DAWN OF destruction! screamed the head line of my paper. Apocalypse Cancelled Due To Lack Of Interest might have been more appropriate. I could have told you this was going to happen. In fact, I’m sure I did, in several of my more demented ramblings last year. But the least I expected was Hollywood to go out with a bang, not a whimper.

I am referring, of course, to the alleged earthquake in L.A. What a disappointment that turned out to be. The City of Angels can usually be expected to put on a bit of a show, but here, despite the hysterical coverage, there were no stars and few casualties. In South America, Asia and Eastern Europe, earthquakes demolish entire cities and claim hundreds of thousands of lives. The death toll in L.A., as I write, is 34. President Clinton spoke about designating California a national disaster area although there are probably more people killed in drive by shootings in Washington every week.

But I’m sure Bill was glad of the relief, since it temporarily distracted attention from his sex life, a genuine national disaster if ever there was one. And foreign correspondents would have been equally pleased: there can hardly be a better story than a non-life threatening emergency in a city with so m any good hotels. The TV was filled with men and women sporting ray bands and sun block, reported every aftershock that caused a ripple in the outdoor swimming pool and sent them diving for cover under the umbrella of another pina colada. You could tell this was an emergency because, at the Beverly Hills Four Seasons hotel, so many members of staff failed to show for work that room service could take as long as ten minutes.

Three days after the incident, the headline in my paper was Jittery Los Angeles Shivers Are Facing Months Of Gridlock. Maybe we should all club together and send them some bicycles.

HARVEY KEITEL

COMPETITION RESULTS

In the Christmas issue, I offered a bumper bag of prizes and all you had to do for a chance to win was answer one simple question about Harvey Keitel. Four of his films made it into my best and worst lists of 1993. Bad Lieutenant, Reservoir Dogs, The Piano and Young Americans. What, I wanted to know, was the fifth film he appeared in last year? I was astonished by the volume of replies, and embarrassed by the number of you who pointed out that Harvey actually appeared in two other films last year – The Assassin and Rising Sun – as well as the re-released Mean Streets. Any variation on that answer was accepted, and I was even kind enough to consider the people who went to the effort of filling in the entire Blow Up Movie Quiz, despite the fact that the answers were printed on page 96 of the Christmas issue.

The three winners, pulled out of my Bad Lieutenant baseball cap (it actually says BAD LT, which I keep having to explain to people does not stand for London Transport) are: Fintan Moor from Ranelagh, Dublin; James Finlan at Curragh Green, Galway and Denice Carney of Swinford, Co. Mayo. Prizes will be winging their way towards you just as soon as I can get my act together.

Harvey, a hot contender for Best Actor at this year’s Oscars, is continuing in what appears to be an attempt to get his name in the Guinness Book Of Records for most film appearances in any given year. He already has Bad Lieutenant director Abel Ferrara’s Snake Eyes (in which he romps with Madonna) and the Saturday Night Live comedy It’s Pat in the can, with Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs follow up Pulp Fiction on the way. He has completed filming his role in Imaginary Crimes and has just started shooting Theo Angelopoelus’ Le Regard d’Ulysse in a variety of European locations including Serbia (nothing can stop this man from getting on your screens, not even war). After that it is a change of pace for Harvey, when the crown prince of angst takes the lead opposite Rosie Perez in a romantic comedy about an out of work ex-cowboy TV star in Alexander (In the Soup) Rockwell’s Somebody To Love. I wonder how Harvey is going to work his obligatory nude weenie shaking scene into that one?

Given his apparent one-man mission to get male genitalia on the big screen, Harvey would be a natural to play the part of Lorena Bobbitt’s unfortunate husband in the forthcoming TV film versions of the case. All parties have apparently sold the rights to the story, although no-one is sure exactly who is represented the severed penis.

Lorena, who originally hails from Ecuador, has been receiving a lot of support from her compatriots. Before her ‘not guilty’ verdict, women’s groups in Quito were threatening to castrate 100 American if Bobbitt was convicted of malicious wounding. Ecuadorian men are not taking this groundswell of support lightly “I can’t come home drunk anymore,” one told reporters. “I sleep on my stomach,” another confessed. Bill Clinton reportedly cancelled a planned trip to Ecuador after the Secret Service told him they could not guarantee to protect the Presidential penis (well, hey, how can they protect it if he can’t even control it? Forget the Ecuadorians, it’s Hillary who Bill should really be worrying about.)

This has been Neil McCormick, reporting live from the poolside at the Hollywood Hilton. Woah, another ripple. Or was that just the wave machines? Keep the expenses coming, boss.