGELES TIMES fa) LZ3 .4 41 What do you get when you cross Darth Vader with an elephant? An elevader. (Joshua Gltomer, 7, Redondo Beach, Me- ear: By Roy Rivenburg, Times Staff Writer Skyscraper Pop-Tarts Department: The world's biggest Pop-Tart will be assembled Tuesday at New York's Madison Square Garden. In honor of the treat's 35th birthday in 1999, Kellogg's commissioned the pastry, which will measure 25 feet by 35 feet and consist of 10,000 individual Pop-Tarts fused together with 800 pounds of white icing and decorated with 150 pounds of colored sprinkles. The behemoth strawberry-flavored Pop-Tart will be available for eating immediately after construction assuming someone can find a toaster big enough to cook it. Cluttered Calendar Bureau: October is traditionally known as the time for Halloween, Columbus Day and famous stock-market crashes, but it also hosts National Toilet Tank Repair Month, National Liver Awareness Month (check your liver), National No Salt Week, National Popcorn Month (popcorn without National Pizza Month, National Healthy Lung Month, World Vegetarian Day (which happens to occur on the first day of National Pork Month), National Auto Battery Safety Month, National Lupus Awareness Month, National Apple Jack Month, National Dental Hygiene Week (which may be undone by National Cookie Month and National Dessert Day), National Dinosaur Month, National Sarcastics Awareness Month (like we National Depression Education and Awareness Month (all these celebrations are bumming us out) and National Roller Skating Month.

October also includes a 150th birthday bash for Hammacher Schlemmer, the catalog company known for selling the first electric toothbrush, the first microwave oven, the first pocket TV and, of course, the first regulation-size home bowling alley ($4,300 for one lane) and the first two-person submarine, which was billed as a "product to solve everyday problems" (such as sinking that two-person enemy aircraft carrier in the neighbor's pool). Deep-Sea Halloween Department: We've heard of underwater basket weaving, but now there's under A Safe Departure: White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry is stepping down. "Saying he wants a job with more truthfulness and integrity, McCurry is becoming the spokesman for professional wrestling." (Premiere Radio) Loony Toon: Nickelodeon is broadcasting a special to help kids under 10 understand the Clinton scandal. "A big-screen TV has been set up in the Democratic Congressional Caucus Room." (Jerry Perisho) Dreis Rehearsal: CBS won premiere week thanks to its top-rated new drama "L.A. Doctors." "That's a show where the stars perform plastic surgery on each other." (Russ Myers) Pulling Stunts: Professional wrestlers promoting a new credit card appeared on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

"Their appearance gave traders the chance to meet others who knowingly deceive people." (David Chrlstensen) Power of Pete's Pen: Pete Wilson vetoed a bill that would have required HMOs to cover mental illness. "It was unnecessary because most crazy people are covered by their plan as elected government officials." (Gary Easley) Raising the Rope: It's all right to be 30 pounds overweight. "How do you know if you're 30 pounds overweight? Well, for starters, if you're less than 5 feet tall, weigh over 170 and look like the third from the left on the evolutionary chart" (Kenny Noble Cortes) The Reserves: The fiscal year has ended with the first budget surplus since 1969. "The Democrats want to save the surplus for Social Security. Republicans want a tax cut I want an apology from them both for putting us in debt in the first place." (Premiere) A Leaky Mess: There have been more grand jury testimony leaks from the Clinton case.

"I thought grand jury testimony was supposed to be secret There have been so many leaks lately, they ought to just call it cloth diaper testimony." (Cortes) In the Beginning: Los Angeles is celebrating its 217th birthday. "This town was small then only three Starbucks." (Bill Williams) Mountain Man: Ross Perot made an appearance on CNN and berated President Clinton. "He was just nuts. You get the feeling that if Ross Perot hadn't gotten rich, he'd be writing manifestoes in a cabin in Montana?" (Jay Leno) SEND US A LINE: Got a joke? Send it to Laugh Lines by fax, (213) 237-0732, or mail, Life Style, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053. norah Community Day School) What kind of license does a refrigerator have? A license to chill.

