He has a short memory:Gary and April...

He has a short memory:

Gary and April Wayland of Manhattan Beach write that they chuckled when they heard that the interviewer on the new O.J. Simpson video was Ross Becker.

Becker, you may recall, is the former anchorman who quit KCOP-TV (Channel 13) last year because he was tired of what he called the “sold-out, disgusting, tabloid” brand of TV journalism in L.A.

TREE PEOPLE: The 72-floor First Interstate World Center is the sequoia of L.A. skyscrapers, so it’s fitting that the names of four workers in one office would be associated with trees.

The Maguire Thomas employees are asset manager Betty Grove, building secretary Leslie Forrest, senior operations manager Stephen Achorn and project accountant Karen Stump.

THERE SHE GOES--MISS RENTON! Little did Kathleen Thompson know when she won the Miss Renton competition that she would reign for 21 years. But the Seattle suburb abandoned the contest in 1975 and is only now reviving it. Thompson, a Beverly Hills property manager, says, “I think I still have my crown in storage somewhere, if it didn’t get broken. I know my mother still has the gown in one of her cedar boxes.”

HEY KIDS! Paul Friedman of L.A. found a store on Sunset Boulevard with an eye-opening--if not ear-shattering--pitch to youngsters.

LIST OF THE DAY: Some brainstorms of Mickey Rooney that never got beyond the planning stages, as described by the actor in his autobiography, “Life Is Too Short.”

* Mickey Rooney’s Two Ball Golf. Players at the 24-hour-a-day club would “hit a Wiffle ball off the tee and a regular golf ball on the green,” Rooney explained.

* A round hot dog with a hole in the middle. Eaten in a hamburger bun, the Weenie Whirl would come with mustard in the middle; other variations would have cheese in the hole (called a Yankee Doodle), relish (a Micklish) or raisins and pineapple slices (a Surfboard Weenie).

* Disposable shorts and panties--”for men and women who traveled and couldn’t be bothered doing laundry.”

* A cologne called Trapeze (slogan: “There’s Danger in Every Drop”).

* A melon-flavored soft drink called Mickey Melon.

* Hair in an aerosol can--”something like cotton candy. You just sprayed it on your bald top and it stuck there till you washed it off.”

* Elim, a pharmaceutical company--”I invented Elim-N-Ache, for headaches; Elim-N-Ate, a laxative; Elim-A-Weight, for dieting; and Elim-N-Itch, a foot powder.”

THE ROAD TO DIVORCE: In her autobiography, “After All,” Mary Tyler Moore links the breakdown of her marriage to producer Grant Tinker with his distrust of her driving. “Whenever Grant and I had separate cars . . . he always insisted on following me in case I encountered trouble of some sort,” she writes.

But once they reached home, she adds, Tinker’s “thoughtful act” turned into a “review of my driving skills: ‘You pulled into that lane without signaling on Ventura and Laurel’; ‘Didn’t you see the broken pavement on Coldwater?’; ‘You anticipated the green light at Sunset and Bundy.”’

It’s enough to make you reach for your bottle of Elim-N-Ache.

miscelLAny Fox Inc., which owns the rights to TV’s “America’s Most Wanted,” has filed a federal complaint against Grove Television’s “Tough Target.” The suit alleges that the Chicago show’s “America’s Most Stupid” segment infringes on Fox’s trademark. “Stupid” obviously is a sacred word in television.