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SONUVA GIPPER: OOPS

In hot water over his hot temper is Michael Reagan, who left a message on a photographer`s answering machine that capped profanity with indiscretion-”I hope your . . . family dies in a plane crash with you in it.” The former president`s son, ruefully admitting the message, said he did it in response to a subpeona from Los Angeles photographer Roger Sandler, who wants $1,500 for two uncredited pictures used in Reagan`s 1988 book, ”On the Outside Looking In.” Sandler wants something more now. He`s filed a police complaint. Under California law, obscene, annoying or threatening telephone calls can result in 6 months in jail. Said Reagan, ”I lost my cool.”

A HUFFY PUFFER WINS ONE The prospect of a train ride without nicotine was too much for smoker Torill Marshall, so she complained to Norway`s rail system about the absence of a smoking compartment. Her cloud of protest carried weight. Marshall got an entire car to herself for the seven-hour ride from Oslo. Said the grateful addict: ”I`d rather sit on my own and have the chance of a puff than sit around and mope with all the nonsmokers.”

HILLARY: EVEREST IS TRASHED Is Mt. Everest a mountain of trash? Sir Edmund Hillary thinks so. ”A great deal of rubbish and junk has been left on the mountain,” said the famed climber, who was the first to ascend the world`s tallest peak, in 1953, with Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay. ”There have been far too many expeditions jostling their way up,” said Hillary, 69, whose feat has been replicated on 259 occasions. Now New Zealand`s ambassador to Nepal and India, Hillary argues for a five-year moratorium to give nature time to recycle debris. ”I think we owe it to the mountain not to constantly harass it as it has been in the past 10 or 15 years.”

MAO SELLS CHEVYS-BRIEFLY Slamming hastily into reverse is General Motors, which has yanked a dialectically-opposed Chevrolet advertisment after viewers saw red. The 15-second TV commercial, aired in the West Coast states, showed a Chevy Beretta stopped at a traffic light. Inside was a couple playing kissy-huggy on the front seat. Innocent enough. Then comes the clinching quote-”All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience.” Cute. But when viewers connected the quote to an improbable shill-Mao Tse-tung-image makers at GM got nervous. TRUMP EVICTS TRADER VIC`S ”Tacky,” is how Donald Trump describes Trader Vic`s in New York`s Plaza Hotel. As the Plaza`s new owner, Trump has told the franchise to take its thatched roofs and dugout canoes elsewhere. The eviction, after 25 years of ersatz Polynesian fare in the Plaza`s basement, saddened Trader Vic`s fan Richard Nixon, who said: ”My entire family will be very sorry to see it close . . . It was always our daughters` favorite restaurant, and it quickly became mine, too.” Trump said he`ll build a health club and classy Japanese restaurant in its place.

AND NOW, TEARS OF JOY Good news came at an opportune time for Sheila and Alan Marshall of Normanton, England. Soon after hubby`s employer announced plans to close the coal mine, her employer of nine years announced layoffs for everyone. Instead of crying, the Marshalls are celebrating. Following her pink slip was news that she had won $1,122,180 in Britain`s soccer pools. They`ll ponder unemployment in Rio.

NOTHING INCONGRUOUS HERE Hoping to slow the AIDS epidemic, city officials in Berkeley, Calif., are considering a proposal to require safe-sex kits in hotel rooms. ”Certainly, if hotels can have a Gideon Bible in every room, they can include a safe-sex kit,” said nurse-practitioner Leland Traiman, a clinical AIDS researcher. Each kit would contain condoms and information about how AIDS is transmitted. ”There could be a sign with each kit saying, `The Bible may save your soul, but this will save your life,` ” suggested Traiman, who will outline her proposal at a city hearing in February.

A SPACEY IDEA? WELL . . . Once it was the stuff of science fiction. Now it is plain science, said physicist Edward Teller, father of the H-bomb and foremost advocate of the

”Star Wars” defensive shield. In a talk at George Washington University, Teller advocated orbiting computer sensors in space to detect an incoming meteoroid and ”send out something to meet it and give it a little sideways shove” before it could crash into Earth. That ”something” would be a hydrogen bomb. Teller reminded the group of the enormous damage done to Earth in 1907, when a large meteorite crashed into Siberia. Conservative estimates by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory of worldwide damage from meteorite bombardment is more than $10 million annually, he said.