(Amanda Wyslnger, 7, Los Angeles, Frank D. Parent Elementary) What did the boy pizza say to the girl pizza? I'm peppery baby! (Nancy Le, 10, Los Angeles, Excelsior School What has eyes but can't see? A sewing needle! (Elizabeth Paz, 13, Beverly Hills, Beverly Vista Junior High) It's sweet. It's furry. And it's frozen on a stick. What is it? A pup-sicle.

(Dylan Sauer, 6, Newbury Park, Cypress Elementary) Do you know how corn listens to you? By their ears. (Yasamlne Torbatl, 8, Los Angeles, Mount Washington School) KIDS, GOT A JOKE? Send it to Pint-Sized Punch Lines by fax, (213) 237-0732, or mail, Life Style, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA 90053. Print (or type) your full name, age, hometown and school. Please note that we try to avoid jokes we've published before. And please be patient.

water pumpkin carving. On Oct. 18, the town of Queensland Beach in Nova Scotia, Canada, will hold a jack-o'-lantern contest in which scuba divers plunge into the ocean with pumpkins and diver's knives. Previous winners include a pumpkin carved to resemble a cat and another designed in the image of a scuba diver, complete with mask. DOONESBURY By GARRY TRUDEAU in ma I AerSjc CAin MPS BACK ANt? CHAT-TINS tVf7H AB0UT1HSM5B5 IN WASHINGTON- 8 BUT WHEN I YOJ7URN47, FORTT.

M5Y0UN6ANP inMl ias ru tun eammwY I tMONA I Wvesew I STFEAK. I SQU5AWCLSAH I MfGOOP I i ffiRSINCB I I SWORN IN.A 77ir BACK XTJi lt994-J Receding Hairline Does Swimming with Barbie need Rogaine? That's the ques- the pumpkins, tion before a federal court in Maryland, where a Canadian doll collector has filed a $200,000 lawsuit over a prematurely balding Barbie. According to the Baltimore Sun, the dispute began when Janice Amundson ordered a rare "Color Magic" Barbie doll originally sold in the 1960s and featuring dyeable hair from an Internet auction site. Amundson says the $1,800 figurine arrived with brittle locks that fell out in clumps. The seller claims it's either an act of God or that Amundson tampered with the doll by trying to dye its hair.

"There's residue around the hairline suggesting it happened," she said. Best Supermarket Tabloid Headline: "California Women's Libber Forced to Clean Alien Spaceship!" (Weekly World News Online) The UFO abductee is now undergoing therapy to recover from the trauma of being "forced to do housework." Roy Rivenburg's e-mail address is roy.rivenburglatlmes.com. Unpaid Informant: Wireless Flash, Chicago Sun-Times, Daily Scoop, Valerie Marz Baby's Name CaUght in the Middle TOYS Continued from I Continued from El A Grim Fairy Tale Taken From History Dear Abby depends on where you are. -RICHARD J. KLEIN Phoenix Dear Richard: You're right.

In our ever-shrinking world, it's to everybody's benefit not only to learn about other cultures, but to keep an open mind as well. It was all he had to give So its yours to use and cherish For as long as you may live. Ifyoulosethewatchhegaveyou It can always be replaced. But a black mark on your name, son, Can never be erased. It was clean the day you took it And a worthy name to bear When he got it from his father, There was no dishonor there.

So make sure you guard it wisely, After all is said and done You'll be glad the name is spotless When you give it to your son. FICTION THE GIANT, O'BRIEN by Hilary Mantel Henry Holt $22, 192 pages ABIGAIL VAN BUREN Dear Abby: I am pregnant and due in November. I want to name my son John Charles Kwiatkowski III. My father-in-law's name is John Kwiatkowski and my husband's name is John Kwiatkowski Jr. Neither of them has a middle name.

My sister-in-law says that altering the name, by adding or changing the middle name, negates the title. Don't the royals in England do this all the time? Who is correct? -KELLY-JEAN KWIATKOWSKI Warminster, Pa. Dear Kelly-Jean: I can't speak for the British royals, but your sister-in-law is correct By giving your son a middle name, you make it different from the name of his father and grandfather; therefore, he will not be third in rank. Perhaps you might enjoy this little poem to include in your son's baby book: YOUR NAME (Author Unknown) You got it from your father Dear Abby: I recently received a wedding invitation from a relative in Oregon. I was surprised to see enclosed with the invitation a bank deposit slip and a request to help pay for the mortgage on their "dream house." Is this a common practice with wedding invitations? This request made no mention of money in lieu of traditional gifts.

