The Iraqi government recently minted a new coin that is sure to be as popular down at the bazaar as the Susan B. Anthony coin was in this country some years ago. The coin`s inscription: ”Victory Is Ours.”
SLIGHTLY AHEAD OF THEIR TIME Not every product made in Japan makes its way across the ocean, or even out of the factory. The publications Direct Mail Life and the Nikkei Industrial Daily provide these reassuring examples:
– A roll-up crosswalk that can be unfurled whenever you want to cross the street and avoid a ticket for jaywalking.
– An industrial-size Swiss Army knife for gardening. Instead of containing knife, scissors and toothpick, it features a hoe, rake and shovel. – For around the kitchen, a slip-on thumbnail that can be used to peel oranges.
– For the man who wants to enjoy the natural feel of walking on grass while maintaining a proper corporate image, dress shoes with no soles.
– And odor-eating polo shirts.
ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK When approaching the city limits of most places, chances are there is a cheerful sign that says ”Welcome to . . . ” But in Oakland, Calif., the signs come off as more of a warning: ”Entering Oakland.” The financially strapped city has decided to inject some warmth into its greeting, if it can come up with $36,000 for 66 traveler-friendly signs.
A RESPECTFUL FOOD FETISH Rodney Dangerfield, showing The Star all the respect he thinks it deserves for publishing a report last year saying he romped with two naked women in his hotel suite at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, has filed a $10 million libel lawsuit against the supermarket tabloid. The story was a lie, Dangerfield said, although he confessed this about his sexual appetite: ”I`m at the age where food has taken the place of sex in my life. In fact, I`ve just had a mirror put over my kitchen table.”
BENCH-PRESSING THE BABY To any new parent who wants to get in shape in time for bathing suit season, hit the gym. And if you follow the regimen created by the Sentara Health and Fitness Center in Hampton, Va., there`s no need to worry about getting a baby-sitter. Vogue magazine reports on a low-impact aerobics class at Sentara ”in which mothers use their babies as weights.”
HOLY CROWD CONTROL! It would be asking too much of soccer fans in Europe to behave at matches like they were in church. But with spectator violence eclipsing the fouls on the field, the managers of the Wisla Krakow Club in Poland figured something had to be done. So they reached a deal with the Catholic Church in which seminary students will receive free season tickets in the hope the priests`
presence at the games will turn hooligans into just rowdy choir boys.
BISHOP`S LOVER SPEAKS OUT Vicki Long says her affair with then-Archbishop of Atlanta Eugene Marino started with Marino ”singing nursery rhymes to me, and then he lay down beside me. . . . It was pretty much over at that point. I didn`t seduce him,” said Long, who also has been romantically linked with another priest and a nun. Ending months of silence on Sunday, Long said Marino, once the nation`s highest-ranking black Roman Catholic, took advantage of her, but ”I fell in love with him eventually.”
WOULDN`T IT BE NICE? ”For all I know, the New World Order will prevail,” Roy Blount Jr. writes in Spy magazine. ”George Bush will modestly turn down the chance to be emperor of EBCAY (Everything But Cuba, Albania and Yemen), it will be revealed that somebody forgot to carry a couple of zeros back in 1983 and actually the federal government has been piling up enough of a surplus to straighten out all the banks and give every American a third VCR, the Bushes` dog will make a hip yet cannily wholesome video with Madonna and the Democrats will nominate narrow-faced senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska and Sam Nunn without realizing that this means their chances are Slim and Nunn.”
