Just in Time for the Holidays, Get Your Own Piece of Tinseltown

It might be a bit too big to hang over your fireplace, but you can now bid for the original HOLLYWOOD sign on eBay.

Of course, you would have to bid a minimum of $300,000 for the 300-foot-wide, 45-foot-high dilapidated icon, which was torn down and replaced in 1978.

Warning: some assembly required.

“It’s in 10-foot sections,” said the owner, producer Dan Bliss, “but it’s manageable. You could lay it out in a field or inside a big facility and put it together like a giant puzzle.”

Admittedly, a few pieces would be missing. Bliss sold a 5-by-3-foot piece of the “H” to the Hollywood History Museum recently. But, he insisted, “only about 2% to 3% of the sign is missing.”

Bliss said the listing is generating excitement. “I just talked to a newspaper in Belgium,” he said. “And an amusement park in Germany is interested.”

Not everyone was enthusiastic, though.

“I don’t think the chamber would be interested,” said a staffer with the Hollywood, Fla., Chamber of Commerce when contacted by The Times.

Say again? We’ve all heard contradictory terms such as “jumbo shrimp,” “industrial park” and “honest politician,” but I didn’t realize the fertilizer business had its own oxymoron until I heard from Terry Foley of Norco (see photo).

Unclear on the concept: So what kind of a bank would call itself Killbuck Savings (see photo)? Well, report Mark and Kelly Wolschon of Redondo Beach, a bank in the town of Killbuck, Ohio.

Thanks for the warning: Suzanne Moore of Long Beach saw an ad for a dance floor that could be awfully slippery, what with the margarine surface and all (see accompanying).

Harrumph for Hollywood!: Readers of the Long Beach Press-Telegram were recently asked how they’d view Warren Beatty entering the 2006 gubernatorial race against Arnold Schwarzenegger. One reader, opting for None of the Above, said: “The last thing we need is another clueless but handsome movie star governing this state.”

miscelLAny: LaVerne Mersereau took note of an article in The Times about a bomb squad that blew up a suspicious object, only to discover it was an eighth-grader’s science project. Said Mersereau: “I wonder if this excuse would be better than ‘the dog ate my homework’?”