He’s Always Alert for High Notes at the Opera

Harry G. Cooper, the La Jolla computer multimillionaire who last week unveiled a proposal to build a new $120-million sports “palace” to replace the aging Sports Arena, said that his plans include a high-tech sound system as well suited to the arias of Pavarotti as to the bust-your-eardrum decibels of heavy-metal rock groups.

Although his friends describe him as an opera buff, Cooper offers a more modest explanation of his musical tastes.

“Well, I’m a season ticket holder,” he says. “I wouldn’t say I’m an expert on the operas, but at least I don’t sleep through them, either.”

Pitch, Putt and Swipe

North County culture clash: elderly residents of Encinitas have complained bitterly about the disappearance of flagsticks from the greens at their pitch-and-putt golf course since migrants began living in a nearby canyon.

The migrants use the poles to hold up their hooches.

All-American Tuxedo

It’s become a cultural cliche that Soviets visiting the U.S. all want to return home wearing All-American blue jeans. Not so conductor Vassili Sinaisky, making his first U.S. visit as guest conductor last week for the San Diego Symphony.

Asked by his hosts to pick his pleasure, he opted for a made-in-the-U.S.A. tuxedo. A fitting was arranged at Nordstrom.

A Dangerous Lesson

One sunny morning in mid-December, a 31-year-old man in Oceanside had occasion to take off all his clothes, run through a plate glass window at an apartment building, and begin breaking up furniture and stabbing himself with shards of glass. He hurled chunks of glass from a broken mirror at police and other bystanders.

A shot from a electric stun gun did not subdue him. A struggle ensued and he was shot in the thigh. When he awoke in the hospital, he remembered none of it. Police and other witnesses helped fill in the gaps in his memory.

“I guess I’m going to have to stop using crystal,” he replied, employing street jargon for methamphetamine. Prosecutors agree: last week they ruled the shooting by police justifiable.

Real College Lowdown

Clark Kerr, the one-time president of the University of California, once said that the job of a university president is to provide winning football for the alumni, parking for the faculty and sex for the students.

Nowhere may that be truer than at San Diego State University where President Thomas Day is catching hell on all three fronts.

The alumni, stung by last year’s 3-8 record, are nervously eyeing the new football coach, the unheralded Al Luginbill.

The California Faculty Assn., representing the 2,300 faculty, has filed a grievance to block the imposition of a $4.50 per month parking fee. The issue has gone to a neutral “fact-finder” when the administration refused to budge.

And the student newspaper the Daily Aztec has called on Day to reverse his decision against condom vending machines (he approves of distribution at the student health center and over-the-counter sale at the student store but draws the line at coin-op).

Fowl Play in Carlsbad

It’s been a week now and there are no suspects in the disappearance of the 7-foot-tall, Fiberglass hen from atop the Country Store on the backside of Carlsbad.

The huge fowl, worth an estimated $2,000, was stolen once before and recovered in a field in Leucadia. The eye-catching hen has beckoned drivers along El Camino Real since the store opened in 1972, and before that for a decade previously when the site was a chicken ranch.

Carlsbad Police Lt. Greg Fried says detectives have yet to find any clues. Pity, because Carlsbad is getting a bit of a reputation as a tough town for ceramic creatures.

First the two oversized chickens at the Twin Inns restaurant had to be hidden away because they didn’t fit in the with the upscale decor of the new owners. Then a ceramic pig was stolen from outside a liquor store on Old Highway 101, and now this.