Home, weird home: The Armand Hammer Museum...

Home, weird home: The Armand Hammer Museum is flourishing in Westwood and the Disney Concert Hall is coming to the Civic Center, but L.A. can’t be taken seriously as a cultural pacesetter until a home is found for the Crypto-Phenomena Museum.

Sad to say that curator Jon Erik Beckjord reports that the Crypto (as it’s known in the art world) recently departed Trancas Beach Restaurant in Malibu after the building was vandalized.

The good news is that no damage was done to the Crypto’s priceless collection of photos of Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster and various rock formations on Mars that resemble Tammy Faye Bakker, Saddam Hussein and Teddy Kennedy. But the shrine is homeless.

As a public service, Only in L.A. is asking readers to contribute (by letter or fax only) the names of suitable sites to share space with the Crypto. The person with the best suggestion will win the hottest gimmick of the 1992 election season, a bottle of Sonny Tan lotion that carries the mug of none other than U.S. Senate hopeful Sonny Bono.

Winner need not be on this planet at time of contest winner announcement.

Mozartarella cheese?: Heather Clark, a third-grader at Castle Heights Elementary School in West L.A., was sure she knew the answer when her music class was asked the last name of composer Wolfgang Amadeus.

“Puck,” she responded.

List of the day: The Cost of Laughing Index is a compilation of leading humor indicators that was formulated by Malcolm Kushner, an attorney-turned-humor consultant (now that’s a life change). Here’s the latest index (including a couple of indicators added by Only in L.A.), with current prices compared to prices of a year ago.

1--Groucho glasses, $15.40 per dozen, up 60 cents from 1991.

2--Rubber chickens, $57.60 per dozen, no change.

3--Arrows through the head, $54 per dozen, no change.

4--National Lampoon (April issue), $3.95, up $1.

5--Eastern Onion Singing Telegram, $54, no change.

6--Dancing Chicken Singing Telegram, $65, no change.

7--MAD Magazine (April issue), $1.75, no change.

8--Minimum fee for teleplay for half-hour TV sitcom, $9,537, no change.

9--Laugh Factory Comedy Club, $10, no change.

10--California Angels baseball game, $11-$9-$7-$4, no change.

Translation, please: We’ve discussed postal sleuths who decode misaddressed letters. Once in a while, Times readers must do some decoding, too. The other day, an article quoted a man discussing his attempt “to buy property in our one zone area.”

Architect Paul Burkhard Jr. of Glendale correctly deduced that “our one zone” means R-1. Too bad we only have one bottle of Sonny Tan to give out as prizes.

miscelLAny:

The oldest university building in Southern California is USC’s Alumni House, a wooden structure that was dedicated Sept 4, 1880.