Potpourri

Putting Your Fantasies To Bed

Just when you thought it was safe to crawl back into the sack and sleep, along comes Bedlam, an adult bed game (is there any other kind?) that includes a fitted multicolored sheet and an oversize spinner that helps you determine what wild-and-crazy position you and your partner will adopt next as you turn fantasy into reality. If all this sounds complicated, there are also Anything Goes and Your Request spinner stops that are guaranteed to leave nothing to the imagination. Welch Marketing, P.O. Box 3538, Lakewood, California 90711, sells the game for $35.95, postpaid. Naughty boys.

One Potato, Two Potato

In these curious times, it's always nice to have a fallback position should Reagan's tax-reform plan become reality and pull the financial rug out from under everybody's Yuppie feet. Yes, there is an alternative to deductible lunches and property taxes, and that's the English-made, Victorian-style Hot Potato Handcarts that Pickwick's Victorian Kitchens, 2609 East Broadway, Tampa, Florida 33605, peddles for prices upwards of $3495. Pushing a pushcart ensures that you get plenty of fresh air; and on cold days, you can even fill your pockets with hot potatoes--just like the famous chestnut vendors in Paris do. And when hot potatoes aren't selling, you can also cook pies, pizzas, chicken and fish in the handcarts. Write for a brochure, you old hot-potato peddler, you.

Go Tell It On The Mountains

Mountain Travel, the "adventure company" located at 1398 Solano Avenue in Albany, California 94706, has been offering lengthy, luxe journeys to exotic locales for years. Now the company has introduced a series of economical quickie escapes, and the one we're packing for is The Annapurna Skyline Trek--12 days (including a four-day hike in the Himalayas) for only $1990 from Seattle, including air fare. And you also get two days in Bangkok. Go!

Mask Ball

Carnival time in New Orleans is great fun, but in Venice, they do it right, with elaborate costumes and masks right out of the Middle Ages. For the first time, signed-and-dated leather Venetian masks are being exported, and Pierro Vergata Interiors, a studio/gallery that's open by appointment only at 36 East 23rd Street, New York 10010, is offering them at prices beginning at $500 and escalating to about $1200. Hang one on the wall or wear it to bed the next time you feel frisky.

New Window On Wine

Kevin Zraly, New York's World Trade Center restaurants' wine director, has just written Windows on the World Complete Wine Course (Sterling), a hardcover book that pulls the cork on wine snobbery with its solid advice on how to select and enjoy vinos from Almadén to zinfandel. Zraly's wine course has been a sellout, and this $18.95 compilation of what he teaches in his class should also be a smashing success.

Thrilla From Godzilla

The next time some heavy breather gives you a call, instead of wasting your breath, just set the receiver in the arms of a Godzilla phone holder and let the recorded voice that screams in Japanese, "The end of the world is near! The soldiers have failed to stop Godzilla!" do the talking for you. It's $52.95, postpaid, from The Afton Toy Shop, 3290 St. Croix Trail South, Afton, Minnesota 55001. And for serious Godzilla fans, the table lighter is only $19.95.

Stuffy Company

Ah, there's Archibald Witherspoon, the faithful family butler, putting the moves on Claudette La Femme, the saucy French maid who never seems to learn. Both are so lifelike--in a kind of soft-sculpture way--that you'd think they were Practically People. And they are--as Practically People!, P.O. Box 3893, Minneapolis 55403, is their parent company. Archibald is 5'9" tall; Claudette, a petite 5'5". Both have flexible arms and hands--as they should for $1400 each, F.O.B. Minneapolis. Veddy good, Archie.

King Louis

The fellow who coined the phrase "Would you like to come up and see my etchings?" was Louis Icart, a French art-deco fashion artist who also specialized in lovely, leggy ladies. Icart's work is still prized, with originals going for megabucks. Fortunately, there is an alternative, and that's to check out the $10 catalog of Icart Vendor Graphics, a company at 8568 West Pico Boulevard, Los Angeles 90035, that sells reproduction Icarts such as the 14" × 28" Illusion pictured here. For $22.50, postpaid, it's a smoke dream come true.

The Spy's The Limit

Avengerniks, Bondophiles and even Man from U.N.C.L.E. junkies, take note: It's no longer a top secret that a new classy quarterly magazine named Top Secret, devoted to the secret-agent genre, has come in from the cold and out to subscribers. A year's subscription is $14 sent to Caruba Enterprises, P.O. Box 1146, Maplewood, New Jersey 07040, and the first issue, with its interview with Patrick Macnee, alone, should be worth that price. The second issue? Still top secret.