Am I expected to give a monetary gift along with another gift? The wedding is soon, and I'm waiting for your response before I send money or buy a gift -STUMPED IN SAN DIEGO Dear Stumped: Send a gift and ignore the request for money unless you can send a little toy bird that says "Cheap, cheap!" To reach Abigail Van Buren, write to Dear Abby, P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069. Dear Abby: Regarding same-sex adults holding hands while walking in public, I was reminded of the orientation we received in the Navy in 1948, prior to going ashore in Istanbul, Turkey. We were told that it was common for Turkish soldiers to walk in public holding hands, and that unless we wanted to instigate a fight, to simply ignore it On the other hand, we were warned that men in uniform would be targets of ridicule if they ate an ice cream cone in public! Values, values and values all future corpse grows. But it is the giant himself, O'Brien, who occupies the center ring, not with the enormity of his body but with the beauty of his poetry.

Against all odds, he is the man of the Age of Reason, with an outsized sensibility to match his frame. Prized by his fellows as much as a fabulist as a freak, he can match the ribald with the romantic, the boasts of his sexual conquests reading like some bastard child of Cleland and Wordsworth. "When the years have flown," he tells the Fleet Street gawkers, "and my dear delights are grandmas, they will need only to think of the business we transacted, and their dried parts will spin like windmills in a gale." The most fascinating of O'Brien's tales are mutations of other authors the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, to name a few stories we recognize as stories in the same way we recognize the giant as a man but whose limbs and joints have grown into freakish horrors. Snow White is housed and fed by the seven dwarfs, but the social contract of the Giant's version insists that every service has its price. Charity exists only to give the maiden a choice of bed and dwarf.

Rescuing princes are few, and the rabble is many. Beyond the forest lies a village that has little patience for perversion. "When night fell, they saw the light of torches dance between the trees." The shocked populace has become a lynch mob, beating the dwarfs to death and chasing Snow White "into the forest, screaming, barefoot and without her cloak, until she was lost among the trees, and the night's blackness ate her up." It is one thing to spin fiction from history and another to spin truth from fiction. These grotesqueries are Mantel's grandest creations. announced only one other toy licensing agreement, with Uncle Milton Industries although others are in the works.

Uncle Milton, maker of the Ant, Farm, is producing a line of Mart toys that will include a robotic arm based on the one used by the Mars Pathfinder rover. But surely it doesn't take a rocket scientist to come up with a rover? The only way Mattel was able to duplicate the rover's suspension system was by going to JPL, which holds a patent on the design. "Because there is so much information available, I think kids and parents and teachers are demanding a heightened level of reality," said Chris Byrne, editor of Playthings Market Watch, a New York-based toy industry newsletter. JPL won't sign agreements with companies who want to make fantasy toys. "We get some companies that say, 'We want to make something with flashing martians on Horvath said.

"We say, 'Thank you very much. Have fun with Now on the drawing board is a Mattel toy replica of the Galileo spacecraft, which is orbiting Jupiter. Mattel's designers recently visited Galileo's desert tracking station to learn about the spacecraft's orbit. JPL insists on realism to the point that the toy will incorporate Galileo's famously stuck antenna. The Mars Pathfinder toy is so realistic that the mission's lead engineer, Howard Eisen, pulls it out of his pocket when he wants to point out a feature on the lander, for instance, to a scientist Eisen, 30, was assigned to help Mattel's designers, who visited JPL's spacecraft assembly clean room to watch the mission team work on the real thing.

"Those guys are very much like us," Eisen said. "They get to dream up the next new superhero. We get to dream up the next new crazy mission to Mars." The toy, he said, is more real than he could have imagined. -Count the solar panels atop the toy rover the real robot's solar panels have the same number and configuration. Turn the toy upside-down details of wiring and diodes are molded on in the right spots.

