Hearts and subpoenas: Just in time for...

Hearts and subpoenas: Just in time for Valentine’s Day, notes Alan Frisbie of L.A., Fedco’s catalogue includes among its “February values” a “Do-It-Yourself Divorce Kit.”

List of the day: As you’ll recall from our last installment, Orleans restaurant has set Feb. 17 for a public meeting to decide whether to cover up the cutouts of three bare-breasted women on its balcony. Some neighbors have complained about the lasses, who are Mardi Gras symbols.

Past disputes over local naked lady artworks seem to leave no clear precedent for Orleans.

* A 60-foot-tall depiction of a bare maiden above a tunnel in Malibu was painted over by the county in 1966. Officials said the Pink Lady, as she became known, was trespassing.

* A decade later, a Saudi sheik painted the flesh, hair and body parts on four Greek statues in front of his 38-room mansion in Beverly Hills to the mortification of neighbors. He eventually moved away and the estate was leveled after a 1980 fire.

* The Naked Lady of Rancho Palos Verdes, on the other hand, survives. A 39-foot-high mound of dirt in the shape of a woman’s bare backside, she was contoured on a hill above Hawthorne Boulevard in 1991. The city ruled that she could stay because she was on private property and seemed in good shape (geologically speaking).

Alas, time has taken its toll on her.

“She’s not as noticeable as when she was freshly graded,” said Carolynn Petru, a city planning administrator. “She blends in with the other landscaping on the hill now. She was supposed to fill in (with grass) so she’d be all green but she’s sort of clumpy.”

If only earthquakes could be predicted as accurately: Douglas Haynes of L.A. feels that the city worker who placed the accompanying sign on Bellagio Road in Bel-Air should receive an award for prognostication.

Another cellular phone scare story: You’ve heard the reports that those trendy high-tech gadgets could be dangerous to your health. But what about to your pocketbook?

During a federal drug trial in L.A., a rep for a cellular company produced the suspects’ phone records--including calls that didn’t go through. She pointed out that the lucky prosecutors had unusually extensive records because users of such phones in the L.A. area are billed even for calls that aren’t answered.

Out of curiosity, Judge Dickran M. Tevrizian Jr. asked whether there were any areas where users are not charged for uncompleted calls.

“Just about anywhere else,” the rep answered.

miscelLAny:

The February issue of Wings magazine recalls that a B-26 that flew during the Korean War was christened the KTTV Channel 11 out of appreciation for a favorable feature the station had broadcast on one local squadron. TV and bombs just seem to go together.