A vodka company, which polled 1,100 bartenders in Florida, says high on the list of pickup lines that won`t work this Valentine`s night, or any other night of the year, are: ”If I could be anything, I`d be your bathwater” and ”I just stepped in a puddle of you and I`ve got love all over me.”
PREHISTORIC PENTAMETER If you think maybe you would have been luckier in love if you lived during one of the glacial epochs, here`s some appropriate valentine sonnets, courtesy of the readers of Advertising Age:
– I know my knuckles scrape the ground. / I know my brain is small. / But you can always count on love. / From this Neanderthal.
– Roses are red. / Dinos are trouble. / You`re pretty cute. / But you`re no Betty Rubble.
– Your back is hunched and your brain is small. / Your brows connect, you`re not very tall. / Your teeth are brown, you grunt like swine. / You`re perfect! Be my valentine!
PREPPING FOR THE BIG EVENT The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine recommends an amorous valentine`s dinner that is low in fat and high in carbohydrates, such as pasta with olive oil, onion, spices, plum tomatoes and Great Northern beans. (The beans, the docs say, ”help your endurance.”) And in case anyone is worried, ”Cardiac events during sex make for good television sequences, but they don`t really happen that often,” said Dr. Richard Stein of the New York Health Science Center.
WORSE THAN TRAFFIC MOVIE In other news, officials in Tacoma, Wash., are reported close to approving a program in which people convicted of drunken driving would be required to watch autopsies in alcohol-related traffic deaths.
JOKKO`S NO JAILBIRD On the advice of counsel, Jokko, a 50-year-old parrot, kept his beak shut in an Oslo courtroom Wednesday while witnesses called on his behalf sang like canaries. The blue and red bird, who loves to pass time jabbering in his owner`s garden, had been charged with disturbing the peace after his squawking caused a neighbor to suffer a heart attack. It was ”like daggers in the stomach,” plaintiff Frank Andersen testified. Bird lovers will be relieved to know that a settlement was pecked out in which Jokko will be allowed outside on alternate summer weekends.
NOT EASILY COWED, BUT . . . With minimal training, antique milk cans can make excellent umbrella holders. One such container, however, did try to eat a child the other day. Justin Kinder, 2 1/2, who is not one to cry over spilt milk, is fine now. But on Monday, Justin was up to his neck in trouble, trapped in a 10-gallon milk can that he had climbed into at his home in Menlo Park, Calif. ”We tried putting butter on his shoulders, we tried everything,” said the boy`s father, Richard. 911 was called, and firefighters used a pneumatic chisel to free the boy. Understandably, his first request wasn`t for cow juice. Justin, milking the situation for all it was worth, was allowed to climb on a fire truck.
