NEIGHBORS A ROUNDUP : Chorus Prepares for Carnegie Hall Date

Ventura County’s barbershop-style Channelaire Chorus is gearing up for a performance at Carnegie Hall in New York May 8. The 83-member group has been invited to perform under the direction of Peter Tiboris, music director for the Manhattan Philharmonic.

Judy Ashmore, the group’s musical director, said nobody seems to be particularly anxious. “We’ve done enough performances not to be,” she said. “It’s more excitement than nervousness.”

But one thing does worry Ashmore. “They were surprised to hear we were coming in full costume,” she said of the show’s organizers. “It makes me wonder what they normally do in Carnegie Hall.”

Elizabeth Mulchay, owner of E M Interiors in Oxnard and Camarillo, was in Osaka, Japan, last month working on a client’s five-story condominium. Though she studied Japanese culture for six months before the trip and says she read “Business Tokyo Magazine,” she still was struck by some differences:

Cost of Housing: “He has a 3,500-square-foot condominium that he paid $5 million for. The average American would be appalled--he doesn’t even have a fireplace.”

Subcontractors: “The construction foremen came to work in suits--shirts, ties, smocks and hard hats. These workmen would take off their shoes and put on their slippers when they went into a room with carpeting. I knew the Japanese took off their shoes inside, but I didn’t know that extended to construction.”

Toilets: “I was working in the bathroom when I saw this toilet. I asked him what kind it was, and he said, ‘It’s a Japanese toilet.’ It was a bidet. He said, ‘It will flush the water and then it will dry you.’ It’s got hot air.”

Overheard at the Ventura YMCA . . .

First mother: “You’ve got to stop your child from peeing in the pool.”

Second mother: “All the kids pee in the pool.”

First mother: “Yeah, but not off the high dive.”

(Footnote: Fortunately, there is no high dive at the Y.)

Selling Girl Scout cookies in Oxnard is a family affair. Troop 729 finished first in Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties this year, thanks in large part to Alicia Johnson, the No. 1 seller in the tri-county area. Meanwhile, Alicia’s mother, Cherie, was the cookie co-chairwoman for Oxnard and had to store about 2,000 cases of the goodies in her garage.

So who would know better than the Johnsons which cookies people gobbled up and which ones they didn’t? The most popular? “Thin mints,” Cherie said. “They made up about 85% of the sales.” And the least popular? “The Golden Yangles. They’re for people who don’t eat sweets.”

By the way, what’s a Yangle?