A Speedy Tortoise Comes to the Rescue

Forget about guard dogs. For protection, Mrs. Ray Macy of Manhattan Beach says you can’t beat her African tortoise. “He sleeps with me and he woke me up at 2 a.m. one night when I had fallen asleep smoking,” she said. “He nibbled on my neck.”

MOVING ON TO CELEBRITY NIBBLERS: Frank Sheftel, owner of the Candy Factory in North Hollywood, says he’ll ignore a demand by attorneys for boxer Evander Holyfield to stop marketing sets of chocolate ears called Earvander Tyson Bites ($5 each).

Dented chocolate ears.

Sheftel said he has been donating profits from the sales to charity and has offered to let Holyfield designate his own charity.

The Candy Factory, by the way, is also marketing sets of chocolate teeth ($5 each) called Crunchy Christian (see photo) and Munchy Marv, in honor of actor Christian Slater and sportscaster Marv Albert, both of whom recently ran into troubles with the law for allegedly biting people.

MORE THAN A TEAR-DOWN: The city of Paramount received a call “from a moving company wanting to know where to deliver the house that was to be blown up,” reports the newsletter City Talk. Employees in the Community Development Department, though “obviously puzzled, offered the caller information about home relocation. However, the caller repeated that the plans for the house included blowing it up.”

It turned out the caller had confused the city of Paramount with Paramount Studios.

Let’s be careful. The city doesn’t want to be blamed for movies like “The Beautician and the Beast.”

PLAYHOUSE LOAN DEPT.: HomeAid’s Project Playhouse ’97 fund-raiser, an Oct. 18 auction of seven elaborate toy houses, is making an unusual offer. Anyone buying one of the custom mini-mansions at the Orange County event can finance it through Norwest Mortgage over two years with 30% down (information: 714-553-9510).

The structures have sold for as much as $26,500 at past auctions. Isn’t it reassuring to know that the playhouse real estate market, at least, is hot?

PERFECT MEDIUM: Gov. Pete Wilson has been described as “wooden” in terms of his personality. Possibly Long Beach artist Samuel Brantley had this in mind when he created a life-size likeness of Wilson, which is on display at Timbuktu, a Costa Mesa Gallery (see photo). Yes, it’s a wooden likeness.

NERD PRIDE: A while back I mentioned the case of Diane Kevorkian, who obtained a LADYNRD license plate for her red car and was surprised when someone asked why she would want a plate that said “Lady Nerd.”

Hey, what’s wrong with that? Caltech’s Stan Schwarz points out that his plate says IMA NERD, and make no mistake what it means.

AND THE ANSWER IS . . . As for this column’s Mystery Plate of the Week, I didn’t hear from the owner of IMAKUPU. But almost 50 readers agreed that it signifies a make-up artist. “Or a hotel maid who talks to the beds,” Henry Kline said.

miscelLAny:

How appropriate that blues artist John Lee Hooker would receive a star on the Walk of Fame in Hollywood now, during the MTA’s deafening subway construction project. After all, one of Hooker’s best-known songs is “Boom Boom.”

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Steve Harvey can be reached by phone at (213) 237-7083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by e-mail at [email protected] and by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053.