The trend’s becoming so crazy that a...

The trend’s becoming so crazy that a supermarket tabloid recently claimed: “Fax Message Received from Heaven!”

While that report is unsubstantiated--do they even have electricity Up There?--the numbers of unsolicited advertisements spit out daily by facsimile machines on Earth are generating increasing complaints from recipients. As usual with any phenomenon, Los Angeles is at the forefront of the junk fax revolution.

“A Southern California firm is offering free gifts for people who provide it with fax numbers--a free Mr. Coffee for 100 numbers, a Sony Watchman for 1,000 numbers,” disclosed Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sepulveda) in a statement faxed to The Times (at The Times’ request).

“The idea is really quite ingenious: In an effort to market products, the advertiser ties up your fax machine, keeps other transmissions from getting through and uses your paper!” Katz said.

To help stem the flow, Katz has introduced a bill that would make it a misdemeanor to transmit unsolicited fax ads.

Fine. But there are signs that advertisers aren’t the only culprits. Katz added: “We even heard that one guy was using his fax to try to get dates.”

Teddy, a 16-year-old cockatoo, faithfully lugs the morning newspaper up a 300-foot-long driveway in Pasadena six times a week. “We have to fetch The Times on Sunday ourselves,” said owner Jack Brady. “Teddy can’t lift it.” Teddy only weighs 22 pounds.

Rootless Southern California has attracted innumerable moving companies over the years, including some with such eye-catching names as A Nice Jewish Boy Moving and Storage, Modern Woman’s Moving Co. and Earthquake Movers.

As a Public Utilities Commission spokesman points out, state regulation of the firms prevents any “appreciable variance” in the companies’ rates, so many bank on a humorous listing in the telephone directory (i.e. Starving Actors) to get an edge on their rivals.

The names themselves are not always meaningful. Starving Students, one of the pioneers in the crazy-name category, once sued a competitor named Starving College Students. Starving College Students countersued.

A federal magistrate in Los Angeles threw out both suits, pointing out that the two companies were neither starving nor solely staffed by students.

More from the state that gave us “Gov. Moonbeam”:

It isn’t often that a lawmaker who’s lost his party post because he’s the target of an FBI investigation is named “Legislator of the Year.”

But that’s the case with Assemblyman Pat Nolan (R-Glendale), recently so honored by the California Republican Assembly, a group of conservative boosters not to be confused with the legislative chamber. Nolan is a subject of an FBI probe of alleged corruption in the state capital.

A 105-degree day is physically and psychologically taxing enough. Did that overtaxed electronic thermometer on 1st Street in Little Tokyo have to flash 115 at the lunch hour?