Grounded spaceship: Sean Morton, who operates a...

Grounded spaceship: Sean Morton, who operates a local outfit called UFO Excursions, has changed the recording on his phone to say that his business has “been put on hold . . . due to the killer quakes that are about to strike California.”

He’s referring to the temblors that psychics have predicted will strike tonight at 7:05 p.m. You’ll notice we said psychics, not seismologists.

Oddly enough, Morton’s recording goes on to say that he now has available a book revealing “prophecy for the next 30 years”--for just $20.

We thought about ordering the book, Sean. But then we thought: What’s the use?

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The sign that won’t die: If a quake did hit, we wonder if it could knock down the outdated sign on the San Diego Freeway (see photo). Certainly, Caltrans hasn’t been able to remove it.

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Art of Troy: Humorist Art Buchwald, speaking at USC’s commencement Friday, proclaimed the economy healthier than some have pictured it. “I can assure you that out of this class of 7,900 students, 131 are going to find work,” he said. “I know who you are, but I’m not at liberty to tell you.”

He singled out medical school graduates for special advice.

“Get as much malpractice insurance as you possibly can,” he said. “For every student graduating from medical school today there are two students graduating from the law school dying to sue you.”

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Fifty million and one Frenchmen can’t be wrong: We wish we could have attended Buchwald’s speech, if only to ask him about a rumor passed on to us by Doug Hays, a classmate of his at USC.

“When Art left . . . he went to Paris,” Hays wrote. “It is said that he grew a goatee, put on a beret and would go down to the train station and charge American tourists a buck to get their picture taken with a real Frenchman.”

From mortar boards to mortar: The Grunion Gazette in Long Beach reports it received “several complaints” after publishing a story that revealed that the bricks for a sidewalk improvement project in Belmont Shore “were being supplied by a New York company.” We’ve heard New Yorkers brag that their pastrami and their pizza were superior to L.A.’s. But their bricks?

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List of the Day: Greg Spring of the L.A. Downtown News compiled a list of things that could be bought for $9,943,825.22, the amount spent by the mayoral candidates prior to the April election:

* 99 LAPD officers on the street for a year.

* 164 feet of the Metro Red Line subway.

* 47,352 hours of phone sex.

* 84 years of salary for the mayor of L.A.

* 99,438,252 cups of coffee at Philippe’s.

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Be more carefulful: Ads are designed to attract attention, but Laura Stegman suspects the eye-catching headline, above left, from a business magazine was unintentional.

miscelLAny:

A stretch of the 91 that was called the Redondo Beach Freeway was renamed the Gardena Freeway by the state Legislature because it doesn’t reach Redondo Beach. Of course, the freeway doesn’t reach Gardena, either. It’s just good old Artesia Boulevard when it passes through that city.