G’day!? When South Pasadena police officers spotted...

G’day!? When South Pasadena police officers spotted a teen-age girl walking down Fair Oaks Avenue at 1 in the morning, they asked her what she was doing.

“She told us, ‘I’ve run away,’ ” recounted Sgt. Mike Neff. “So we asked her where she was from and she said, ‘Australia.’ Well, we thought she was on vacation here and she’d had a fight with her parents or maybe she was visiting relatives.”

But, no, the 15-year-old had run away--or rather, flown away--from her parents in Melbourne. She had taken her mother’s checkbook and persuaded a travel agent to sell her $1,600 worth of airline tickets.

“We called Melbourne police and they had a missing person report on her,” Neff said.

The girl, who has since been flown back home, told police she landed at LAX and took a shuttle bus to the Pasadena Hilton, where she was unable to get a room because she didn’t have enough cash.

When police stopped her, she said was walking toward the only part of L.A. she had heard of.

“She said she was walking to Watts,” Neff said.

*

L.A.-style multiple-choice problem: While taping here the other day, TV talk show host Jon Stewart subjected Southern Californians to a sort of health-consciousness experiment. He placed a container of Musclebuilder 2500 protein powder next to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s star on the Walk of Fame and he placed a carton of Camel cigarettes on a Melrose Avenue sidewalk. While hidden cameras recorded the reaction, the cigarettes were grabbed in less than 10 seconds. It took 15 minutes before the protein powder was taken.

Probably by someone who intended to smoke it, too.

*

Speaking of L.A. stereotypes: The laid-back image in these parts is reinforced by one Downtown parking lot’s liberal definition of “early bird”

(see photo).

*

Good news, honey! The pressure’s off! Michele Lambert and several other astonished readers sent us this blurb from Blue Cross, which is easing up on its policy of really planned pregnancies

(see excerpt).

*

But how do you deliver the subpoena? Testimony in the O.J. Simpson trial about the howling of Kato, an Akita, at the murder scene prompted dog trainer Julie Sterling to speculate that more information might be gleaned from the animal. How? By channeling, a form of New Age mysticism that enables a being (usually a human) to summon a past life or recollection.

So, Newsday asked Carol Gurney, an animal channeler, if Kato could be induced to reveal what happened on the witness stand.

“It is possible,” Gurney said. “Depending on whether the animal wants to talk.”

We’re sure that any such reluctance would be quickly cured by a threat of canine contempt of court.

miscelLAny:

Dottie O’Carroll reports that a restaurant near Anaheim Stadium, the late home of a professional football team, has a menu item titled “Lack of Ram.”