When USC humanities Prof. Gloria Orenstein learned...

When USC humanities Prof. Gloria Orenstein learned the other day that she would be honored by a student group for combining “scholarship and vision” in the classroom, it didn’t come as a complete surprise.

She told the Daily Trojan that she’d had a dream the previous night in which a “symbolic deer head on a string” summoned her to the door with “a ringing sound.” She awoke feeling something unusual was going to occur, basing this interpretation on her work with shamans in Lapland, who believe deer represent a “sign of calling.”

We thought it sounded more like a fraternity prank.

Not so scholarly was the USC student who was recently arrested for assault with a deadly weapon. A USC police officer, responding to a noise complaint, was knocked down by a frozen grapefruit allegedly propelled by the student with a homemade slingshot from an apartment window.

Meanwhile, in an assault on good taste, there’s the “It-Pays-To-Be-a-B.U.M.” billboard, installed across the street from the downtown Midnight Mission, a sanctuary for the homeless.

A spokesman for the billboard company, Patrick Media Group, said the ad for B.U.M. sportswear had been “inadvertently” placed there and would be moved after a complaint from Councilman Mike Woo’s office.

We recently mentioned that signs on the Santa Monica Freeway inform motorists that “Long Beach” is to the south and “Sacramento” is to the (far) north. Our suggestion that perhaps Caltrans could extend diplomatic recognition to the San Fernando Valley and substitute the name of a local community for “Sacramento” pleased reader Paul Wolfson.

“Change the sign to Van Nuys,” he pleaded. “God forbid the worst nightmare of all to happen--L.A. people move up to Sacramento.” Needless to say, Wolfson lives in a city about 375 miles north of Van Nuys.

“Everyone knows that job resumes need that something extra to be noticed,” writes Dan Kaplowitz of Whittier. So, perhaps, Kaplowitz shouldn’t have been surprised the other day to spot this sign, seemingly offering to reinvent one’s past:

“Resumes--Creative Writing and Typing Services.”

Cabbage is optional:

For St. Patrick’s Day, a Sherman Oaks restaurant called Que Pasa will be offering that traditional Mex-Irish favorite: Corned beef tacos.

miscelLAny:

The first drive-in theater in the United States opened in 1933 in . . . Camden, N.J. But L.A. gets credit for No. 2, which appeared soon afterward in West Los Angeles, on the then-inexpensive piece of land at the corner of Pico and Westwood boulevards.