Happy Hollyween!A colleague of ours reports that...

Happy Hollyween!A colleague of ours reports that when she saw “Ed Wood” at the Los Feliz Theater, there were some ghoulish treats in the lobby--free copies of the death certificates of Wood and Bela Lugosi.

Which seemed appropriate (at least for Hollywood), considering that Wood was the transvestite writer-director who specialized in schlocky horror features. And Lugosi was in his stable of players.

The Hungarian actor was supposed to have starred in Wood’s “Plan 9 From Outer Space” but died in the early stages of filming in 1956. Unfazed, Wood kept the footage of Lugosi and shot the rest of the movie using a double, whose face was obscured the entire time. No surprise that many film buffs regard “Plan 9” as the worst movie ever made.

Incidentally, the death certificate copies, in the true spirit of the City of Angles, were publicity handouts of a sort. They carried ads that proclaimed: “Compliments of Grave Line Tours--The Best Tour in Los Angeles. You’ll Dig It!”

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But what does his sidekick Doug Llewelyn say?One of the opponents of Proposition 190, which would restructure the state commission that disciplines judges, is retired L.A. Superior Court Judge Joseph A. Wapner.

He became better known as the star of TV’s “People’s Court.”

In fact, in one nationwide poll, Wapner had more name recognition than any member of the U.S. Supreme Court.

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Art imitates unreality: Turns out there’s yet another twist on the old urban folk tale about the kinky husband in the Batman costume. Stephen King’s 1992 thriller, “Gerald’s Game,” involves a woman whose husband cuffs her to the bedposts--one time too many as it turns out. She kicks him below the midsection, and he not only falls unconscious but dies of a heart attack.

In this version, though, the husband has no costume. He’s nude. (That’s our one gripe about Stephen King--the guy has no imagination.)

Anyway, some readers may consider King’s story a humorous twist. The husband is a lawyer.

Decision time: UCLA professor Byron Myhre photographed today’s sign on a street in Big Bear and was moved to quote Robert Frost: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

Especially with these rising health care costs.

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Why do we always end up on the road more traveled by?It seems as though every time we’re stuck in a traffic jam on the freeway, we see a billboard ad that says: TIRES JUST AHEAD.

And we feel like screaming: “We know! We know! All we see are tires just ahead!”

miscelLAny Mimi Melnick, co-author of “Manhole Covers of Los Angeles,” the authoritative work on that subject, is coming out next with “Manhole Covers.” It’s a collection of more than 200 photos of ornamental sewer lids taken by her late husband, Robert Melnick, all over the nation. Local shots will include one manhole cover from the UCLA campus. USC partisans will no doubt point out that the UCLA lid is symbolic of the inept Bruin football team’s position at the bottom of the Pac 10 standings.