Odds & Ends Around the Valley
Liberty Garden
If you are one of those people who is more patriotic than thou, you now have an opportunity to prove it to your neighbors by installing a $1,900 replica of the Statue of Liberty in your back yard.
Actually, it’s a four-foot-tall, concrete grand lady on a four-foot-plus pedestal.
Rather imposing.
Diane & Rudy & Sons--”in the same location since 1947” at Ventura Boulevard and Vanalden Avenue--will deliver the 500-pound statue, at no extra charge, within a day or two of purchase.
This is not a once-only sale or anything like that.
Once you buy the statue, the folks at Diane & Rudy & Sons will be able to make others because they bought the mold for the statue from Venice-area artist Zoltan Friedman, who first created it for the Bicentennial.
If you don’t necessarily want the Statue of Liberty as a permanent guest, you might consider a concrete set of lions to guard your front door. The big problem with the lions is that they actually look kind of cute and will attract every kid in the neighborhood.
Also featured in the Diane & Rudy & Sons showroom are some jolly Oriental gentlemen with large tummies, all kinds of birds and animals, some half-naked ladies in the Grecian mode, and an anatomically correct male nude that bears a real resemblance to Michelangelo’s David.
The showroom has no floors or walls, but lots of trees. And, there is no more Diane or Rudy Dallugge, and just one of the sons. The place is owned and operated by Dennis Dallugge and his wife, Bunny, who bought the business from his parents in 1966.
By the time Diane and Rudy retired, Dennis was bringing in some of the large concrete statuary that catches the eye of travelers driving down Ventura Boulevard. He and Bunny, whom he met when attending Taft High School, also sell beautifully crafted hand-carved sculptures, like the two playful sea lions frolicking on a huge piece of driftwood. But the biggest sellers for years have been the three-tiered fountains that grace hundreds of San Fernando Valley homes.
Universal Greening
Garrett DeBell is a new kind of Hollywood czar.
A Green Giant.
DeBell is a professional ecologist who helps Universal Studios clean up its act.
He advises the folks there on buying products kind to Mother Earth, including fuel-efficient automobiles that emit less pollutants. Generally he helps the studio switch from products that are environmentally harmful to ones that are less so.
DeBell graduated from Stanford with a degree in biology, then completed his doctoral work for a degree in ecology from UC Berkeley. He also co-authored and edited the Sierra Club’s Friends of the Environment Handbook, served as a lobbyist in Washington and wrote the 1971 Voters Guide to Environmental Politics.
In addition to the nuts and bolts work at the studio, DeBell is a creative consultant.
“I’m often asked to read television and feature film scripts to make suggestions about ecological questions. I worked with Dennis Weaver on the two-hour “McCloud,” which was very ecologically oriented,” DeBell said.
The project with which he has been most involved is the new MCA video “Help Save Planet Earth,” which hit the stores recently.
The tape--which is narrated by Ted Danson and features Whoopi Goldberg as a beleaguered Mother Earth, Beau and Lloyd Bridges on saving water, Cheech Marin on reducing car pollution, and Max Casella, Jamie Lee Curtis, Sally Kellerman, John Ritter and Kedric Robin Wolfe discussing a number of ecological sins of omission and commission--suggests ways in which we ordinary folk can clean up our act, as well.
Stocking Up
If your taste in tennis togs runs to Andre Agassi’s black shirts and pants with neon underwear hanging out, it’s time to rethink what your fashions are stating.
Since Southern California’s 19-year-old Pete Sampras slammed his way to victory in the U. S. Open--earning himself a fistful of dollars and a slice of tennis history--the emphasis, according to tennis pros and sporting goods stores, is on the Sampras version of classic elegance. The only loud thing about the quiet-spoken and unobtrusively dressed Sampras is the thunder his racket makes on a serve.
“The minute you see a new phenom emerge, the kids want to serve like him, play like him and dress like him,” said Jim Lavenson, a salesman at Jerry Balboa’s Tennis Warehouse in Encino.
The serving and playing part take a couple of lessons, a little seasoning and a bionic arm that comes as standard issue. The classic shirts, shorts and shoes you can get at sports stores that carry the Sergio Tacchini brand. The racket is a Wilson 1984 Pro Staff mid-sizer.
The day after the Open, the folks at the Wilson headquarters in River Grove, Ill., were ecstatic. “We knew he was going to explode, but it came so soon,” said John Embree, director of racket sports marketing. “You people out there must be really proud since he’s such a nice kid.”
One Southern Californian was for sure. Woodland Hills tennis coach Paul Holback, who coaches Pete’s sister Stella, was pulling for Pete.
When asked if Stella has the kind of natural talent that her sib has, Holback said, “She won the NCAA title playing for UCLA as a freshman. She’s good.”
What a Screamer
Remember when those cars that talk were new?
The cars told you to put on your seat belt, take off the hand brake, turn on your lights, slow down, sit up straight and fly right.
It was pretty bad. A lot of comedians did routines about it.
Folks went around grumbling that they didn’t need their car to boss them around and/or give them a bad time. Most cars are now fairly quiet, except for the ping that reminds you that you were supposed to take it in for some sort of automotive doctoring.
Of course, there are car alarms that get in your face if they think you are too close to someone’s $60,000-plus designer wheels, but that is another story.
What is new on the market is a Frisbee that screams.
It is called the Sonic Siren and costs $10.95.
It’s not particularly pretty or aerodynamically daring.
It just screams.
You pay about $8 more for this disc that shrieks at you.
Sherrie Adler, at Roc’s in the Northridge Fashion Center, says they are a very good seller.
One person has suggested that it’s because they’re perfect for blind people and dogs.
Not likely.
Call out the noise police.
Overheard
“I don’t know how they got there, honestly. Someone must have done that to me as a joke.”--Man being questioned outside a North Hollywood market about the unpaid-for bottles of vodka stuck in his boots
