One subject dealt with in USC professor...

One subject dealt with in USC professor Richard Chase’s Management of Service Operations course is the money-back guarantee. Just to make the graduate course more relevant, he’s offering one himself.

Chase pledges to reimburse $250 (about one-sixth of the class cost), plus the amount spent on books, to any student dissatisfied with his teaching.

The prof said he considered a $500 rebate but reduced it because “such a large figure might not be believable to students, and for a guarantee to be effective it must be credible as well as meaningful.”

As it is, he could be out as much as $13,500. Chase is confident of his product--he admits he received “very good marks” from students in a recent evaluation.

Plus, the offer contains some fine print:

No reimbursements made after grades have been issued.

The name “Paramount” lately has been linked with motion picture disappointments.

Following such box-office flops as “The Godfather, Part III,” and “Days of Thunder,” studio boss Frank Mancuso resigned Wednesday.

Now comes the stunning revelation that Paramount may substitute bingo for movies. Of course, THIS Paramount is the city located south of L.A. The owner of the Paramount Drive-In, where box office hasn’t been so hot, either, has asked the City Council for permission to turn the site into an outdoor game parlor.

Days of thunder, nights of bingo.

Good news for Woody Allen, the German shepherd.

His owner, Mitchie Merkelson of North Hollywood, wrote last week, saying that Woody turns 13 in June and would like to have a bar mitzvah. “But where, oh where, can I find a canine rabbi?” Merkelson asked.

Thundering to the rescue is Mary Frazier of San Bernardino, who nominates her hound. “Who better for a canine rabbi,” Frazier wrote, “than a dog named Moses?”

Those who detest changing planes should consider the case of Calbraith P. Rodgers’ flight from Sheepshead Bay, N.Y., to Long Beach 80 years ago. Rogers, a daredevil pilot, was publicizing a nickel soft drink called Vin Fiz.

It took him 49 days to complete the flight. He crashed 11 times and had to change planes 17 times. No wonder he had carry-on luggage only.

For Whom the Prose Smells: Grunion season is here and, inevitably, we thought of Hemingway.

We can recite the famous excerpt from “The Grunion Still Ran in Santa Monica”:

“There is a mountain between Santa Monica and the Avenue of the Stars. The old ones say that a grunion once climbed it, far above the high-tide line and died there, and when the smog lifts in the winter you can see it shining in the chaparral. No one knows why the grunion came so far from the ocean to a place where there is nothing to eat and no one to love.”

Sure it’s bad Hemingway--but not just ANY bad Hemingway. It’s a story by M.R. Montgomery that appears in the tome, “The Best of Bad Hemingway.”

miscelLAny:

Mt. Disappointment, north of Altadena, was named in 1875, but by government surveyors, not gold miners. The exhausted surveyors reached the top of the 6,000-foot peak only to find that their view to the east was blocked by neighboring San Gabriel Peak. So they had to lug their equipment to the top of that mountain.