For the homeless, every bit helps. Still,...

For the homeless, every bit helps. Still, the contribution received by Food Partnership, a local distribution arm of United Way, at a press conference attended by Mayor Tom Bradley on Thursday was a bit unusual.

It was “a major donation” of “chocolate flavor nutrition bars” to “homeless and hungry people” by Slim-Fast. That’s the company that advertises its products as “the natural way to lose weight.”

Beam Long Beach Up, Scotty:

A pyramid of light, about 8,000 feet tall, rose above the Landmark Square building in Long Beach this week and will appear each night indefinitely.

The four high-intensity beams of light, projected by xenon lamps, are the work of artist Eric Orr and will be switched on each evening for three hours. The project was financed through a city program that assesses developers in redevelopment areas a 1% fee for public art. It cost $250,000. Talk about big electric bills.

“We have planes that land here and ships that arrive here from all over the world and it (the light) will be the first thing they see,” Landmark Square spokesman David Churton said. “It will be a tremendous aid to navigation.”

Orr has also constructed a similar light pyramid for the Sanwa Bank building in downtown L.A. The Civic Center, of course, isn’t as close to an airport or the sea as Landmark Square. But the Sanwa light could still come in handy as a beacon for automobile mariners lost on our storm-tossed freeways.

Long Beach, by the way, has another new landmark on a somewhat more modest scale. It’s a one-lane road inside the burg’s Recreation Park Golf Course. The asphalt is cracked in places. And the last time we looked we saw a big pile of sand parked on one stretch--the reserves for nearby sand traps, perhaps. Wilshire Boulevard, it ain’t. But it’s named for a no-nonsense guy: Long Beach resident and ex-Gov. George Deukmejian.

From our “I-Don’t-Think-We’re-in-Kansas-Anymore” file:

A copier shop in Beverly Hills advertises that it specializes in “movie scripts.”

No, proof of authorship isn’t required.

MiscelLAny:

The first bell in L.A.’s Old Plaza Church was donated by Capt. Henry Fitch in the 1820s as a condition for having abduction charges against him dropped. Fitch had eloped with one Josefa Carrillo without asking her parents’ consent.