Literary offenses: Reader J. Joussone sent along...

Literary offenses: Reader J. Joussone sent along this crime item from the Daily Forty-Niner, the newspaper at Cal State Long Beach:

“Feb. 2--Suspicious subject. Man with long hair and gray beard attempted to sell short stories regarding the earthquake and getting verbally abusive to students who refused. . . .”

Commented Joussone: “Having attempted to sell short stories to students in literature courses for 20-odd years now, I don’t find the perpetrator’s abusive attitude at all suspicious.”

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Lost and found spouses: “You left your watch behind,” says Conde Nast Traveler. “Can you trust your hotel to send it on?” The magazine decided to find out, ordering its spies to misplace expensive-looking timepieces in a dozen hotels around the country.

One that received four stars for honesty was the Westwood Marquis Hotel and Gardens, whose maid “caught up with our undercover agent before he left the hotel’s grounds.”

All the other hotels recovered the watches but several didn’t bother to phone the departed guests. A housekeeper at the Hyatt Regency La Jolla attributed its silence to the “straying spouse scenario. . . . What would happen, she asked, if the guest who left an item behind was engaged in an illicit tryst? The hotel calls. The innocent-but-betrayed spouse answers the phone. . . .”

A lot of angry Mrs. Smiths: We’re reminded of an urban folk tale that we’ve heard associated with various hotels in Southern California. It goes like this: A new vice president--a young, ambitious guy determined to show he can make a difference--has a bright idea. He has the hotel start sending out thank-you notes to everyone who stays there. In the case of married couples, he gallantly has the notes addressed to the wives. Within a few days, the hotel is bombarded by calls from angry women who’ve never stayed there.

So much for the veep’s career.

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It’s Greek to them: A colleague came upon a postcard that pays tribute to what looks like Grauman’s (now Mann’s) Chinese Theater. But the caption on the back tells another story. Of course, the card was put out by a San Francisco company.

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Opening-day jitters: Congratulations to Joel Maliniak, who faxed out press releases announcing that he had been named press secretary of the California Democratic Party. Only problem was, Maliniak’s first press release to The Times was addressed to KFWB’s Charlie Sergis. It reminds us of that old Will Rogers joke--”I don’t belong to an organized political party. I’m a Democrat.”

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Watch your back, Nancy: Maxfield, a Melrose clothing store known for its offbeat window displays, is currently showing look-alike mannequins of Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan on ice skates--facing in different directions. What’s next? An Eagleson’s Big and Tall displaying a mannequin of bodyguard Shawn Eckardt?

miscelLAny:

Now you too can own an “Official Gene Autry Revolver,” a Single Action Army .45 “clad in pure silver and 24-karat gold” with the lyrics to “Back in the Saddle Again” embellished around the cylinder. The gun, a flyer says, “captures the excitement and glory that he brought to his countless films. . . .” Price: $1,250. Gee, for that kind of money, we’d like to have reproductions of the blanks that he fired with the gun.