Playboy After Hours

Anyone who doesn't know by now that the Soviets invented everything hasn't been doing his party-line homework. For fresh evidence, we submit the case of the American tourist traveling in a Russian train who pulled one of the small new transistor radios from his pocket. A Soviet citizen, fascinated by the gadget, finally blurted: "We have lots of those. What is it?"

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Several issues past, you'll remember, we remarked with pleasure on a new trend in bar titles, citing The Men's Room, in Chicago, as an example. The trend continues and, in choosing handles for their bistros, bar-owners are beginning to show consideration for the man who calls home with, figuratively speaking, one foot on the rail. Harried white-collar types will find explanations easy when they call from The Office, in Bloomington, Illinois. And, for calling in to the office, when the workaday world seems intolerable, we suggest The Living Room, in New York City.

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Teen-Ager Lipstick Corp. has come out with an Elvis Presley Lipstick, engraved on the case with the gyrator's autograph. The color is, brace yourself, Hound-Dog Orange.

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Jacks-of-all-trades will be happy to learn that specialization has received a setback from the Venetian Isle Motel in Miami, Florida. Prominently displayed on the establishment is a sign reading "Guests wanted -- no experience necessary."

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A tidal wave of reader response washed in recently, in reaction to our song titles for an LP called Music for World War III. We suggest you hum these through clenched teeth: In the Shade of the Old Mushroom Cloud; Were You There When the Ocean Boiled Away?; I'll Be with You in Atom-Bombing Time; Gone Fission; If You Were the Only Girl in the World -- And Damned if You Aren't!

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California's Matson Navigation Co. announces that The Lurline, a luxury ship, is available for charter March 22-26. Better bust into the ol' piggybank before you apply, though. The cost (with crew, food and entertainment): $25,000 a day.

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The following sign, spotted by one of our spies in a New York clothing shop, proves what we've known all along -- that retailers have a sense of humor:

"I have a brother who was recently electrocuted for murdering our parents, two days after they were released from an insane asylum. My sister, who is expecting her third child, is thinking of getting married to a fellow with a venereal disease. I recently met a girl who is serious enough about me to give up her job in a brothel to marry me, if I say the word. My problem is this: Should I tell her I'm in the men's wear business?"

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Ever wonder about the problems involved in running a school? Insight into administrative headaches comes from President Clark Kerr of the University of California. He says, "I find that the three major administrative problems on a campus are sex for the students, athletics for the alumni and parking for the faculty."

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Travelers to Great Britain were treated to the sight of more than the leaves falling this last autumn. Thousands of English lovelies had their stepins sabotaged by a manufacturer who glued the panties' waistbands together instead of sewing them. Result was that, after repeated washing, the unmentionables we've mentioned traveled ankle-wards. First victim was the Countess of Haddington. As she opened an exhibit at Edinburgh, spectators got an uninhibited exhibition they hadn't expected.

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The frenzied efforts of the flick flacks become more and more bewildering as movie ads get blatter than ever. In his syndicated column, Sydney J. Harris has offered a Layman's Lexicon of Show Business that dissipates the obfuscation. Here are some of his entries:

"Raw human emotions! means a cast of characters who behave toward each other as inhumanly as it is possible to get away with."

"A gay and naughty French farce commonly means the sort of infantile nonsense that the French public grew tired of two generations ago."

"And now, for the first time, Hollywood dares to ... means that the film is perspiring foolishly over some trite sexual situation that Chaucer tossed off in a couplet of his Canterbury Tales 600 years ago."

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That newspaper mistakes, both typographical and semantic, can make column-culling a happy chore, is made abundantly clear by the following amiable errors: A reducing salon announced its grand opening with an ad in a Tulsa newspaper that included this guarantee: "... 3 Months Free if We Fail to Get the Following Results in 60 Lays ..." And, from the classified column of a Montreal daily: "Unmarried Girls to pack fresh fruit and produce at night."

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Buddy of ours who rides one of the Mad Av commuter specials from Connecticut reports overhearing a solicitous chap advising his seatmate to ease up on his favorite tranquilizer because it was habit-forming. "But it isn't," said the tranquilized one. "I know: I've been taking three a day for the last four years and I haven't got the habit yet."