Taking irreverent note of the opening of...

Taking irreverent note of the opening of the Nixon Library, Dodds Book Shop in Long Beach featured numerous books by and about the controversial former President on its main display table. Also included was a tome entitled “Lying--Moral Choice in Public and Private Life.”

Switzerland is known for its neutrality, so it came as a bit of surprise when more than 200 people began shouting in the county Board of Supervisors chambers during a ceremony honoring Leo Renggli, that nation’s consul general.

Actually, the timing was just a coincidence. The demonstrators, who were county employees, had gathered at that moment to protest a plan to charge them from $55 to $120 a month for parking. Previously, they docked their cars for free.

More than a dozen sheriff’s deputies came forward to persuade the chanters to leave rather than face arrest.

The protest didn’t seem to move the supervisors. After the outburst, their next bit of business was to honor a beauty queen.

Muscle Beach--just south of the Santa Monica Pier--was the home of musclemen, musclewomen, aerial artists and jugglers until 1959. Then the City Council, uncomfortable with (if not jealous of) the performers’ worldwide fame, had the equipment and platforms torn out after the arrest of a couple of weightlifters on a morals charge.

But, of course, the name never died. Images of the area’s glory days are preserved in an annual pictorial calendar ($5) published by the Santa Monica-based Muscle Beach Alumni Assn. Memories can’t be banned.

If you can’t stand the heat--and smog--stay out of the kitchen:

Ma Maison’s Patrick Terrail begins the July edition of his newsletter, Les Nouvelles Gourmandes, with this emotional plea:

“The summer has arrived and we will all be going to various destinations to seek a change from the L.A. traffic as well as the smog. Before you all go to (sic) far, do not forget that you can eat wonderfully well in L.A. and therefore save a lot of money on airplane ticket AND SUPPORT YOUR LCOAL RESTAURANTS.

(Capital letters are his. So is the spelling.)

No surprise to hear that Dennis Conner, the America’s Cup-winning yachtsman, will be at a celebration involving boats Aug. 2.

But in West Covina?

Yup. Conner’s hosting the opening of the Lakes office complex, which includes a shallow, man-made lake. There’ll even be a demonstration of radio-controlled miniature boats. Let’s hope there isn’t another controversy over the hulls.

miscelLAny:

A recent study found that 93 languages are spoken by students in the L.A. city school system. The top five, after English and Spanish, are Korean, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Tagalog and Farsi. Apache, Hopi, Tibetan, Maltese and Berber each are listed as the principal language of one student.