Check out the cleats on the toy wheels the number and texture mimic the Mars rover's. "When I give one of these to my grandkids," Eisen said, "I get to show them this is what the rover really looked like and back then, we had these gallium-arsenide solar cells, and that's how they were arranged." For Cheaters, It's Not All Regrets By JONATHAN LEVI SPECIAL TO THE TIMES Spinning facts into gold, the coin of fiction, is the peculiar joy of certain novelists. Dull patches of history catch the eye of these alchemists, encouraging them to heat their secret crucibles until history glows with the fire of literature. Often the residue is dross. But in the case of "The Giant, O'Brien," Hilary Mantel has turned out the real thing.

The facts are simple. In 1782, a Scottish doctor acquired the corpse of the renowned Irish giant O'Brien; the skeleton hangs today in London's Royal College of Surgeons. Onto these bones, Mantel drapes an equally simple story. Driven from Ireland by hunger and the promises of an agent named Vance, O'Brien and his train of drinking buddies descend on England seeking fortune in the circus that is London. And a circus it is although not in the Barnum Bailey world of Tom Jones or Moll Flanders.

Too skint to afford the rococo makeup of Fielding or Defoe, Mantel's thieves and whores are simply hungry people, petty entrepreneurs with their eyes open for the chance to make a farthing, whether it be off a talking pig or a giant At first, in their bumbling way, the Irishmen succeed, attracting a well-heeled crowd of the curious rich. The most energetic voyeur is the Scottish doctor himself, an anatomist named John Hunter, a surgeon forced by the superstition of religion to engage grave robbers and worse in order to advance his particular corner of medical science, "what they call in England a crocus interested in cutting up whatever he finds at the limits of life." As the novelty of the giant wears thin among the plutocracy, and as the giant sickens toward death, Hunter's interest in the nent in our rather small town, and had children about the same age. After 12 years of a discreet affair, we decided to divorce our spouses and get married. We braced ourselves to accept the consequences. We were supremely happy for 33 years.

Our children were not judgmental. They were pleased that we had found so much happiness with one another. My darling passed away a few months ago, and I cherish the years we had together. Was it worth it? Absolutely, positively, yes. Rapid City, S.D.: My affair happened 10 years ago.

Do I regret it? Yes, with every fiber of my being. My wife deserved better than the pain and disgrace I gave her. Our children were devastated. We were divorced, and from then on, everything went downhill. My advice to any man with a family who is thinking about having an affair is don't do it To reach Ann Landers, write to Ann Landers, 435 N.

Michigan Chicago, IL 60611. demands on them. No one was deceived, and no one was hurt. My straying contributed a lot toward my mental health, and I'm sure it did the same for my partners. All involved said it made them happier and healthier.

Nobody felt diminished or damaged. Plscataway, N.J.: i am "the Other Woman" in that well-known triangle, and I can tell you it was not worth it I was miserable from the guilt and isolation my cheating imposed. How did I finally extract myself from that dead-end relationship? I woke up one morning and asked myself, "If he would leave his wife to marry you, how can you be sure he won't leave you for the next woman who appeals to him?" I'm ashamed of what I did to his family and mine. He swore they didn't know about our affair, but I doubt that this was possible. To answer your question, "Was it worth it?" No way.

No Name, State or City: Was it worth it? You bet! We met when we were in our 40s, both in unhappy marriages and both promi Dear Readers: The response to my question "Was cheating worth it?" has produced so much mail, I'm devoting two days to the subject. I hope you enjoyed Sunday's column. And now, here's another one: From Hot Springs, I am 65 years old and have "strayed" with five different women. My wife is a fine person, but thanks to her strict religious upbringing, she believes sex is for procreation only. After we had our family, she cut me off completely.

I do not believe a healthy, married man should be expected to lead a celibate life, so I became interested in other women. This is not an excuse it's an explanation. None of the "other women" were after anything more than a little pleasure to brighten their lives. All were close to my age. I was not looking for a "trophy blond." The women made no demands on me, nor did I make any For the Record Bookshelf "Volk," a novel by Piers Anthony, can be purchased over the Internet from http.

www.xlibrit.com or http. www.pulpless.com. An incorrect address was included in a reader's review of the book in Thursday's Life Style. A.