Not a candidate for the ‘perfect crime’

You couldn’t blame officers for taking an interest in the young man wandering through the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. First, he seemed to be drunk, the Mirror newspaper reported. Second, he was wearing clothes that still bore their sales tags -- the tags of a nearby store.

Asked for identification, he opened his backpack and inadvertently revealed a fine collection of 14 knives, still in their packaging and also bearing the tags of the same store.

A check determined that -- surprise! -- the goods had been stolen. The suspect was arrested, and left to wonder: Where had his clever plan gone wrong?

Sounds like something out of a murder mystery: Julie Cuttrell of Long Beach noticed an ad from a coffee shop that seemed to be offering a drink to die for (see accompanying).

The ultimate outsourcing? We’ve all read about businesses sending work to India, but the trend may be older than you think. On 7th Street in downtown L.A., Eric Pisarro-Grant noticed a manhole cover that was produced in that country several years ago, then floated back here (see photo). I’m guessing about that last part.

Actionable News! In my Random House Webster’s Dictionary, the third and last definition of “actionable” is “ready to go or be put into action.” So the CNBC ad I spotted isn’t technically wrong (see accompanying). But I think, in this litigious atmosphere, that most people associate that word with another definition in the dictionary: “liable to a lawsuit.” And for a media company to use that word. . . . I wonder if CNBC ran this ad by the lawyers?

Up, up and over! The other day I noted the growing practice of Athens pedestrians walking on top of parked vehicles that block sidewalks. Car-vaulting, it’s called. (Perhaps car-trampling would be more specific.)

Anyway, Lisalee Wells of Long Beach recalled a Bay-to-Breakers Run through the streets of San Francisco that was slowed by a motorist who had somehow eased out onto the racers’ path from a side street. The driver was trapped, and Wells watched as several “runners ran over her hood and over her trunk. The insurance claims for multiple knee-, butt- and sneaker-prints must have been a thing of beauty.”

Leaving his mark: Fredric Dunn, meanwhile, remembered the time he saw a man with a white cane heading for a car that was blocking a sidewalk.

“I warned him of the hazard that he would have been unable to see,” Dunn said. “He thanked me and proceeded slowly ahead, using his cane to search for the hazard. When he came to the parked car, he raised his cane and hit the car with it several times, hard enough to leave a dent in the trunk. He then smiled and continued on his way.”

miscelLAny: The producers of the next “Star Trek” movie -- you didn’t think they’d stop making them, did you? -- recently put out a casting call for “intriguing and interesting faces to integrate in this film,” Hollywood.com writes. Especially sought were people with “long necks, small heads, bug eyes, large foreheads and oversized ears.”

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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.