Advertisement

Now where have we heard that plot...

Share

Now where have we heard that plot before?”He had a nice seductive manner, like those dark-suited zombies who sell cemetery plots to the not-yet-dead,” begins the short story by Harry Hellenbrand.

If the tone sounds sort of 1940ish, it’s because Hellenbrand, a Duluth, Minn., English professor, was an entrant in the International Imitation Raymond Chandler Writing Competition, held by the La Jolla Library. In fact, Hellenbrand’s parody of the hard-boiled Bard of L.A. took the $700 top prize. How could it miss with the riveting title, “Confusion Is My Business”?

The story describes a meeting in which an L.A. lawyer by the name of Shapiro tries to lure detective Philip Marlowe back from La Jolla to join the defense team for a man accused of killing his ex-wife.

Advertisement

“Ten minutes of your testimony and any jury would be so dizzy they’d have reasonable doubts about what decade it is,” Shapiro says.

But Marlowe turns him down.

“I wasn’t buying,” the detective/narrator explains later. “It sounded like the same old city, just bigger and sleazier and a lot more afraid of cigarettes.”

*

You can’t escape the trials of L.A.: Even if you drive around with the radio off, you can hardly avoid noticing several billboards that seem to offer ironic commentary on recent events.

We’ve mentioned the ads for Not Guilty Jeans (“more for your bottom dollar”). There’s also the billboard on the Long Beach Freeway that proclaims: “You Can’t Do This With Just Any Camcorder”--and shows a black-and-white police car through the viewfinder.

And then there’s the ad on the San Diego Freeway for a “fragrance for men,” titled DNA. We don’t know about you, but we’d hate to have the same DNA as a bunch of other guys.

*

Thanks, but we don’t need that one linked to L.A.: The TV movie “Overkill,” which was broadcast the other night, is a docudrama about a female serial killer in Florida. But Jeff Bliss of Newbury Park noticed that during one outdoor scene that was set in that state, a clearly visible sign in the background said: “Malibu Country Mart.”

Advertisement

*

Bradleyiana: Tom Bradley has been retired as mayor for more than a year but people are still naming things after him. There are more than a dozen sites now, compared to one for his predecessor, Sam Yorty. (That’s Yorty Hall in the Convention Center.)

Anyway, UCLA is planning another tribute--a Tom Bradley International Center for Students and Scholars that will contain the memorabilia he amassed as our traveling mayor. We wonder if they’ll have collections of the flight passes, airliner napkins and swizzle sticks he must have collected.

*

The heat has disoriented everyone: City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter sent out notices informing her constituents that the city Bureau of Sanitation will make special calls to pick up bulky items that normal trash collection trucks refuse.

But will they do it now, or next March? The notice was headlined: “Spring Cleaning Time!”

MiscelLAny:

The Walt Disney Co., hard-nosed in its business dealings, doesn’t have a reputation for poking fun at itself. But there is such a scene in the Disney movie “Lion King,” in which evil Scar asks a prisoner to sing for him. The inmate breaks into “It’s a Small World,” but Scar cuts him off. Echoing the words of parents who’ve heard that syrupy tune one too many times, the lion growls: “No, no, anything but that.”

Advertisement