A growth industry in L.A.: Joel Maliniak...
A growth industry in L.A.: Joel Maliniak tipped us to a traffic sight that’s even less cheery than a jammed freeway--a van displaying the phone number (800) AUTOPSY.
We gave AUTOPSY a jingle and spoke to the founder, Vidal Herrera, a former coroner’s investigator who was forced to retire from his county job because of an injury (“I hurt my back lifting a body”).
Herrera’s Autopsy Post/Services supplies physicians for private and forensic autopsies, removes organs for medical research, conducts paternity DNA analysis and, of course, acts as a consultant for TV shows.
“I didn’t advertise on my van at first because this is a very personal business,” he said. “But then I saw all the 800 ads on TV and thought, why not? Business has gone up at least 50% since then.”
Not all the attention is positive. “I parked in the handicapped zone when I went to eat at Yamashiro’s restaurant,” Herrera said. “I have a permit because of my back. But the restaurant made me move. They said it was in bad taste.”
The evening wasn’t a total loss, though. “Five attorneys approached me,” he said, “and I gave each one my card.”
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Or she could abstain from washing: “My 19-year-old daughter, Kristina, bought a blouse and on checking the washing instructions, noticed a curious step in the procedure,” writes Danny Haberern. Now, he quips, she’s afraid if she doesn’t practice “safe wash, there may be baby T-shirts in our future.”
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You can’t tell the motorists without a score card: A Wilshire Division officer came in for some kidding back at the station house after he wrote a ticket without noticing that the driver of the Mercedes was a pro basketball player.
Even if the name meant nothing to him, the numbers on the driver’s license were a pretty good tip-off: “Height: 7-1. Weight: 303.”
At least the officer got no argument on the foul call from Orlando basketball star Shaquille O’Neill--reportedly for driving in the early morning hours with the stereo turned up too high.
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Stupid Criminal Tricks: Then there’s the “tired old 1980 Datsun” of J. David Moeller of Sun Valley, who isn’t a pro basketball star. It “is of no great value other than it had belonged to the late Academy Award-winner Anne Ramsey,” he says. (If you dig deep enough, every L.A. story has a Hollywood angle).
But the jalopy was stolen the other day. Moeller wondered why. It was intact when police found it but had been transformed into a kind of storage facility.
Moeller says it contained “two car batteries, a portable radio, a telephone, a pair of sunglasses and a gallon of antifreeze.” He adds that if the thieves “want their booty back, they can call the L.A. Police Department’s lost and found.”
miscelLAny:
The Learning Annex in West L.A., which offers offbeat courses, lists this three-hour seminar in its June catalogue: “How to Start, Own, Manage, Run or Even Dance in a Topless Bar” ($39; bring your own G-string).
