Off-Kilter

Lunatic Fringe Department: Here’s something you probably never learned in school: Dinosaurs didn’t become extinct. They were kidnapped. According to cable-TV host Franklin Ruehl of Glendale, UFOs abducted the primitive reptiles and took them to interplanetary zoos.

Or maybe not. Ruehl says it’s also possible that the dinosaurs were superintelligent and built their own spaceships to escape the planet.

Pre-Previews Department: Something has to be done about the lame quizzes and ads that movie theaters show before the film starts. For example, some cinemas invite audiences to decipher such scrambled celebrity names as (no joke) “HITNEYW OUSTONH.” It doesn’t take a dinosaur rocket scientist to figure out that the correct answer is “Whitney Houston.”

As for the ads, well, let’s just say we’d like to keep our job here at “Get the story, get The Times,” so we’ll skip that category and instead tell you about an inane blurb that flashed up on the screen at an AMC theater. Actually, we might be off by a word or two because we were writing in the dark with a piece of burnt popcorn, but it went something like this: “We appreciate your cooperation in maintaining a quiet moviegoing environment.”

Uh, whatever happened to “Please be quiet”?

Candid Cameron: Every time we think we’ve finally seen the last of all this Titanic nonsense, the thing resurfaces. For instance, the Home Shopping Network recently sold lumps of coal recovered from the ship’s boiler room for $25 apiece. And designer Kathrine Baumann is peddling a $32,000 Titanic-shaped purse, according to U.S. News & World Report. Other Titanic-related merchandise includes a slew of paperbacks dealing with either the boat, the making of the movie or actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who played Jack Dawson in the film.

The latest rumor, which we are starting, is that director James Cameron is filming a Cliffs Notes version of the movie using one of the small ferryboats that shuttle cars and foot passengers to and from Balboa Island in Newport Beach. In the abridged version, DiCaprio boards as a pedestrian and Kate Winslet drives on in a BMW.

Normally, foot passengers and car owners don’t mingle, but Winslet rolls down her window, and she and DiCaprio fall in love during the three-minute voyage, which is cut tragically short when the ferry rams a Popsicle that was carelessly tossed overboard from another boat and sinks. We won’t give away the ending, but the special effects are amazing.

Random Facts Department: Off-Kilter can’t afford any of the Kennedy memorabilia that people keep auctioning off, but we did successfully bid on a collection of fabulous facts:

* Willie Nelson composed “On the Road Again” on the back of an airline barf bag. Very apropos, in our opinion.

* The average pencil can draw a line 35 miles long before running out of lead, according to statistics compiled in honor of National Cedar Pencil Week, which is this week.

* Chickens that watch TV lay eggs more often, eat less food, grow faster and seem happier, according to a study cited by the Internet news service https://www.tabloid.net.

Best Supermarket Tabloid Headline: “Man Shot Dead for Passing Gas in Restaurant Buffet Line!” (Weekly World News)

* Roy Rivenburg can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].

Contributors: Wireless Flash News Service, Allison Joyce