Only in L.A. / People and Events

Monday was barely under way when we made our first UFO sighting of the week.

It was a small, pilotless craft wending its way along Wilshire Boulevard between MacArthur Park and the Civic Center at an altitude of about 200 feet. It appeared to be carrying a camera.

What is that you say? Of course, we collected evidence--just before the voyager disappeared behind a skyscraper.

But we’re still searching for an explanation to relate at our next UFO Convention.

An LAPD air support officer did reveal: “We got a courtesy call from a guy who said he was taking some aerial photographs, something to do with Metro Rail.”

But spokespersons for the two Metro Rail agencies--the RTD and the county Transportation Commission--said they knew nothing about the flight. (And you know how well-organized the Metro Rail project is.)

So . . . come to think of it, perhaps the spy craft only appeared pilotless to human eyes.

Our Unreal Estate Market (cont.):

You may recall that we recently ran a photo of a banner across a Long Beach house that pleaded: “BUY THIS HOME . . . $269,900 . . . “

The picture brought back memories for Robert Paine, who lives nearby.

“In the summer of 1932, that house was offered to my mother,” Paine wrote. “She, my brother, and I were spending the summer in the house and paying $40 a month rent.”

Paine said that, with building costs what they were then, his family rejected the asking price as too high.

It was $2,500.

In assembling our proposed “Golden Treasury of Malathion Poems”--still no publishers-- we had more than enough entries for Chapter 1, “Malathion Malcontents.”

But we didn’t have a single submission for Chapter 2--”Pro-Malathion Prose”--until we received this verse:

Malathion might be a curse.

But hordes of Medflies are even worse.

If the helpful spray is banned,

We will have an empty land.

So wrote Kam Cammer of Santa Barbara.

But back to UFOs. Our last sighting turned out to be exercise guru Richard Simmons on Sunset Boulevard. He was in his convertible, talking to a woman who was in her convertible. She held up her car phone, indicating that she had someone on the line.

Simmons yelled out, “Just tell him to call me at . . . “ and he gave a phone number whose last four digits were, naturally, “FOOD.”

Just to be sure, we checked with Simmons’ spokesman, who said: “Please don’t print the full number. That’s his private line.”

Sure. Simmons probably shouts it out only occasionally on Sunset Boulevard.

miscelLAny:

Sierra Madre’s Chinese wisteria is the world’s largest blossoming plant, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. It has branches 500 feet long, covers nearly an acre and has been known to show as many as 1.5 million blossoms. It was planted in 1894 by a resident who purchased the tiny vine from a Monrovia nursery for 75 cents.