Wanted: Fun couple from Texas looking for...

Wanted: Fun couple from Texas looking for new way to roughhouse. Must be something that won’t cause the husband, Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, to accidentally break the rib of his wife, B. A. Bentsen. That occurred earlier this month during a trip to Wyoming. According to a Bentsen aide, the 70-year-old senator was tired and ready for bed, but B. A. said she preferred to stay awake. So Bentsen picked her up, flung her over his shoulder and carried her off to a bedroom. Later, B. A. discovered the busted rib. Bentsen said he and B. A. have been roughhousing that way for years: “We always had fun doing this--both of us. But no more.”

The Princely Painter: Mark your calendars. Nov. 24. West Palm Beach. Norton Gallery of Art. It’s the world premier of “His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales: Watercolors,” a collection of 80 paintings by Prince Charles. The paintings were done over a five-year period. No word on whether Chuck will quit his day job.

Quoting: President Bush called Laurence Rockefeller a “national treasure.” Rockefeller told the President thanks and added, “We cannot rest on our laurels. Much remains to be done.” The occasion was Friday’s presentation of a congressional gold medal to Rockefeller for his decades of work in the “conserving priceless national treasures and historic legacies.” With help from Rockefeller, 72, additions to the national park system have included Wyoming’s Grand Tetons.

Splat, Splat: Just call it Tomato Therapy. And it’s not out of California. Try New England? Yup. Every year in Leverett, Mass., when the frost comes, the locals get together for a tomato fight. It is important to keep in mind that this community of 1,500--mostly craftspeople, farmers and college professors--is the last place you’d expect to find folks hurling fruit: It’s among the first “nuclear free zones” in the United States. But there they were Friday, rooting through their gardens in search of unripe, rotten and frost-damaged tomatoes, which can’t be cooked, canned or eaten. “There’s only one thing you can do with them,” said David Mager of the E-I-E-I-O Farm. On Saturday the “Archduke of the Supersonics” and the “Czar of the Jet Stars” were “executed” by a firing squad of tomato hurlers before combat began.