Item No. 27 on today’s L.A. City...

Item No. 27 on today’s L.A. City Council agenda is proposed funding to replace “the existing Automated Worthless Document Index (AWDI) for the Police Department.”

Sort of makes you ponder whether a Worthless Document Index is needed in the first place.

Actually, says Charles Drescher, the LAPD’s systems director, “ ‘worthless’ is a misnomer.”

It’s really a valuable file of bad-check and forgery reports. Drescher admits it needs a name change, though. So, it’ll become the Tango System.

Tango, as in dance?

No, the name’s in honor of Motoko Tango, a recently retired clerk in the bunko-forgery section who was famed for her phenomenal memory.

“We’d have a credit-card forgery case,” Drescher said, “and she’d say, ‘Hey, I remember about a year ago there was a similar one in such-and-such place,’ and sure enough she’d be right.”

A good reminder that people, as well as computers, have memories.

Most every reporter knows from personal experience how a single typographical error can give a story an unexpected--and memorable--impact.

Joseph Ascenzi of the San Gabriel Valley Tribune inadvertently omitted one letter from a piece about a local fair, whose theme was: “Come Take a Peek.”

Ascenzi’s omission, he admitted in a humorous subsequent column, turned “the Great Western Fair and Livestock Show into a chance for everyone to drain their kidneys.”

He had left the “k” out of “peek.”

There was a bright spot. The show’s organizers told him that they “received about 200 telephone calls that morning, asking when the contest would be held.”

Coca-Cola recently sold Columbia Studios, but the soft-drink giant still has an “in” with the Hollywood crowd. Coke was one of the beverages served at the $1,000-a-seat dinner that film industry notables threw for Nelson Mandela Friday night at the state Museum of Science and Industry. This despite the fact that Mandela’s African National Congress has urged a boycott of Coca-Cola--and refused Coke’s offer of a charter jet for the anti-apartheid leader’s tour--because of the company’s continuing ties with South Africa.

If you happen to be going to the beach today, drop in and wish Venice a happy 85th birthday. Several Venetians will skate over to the Venice Pavilion at noon to blow out the candles of a 3-foot-high cake. Maybe the boardwalk’s Amazing Chain-Saw Juggler will cut it up.

And, while we’re at it, we almost forgot to say:

Happy Fiscal New Year.

miscelLAny:

A bit of 19th-Century America looms off the Crenshaw off-ramp of the San Diego Freeway. It’s a 105-year-old, former Council Bluffs, Iowa, courthouse. Purchased by attorney Dudley Gray when it faced demolition, it was hauled out to Torrance in pieces and was reassembled as an office building in 1980.