Seeing red: Leslie Shields of Highland Park,...
Seeing red: Leslie Shields of Highland Park, who recently turned 40, received a birthday card from her optometrist, which didn’t really cheer her up. In the same mail, she also found a second letter from the optometrist containing a booklet called “Eyes Over 40,” which detailed all the eye diseases she’s now eligible to catch.
“At least,” groused Shields, “they could have given me a grace period of six months or so.”
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You’ve got the wrong one, baby. Uh-huh: The L.A. Daily News recently ran a brief article on what it called a “strange twist” in the Pepsi/needles case. It told how a diabetic in Williamsport, Pa., found his syringe contained what appeared to be a cola drink.
What’s really strange about the tale is that the Williamsport Police Department, which is quoted in the story, told The Times it knows nothing about any such incident. And the name of the police chief in the story is fictitious, said Police Inspector William Dalton, a department spokesman.
A day later, the Daily News ran a correction, admitting that the item in its People column was “fictitious,” without elaborating on how it got into the paper. Several messages that we left with the newspaper’s editors were not returned.
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“Your Honor, it was this way . . . “Part II in our series of parking violation excuses and the city of L.A.’s reasons for rejecting them, as discussed in its parking citation manual:
* The officer saw me park and didn’t say anything : “There are some misunderstandings which seem to be based on the proposition that officer inaction somehow implies granting an exemption.”
* I have diplomatic immunity : “Consul generals are exempt from (local) laws . . . only (for) criminal acts performed in the exercise of consular functions. Since parking citations are now civil offenses, this defense is no longer applicable.”
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Letter imperfect: From the look of the marquee photographed by Richard B. Goetz, one Hollywood theater that has changed hands seems likely to limit its fare to movies with very short titles.
miscelLAny:
South Pasadena, where hundreds of Craftsman-style houses are threatened by a planned extension of the Long Beach Freeway, was named to this year’s list of America’s most endangered historic places by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.