HALL’S WALL: Traffic through the new Orange...

HALL’S WALL: Traffic through the new Orange County Sports Hall of Fame at Anaheim Stadium is still at a trickle, but officials expect word-of-mouth interest to take awhile. . . . Items getting a lot of attention: The Size 20 Adidas tennis shoes of the Utah Jazz’s 7-4 center Mark Eaton. Plus the wall with names of nearly 250 Orange County medal winners in the Olympics. The first: Fred W. Kelly in 1912, a hurdler from Orange High School.

PERMIT YOURSELF: Builders have grumbled before about going to five or six different offices to collect all their permits. Which is why business was good right away when the new county Permit Assistance Center at 300 N. Flower St. in Santa Ana opened last week. Four county and nine state agencies are housed there for one-stop permit shopping. Says county planning manager John B. Buzas: “Whether you’re putting on a patio cover or building condos, this is the place to go.”

SEES THE PAST: For Tai Thai of Westminster, making the new Oliver Stone movie, “Heaven and Earth,” which opens Christmas Day, hit close to the home hearth. His character, Jimmy, is separated from his father at birth and does not reunite with him until more than 15 years later. Thai was separated from his parents in Vietnam in 1975 and didn’t see them again until 1984, when he was 16. . . . When he did the reuniting scene, Thai says, “everything just hit me again, and tears just started falling down.”

PRAISE, FINALLY: Another film by a heavyweight director, “Schindler’s List,” is getting lavish praise from film critics. The Steven Spielberg movie, based on UC Irvine writing professor Thomas Keneally’s 1982 historical novel about the Holocaust, is being hailed as the best picture of 1993. Keneally, on leave of absence in Sydney, Australia, until next month, says he’s been deluged with calls and faxes. He quotes “that wonderful American phrase--it’s going gangbusters, at least critically.”