Matters of memory and U.S. politics

The other day I mentioned the story of an 80ish woman who, after suffering a fall, was asked by paramedics if she could name the president of the United States. She said, “I can’t remember his name, but I didn’t vote for him.”

Which reminded Kara Knack of the time she was laid up in the UCLA Medical Center’s emergency ward with a sprained ankle.

“A curtain separated me from an elderly woman brought in after a fall at her home,” Knack said. “The doctor asked her name, did she know where she was and what was the date. She answered each question correctly. When he asked if she knew who was president, she sighed, and with the wisdom of her 90 years, she replied, ‘I don’t think it really matters, dear.’ ”

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L.A. -- you can’t escape it! While in Tel Aviv, Gloria Greengard was surprised to find that La La Land is more sprawling than she figured. I’ve added her shot to my collection of eerily familiar names in distant areas (see photos), including Downtown L.A. (in Lethbridge, Alberta), Lubec America (in Maine) and a Beverly Hills club (in Costa Rica). Talk about Beverly Hills adjacent.

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One healthy impulse, anyway: Often when a store is burglarized, the intruders take cigarettes (among other items). Not one recent thief in Seal Beach, whose loot instead included nicotine patches, the Sun newspaper reported. Let’s hope the burglar can break the smoking habit. And the burglary habit.

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This gave me a lift: I read in the New York Times about some pedestrians in Athens who are angry about parked cars blocking sidewalks and have taken to climbing up and over such offenders. The practice is called car-vaulting.

Not sure if it’s taken root here. My wife once saw a jogger run up and over an illegally parked jalopy (nothing will stop some joggers).

In another case, a friend of hers was angered by an SUV that was parked in a “compact” space, taking up three spaces. With a piece of chalk, the friend traced the dimensions of the compact space on the body of the SUV.

I’ve done nothing more radical in my neighborhood than walk on the car owner’s lawn (rather than on the street) to get around a blocked driveway. I wish I could work up the nerve to do the old Charlie Chaplin stunt of entering the back door on the passenger side and exiting the back door on the driver’s side.

In the meantime, I’d love to hear any of your car-vaulting stories. This could be an Olympic sport someday.

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miscelLAny: Even though it’s early, Chris Ames of KFWB news gives Typo of the Millennium honors to the folks who sent out a news release that reads, in part, “From Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s sustainable design to help rebuild hurricane-ravaged New Orleans to Al Gore’s Academy Award-winning documentary, ‘An Incontinent Truth,’ . . . “ Incontinent!? God, I hope that’s not the next stage of global warming.

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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LATIMES, Ext. 77083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st St., L.A. 90012, and by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com.