Always go to the source: Headphones in...

Always go to the source: Headphones in place, jurors were poised to hear dramatic tapes in a Mafia drug trial in Los Angeles federal court. The high-tech machine on the prosecutor’s desk was activated. Result: Nothing but static. Again and again, the machine screeched the same sounds.

Government bumbling? Or sabotage? One spectator even invoked the name of Rosemary Woods, the faithful secretary of Richard Nixon who was involved in the “18-minute tape gap” of Watergate infamy.

Judge Dickran Tevrizian ordered the jury to leave the room. Prosecutors and FBI people, joined by Tevrizian himself, examined the equipment. An FBI specialist was summoned.

At last, the jury was recalled, whereupon Tevrizian revealed: “We spent 15 minutes looking and found it was just a plug.”

An unplugged plug.

It was discovered before the specialist arrived.

Maybe if it had been addressed to Millie . . . “Is someone trying to tell us something?” writes Sherma Rabins of Van Nuys, after her note to a fairly well-known Washington figure was returned as undeliverable.

Postal wonders (cont.): Pat Stafford of West L.A. entered a radio contest, hoping to win a trip to Hong Kong. But the only thing that made a trip was her postcard.

Stafford addressed the card to the radio station and, as instructed, wrote her own address and telephone number on the back. The post office mailed the card to her rather than the station.

She sent it a second time. Back it came. On her third try, she wrote “Front” on the side with the radio station’s address and “Back” on the side with her home address. Stafford wound up with a thrice-postmarked card, which she mailed to us (inside an envelope).

She should write the White House to complain.

Dinner and no drinks: Revelers taking the cruise sponsored by the Beacon House Assn. of San Pedro will sail aboard the Spirit, which is docked in front of a restaurant called Whiskey Joe’s. A bit ironic, since the Beacon House is an alcoholic recovery program.

It’s a gas: The appropriately named Elyse Verse of West L.A. was moved to poetry by a local television station’s report that prolonged exposure to “laughing gas” (nitrous oxide) may cause infertility in some women:

When you’re in the dentist’s chair

If you want kids, request fresh heir.

Is childlessness indeed your goal?

Try nitrous oxide birth control!

I’ve conceived the best way to go:

To not have kids, “Just say N.O.!”

miscelLAny:

The guide LA Access says that the St. James Club on Sunset Boulevard was once the home of actor John Wayne, who “lived with--legend says--a cow on the balcony.”