Smile, L.A.: We turned on CNN in...

Smile, L.A.: We turned on CNN in time to hear a broadcaster proclaim, “After earthquakes, fires and floods, Southern California finally had something to cheer about.”

He apparently was talking about UCLA’s basketball win.

But we assumed at first that he must be referring to the fact that Los Angeles City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter had just presented a Brentwood resident with the 500,000th ultra-low-flush toilet given out by the city in its conservation program.

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Two-faced: B of A, which has begun offering customers the option of having their photos on its cards, is running ads that say, “Now Security Has a New Face. Yours.”

But, in the case of Ara Najarian, security has someone else’s face.

When Najarian, a Times sportswriter, received his card, it carried his name but bore the mug of a man who appeared to be 20 years older. Najarian’s face, meanwhile, landed on the other man’s card.

Asked if B of A had received similar complaints from other customers, a bank rep assured Najarian: “Oh, no, you were the only two.”

B of A promised to issue new cards and give the two their faces back.

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We must have missed it while watching the O.J. trial: A fund-raising letter sent out by Gov. Pete Wilson begins, “Do you feel like a revolutionary? I do . . . and so should you. The 1995 election was the opening shot in a revolution . . . “

1995 election? It was such a quick revolution we didn’t even know it occurred.

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Florida to California--Bye, bye: Arnold Court of Northridge forwarded a letter to the editor from the Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune, which suggested that the way to eliminate the national debt would be to sell the state of California to Japan.

The writer, Glenn May of Port Charlotte, said the proceeds could then be put in “some interest-bearing account” that neither Congress nor the President would be able to touch.

Of course, the questions raised by such a deal would be staggering. How would the O.J. trial fare in a Japanese court? Would the Dodgers’ Tommy Lasorda be too boisterous for Japanese baseball? And how long would it take to extend the Vincent Thomas Bridge across the Pacific?

No, the more we think about it, we can’t see California being sold to Japan.

Unless Republicans saw it as a way to get rid of Assembly Speaker Willie Brown.

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Why Japan wouldn’t want to buy this state: What if Robert Dornan, the Republican congressman from Orange County, announced he was going to run for emperor?

miscelLAny The L.A. County coroner’s office doesn’t have a monopoly on ghoulish gifts. Long Beach police’s homicide division is marketing a coffee mug that shows a corpse’s foot, a toe tag and the cheery thought: “Our day begins when your day ends.”