Contestant Choked in the Last Quarter

I mentioned a while back that Richard Lefevre won an early round of the Nathan’s Famous hot dog-eating competition in Hollywood.

Alas, he ate less successfully in the finals, placing fourth.

Lefevre wolfed down 27 3/4 hot dogs in 12 minutes, about half what winner Takeru Kobayashi consumed. What bothers me about Lefevre’s performance is not the defeat, but that three-quarters of a hot dog.

Didn’t anyone ever teach him to finish everything on his plate?

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No lie: Panhandlers, like others trying to make money, keep an eye on trends. I’ve received reports (and snapshots) from around Southern California of various characters holding up signs reading, “Why Lie

It’s evidently a laugh-provoker that brings in donations. I even saw a reference to a Washington, D.C., moocher using the identical slogan.

So I wasn’t surprised when I came upon the phrase again the other day at a Long Beach mall. But I noticed that the supplicant had added a punch line (see photo). The absence of a question mark on his second sign left me wondering whether he was saying he was already well supplied with Prozac.

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What’s going on in Van Nuys? On Tuesday I talked about a thermometer at Van Nuys High that’s been giving off crazy readings (116 degrees at 8:52 a.m., for instance). Now, Alan Nino of Alhambra has chanced upon a chilling triple-digit warning (see photo).

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Dangerous driving (cont.): A. Miller of Whittier points out that the directions for finding one store seem to involve ignoring some basic rules of the road (see accompanying).

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Weighty proposition: Joe Gold, the physical fitness guru, died this week at the age of 82. Radio show host Brooks Melchior recalled that Gold, though wheelchair-bound, “was, until recently, personally overseeing the World Gym in Marina del Rey where I worked out regularly.”

On his www.sportsbybrooks.com website, Melchior wrote: “The best indication of his still-spry condition was last year, when he wheeled himself over to me as I sweated over free weights on the floor.

“The mastermind behind Arnold Schwarzenegger’s bodybuilding career, inventor of the modern workout facility and creator of the Gold’s Gym empire had sought me out with serious business in mind: Was my membership paid up?”

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You can’t be too careful: James Warren, a Riverside Superior Court judge, ordered a beer at San Diego’s Petco Park and was told by the counter worker: “I need to see your ID.” Warren didn’t enter an objection, though he’s 63 years old.

Press-Enterprise columnist Dan Bernstein asked Warren why he thought he was carded.

“I was wearing a floppy orange Padres hat on my head,” the judge responded. Also, “I don’t have a lot of lines on my face, but my neck is pretty bad.”

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Anchorpoet: My item the other day on broadcaster sign-offs included longtime anchor George Putnam’s “And that’s the up-to-the-minute news, up to the minute, that’s all the news.”

“Great timing,” wrote Kymberleigh Richards, “as it happens to be his 90th birthday.” She added: “Back in the 1960s when KTTV Channel 11 did both a 15-minute newscast at 6 and a 30-minute edition at 10, George would add, after the ‘up to the minute, that’s all the news,’ a rhyming tag: ‘Back at 10, see you then!’ ”

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And that’s all the column. Back on Page B4, tomorrow and not before.

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miscelLAny: How big a controversy is the breakup of the two Laker stars? ESPN’s John Ireland revealed that travelers arriving at LAX are now asked to declare, “Are you a Shaq fan or a Kobe fan?”

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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LATimes, Ext. 77083, by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st St., L.A. 90012, and by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com.