Maybe Shaq’s ‘Scary Movie’ Blurb Should Be Titled ‘The Haunting’
Just when you thought that celebrated sports feud was over....
In a TV blurb for the comedy “Scary Movie 4,” Shaquille O’Neal is being held captive in a room when a threatening voice is heard and a monster appears on an overhead TV monitor.
“Kobe?” asks Shaq.
Hey, what about a separation of church and estate? If you’re praying for a big tax refund, Terry Miller of Pasadena may have found just the place for you in the town of Oakhurst (see photo).
Can’t grow another Broadway hit? George Ehrnman of Alta Loma isn’t sure whether this is a career change or a new hobby, but he points out that a famous songwriter seems to have taken up gardening (see accompanying).
No-Surf City: Perhaps the addition of “Los Angeles” to the Angels name has confused some over the location of Anaheim. At least that’s the conclusion you could reach from an ad unearthed by Matt Zielke of Orange (see accompanying).
Word imperfect: “This sign painter was really behind the eight ball,” wrote Laguna Hills’ Al Weber of a pool hall miscue.
School daze: Some fractured sentences collected by high school teacher Juel Goldstock of Long Beach:
* Afghanistan is ruled by the Tailbone.
* I don’t want to be cremated. It’s just not cool.
* We bought a three-topic pizza.
* sullen: adj., sad. I was sullen when I found out I was dead.
* In our backyard, my dad and I built a place where my pet turtle can run free.
Da OC: “You think Costa Mesa’s problem is illegal immigration?” wrote Peter Buffa in the Daily Pilot, a Tribune Co. newspaper that serves Costa Mesa and Newport Beach. “Please. Having the mob show up in Costa Mesa -- now, that’s a problem.”
Buffa was referring to a surrealistic episode of “The Sopranos,” in which sullen patriarch Tony is in a coma after being shot and dreams he is not a mob boss but a respectable traveling salesman attending a convention in Costa Mesa.
In the hotel bar, he asks the bartender: “So what goes on in Costa Mesa?”
“Around here, it’s dead,” the bartender says.
Adding to the sense of unreality, a television above the bar shows a forest fire with the caption: “Costa Mesa.” Wrote Buffa: “I try and I try, but I just cannot remember seeing that forest.”
Of course, Costa Mesa has no coast either, proving that city names can be as fanciful as TV shows.
miscelLAny: For your Unclear-on-the-Concept file, I heard a TV commercial for a hair dye that was accompanied by the tune, “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing.”
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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.