The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 259

JOYCE HABER Ego-Tripping in Six Letters or Less ciety and just-people license plates JACK LEMMON: JALEM (the name of Jack's production company. MGM RECEPTIONIST: YENTA (the plate that Lemmon's wife, Felicia" Farr, had applied for) GENE KELLY: DADDY 3 (Gene has threechil-dren). NATALIE WOOD (Mrs. R.J.) WAGNER: NWW NWW (because Nat has had that name twice, by virtue of her two marriages to Bob). IRVING LAZAR: IPL (agent Irving switched from his nickname Swifty, to his initials).

NEIL DIAMOND: ND RRT (Tycoon). CARROLL O'CONNOR: UGO PRD (for his Ugo Productions, which in turn is called after Carroll's son Hugo in Italian, for reasons I don't under- stand). -n DAVID CARRADINE: 7 GRAIN (David's a health foods freak). v. FRANK SINATRA: FAS III.

ERNEST BORGNINE: BORG 9. ROBERT EVANS: RE 13. DINAH SHORE: -GRUNK (the name of one of her favorite JOAN RIVERS: STARLT STIRLING SILLIPHANT: SHAFT. FLIP WILSON: KILLER (for Geraldine's boy-friend). 'y DEAN MARTIN: DRUNKY.

JUNE ALLYSON: JUNEY. Thirty-five states, from Alaska to Vermont, now. issue personalized license plates. You pays youf money and you takes your choice more or less. New York's department of motor vehicles just censored 245 three-letter combinations on that state's standard three-number, three-letter yellow and navy blue license plates.

Among the taboos: SEX, LUV, JOY, WOW, EEK, NUN, CAT, BOG, HOG, COW, PIG. "If a cop's private car got PIG he might be upset," a spokesman for the department explained. "If some women got COW, they might be upset" Not so California's Gisela (Mrs. Arte) Johnson, who chose "the word KUH in German) for her Mercedes. Arte chose BULLE because the Johnsons are freaks for bovines.

But why do they spell in German? Gisela was born in Germany. New York allows motorists to pay an ex-' tra $5 if they want to choose a nonbanned combina-' 'tion, but California's system is freer and more individual. Twenty-five dollars extra, which goes to the" Environmental Protection Fund, entitles our drivers to pick any numeral or letter combination of six or less. Not that we don't have censorship here. My ex- sister-in-law tried for TINK which: happens to "be her nickname.

Her application was rejected be-: cause someone suspected the wbrel was Publicist Joe Siegman, on the other hand, got awayv-with PIM: apparently no one at motor, vehicles knew that "Pirn" is Hebrew" fortbreaking "Wind. In a recent Price-Stern-Sloan paperback called "Those Crazy License Plates," "author Dave Gra- ham lists 140,000 registered combinations. They include BILLME, TVDOG, RECKER, PUNDIT. MA- CHO, APET, AQUEEN, BNASTY, ARBABY, CALLME, ATEASE, BEDPAN and BEAVER. Here are some of the more intriguing celebrity-so EDIE WASSERMAN: EDIB 1 FOSTER BROOKS: A LUSH.

RICHARD CARPENTER: SONG 4 U. MARILYN AND ALAN BERGMAN: WORDS 1 WORDS 2 REDD FOXX: FOXX (in Nevada) FOXXX (in LYLE WAGGONER: MR COOL. TELLY TELLY. LAWRENCE WELK: Al AN A2. CASS ELLIOTT.

ISIS (for the Egyptian love goddess). RUTH AND RICHARD CARTER: KOTCH 1 and KOTCH 2 (Dick produced LUIS ESTEVEZ: LEG. WILLIAM (hi3 name, spelled backwards). JOHNNY GREEN: MUSIC. ALANA AND GEORGE HAMILTON: GH 1 GH 2.

GEORGE SCHLATTER: BIG CSV iPAUL WILUAMS: HOBBHV I BAILEY K. HOWARD: BKH through: BKH 8 (Howard's a car freak). KFWB RADIO, LA- 4 NE 1 (an all-news Station). Please Turn to Page 27 BURT PRELUTSKY Changing a Name He Couldn't Handle It never fails to astonish me the way that certain, seemingly ordinary, even humdrum, individuals can be transformed into so many Mr. Hydes when it comes to naming their pets and their children, I don't know what demon possesses these people to name their dogs Nip and Tuck or Mutt and Jeff.

