George Alexander is the spokesman for the...

George Alexander is the spokesman for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, but he phoned to discuss a remarkable sighting he’d made of a land vehicle--a sports car, to be exact, which took some “curious jerks to the left and right” as it exited the Ventura Freeway.

When Alexander drew up alongside the car at a red light, he saw the reason.

“The driver was attempting to balance a parrot on her steering wheel,” Alexander said.

He added: “She was talking to it.”

Nothing worse than a front-seat driver.

“Un Film de D. Zucker,” proclaimed the marquee at the Laemmle four-plex at the Sheraton Grande Hotel downtown.

A tourist-type with a French accent inquired of the ticket-taker: “What is that foreign movie that is playing?”

She explained that it was “Naked Gun 2 1/2,” the cops ‘n’ robbers nonsense by David Zucker, which even spoofs film credits.

“Oh,” he responded, without enthusiasm, and walked away.

Americans.

Self-stewardessing was one of the innovative features on a recent $59 United Airlines flight from L.A. to San Francisco. Passengers in the first rows were handed cardboard boxes of snacks and told to take what they wanted, then pass them back. One woman was so astonished that she insisted on snapping a photo of the over-the-shoulders maneuvers. Big deal. It isn’t as though the no-frills policy required a passenger to explain the emergency procedures. Or chat with the air traffic controllers. But we don’t want to give the airlines any more ideas.

You have to admit that that warning on the Los Feliz Boulevard bridge (see photo) is effective. At least, we can’t ever remember seeing anyone casting a line into the picturesque L.A. River.

But back to parrots on steering wheels:

Just to show you that nuttiness on the roadways isn’t new, we bring you this 75-year-old excerpt from the old Auto Club magazine, Touring Topics:

“A man with a self-steering Ford was arrested in L.A. recently. . . . The car, which was equipped with a device to make any Ford keep the street without the attention of the driver, ran true to form, but the trouble was that it required the whole street to operate it . . .”

miscelLAny:

The maximum speed limit in the Catalina Island city of Avalon is 20 m.p.h.