NOTEBOOK

By KATHLEEN HIRCE, JANICE M. HOROWITZ, JAMIE MALANOWSKI, STACY PERMAN, GABRIEL SNYDER, ALAIN L. SANDERS, JOEL STEIN AND SUSANNE WASHBURN

WINNERS & LOSERS

MODERN OCCUPATIONS: HELP WANTED

[WINNERS]

ELVIS IMPERSONATORS The King is dead; long live the ersatz Kings. After 20 years, the Elvis biz has never been better

TELECOM EXECS The Bell Atlantic-NYNEX merger may be no good for callers, but it's great for the corner offices

UPS WORKERS Americans don't like strikes, but they do like their delivery guys

[& LOSERS]

DOCTORS Bring back Marcus Welby. A.M.A. endorses a line of medical products. Physicians, heal thyselves

PLAYBOYS Dodi a deadbeat? Ex-girlfriend's suit says he didn't deliver; gives his species a bad name

CARJACKERS Hands off! Louisiana law says you can be shot on sight

POST BOX

PHILATELIC FELINE The Central African Republic, it seems, has a soft spot for Socks. But you don't have to go there to lick the back of the First Cat's stamp. The International Collectors Society, a privately owned stamp company, sells a block of nine for $12.95. The company, based in Maryland, is appointed by post offices around the world to help market and distribute special-interest or collector stamps, which are legal for postage in the country where they are produced and recognized by postal authorities worldwide. i.c.s. buys the stamps from the government, usually paying above face value, and covers distribution costs. The country takes a cut from the company's profits.

ASK DR. LABOR RELATIONS

DEAR DR. RELATIONS: I read that the UPS workers now on strike are getting $55 a week from a Teamsters strike fund. That doesn't seem like much, does it?

No, but in this case, as in so many others, the lesson seems to be that them that has, gets. When the Players Association struck Major League Baseball in 1994, veteran players received $10,000 a month from the association's strike fund, which had been fattened with the proceeds from endorsement deals. But not all fat cats think ahead. The National Football League Players Association went into its 1987 strike with no funds whatsoever, and players were soon crossing picket lines.

HE'S A WELL-READ, TRUCK-DRIVING MAN

After hauling a load 3,000 miles in three days, you don't need a Celestine Prophecy. Truckers, who seem to dote on books on tape, rent mostly adventure books, mysteries and sci-fi, according to Audio Adventures, a company based in Colorado that rents tapes at 450 truck stops to 50,000 members. The top July rentals:

1. Pretend You Don't See Her by Mary Higgins Clark 2. Last Rights by Philip Shelby 3. Underboss by Peter Maas 4. The Partner by John Grisham 5. Star Trek: First Contact by J.M. Dillard

LOOK! A BLIMPOMANIA LOLLAPALOOZA!

With no real purpose since the Wright brothers' invention was perfected, the blimp has spent the past 30 years as the lofty billboard of the Goodyear Corp. Now, for a fee of $200,000 a month, such companies as Alta-Vista and Russell Stover are causing dozens of jumpy citizens to call FAA with UFO sightings. Eleven blimps are flying somewhere around the country, and there will be 13 by 1998. That's almost double the blimpage of a year ago. Most of them are made by the American Blimp Corp. of Hillsboro, Ore., which has designed a blimpette, that is, one so small (130 ft.), so bright (it's interior lighted) and so cheap (about $1.75 million) that four blimps circled the Super Bowl this year. Last Monday the company introduced a larger, Goodyear-size blimp (rented by Sanyo, it's flying over San Diego), a 10-passenger dirigible it hopes to use for sight-seeing trips. Blimps are also being looked at for use in surveillance and shipping. But the most nostalgic entrance will come later this year when Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik, the good people who brought us the Hindenburg, begin test flights of a new model for the millennium.

HEALTH REPORT

THE GOOD NEWS

WHAT'S MY LYME? Doctors have isolated an antibody in spinal fluid that allows them to quickly detect if Lyme bacteria have spread from the site of the bite to the nervous system. Treated early, Lyme disease is easy to cure.

HEART HELPER Angina patients who take a newer form of the blood-thinning drug heparin (called low-molecular-weight heparin) have a much smaller risk of heart attack or early death than those treated with standard heparin.

BONE BUILDER Asthma sufferers and others who require high doses of cortisone run the risk of developing osteoporosis. But brittle bones can be prevented if patients also take the drug etidronate.

Sources: Journal of Clinical Investigation, New England Journal of Medicine (2,3)

THE BAD NEWS

PAST AS PROLOGUE If your parents divorce, you're also more likely to do so. Now a study finds that if you experience more than one divorce as a kid, you're four times as likely to go through multiple marriages as an adult.

TAKE ME TO A TEACHING HOSPITAL For many conditions that require hospitalization--heart attack, stroke, pneumonia--your chances of dying are nearly 20% higher in a nonteaching hospital than in a teaching institution.

SAY CHEESE Most of us should get 1,000 mg of calcium a day rather than 800, says a nutrition panel. That's about four servings of calcium-rich foods like cheese, milk, yogurt--or turnip greens.

Sources: American Sociological Association meeting, Journal of the A.M.A., National Academy of Sciences