Those weren’t pennies from heaven that were...

Those weren’t pennies from heaven that were plunked down on the counter of the San Gabriel police station recently. They were pennies from Randall Cornelius--2,000 of them.

Cornelius, an Upland resident, was showing his displeasure over what he considered an unfair parking ticket. He says he was cited for overnight parking on a San Gabriel street that bore no warning signs.

San Gabriel police refused the box of coins, which they have a legal right to do.

“We don’t have time to stand here and count pennies,” records clerk Paul Bock said.

Cornelius is still holding out. Of course, he can still pay in a more traditional way and then go to court to put in his two cents.

The sign on the soft drink machine at the Hollywood police station says “Orange Minuet Maid” is available for 65 cents.

Another illustration of how prices have climbed since the 10-cents-a-dance era.

Kicking off the 1991 Dueling Signs Competition, Mike Kotzin of La Verne spotted this pair of contradictory directions (see photo) in a parking lot in South-Central L.A.

“As you can see,” he adds, “one motorist is just beginning an apprehensive descent into the unknown.”

Jeff Bliss of Newbury Park saw a job opening in the Business Wire Newsletter for a public relations person with “203 years agency background.”

Starting pay is $24,000 to $30,000, which Bliss noted “isn’t much for someone with all that experience.”

“OK, who infiltrated Caltech’s computer and screwed up their float’s trick?” wrote John Arnerich of West L.A.

Could it have been revenge by the students of Rose Bowl-participant, the University of Washington, whose card stunts were infiltrated and altered by Caltech commandos 30 years ago?

Actually, a Caltech spokesman said that the Rube Goldberg-type contraption functioned smoothly, except near the start when it failed to emit smoke on schedule. And that’s when TV cameras were watching. (Ain’t it always the case?)

The spokesman said that the float’s initial problem was that “the vacuum line was not fully purged.”

Just as we suspected.

Before we bid the parade a final goodby, we might add that a review of the films shows that Caltrans’ float, “The Magic of Ride-Sharing,” was not among the half-dozen that malfunctioned.

miscelLAny:

It ate the WHOLE thing . . . : Among the items in the collection of the L.A. County Natural History Museum are the fossilized stomach contents of a 70-million-year-old mosasaur, a marine lizard. The creature had apparently last dined in the Fresno area.