Odds & Ends Around the Valley

Mickey Mouse Architecture

Over the years, large office buildings have been springing up along the banks of the Ventura Freeway where it passes through Burbank. Most of these are not urban-issue, Geometry 101 high-rises. They are more innovative than that, prompting you to wonder why so many of the other high-rises around town look as if they were designed by the same computer.

Now this stretch of the freeway is being further enlivened by Walt Disney’s new office building, which is a few blocks to the north. Its architecture is rather, well, unusual. No flat roof line for this building. Instead, there are these rounded forms projecting upward that are reminiscent of Mickey Mouse’s ears.

“That is one possible interpretation that we wouldn’t disagree with” is all a company spokesman would say. The building is scheduled for completion by midyear. It will also feature 19-foot-tall versions of the Seven Dwarfs on the front of the building. “They’ll be holding up the roof,” the spokesman said.

Obviously, Disney plans on staying there for some time. The market for office buildings with ears attached is rather slack.

Joan Crawford Should Have Tried This

“If you have a husband who wears a suit and tie to the office every day, you can end up with a lot of extra hangers in your closet from the dry-cleaners,” notes 31-year-old Mary Haskell, who lives in Encino.

Haskell used to throw out the extra hangers that cluttered the closet. Now she recycles them back to her dry-cleaner.

Celebrity Cleaners in Encino recently used the “recycle your hangers” theme as part of a coupon gimmick. Customers who brought in 10 or more hangers were given a coupon worth at least $5 off on future orders.

“We got so many new customers just because of that idea. They wanted to start recycling their hangers,” says co-owner George Kupelian. Adds his partner, Rick Sarni, “We don’t have any coupons left, but some customers are now in the habit of bringing their hangers back.”

About 10% of the customers at Valley Oaks Cleaners in Sherman Oaks recycle their hangers, says owner Jim Avakian. “It really picked up after the first of the year,” he says. “Maybe they made a New Year’s resolution to start recycling.”

Like Daughter, Like Mother

Doubtless you’ve seen them in the malls, wearing their tight leggings and their multi-neoned tops. When you get up close, you see the wrinkles around their eyes and that extra flesh around the elbows. They are mothers who raid their teen-age daughters’ closets.

“I deal with this a lot,” says Pat Edmister, Ph.D., a psychotherapist who is also a professor at the California Family Study Center in North Hollywood. “The bigger issue is mothers who are insecure with aging, and mothers who are in competition with their daughters. Teen-age girls really find a part of their identity through the clothes they wear, and now mom is taking away part of that identity or separateness. It’s denying the daughter any kind of power or independence.”

Marilyn Rand, Ph.D., a psychotherapist with a private practice in Tarzana, believes the mother places her daughter in a difficult position when she borrows her teen-ager’s clothes. “What if the daughter doesn’t want her mother wearing her clothes? It’s all right for a daughter to tell her mother no, she can’t borrow something. But then you’re placing the daughter in the position of being the mother who has to set limits,” Rand says.

Adds Marilyn Stolzman, Ph.D., a psychotherapist in Woodland Hills, “It’s like the mother trying to recapture her youth.”

Keeping closets separate is best, Rand says, because it makes it very clear who’s the mother and who’s the daughter.

A Pregnant Question

The curious are apt to ask “Is it a boy or a girl?” before a baby is born these days. Pregnant women who have an ultrasound test or undergo amniocentesis are given the option of learning their fetus’ sex as early as 16 weeks into the pregnancy. How many prospective parents want to know in advance whether they should be buying pink or blue?

“I would say somewhere on the order of 90% want to know the sex,” says Dr. James Shields, a perinatologist based at AMI Tarzana Regional Medical Center who performs approximately 1,000 amnios and 2,000 ultrasounds annually.

“I think patients who have deferred childbearing to a later age--like 35 or 36--in order to pursue their careers have a greater tendency to not want to know the sex of their baby. And those who are having their first baby. Frequently, after the first one they want to know, though. They say it was nice being surprised the first time, but this time they want to plan more in advance.”

Some patients who aren’t sure whether they want to be told their baby’s sex ask Shields to write it down on a piece of paper and put it in a sealed envelope.

Then there are the couples who don’t agree--one wants to know, the other doesn’t. “I’ll take whichever one wants to know out of the room and tell them privately, but usually by the end of the day the other one knows.”

Overheard

“A woman isn’t a celebrity until she has a perfume named after her, and for a man, it’s a golf or ski tournament.” --Man in salad-bar line at Sizzler restaurant in Canoga Park.