Still, I don't suppose that the animals are unduly traumatized by this bizarre quirk in 'their owners' it comes to naming their offspring however, trauma is the order of the day. Re cently for example, there was an item in this paper, as reported by Jennings Parrott, regarding a man who has spent 34 years with the Florida Bureau of Vital Statistics. Over those years, it seems, he has had occasion to record 4 birth certificates for Emancipation Prbclama- tion Cogshell, Sports Model Higginbotham, Starlight Cauliflower Shaw and Mac Parents of twins appear overly inclined to-, wards whimsy, as attested to by such living examples as Pete and Repeat, Early and Curly, Bigamy and Larceny and even A.C. and D.C It would be easy enough to dismiss these aberrations as peculiar to Florida, a state in which the seasons are broken down to hurricane and nonhurricane, and all the, first families trace their ancestory to alligators and crocodiles. But, clearly, this sort of mischief knows no geographical boundaries.

For in- -stance, when I was in the second grade, there was a kid in my class named John Smith. Now, I have no idea what he is doing for a living these days. I do know, however, that he can't check himself and Mrs. Smith into a hotel without getting the old fish eye from the desk clerk. But, embarrassing as that may be, he's in yet a bind when it comes to filling out official forms.

For you see he was born on Oct. 31 and hope you don't think youVe talking about ua high class Italians, you rotten S.O.B.' But I also get old ladies climbing on stage in "Vegas, carrying jars of fish and sauce for me. Tom Jones gts hotel keys and lingerie I get jars of fish I asked Cooper whether he, like many other comics, was a frustrated ham. "No, not really. I make a ton of now.

I don't need to try to do everything, to prove something like a Jerry Lewis. But, just for kicks, Id love to play a maniac And I'd like to do just one western wearing my horn-rimmed glasses. There were blind, guys like me in those days, right? So how come you never see a cowboy wearing glasses? I mean, you get two guys with eyes like mine out -on. Main St. for a shoot-out without our glasses, and we'd still be shooting a week later." Not only does Cooper work three months out of 12 in Las Vegas, but he and his family live there the year around.

I wondered if that suggested an affinity for the gaming tables. "No way. If you make $20,000 a week, why blow it? 1 know guys who pull down two and even three times as much as I do, and they're constantly in debt because they leave it at the tables. But," let's face it, they're fools. Once you live here, Vegas is just like any other town, except that the weather is better.

Of course no place is perfect, but you just have to learn to fight back. For instance, I've, done business with the same bank since I moved here, nearly four years ago. Well, one day they kept me waiting eight hours, for my mortgage papers. So I got myself a safety deposit box and stuck four pepperonis in it for a month. The stench drove them crazy.

But I've never been kept waiting since." Proving, I suppose, that at least where Pat Cooper is concerned, the question of what's in a name definitely takes a back seat to what's in the safety deposit box. his parents, in a flight of autumn fancy, noted the occasion by bestowing on the innocent babe the middle name of Halloween. He can be grateful, I suppose that he wasn't hatched on Feb. 2. It seems to me that, short of a federal law preventing such jokes from being perpetrated, a victim such as Emancipation P.

Cogshell should be encouraged to sue Ma and Pa Cogshell and the law should look the other Way if Mac Aroni ever decides to sever his family ties with a sharp axe." On the other hand, anyone blessed with so euphonic a handle as Pasquale Caputo should be prevented, by force if necessary, from changing his name to Pat Cooper. Pasquale Caputo, alias Pat Cooper, is a nightclub comic. He's an Italian version of Sam Levenson, his act and his conversation consisting in great part of his childhood recollections: "We had 45 religious statues in. our house. It was pretty spooky.

I mean, how would you like to have 90 eyes staring at you every time you sat down to eat?" I wondered what had ever possessed him to swap Caputo for Cooper. "Well, 18 years ago, when I was first breaking into show business, you couldn't use an ethnic name because you couldn't Use ethnic material. Everybody was too touchy. Besides, with a name like Pasquale Caputo, there was always the danger that the club owners would figure you did your act in Italian." About the reaction of Italian-Americans to his act, Cooper says, "They run the gamut. I make it obvious that Tm Italian and that I love Italians, but I still get hate mail.

I got a couple, of beauts recently. One said, 'I hope you die. Are you dead yet? and the other one was, 1I toi Sfastle calendar, Sunday, june 16, TWENTY flYI.